Minor setback

While I was living the excitement of CPR recertification today, Piper went for a walk with Spouse and somehow opened a couple of inches of incision. While I faux-shocked dummies, Spouse took her to the vet where she received additional staples and antibiotics.

Rather than the staples coming out next week, she gets to be FrankenDog for an additional 7 days.

In unrelated news, there is a trip to DC afoot! I am very excited as this is our first real travel since the NOLA conference *and* it’s to another awesome city where I *also* know awesome internet peoples. I love the web, y’all. It is no lie.

There’s also this weird thing where, when explaining internet friends to people who do not have internet friends, it feels like it devolves into a history of how I am an internet nerd. Probably these days I should just say I met people on Facebook?

YJCO 2011 – The End!

I was disappointed for the end of the conference, as the weekend was really fantastic. The weather was gorgeous and everyone was incredibly friendly. Melissa and I sat with different folks at every meal and had great conversation about where everyone was from and which sessions they were there for, as well as their opinions on what they’d done. It actually made me think that, given the right sessions, I’d consider the weeklong conference provided I could put together the scratch (or get a slot volunteering).

Sunday morning began with breakfast and a keynote from the founder of the Africa Yoga Project (which I’ll link to after their promo movie becomes public). It was a great speech and one of the Project teachers led some rapid-fire vinyasa that got my butt (my actual butt) in pics on the YJ recap on the yjevents site. The short film they made about the project was moving and impressive and it’s a fantastic program which is encouraging me to work on an idea of my own.

The vinyasa was just enough to work out some residual soreness from the weekend – a good thing as I had two hour meditation session afterward. “Meditation for the Love of It” with Sally Kempton was a very nice session. We alternated in discussion/lecture and meditation so that we sat for 4 meditations of about 15 minutes each. The bad thing was that Kempton’s voice is great for relaxation and I’ve gotten so used to tuning out voice during savasana that I literally heard nothing she said during the meditation sessions. I think it was supposed to be techniques/pointers but I suppose not hearing her was less relevant than the fact that each meditation session wasn’t as hard as I’d expected it to be.

After session we had lunch, took some photos with the mountains in the background and made our way back home. It’s left a residual… glow. Even the downside of things like the conference were mitigated by a lot of great learning and general good vibes.

Today was sightseeing in Breck and then a mini-tour of the fall “colors.” Colors gets quotations because what passes for color in Colorado (and is lovely, don’t get me wrong) can’t touch Michigan at all. With or without colors, though, the views are pretty spectacular.

YJCO 2011 – Day 2

Let me say that the butt class yesterday was fantastic and I ended the day solidly with Gary Kraftsow’s neck and shoulders session, but I did not plan my Saturday well.

1. Post butt class, it’s maybe not the brightest thing to sign up for Baptiste heated power yoga with Baptiste himself first thing the next morning. That session KICKED MY ASS.

2. Second session with Tias Little was great and a kind of restorative class, but when it hurt to roll over onto my side out of savasana it was VERY clear that I hadn’t worked out all my butt-soreness issues. I HAD, however, compounded them with renewed shoulder soreness from the previous morning’s inversions multiplied by Baptiste vinyasa.

3. Apparently several months ago when I registered for the conference, I was feeling invincible because I had requested ANOTHER Baptiste session as my third of the day. No way, no how. My butt was better but not BAPTISTE better.

4. Before lunch I changed my last session to one on stretching physiology which was pretty great.

Tomorrow we’ve got a closing session at 8:30 that will include some Baptiste vinyasa and then my final session of the weekend is Meditation for the Love of It. It’s a two hour session and I am a bad meditator, so this is the ‘scary’ thing I signed up for in the conference.

It’s really been a great experience overall. I’ve been joking about how yoga conferences are like The Craft but with less dead sharks and more hugging, but it’s not too terribly off the mark. Everyone comes in looking to be hopeful, which is then self-fulfilling, so you’ve got a bunch of happy, hopeful people who want to feel better and help other people feel better. And there are invocations where people call the corners. Still, there are worse places to be.

Yoga Journal Conference – Estes Park 2011

This is the view from our room at one of the YMCA lodges. Go look. It’s worth it.

