Alesia, the woman to the right in this picture, is one of the people responsible for training me as a step instructor for the University of Virginia’s group fitness program (where I got my start teaching step).

Heather, unfortunately not pictured, was also responsible for my training. More importantly, however, she ran UVa’s impressive fitness program more efficiently than most professional gyms are run today.

As it turned out, these women were also a blast to hang out with. As such, they became dear friends of mine. I even lived with them for a brief period of time.

In the above picture, Alesia and I (yes, that’s me) are team-teaching a double-step class at a conference in Richmond, TWELVE years ago. If memory serves me, Alesia was sick as a dog that day. Halfway through our routine, she ran off stage to go throw up, leaving me on stage with no choreography left to teach. Memories!

Thanks to my friend Mark, for digging these picture up from God-knows-where and sending them to me.

There have already been many studies that conclude wine drinkers have healthier hearts, but none of then have truly explored the nature of this link. In fact, it’s possible that people with healthy habits tend to also be wine drinkers, so wine could actually not be responsible at all for improving health.

A new study, however, is making wine look better than ever. It found that

What was unique about this study is that it focused on a specific way wine could be helping the heart: low level inflammation, which can lead to fatty deposits in the arteries. Both red and white wine increased HDL (good cholesterol) levels and lowered inflammatory substances in the blood. Red worked better than white.

Although the study was only performed on women, I can’t imagine the results would be much different for men.