Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

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Archive for October, 2011

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Looking for . . . .Love, Purple Puppies, Marilyn Monroe

Posted by terrepruitt on October 6, 2011

Funny, I was about to type that I post mostly about Nia since I am primarily focused on teaching Nia, but right now I looked at my Categories and I have 111 post under Nia and 111 post under Misc. Funny. This post will fall under Misc.  This post is about some of the search terms I see. Sometimes I see people using a question as a search term. I always wish I could contact that person via e-mail to answer their question. I have thought about posting replies, but I haven’t done that. I am often surprised and sometimes shocked at some of the things people search for. I am laughing right now at the most popular search term since I have been blogging. It is funny because WHO thinks of these things? Why would anyone actually be searching for it? I am actually very happy — now that I think about it — that I posted about it because apparently people want to know. Do you? Have you ever wondered about a puppy that is purple? Seriously “purple puppy” is the biggest search on my blog. Hilarious, don’t you think?

dance exercise, Nia classes, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia teacherIt is especially funny since I just happened upon the purple puppy and her pink sister and I thought it was so oddly cute that I decided to post about it  Makes me laugh that other people are curious about purple puppies. Makes me wonder why people are curious about purple puppies.

The next biggest search term is relevé. See, that makes sense to me. I under stand people wanting to know what it is or how to do it. Or just wanting more information about it. There are people who dance that might have heard that term but not being a ballerina, might not know what it is. Or someone wanting to be a ballerina might want some hints and tricks. That one makes sense to me.

The next one is Voss Water. I am somewhat surprised that Voss water isn’t higher on the list. Seems as if for a long time I had been seeing that come up again and again and again. But it is number three.

Number four is Carlos AyaRosas. That is nice. Carlos is the co-creator of Nia. His name was Carlos Rosas, but near the end of his career with Nia he changed it to Carlos AyaRosas. I love that people are searching for information on him. I imagine they are people who love Nia and they are wondering where he is and how he is doing. I believe he is in Texas with his new wife. And I have faith they are doing wonderfully.

I am not sure about you, but I was surprised by number five. Are you ready? Purple puppies. Plural. So not only do people search for purple puppY, they search for purple puppIES. I wonder what they want to know? I wonder if my post gives them any information they want to know. As I scroll through the entire list of search terms I see even more searches for the purple puppies just phrased differently.

The next popular search is optical illusion. That one is big. I see that one comes up a lot with the plural version search and all of the elements of the optical illusion; horses, babies, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein. Funny. That post gets a lot of hits. I can understand that, who doesn’t love an optical illusion. They are so cool. Tricks of the eyes and brain.

Well, I was just looking at the search terms and they often make me laugh, although today there were not any funny searches, but I think the next time there are I will write a post. Maybe you can help me figure out what some of them mean. Or maybe we can just have a chuckle. I am still laughing about the purple puppies.

Posted in Just stuff, Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Nia Temporary Studio – Because We Love It

Posted by terrepruitt on October 4, 2011

If you follow me on Twitter, are a Facebook friend of mine, or look at my website, you will have seen that my Nia students and I have been doing Nia in the park.  I teach Nia at two different facilities.  There is my Monday and Wednesday class that meets at 9:00 am.  We meet in a little dance studio in an area of San Jose called Willow Glen.  The studio is about 900 square feet, it has a laminate floor and a large mirror.  It is long and slightly narrow.  It is a nice little place.  I have been teaching there for over two and a half years.  Some of my students have been dancing Nia with me for that long.  In November of 2010 I started teaching Nia on Fridays at a different studio in Los Gatos.  It was a different type of studio . . . it was more of an exercise studio where exercise classes are held.  They had a separate room for Pilates Reformer classes.  Well at the end of August this studio said they were moving.  When they would be done with the move and how it all was going to work was very up in the air.  At one point I was told by one of the owners that we would only miss one Nia class.  So I just decided that one class would be ok to miss.  It would not be worth the time involved to secure another place to hold a class.  But then the next week we were told it would be at least another week.  So I asked my students if they wanted to hold a class in the park.  Many students are wanting to participant in Nia three times a week so they said yes.  We decided to try it.