Melissa and I got to Estes Park later on Thursday than hoped – we’d planned to be here by 6 but a wrong turn, dinner and loss of cell signal delayed us a bit. We missed the keynote speech but had plenty of time to settle in and prepare for Friday’s classes. As luck had it, we were in two of three sessions together (first and last) and it was a nice way to re-acclimate (me) and intro (Melissa) to the yoga conference culture.

There is definite verbiage associated with a  yoga conference. Things like “the Divine,” loops, spirals, grounding, “hugging in”, melting and “bringing it in” are referenced ALL THE TIME. If you are not down for a little yoga woo-woo, a conference is probably not for you.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m not a woo-woo fan, but I love this opportunity to study with teachers I’d otherwise never see and experiment with styles otherwise unavailable to me in person. Also, a little woo-woo does a body good.

This morning I started with an Anusara inversion class. As is typically my experience, I enjoyed the class and I actually like their little opening mantra. My only frustration with Anusara is their default to woo-woo words in a lot of places where anatomical direction would be a lot clearer but they’re not egregious about it. There IS however a tendency (not just Anusara) to talk about how inversions allow blood to pool in the now upside down extremities/reverse/move from the feet and other variations of that ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT which makes me insane. You are talking about anatomical parts and you have missed that the heart is a PUMP. Unless your pump is NOT WORKING, you continue to have blood EVERYWHERE IN YOUR BODY – EVEN WHEN UPSIDE DOWN.

End rant. Sorry about that. It’s shit like that that convinces people yoga is nonsense because it’s just a stupid thing to say.  It’s that sort of thing that makes people who’d benefit from it dismiss it out of hand. All in all I enjoyed the inversion class, which I followed up with “Toning Your Butt Can Be Spiritual.” It’s safe to say I wasn’t there for the spirituality, of which there wasn’t REALLY all that much because when it comes to butts, it turns out no one cares about spirituality and everyone cares about toning. It was a fun (and funny) class.

Last session was with Gary Kraftsow who kind of changed my life (and definitely changed my teaching) when I saw him first at a yoga conference in Toronto pretty early in my teaching career. Today’s class was a focus on therapeutics for neck and shoulders and it was just as incredible and helpful as I remember that first session being. When I eventually take on more training, it will likely be with him.

Tomorrow I’ll hate my life a little because at 8 am I’ve got a 2 hour Baptiste session (thanks to a great Baptiste instructor I had in Michigan) and I’m going to be HELLA sore from today’s adventures.

Thus far it’s been the experience I was hoping for when I signed up and it makes me think I should be looking ahead to additional conferences or retreats. Work did not cross my mind for a single second today. There has been good food, beautiful weather, great views, excellent instruction and good company so the conference is a win no matter what.

Yoga travel

I’m currently loading a metric asston of my favorite music onto my phone with its shiny new microSD card, so I figured I’d answer a question from Melissa about traveling with a yoga mat.

There are a lot of ways you can go with this, all of which will depend on what kind of yoga and how much of it you’re going to do while traveling.

For example, when we went to India we had a limited amount of luggage and I wasn’t sure how much room I’d have to spread out – not to mention the space a yoga mat would fill could hold a lot of souvenirs. I went with some yoga paws, which are gloves and almost-footies that have contact points made of the same material as an inexpensive ($10-15) yoga mat. They take up almost no space and are good for yoga on the move, but not for a lot of seated or kneeling poses.

There are also travel mats, designed to be folded, which I haven’t personally used.

What I’ve done for almost all my travel is carry my mat on with me. I’ve got a nice little bag which is mat-shaped with an extra pocked on the inside and outside. It provides great protection for the mat (rain or shine) and has just enough space for keys/i.d./towel/small stuff that would be useful in a studio. I use that as one of my personal items and then usually carry a regular carry-on bag rather than checking luggage. Et voila – two bags, no baggage claim.

The reason I carry on my mat is because I’ve got a Jade Harmony mat worth every bit of the $50ish I paid for it. It’s a natural rubber and no matter how much I sweat (I’m looking at you Forrest Hip Hop Yoga class in Boston and Urban Yoga Spa in Seattle) I do. not. slip. Since I sweat like a center for the Detroit Lions, it’s a huge bonus to have my own mat with me unless the circumstances require otherwise (see: 14 hour flight, foreign country).

