skip to main |
skip to sidebar
My neighbor gave (!) me her leather couch when she moved out this summer (she was feeling overwhelmed by the whole moving process). I've never had a leather couch; how could I have known that I wouldn't want to sit on it in the winter? Oh: this post has to be tiny, because the dumb arrow on the post below it still has to point to the poll. UPDATE: Voyla (English spelling)! More room for posts (see comment). Maybe, in my next post, I shall discuss my doorknob or something.
I hella worked out today. I burned about a gazillion calories, more than I could have possibly consumed in a day. Drinks and socializing the night before, drinks and celebrations immediately after. Bonus: I got to take pictures this evening, and I wasn't the one who dropped the camera! Bonus #2: I told Lawrence The Psychiatrist all about my crazy, incredibly and unusually lucid dream of the night before, and not only didn't he charge me a fee or roll his eyes, he didn't even declare me totally nuts! At least not to my face. AND, he even validated me by saying, "that must have been really scary!" On top of all of that, tomorrow I have a massage. Then I only have to work 3 days (actually, Wednesday's only a half-day). Then I get to go to Baltimore for Thanksgiving, my absolute favorite holiday in the whole wide world, because it's all about food (specifically, mushroom stuffing) and movies, and hanging out with family and quasi-family. Plus, I'll see Amy and Steve, who both happen to be coming to Baltimore from the "deep south" (I wonder if they're republicans now).
I can barely stand it.
I might be really depressed on Sunday. Oh no. I definitely will. I'm not going to think about it!
I'm going to start racing my bike next year.
Early Bird crits start in January.
Ack.
In other news, I have an 80 mile ride tomorrow. Palomares. My pre-ride evening meal: a burger, some fries, a mixed drink, and an Arrogant Bastard. Bring it on.
I went to Dance Jam with Lisa on Friday. It was my first time, but I found it similar to Groove Garden. Only no one got naked (someone decided to go topless at Groove Garden, and the really weird part, to me, was that none of the men stopped dancing to check her out). Actually, Dance Jam was a lot bigger, and the music was better, in both the hot room (upbeat music) and the chill room (ambient music). Wow, this all sounds very Burning Man.
Lisa was once a Dance Jam regular, but life intervened, and now she wants to get back to the way she looked and felt when she spent a lot of time dancing. Frankly, I was worried, because I'd worked out for over 3 hours the night before, I was up at 5:30am that morning for an hour and a half of spin, and I had a ride planned for Saturday morning. But I'm her support, as the former personal trainer and, well, compulsive exerciser. Plus, I thought it would be good for me to dance. I don't dance much.
Andreas
There was this guy, in the chill room, lying face up, twisting and turning a woman in the air above him in slow motion with his arms and legs, to the beat of the music, for what seemed like forever. She never once touched the ground, and she never stopped moving. It was all very fluid. He brought her upside down into a split, his legs tucked into her hips to hold her up. Then she was facing the ceiling, then she was standing above him, then his foot was in her back and he had her in a deep backbend, etc. At times, only one of his limbs was in contact with her body. It was like a really advanced version of that airplane game you played as a kid, where someone's got their feet in your stomach and you're above them holding their hands for about 5 seconds until their legs give out and you fall forward, hitting the floor with your face.
Lisa saw me staring. I asked her what it was called, and she said she didn't know, but that "that's what he does." Actually, another guy saw me staring too, and he walked all the way across the room to tell me I should try it. Then Lisa said she knew him, and she asked me if I wanted to try it. Of course I had visions of falling on my head after either the poor guy's strength gave out (his current partner looked awfully light and limber) or my body didn't cooperate, so I said no. Lisa then went over to hug him hello, and the next thing I knew, they were both beckoning me. I shook my head. They came closer and beckoned. I shook my head. This went on until they were within hearing range. Andreas said, "I just wanted to say hello!" Oops. Hello! Then Lisa asked me if I was sure I didn't want to try it. I said no, I've never done it and I didn't know how. Andreas said it didn't matter.
So I said OK.
And Andreas said, "Yay!" What?!
Then I was in the air, twisting and turning, and transitioning slowly from one pose to the next without ever touching the ground, for a really long time. I was totally relaxed, and no words were exchanged. When my hand would fall backwards, for example, he would grab it, and he'd use it as leverage, together with his foot on my hip, or leg, to flip me into another pose. It felt like I was flying, and like I was being stretched, and like a massage, all at once. Unbelievable.