Well, I think that not having Nia that one Friday really helped us all realize that we do like to have it three times a week.  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday just seems pretty perfect.  On the Friday we met in the park we didn’t know how it would go.  We didn’t know if the weather would cooperate.  We didn’t know if there would be too many people for us to dance on the volleyball court.  See that is one thing, I have often entertained the idea of do Nia in a park, because grass really sound likes a great place to dance barefoot.  Natures cushioned dance floor.  But I have always been concerned about holes, bumps, and ruts.  The thought of someone turning their ankle on the grass has always kept me from following through with it.  Plus, the idea that was tossed about had always been an evening class.  I imagine parks being really busy in the evening.

This park that we have been at is really close to the studio in Willow Glen.  There is a basketball court and a volleyball court that have been empty in the mornings.  I imagine the basketball court is occupied in the evenings, but while we are there it is empty.  The volleyball court is somewhat in the shade and provides us with a smooth flat surface to move on.  The park seems rather busy the hour before we arrive.  Seems like many loving dog owners take their dogs out for morning exercise.  There are mother’s and children at the playground.  We have had to dance without music when the lawnmower has obliterated the sound.  But that was only once or twice for a song or two.

The studio has been closed for longer than we had anticipated.  So we have been doing Nia in the park for four weeks.  The weather has been very nice.  Once it was warmer than we like, but so far we have had great temperatures.  This week it is raining.  The forecast is saying that it will be sunny on Friday, but we will see.  The studio has also announced that it will not be open for two more Fridays.  So we might get this week in at the park and next week.  I have been leaving it up to my students.  If they tell me they are going to be there, then I say, I will be there too!

I have really enjoyed our time at the park.  I sort of wish that we could do it there all year, but with winter coming, although winters in the San Fransisco Bay Area are not full of snow, we do get rain and I don’t think we want to dance in the rain.  So I am sad that our time in the park is ending.  I hope that we will be inspired to do Nia in the park again at some point after these next two weeks.  I am really doing it because my students wanted to do it because we love Nia.  I know that some classes take place on the beach and other outdoor places.  I am so happy that I have been able to experience Nia outdoors and share it with my students.

Yeah, this is me sharing.  🙂

Posted in Nia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Sometimes Things Are Not What They Seem

Posted by terrepruitt on October 1, 2011

This is not something new to you, I am certain.  Sometimes things are not what they seem.  I get contacted almost every day by people wanting to help me advertise Nia and my business.  I am always interested because Nia is not yet a household name.  Nia is not yet as big as Zumba.  More often than not,  I listen to what the caller has to say.  I was recently disappointed after I received a call from a rather large company.  The woman identified herself as a person working for this large company.  She said that they were contacting people in my industry who might be interested in being on this company’s list of preferred service providers.  Since I had never had any dealings with this HUGE company, when she asked if she could send me some information regarding being on this preferred list I said yes.  I was curious as to how I could be a preferred service provider when I had never worked with this company or for this company.  Well, I got my answer rather quickly as this person did as she said.  She sent me an e-mail with the information within minutes of talking to me.  It seems that all one has to do to be included on this HUGE company’s preferred service provider list is pay, at the bottom of the scale, $395.00 for an ad.  Then — boom! — you are a preferred service provider.

I was disappointed, not that I wouldn’t be on the list, but I was disappointed about the list.  This list of preferred service providers is provided to the employees of this company.  If I were an employee of this to-remain-nameless-HUGE-technological-company, I would expect them to be preferring people that they have had some experience with.  I would think that, if I was employed by this company that they would be recommending people to me for some other reason then the company, the service provider, paid them.  The pricing started at $395.00 and went to $995.00, with something else (I am not certain what type of ad) for $100 each.

In addition to payment to be preferred the item that was to be advertised on this “preferred service provider list” was DISCOUNTED services.  So it was a preferred service provider list that offers discounts to the employees.  I honestly didn’t know that is how it worked.  I thought the preferred service provider list was more than just advertising.

Also, I would like to point out that while the caller said she worked for the company, she meant as a hired outside marketing company.  So . . . not only does this company have a preferred list of providers that are nothing more than people who pay for adverting in a preferred magazine of discounts for the employees, but the company doesn’t even do its own selling of ads in this “prefered service vendor list”.  So not only are the service vendors not actually preferred they aren’t even known to the company whose list they are on.

Bummer.  Just another lesson in some things not actually being what they seem.  If you are one that works for a company that has a preferred service provider list you might want to find out HOW they get to be “preferred”. I guess I just thought of preferred as one having been chosen over another, not just having paid to be so.

Posted in Misc | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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