Vacation

I can’t BELIEVE I haven’t posted since the end of July. In my defense, there was vacation and book reading and PLENTY of twitter and G+ posts. So while this is not a real post, there is soon to be a long post about vacation book reading and how I recently bought (*gasp*) two actual PHYSICAL books. Shocking!

Mountain Views (large pics ahead)

During my talk-through with the Verizon rep, we somehow managed to recover the pictures from yesterday’s train ride.

There was a fundraiser for the local battered women’s shelter and it involved an afternoon/evening train ride through the mountains. I haven’t been on the train before as I see the views pretty regularly on my commute, though that didn’t stop people from being shocked that I hadn’t ridden the train. I have to say, the views from higher up the mountain are pretty impressive. Click on the photos for larger views.

Leaving town

It's possible you can see the highway in this picture...

Last one

In conclusion, I live in a beautiful place.

Bears shit in the woods, and so do I

Last weekend, Spouse and I made a trip to Colorado Springs. The drive includes Wilkerson Pass, where there are incredible views from a visitor station. Given the dearth of nearly anything from Buena Vista to just outside the Springs, odds are if you’re making that drive you’re ALSO making that stop.

The visitor station has bathrooms of the enclosed fancy port-a-john type. I loathe these things. I actually detest port-a-johns as a whole but I hate these things especially because the tanks are so large and frankly just about any damn thing could be swimming around down there and ohmygod I don’t talk about this because it gives me the screaming heebie jeebies.

This is all apropos of 1. Having stopped at the Wilkerson Pass visitor center, having to use the john and being skeeved out about it. 2. Thinking I would maybe post about the inherent ick factor of those facilities. 3. Reading THIS STORY in the local paper TWO DAYS after this adventure.

I’m not sure that I can convey exactly HOW MUCH that story freaks me out except to tell you that there are now two emergency TP rolls in my car.

Quick and dirty NOLA

Denver’s Day of Rock was nice but this post is full of NOLA updates for my friend who is about to make a trip.

One of the best things I put in my mouth the entire time we were in New Orleans is the Shrimp and Grits from the Desire Oyster Bar. PHENOMENAL.

Beignets are a must; Cafe du Monde or Cafe Beignet, makes no difference.

Cochon is the other place you need to visit – not far from the convention center and while the food is upscale, the prices aren’t. One of the best drinks I had was there (the Swinekiller) and their drink menu was nearly as incredible as the food.

Before you leave, hit up the Central Grocery for an original muffaletta. Plan on splitting it because they’re massive.

Crescent City Brewhouse has two floors and an excellent courtyard. The beer’s a little pricey but you’ll be glad you ordered a Red and Black half and half. SO GOOD. I ordered the duck and it was EXCELLENT.

Visit a Hemingway haunt at the Carousel bar inside the Hotel Monteleone. The Ramos Gin fizz is fantastic.

For music and drinks, we spent a lot of time at Maison on Frenchmen Street. Their fruit punch was on special and FANTASTIC, as were the bands. Make sure to catch dinner at the Praline Connection just up the street; it was one of our favorites.

Bourbon House has great food and impeccable service.

You’ll need strong drinks to tackle Bourbon Street and luckily they are available everywhere. I like loud music but Rue Bourbon is MOTHERFCKINGLOUD.

If you need a lunch break during your conference, hit up Mulate’s just across the street. Best sweet tea in town (among other things).

Take the St. Charles streetcar out to Tulane and see what a real university looks like.

The Haunted History tour was interesting. The Voodoo Museum is wicked cheap and takes all of about 10 minutes to get through.

It takes a bit of legwork to get to, but the Metairie Cemetery is worth a visit. Make sure you take something to drink.

NOLA

The first thing people ask about when I mention NOLA are beignets. Weird, right?

These were at Café Beignet. While we did visit Café du Monde a couple of times, I actually preferred the beignets here. They were a bit lighter and fluffier but don’t get me wrong – beignets in any incarnation are delicious. This was the spot on Bourbon Street which wasn’t actually on Bourbon – a little courtyard just off the sidewalk, with the tables and counters deep in the lot. The live music which was always playing distracts from the strip clubs and pounding dance beats that make up the majority of this part of Rue Bourbon, such that it’s kind of a shock to get back to the sidewalk and the noise after your interlude and treats.

