Teachers New Pet

After my studio, I walked back to the apartment, worked on putting together a "fake" schedule, then drove down to south phoenix for the city of phoenix planning comission meeting. As one of our assignments, we have to attend a public meeting and give our impressions and analysis. The meeting was fairly easy to find, athlough I was surpised to find something as powerful as the planning comission meeting in a room with a large bingo board behind them. I sat in the public seating, room for about 36. I'd say close to thirty citizens showed up along with the eight commissioners. These people, mind you, are not professional planners, although there were three professional planners from city of phoenix there. There was an air of decided casualness which surprised me. Many council members wore jeans. Anyway, there were three agenda items, one of which was dismissed immediately becuase it was only one line about a zoning change, and there was no one present who knew anything about it. The second item was about this guy who wanted to change a mixed-use agricultural zone to a R3 (three family residential). There were five people who were there to oppose him, so he asked for a continuance to see if he could solve thier problems outside of the council. The last issue was the planned rezoning of a large parcel of land in Desert Ridge to accomodate car auctions and dealerships. This was initiated by the city of phoenix planner. Eight citizens came forward to the mic to give thier view, inlcuding the JW Marriott hotel head. A few were members of the DR HOA, and all were residents. They felt they had not been included in the planning process, that the dealerships would spoil the desert and bring even more traffic to an already congested area from the DR Marketplace. Armed with a petition from the DR denizens, they convinced the council to deny the rezoning. There was applause and the meeting ended almost exactly an hour after starting.

I drove home quickly, picked up Jen, and we went directly to Salsa. For some reason, we seem to have come into her view. Maybe she noticed us becuase we were one of the only couples that danced in the clubs with her second and third year students. Who knows. At any rate, all of a sudden, I'm the one she drags out in front of the class to correct most often. I got in front of the class three times tonight. I'm not complaining, its good because its individualized attention which is amazingly effective at correcting bad form, its just a little strange. We were learning these new steps in class, and I was just barely getting them. Tuesday's child or not, when I have to follow a new, set pattern to a set beat, I have the grace of a wildebeast on skates. We were praciting for the final which is set up as a dance competition, complete with numbers on our backs (not to worry, we get full credit for participation) and she went though picking the ten best, then the two best, then she drags Jen and I out on the floor, saying how good we are. I barely have the basic step down, but I muddle through it, only coming hideously off time. Speaking of the final, we have to put togather four dance routines, thankfully only less than a minute each. Salsa, Cha-cha, Merengue, and Rhumba. Well, back to work. I'm not going to have much time to work on a model for monday being in San Francisco from Friday to Sunday.