Line Dancing

When I was working for Steve he purchased a giant ranch (1.2 MILLION acres) and one of the best trips I got to go on was a road trip out to this Ranch for a couple days. Steve had us stop in Reno and get outfitted properly-boots, belt, wranglers, tops. It was pretty fantastic. The photo above was taken on the ranch. I know I look pretty awkward. I felt like I was playing dress up. We were surrounded by REAL cowboys and I was posing for a photo.
It's crazy beautiful out there. I'd love to go back some day.
Anyway, maybe the best thing I got out of that job was these boots:

I wear them all the time and have pretty thoroughly destroyed them (they don't look like this anymore). My friends all tell me that I dress/look like a country western singer which I usually take offense to. Jason even called me Faith (hill) for an entire weekend once. So I stopped curling my hair. Tonight, Melissa and I are going line dancing at Duke's here in Portland and my hair is going into rollers as soon as I get off work.
Over the last couple weeks, I've been trying to learn some line dances off youtube- not in preparation for this night (we just decided yesterday that we would go)- this is actually something I've been wanting to learn more about since we went to Denver

(a year and a half ago-wow)

and went to this amazing bar called the Cowboy Lounge(photo above is NOT from the Cowboy Lounge. That is from the Bump & Grind Cafe's Drag Queen Brunch). People were line dancing and country swing dancing. But there was also top 40 and the same kind of dance club scene you'd see here in Portland-all in the same club. The men were so respectful and they could dance. We met a group of guys willing to teach us the line dances. They were very patient and by the end of the night we (almost) fit in. We were back the next night as well. I didn't learn to do any of the swing dancing but watched with SO much envy.
Even though I know Dukes will have nothing on the Cowboy Lounge (I don't have very much faith in the ability of Portland men to line dance) I'm still excited. Country music has always been a pretty guilty pleasure and I love it when I can just enjoy and be ridiculous. Usually those moments are confined to road trips with Melissa and Box.

***Disclaimer about my love for country music: I hate/change the radio station when any songs come on related to patriotism, putting a boot up someone's ass, soldiers etc. I also have a hard time with songs about how awesome it is to be trashy (redneck woman) but I usually end up singing along. See, guilty pleasure. I fully feel the need to qualify my enjoyment with the fact that I'm not one of those people.