Our first two days though, were all about French Quarter Fest. I wish I had a single picture that captured what it was like, but this is the best of the bunch.

We arrived to hotter than usual weather, which was LOVELY. I, who hate extreme heat and humidity, was thrilled by the change in latitude. I believe my exact words were, “It’s as hot and moist outside as it is on my insides!” This was said with an inordinate amount of joy. We walked from the CBD to Bourbon a couple of times the first day, checking out the Fest and Rue Bourbon. While it’s no Red Light District, I’ll say Bourbon Street lives up to its hype.

The French Quarter Fest comprised of some major stages right on the Mississippi which – if you haven’t seen it from NOLA – looks like a completely different body of water when compared to the crossing at St. Louis, as well as a bunch of smaller stages throughout the quarter. In addition, there were a boatload of buskers and bands playing virtually anywhere they found free sidewalk or streetspace. The end result was the loveliest, largest street party you’ve ever seen and the best food I’ve ever put in my mouth.

The band in this picture was a Dixieland Jazz band from Belgium.

The balconies and galleries everywhere were lush with greenery as well as chock full of decoration. They made walking an especially interesting adventure.

We were lucky and had Marlene to show us around on Sunday. I think we must have walked the entirety of the Quarter (she was a champ) and gave us the lowdown on local favorites and history, not to mention all the dirt on local film shoots. In keeping with my experiences thus far, meeting an old internet friend (8 years? A bit more?) for the first time in person was wonderful. She also went above and beyond the call of duty with an amazing gift baskets of snacks and goodies, of which we made SERIOUS use.

One of my favorite buskers during the Festival:

We spent a fair amount of evenings during the week on Frenchmen Street listening to local music. This was one of my favorite doorways:

Food and drink will likely have to be another post, but this picture really captures the mood during our vacation. The best part was that this sign was off Bourbon Street at a small, out of the way neighborhood bar.

Success, tentatively

I’ve been feeling a weird generalized anxiety lately. I’m not sure what it’s about, but I can tell you that watching the Sunday morning newshows doesn’t help. Lindsay Graham has the singular ability to jack my blood pressure into the roof.

Checking the LJ and rss feeds shows that my journal import has NOT in fact crippled the flist/feed. I’m really glad because it means all my yoga posts have returned. Now if only I could figure out what I was using to crosspost to wordpress.com, it would be amazing to have the same backup but I guess I can widgetize an alternative.

My only weird consequence is categories. I suddenly have a bajillion more categories than I’ve been using since the blog reboot and I haven’t sufficiently researched a way to condense them. Instead I’ve treed them under the reboot categories and just disabled the drop-downs so as not to clutter the page. Yay for tag clouds!

I’m reading God’s War by Kameron Hurley, which I first heard about in a Scalzi Big Idea post. As soon as I read that entry, I thought ‘That sounds awesome.’ Alas, when I went to add it to my Kindle wishlist, it wasn’t available in format. Insert frownyface. So imagine my delight when Books on the Knob announced that Nightshade was giving free ebook copies for a book club! I haven’t used calibre in a while, so I re-downloaded/installed and when the e copy arrived I converted it. So far I’m enjoying it as much as I hoped I would.

Speaking of enjoyment and Scalzi (I kind of was, right?) he gave up Coke Zero for Lent and I’m pretty sure it was the picture in that post which convinced me to try Coke Zero. No lie, it’s delicious. So I guess I’m going to take up Scalzi’s Coke Zero consumption for Lent and make sure Coca-Cola doesn’t lose any market share.