So I researched it on the web, and apparently it started here in the Bay area. It is a blend of yoga, acrobatics and Tai massage, and it's called Acro Yoga, specifically, the "flying sequences". Aptly named.
Here's an example I found on the web:
I did that!
So as I'm getting on the bus this morning (along with 2 others who must have looked like they were "from California", because they were not interrogated), the bus driver says to me, "What do they mean by 'kosher?'"
I am not making this up. And she really wanted to know. I told her that it was kind of a long answer. She looked really disappointed, so I felt bad. But what do I know from kosher?! I just like to listen to my ipod in the morning.
Then, Larry emails me at work, saying, "you should know that for the most part, Bette Midler has her hair colored a solid red." He was kind enough to include a picture:
Is "Bette" supposed to mean better than "best" here? Because the above seems to go from the superlative backwards: there's "best", there's "better", and then there's just "good" ("Bette"). Basically, this poster says, "Pin me up! I'm mediocre!"
Is my nose that long?
I do agree with Larry that she looks good in this other one:
But my hair doesn't look like that. It looks like the mediocre pin-up girl one. Oops.
My new favorite word.
E.g. "Laura. You no longer have that splotch of blonde in your hair. You could not possibly look any less like Bette Midler. Do you want to drive my brand new Ford F150 4x4 until you get bored, and then I'll drive it?"
There was a health fair at work yesterday - free flu shots. I've been getting over a cold (which I am loathe to say, because only a few weeks ago I told a table full of people that I never get sick, and they were really impressed), but the waiver thingy said nothing about colds. It said not to get a shot if you had a temperature, which I was pretty sure I did not (hullo!). So I got the shot (the nurse did not have a very nice bedside manner - I told her to tell me when she was going to stick me, and she said, 'oh, just look over there' all irritated-like), and then later, I suddenly started coughing alot, and so of course I worried that I was now coming down with the flu because my immune system was compromised, so of course I called Mom The Nurse, whose immediate response was, "why the hell did you get a flu shot when you're sick?!"
What's with these modern-day nurses and their attitudes?
I've been feeling my struggling body build antibodies ever since. I slept nine (nine!) hard hours, waking at one point with a killer sore throat, which was gone when I re-awoke. I'm a "test case" in my department at work. No one else in my suite wanted to get a flu shot (they think it'll either cause the flu, or be way too "strain-specific" to prevent it). They're all watching me very carefully. I thought about faking convulsions, but I decided against it: someone might call a nurse to the scene. The horror!
I usually walk to work, but I wasn't feeling well yesterday, so I took the bus. As I was depositing my fare (with at least a couple people behind me), the driver singled me out for a conversation....
Driver: You're not from California.
Me: No, East Coast. Why?
Driver: Please don't take offense. You just have that East Coast, Barbara Streisand look.
I think she may have been confusing Barbara with Bette?!
Either way: UGH!
I figure the problem must be with my hair, so I totally changed my haircolor today. As I was getting Spanked (my hair salon is called "Spank"), I told Angela, my stylist, that I was getting a lot of "you remind me of [insert name of uncool older Jewish female singer here]". She laughed, and said, "Don't feel bad. The other day, I got Celine Dion." And she's, like, super cool and trendy, so I felt a little better. She then assured me (after I looked in the mirror, at the results, and asked) that I did not resemble Bette Midler. Angela, did you ever know that you're my hero?
In the afternoon/evening, I went to help bottle wine at a Bobby's winery. It was a 2003, cabernet mostly, with some zinfandel thrown in. We tasted as we bottled (I'm surprised nothing broke), and then we got to go to Lanesplitters for pizza and more wine! And beer! Kathryn and I got in big trouble for taking matters into our own hands and pulling 8 chairs up to an empty table that was only slated for 6, or some such thing. Bobby got a little upset at us for causing problems, because he's a regular, and they weren't charging us a corking fee, but we were quite buzzed, and we'd been waiting for close to an hour at the bar to get seated! Anyway, it was tres fun getting into big trouble with Kathryn.
And here I am with a head cold and wine headache. Oh dear. I have to go to sleep now.
P.S. I met someone, at the bottling gathering, who's from Alaska! I've never met anyone from Alaska!
