Cleaned my clock — DDR-style

There are good days and there are bad days with DDR. Of course, the "game" is unchanging and uncaring, so, again, it's all me and what I'm expecting of myself. Yesterday was simply a fun time through the delightful song-set of my DDR2 favorites, but three days ago I challenged myself to improve my scores on some tougher DDR1 songs.

I had a few issues controlling my temper.

The previous turn, I just went along with the game, learning the songs better and not fretting myself over (the lack of) visible improvement in the score boards. I can feel I'm at a cusp on the DDR4 song set: I haven't improved my grades, but I'm beginning to understand the songs in an entirely new way.

• Music Revolution (Scum Frog): AA → A → AA
  
  I've held my AA on this song for a very long time, and I love dancing it, even with its tricky parts. Well, it finally happened that I messed up the sequence but still did better than I had done, stylistically, than my previous correct (but sloppy) attempt. My higher score "awarded" me with a lower grade! I went from AA to A on the score board. This has happened before, and it probably will happen again on another song. Of course, I would not let that stand, so I danced it again, careful re-earning my AA, then I danced it again well to improve the style.
  
  Then I danced it one more time to near perfection to cement the grade on the score board.


• These words (I love you; I love you) (Natasha Bedingfield): A → A
  
  What a simple, sweet, song! Why haven't I earned the AA on it yet? I've probably (marginally) danced this song on this set more than most of the others. The slow tempo does hide some frantic and dense patches, but, even though I didn't improve the grade this time, I did finally start to see how the arrangement of arrows flowed. I have hope of, one day soon (possibly years from now), earning that AA with ease.


• Giri Giri Daddy (Hirata Shoichiro): B → B
  
  This song, on the other hand, albeit much slower, is much meaner. You see the "easy" version being played; I play it at the expert level. I hoped simply to upgrade from a B to a A, not aiming for the lofty AA, but it wasn't descending to me from Mt. Olympus. However. However! I did see some order in the arrows so thick that they obscured the background movie entirely, and I did start to improve how I played this song (from the desperate "Stomp hard, stomp fast, stomp anywhere!" to a more measured "Oh, okay, this is the eighth-sixteenth-eighth patch" but flubbing the transitions between patches, still), so, who knows?


• Fire Dub (Asletics): B → A
  
  [Sorry for the bad audio transfer]. Did the song three times to earn the A. What was the problem? I've gotten AA's on this song in other DDR games. I suppose that I was pushing myself too hard today (more on that later). I does have a really simple ("simple" for expert settings, that is) and delightful arrow set, backed by a fun little rhythmic song, so eventually I worked my way up the grade scale.


• Cosmic Hammer (Jondi & Spesh): A → A
  
  Actually, I love dancing most anything by Jondi & Spesh. You name it: Cosmic Hammer, Edge of Control, Insander, their remixes, too: Balalaika. So whenever they have a song up I dance it. I've gotten AA's on this song in every other DDR game, but I didn't sweat the grade today. I must have been feeling really mellow.


• Waka Laka (Jenny Rom vs. Zippers): C → C
  
  Any exercise set I complete where I finish Waka Laka, is by definition good ("amazing" is the correct term). So I guess this set wasn't all that good, because, as the wife and kids watched curiously, I failed to complete even a third of the this song before failing out, twice ... pausing 45 seconds (after failing 30 seconds into the song) between attempts.
  
  My cara spoza eyed me carefully as I gasped for breath.

  cara spoza: You know, it's a good thing they stop the song; you should be able to talk.
  Me, panting: ...
  Me, panting: Okay.

  I think I earned her ire, showing how far (too far, my cara spoza was clearly thinking) I push myself, for when I looked at the workout recorder, I had expended over 900 kilocalories. Hm, a good workout is 400 KCal, a hard one is 600 KCal. I guess I did push myself a bit far today.

So, good DDR days and bad DDR days. Really bad DDR days, however, are days when I don't dance at all.

Like today.

Off to work.

*sigh* I guess I'll do my exercise this evening.