In Netflix movie news, I watched Chloe last week and I really enjoyed it. Not your typical psychological thriller but pretty fantastic nonetheless, with stunning performances all around. 4.5 of 5 stars

Last night we watched The Social Network (which means we might be the last people, ever) and I enjoyed it more than I expected. In fact, I found the Zuckerberg character to be kind of hilarious and Eduardo – I’m pretty sure he was intended to be sympathetic – to be a bit smarmy. After all, it cannot POSSIBLY be in dispute that had Zuckerberg NOT gone to Cali and hooked up with Sean Parker there is no chance Facebook would be what it is today. Also, Winklevi  = fail. Especially given that you settled for $65 mil and then sued AGAIN because $30+ mil A PIECE wasn’t ENOUGH? REALLY. All the win goes to Zuckerberg and I hope to Christmas his depositions were in fact that awesome because those scenes SLAYED me.

Unrelated, we watched Zach Galifinakis host SNL and it was funnier than I’ve seen it in a while. The musical act was a bit odd, so I googled/youtubed and was pleasantly surprised to find Jessie J has a great voice. I’m a bit sad that I’ve missed out this long probably because I don’t listen to popular radio but her album drops next month and I’ll definitely be picking it up.

NOLA is quickly approaching and I am EXCITED. Not just because I’ll get to wear shorts and blind the local population with my reflective fishbelly white skin but because FOOD. Food, y’all. It might as well be the sole reason I travel.

potentially bad decisions

Watching MacGruber while on Ambien. A musical cameo of Rosanna means my dreams this evening are bound to be epic.

I’m having a kind of bad ass week. I know it’s only Tuesday but it’s worth saying. It’s nice having work buddies to chill and bitch with.

I’ve been reading and watching some Netflix, which I may update next week because I’m already a little Ambien woozy and losing track of my qwerty.

I’m very excited about our upcoming trek to the Big Easy. So far my biggest challenge is 1. finding places to do yoga in new orleans while spouse is otherwise occupied and 2. convincing spouse that we need to take a guided swamp tour.

Anyone with suggestions/recommendations/ can’t miss things to check out, please let me know!

Today I took a vacation day.

There were no real house projects (I re-stained part of a bench). I didn’t do any homework. Spouse and I drove into Frisco for the BBQ Challenge – Big Hoss had the best sauce, fyi. I started to rain as we were leaving, so we came home and couched watching movies.

The Wrestler was good, as predicted. I think the creepiest part about it is that Mickey Roarke’s own career has to feel very much like the character, making it less like acting and more like voyeurism. We also caught most of the latest X-files movie on cable. It was… strange. Good strange but not really what I was expecting. Spouse likened it to a much longer X-files episode. Pretty accurate and ultimately satisfying. One can never have too much Scully.

I was unsuccesful seeing The Proposal. In fact, I completely forgot about it until we were halfway over the mountain. I think the plan is to make it part of Spouse’s vacation week.

Tomorrow, life returns to normal. Work, then homework. Rinse and repeat for Monday.

End of the week roundup

The inside upstairs paint projects are DONE. That includes touch ups where we changed lighting fixtures. There’s a guy outside right now hanging a gutter on the back of the house because they old owners didn’t have one. Gutters are the last home improvement for (at a minimum) the next year, if not more.

In terms of current home improvements, I painted the front deck post and have started painting the front deck bench. The benches were a gift from my in-laws for our wedding. When they’re pushed together and the backs are flattened, they become a picnic table. Very cool, but also makes restaining a challenge. I’m going to do it in two parts.

All that remains is the railing on the back deck and the back deck bench. I’m very happy at the prospect of being DONE for a while.

In related news, I got an 83 on my exam which I’m pretty happy about. First exams suck because you’re never quite sure what the test is going to look like. I’m excited about class time in July.

With any luck, our plans today will include a trip to Frisco for BBQ and maybe seeing The Proposal.

Mission accomplished!

I’ve successfully made reservations for our anniversary dinner. It’s going to require a trip over to Vail, but 40 minutes isn’t a bad drive for good food. Not only that, but we’re in the off-season so we’ll be able to take advantage of some pretty sweet deals.

I’m waiting for Spouse’s new phone to arrive and then running some errands before he’s done wth work.

Have pretty much finalized house painting colors and a decorating plan for the basement. We’ll need an area rug for the kitchen but all in all we’re in good shape. The new sliding door arrives this weekend and I’ve just got to contact my guy to put it in. We’re inordinately excited about it for reasons I’ll elaborate later.

Our anniversary gifts are working out fantatsically and I’m going to update with some more Santa Fe details later.