the girly who shall end all girls

This week i missed my bi-weekly D&D game and my thursday knitting group. i am back in the intro series at the local yoga studio, for the second week. my return is long overdue.

it's been interesting to go back to the beginning, when I feel out of shape but seem to have certain reserves and balance that I didn't have years ago. i also have less fear, as proven by my bloody nose and fat lip.

we were working on crow pose, which i never have mastered. tonight i was able to take the full pose for a moment. surprised, i immediately collapsed and fell on my face. then I laughed. i laughed and got right back up. the assistant had to get me to stop to clean up- i didn't realize that my nose was dripping.

i never got hit like that doing martial arts; it wasn't something practiced or conscious to keep going. i'm a little surprised in retrospect that it didn't scare or embarass me. (Hella endorphins. Barely felt it.)

anyway, yoga feels good.

according to del.icio.us, i started researching martial arts classes in Seattle more than six months ago, and that was i don't know how long after C and me swore we would take a class together. it's a sign of how things go with physical fitness in my house - reading about it is much more engaging than doing, and there's always some reason we should put it off or drop it for a while and then the momentum is gone and we forget...

mimerki mentioned elsejournal that it takes 21 days to form a habit.* i've embraced it as an arbitrary measure. the plan is to go three times a week until we hit 21 classes and hope that makes it stick. so maybe i'll read this in a couple months to see where i was at the beginning, or maybe it will be another well-intentioned failure.

we settled on kung fu. we've done three classes as of yesterday. ( first impressions )

i liked my first week. quite a bit. we got massages this morning to work out the tense bits, and i feel relaxed and excited rather than scared about going back to class Monday. it's a good place to be.




*so i looked it up. it came into popular use from a book with the ridiculous-to-me title Psycho-Cybernetics.
¹research says this is from the style family attributed to Wong Fei Hung - the dude from an astonishing number of films including Drunken Master, Once Upon a Time in China, and Iron Monkey. more fangirl squee.

note to self: moisturizer is reactivated by sweat. might as well coat your mat in olive oil.

i'm done with being sick. beyond done. the congestion doesn't stop. the mostly tasteless food is a fine appetite suppressant, but i would like my hearing and balance back. (and i just discovered a gob of mucus, most likely escaped from an overfull tissue, on my keyboard. gross.) i hope it's not allergies; benadryl is the most effective for me but it also puts me right to sleep.

many pleasures recently - rhythm festival, shadow_and_veil's badass birthday, new season of Doctor Who, seeing buhrger, starting grilling season, losing some weight.

worried about memorizing my music for the upcoming chorus concerts. concerned for friends who have lost dear ones recently.

i'm still pretty fragile physically, so i haven't been going to yoga. can't lift my own weight, can't stand to hang my head below waist level. this makes me cranky and antsy; i'm glad (i think) that i seem to have developed a dependency, but frustrated that i'm surely losing ground with this idleness.

i'm reading more hard sf recently. gods, i'd missed it. the only problem is that Big Ideas aren't always suited to reading in snatches on the bus. i feel like i need to reread Blindsight on vacation without interruptions. it's tough to read a novel where the POV character is a disinterested observer whose job is to stay out of the action. it's a fun read for anyone who is into neurology, linguistics, and first contact stories. the library should be bringing me more Watts soon, along with Kage Baker and Charlie Stross. (while Watts and Stross make most of their work available online under CC, that would mean reading it on the screen. i can't take reading books online.)

and now for a really hot shower.

things i should have been writing about:

• so, um, Trick My Truck is totally awesome. these people actually get something useful done to the thing they use every day. and yunno, there's always a sob story. and then the truckers see how beautiful their truck is when it's done, and they cry. <3 <3 <3



• i did candlestick on Wednesday before i knew what was happening. i can't find a picture, but it's like plow except with my knees bent almost touching my nose. i'm just starting to get the bendy inversions. i'm pleased.



• found a pattern and made yoga pants that cover my butt and my ankles. (and the space between. bonus!) they're a little wonky since they're my first stretch knit project, but not in ways that people can see without getting offensively close. i have more fabric and notions, the next ones will be better.



• read The Lies of Locke Lamora. good times. very cool world, and a fun caper. i was occasionally ahead of the characters, but never in the details. i'm a fan of the long con, and there are lots of questions left to be answered, so i look forward to more from scott_lynch. (and now i hate him a little for being young. i'll get over it.) in an interesting twist, the Strange Horizons reviewer (mentioned in the wikipedia article) who hates things that are hyped, loved Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - my copy of JS&MN went to a media exchange long ago since i don't have any furniture that needs propping. in the review she implies that there's internet book reviewer payola, which started a bit of a tempest in the fandom teapot. she also spoils the entire freaking book, so don't touch the review if you have any vague interest in enjoying the plot.



• struggling to read Rocket Science. rather than being a zippy golden age romp, it's leaden. its 224 pages feel heavily padded, and i'm thinking it would probably have been a nice novella or novelette. (research says that this was jay_lake's first stab at length, and it shows.) our hero is a collection of hooks that don't resolve into an actual character (leg gimpy from polio, alcoholic dad, tragically dead mom) and i'm over halfway through and we're not having any fun yet, even though the cover says that it's "action-packed." what i enjoy most is the clear and detailed world of Kansas just after WWII, with still-new telephone calls, the camaraderie of veterans, and the edges of rationing. sf awesome, it's not. considering skipping on to something more fun instead of trying again now that i've finished this week's Economist.



• 300 is pretty, but surfacy. the meanwhile-back-in-Sparta subplot was pure filler.



• the new SIFF cinema is okay. sound was great, as was picture quality. the booth is a theatre setup, with big windows. the projectionist left a fucking white worklight on. the glow is only supposed to come from the screen, kids. the seats weren't staggered enough for butterflydrming to see subtitles around the tall guy in the next row. hopefully the wrinkles will get ironed out before the festival proper starts.



• celebrated nine years of marriage. still think it's the best thing ever.

i have a very difficult time with exercise. if it doesn't move my body or some stuff from one place to another, i don't want to do it. i realize that fitting into my favorite concert pants and my long-term health are reasons to engage in activity that makes me sweat, but the intellectual and the practice don't seem to work together well. i've talked about this issue with multiple people this week - the commitment to exercise is delicate, and must not be disturbed in any way or it evaporates. ( practice, practice )