22. call up a friend from school

The idea of today's dance was to keep in touch with friends and family. I'm pretty bad at it, for multiple reasons. I prefer calling people when I really want to talk to them rather than scheduling timely calls to notify that I'm still alive. And don't even get me started on the "what's the weather like out there?" question. If you want to know what the weather is like in my part of the world, all you need is weather.com!

I guess I'm not feeling all up there today (I blame it on the non-daylight savings changeover). I think today, for the first time, I genuinely felt like giving up. More than just giving up, I'm questioning the whole purpose of the 30 days, 30 dances. What exactly is it??!! Why am I doing this? Is it going to be as satisfying at the end of the road as I pictured it? Has it been a satisfying journey even? Or is it just a distraction from something more important? Aargh ...

21. watch 1 hour of a tv series you haven't seen before

I like Netflix. I like that I can cross off movies and TV shows off my ever-growing list. I watched the first couple of episodes of Arrested Development last week and I thought it was pretty funny. I wasn't blown away by it but it was funny. Now I'm not one for TV show marathons so I take my own sweet time watching them. I also want to catch up with Mad Men. As much as I like the show, I haven't made it past season 1.

20. sleep at 10 pm

No, no, no, no. I did not forget to pick out another dance for .... well yesterday. I just post today (and consequently late) because I did my dance yesterday. I feel fresh! I needed this dance.

I'd like to thank Great Lakes Christmas Ale for helping me out with this one. I could not have done it without you. And I most certainly would not have passed out on my futon without your help, and that too right before I was about to blog about it. Can you imagine what this blog post would read like if I had posted last night?? I know I can't. I'd also like to thank my office for making it a week worthy of the said Christmas Ale.

And I just had to share this:

19. log on to mint.com

So it happened again! Twice in 3 days now. I forgot to pick out a dance again today morning. Is this a sign of things to come? If so, what is it a sign of?

As always, I still randomly picked a dance. This time, I had to cheat twice to settle on today's dance. The first time, I picked out one relating to photography and salad the second time (salad has been rejected twice in 3 days. The universe must really want me to have salad. Don't worry, salad. I'll make it up to you. When it's your turn to dance, I'm going to have tons of salad, with tons of dressing. I do not promise a home-made salad btw)

So anyways, mint.com is a financial planning website. You give it credit card information etc (horrifying thought for many) and it spits out pie charts about what you're spending your money on. I've had an account for a few months but I seldom log in. It's not like any of these pie charts are going to prevent me from spending more money. It's just good to know where the money's going. Technically, all I have to do is log in. For now, I'm just glad today's dance has been accomplished. Even if it's a boring and mundane dance (mundance n.: a dance that is mundane), it's still a dance ...

18. watch a Ted talk / RSA animate video

I've been watching Ted talks since a couple of years now and they cover a range of interesting topics. But of late, I've been more fascinated with RSA animate videos. It's such a creative way of portraying rather humdrum lectures. This one's pretty funny and interesting at the same time:

And this one too. I just love that she took a rational dig at Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

17. read through 10 saved tabs / articles

So I kinda cheated my original dance today ("salad for dinner"). What happened was I forgot to pick out a dance after I woke up and left for office in the morning ("certain excitement every morning" my ass!). So when I was at office, I really, really craved some good home-made Indian food. I just had to have some daal. So I did my groceries and came back armed with the required ingredients. And since I had to pick out a dance for the day, I did. I just chose to postpone it to another day because frankly I just had to have daal (who wouldn't choose to have daal? It's simple and it's delicious!). I have no regrets in ditching the original dance because let me tell you that spinach daal: it turned out to be awe-freakin'-some, ama-freakin'-zing !!

Alright, so a little background about today's dance. Ever since I discovered the tab feature in internet browsers (thank you, Opera), I have pretty much been going hog wild with opening new tabs. With the way the internet is designed, one comes across a million interesting articles. And sometimes, you don't feel like reading it right then and there. One has to save it for another day, come back to it. The only problem is sometimes it can take a while till you come back to it. I have tabs from a year ago, for God's sake! And I close them when I want to close them. And I'll just keep adding more till it's against the law (not likely I'll stop even after it's illegal). This is what my tabs look like. To say it's pathetic is an understatement:

These are some of the tabs that were deleted today:

• how travel makes you smarter, sexier and more productive
• the power of time off
• how to transform negative emotions
• official guide to brown girls 2

And because it's late, I couldn't get through 10 tabs. Ah well ...

16. download and sort 10 new songs

So I've been downloading music for more than a decade now. In college, I started creating my own music collection (I speak of it as if I was creating my own music. I wish!), everything arranged neatly into relevant folders. My friends at the time can vouch for that because they relied on me for all new music, mostly Hindi Bollywood stuff (one sadly still does, much to his own disappointment). And most of it went through (what I thought at the time was) a thorough screening process. If I didn't like it, it was banished from my collection. I didn't care if it was top of the charts and playing at every pub and club. And then, I (somehow) graduated from college and now I have no time to look after my music collection. I keep adding new music to it but I never have the time (that's a lie) and energy (that is the truth) to sort it out. My 'unsorted' folder (yes I have one) just keeps growing and growing. I hate to admit it but even today, for these 10 new songs, I did not sort them ...

These were the songs (I couldn't find a couple of them on Grooveshark):