Dancing, Cornhole, Pride Festival and Swimming

It has been an incredidbly engaging weekend. It began with Swing Dancing lessons on Thursday and ended with swimming with people from my church who live 10 minutes away.

Thursday evening, I enjoyed the last lesson in Jim and Sam's Eastern Swing series. It was an opportunity for me to fine tune what Jim has been teaching me on the floor after class. We played with the Sweetheart and Hammerlock, and took a group picture, knowing the sweat was making a mess of my hair. I chatted with Lindsay a while, and Rose invited me to a party she was throwing at her parents' place on Friday.

When I arrived at Rose's place I Friday, I had stopped by home to dress a little more comfortable, since it was jeans day and she had mentioned that she might have dancing. That meant that as a minimum, I did at least need to change int a skirt. I had also stopped by and picked up a house-warming 4-pack of strawberry daquiri wine cooler. As I walked to her front door with the grocery bag in hand, I noticed a sign in the front garden that read, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, Joshua..." I rang the doorbell, and when Rose answered, I said, "Hi, Rose. I brought wine coolers." To which she replied, "We don't have alcohol in this house."

"Ok. I'll just take these back to the car."

She introduced me to other guests that had arrived, a couple from her church and someone she knew from school. The name of the church curiously didn't have the denomination on it. "We leave off the Baptist," because it usually causes problems she said. She took us on a tour of her carpeted basement, which was fabulously remodeled into a living space, complete with pool table, foosball table and a bathroom with a shower. It was impressive. That evening I got to try out the Kentucky game corn hole on a custom board (we lost by one point), and danced with Jim a couple of times as he danced with several of us.

I soon had to tell them at 11 PM that I had to leave because I had a long drive to help out at Pride in Lexington from 11 in the morning to 7 in the evening. I tried to leave it blank which pride, but naturally, someone asked, "Which Pride?"

"LGBT Pride," I answered, and decided to just get it all out there, since the cat was out of the bag. "I am helping with the TransKentucky booth."

Rose offered to walk me to my car and gave me a hug at the door.

The next two days also saw me out until 11 PM. First, was Lexington Pride Fair, where I met so many interesting people and answered numerous questions and had great conversations.