2005-09-01 - 8:20 p.m.

August 31, 2005

The New Orleans thing is just so damn sad. And infuriating. >:( Fucking looters.

In more mundane news, we are back from vacation as of Monday evening, and back at work this morning. I have given up on catching up with the friends list.

At work, things are thankfully quiet on my end, since I wrapped up a few projects before I left. Poindexter tells me they're bombarding him at his office. Poor Poindexter. He's still not fully recovered from the cold he had in Florida. That thing is tenacious. He had white spots on his throat and got antibiotics midway through, so I don't know what could be bugging him still since presumably it's not a secondary bacterial infection. My poor baby.

We took yesterday off to run a few errands, including picking up the refurbished truck (I think I mentioned that a tree limb fell on it during a bad storm around July 4th). It looks ridiculous now, since we now have a new roof, hood, and a couple side panels, freshly painted, but the doors and remaining side panels are still 10 years old and look it. But we were happy to have it back.

But then, last night we were in Cherry Hill testing out the mattress we're going to exchange the too-squishy one for, and on the way home, the pulley on the air conditioning froze and the stress on the belt was causing a gross rubbery-smelling smoke. Despite turning off the air conditioner and turning off the engine, upon restarting, the engine was still trying to move the pulley and still burning up the belt. Poindexter was tempted to just drive it and let the belt break, but he was worried that it wasn't just the air conditioning that was broke, so we decided to have it towed back to Philly, to our regular mechanic.

Here's some foreshadowing for ya: One time, after sitting for a while when we were on vacation, this same truck refused to start, even with a jump. We towed it to the mechanic, he came out, turned the key, and it started up just fine. We never had any problem with it after that, either. Unbelievable.

The gas station we were at had no phone book, so we called Camille to see if she could look one up for us. Wouldn't you know, the phone company hadn't delivered her phone book yet AND her internet was sketchy. Fortunately we were able to get a phone book at the Italian restaurant next door and call a tow truck, and we brought it all the way back to our mechanic's street, made sure (again) that the AC was off, started the car to park it, and ... you guessed it, the car was fine. Poindexter was hopping up and down and pulling his hair out. We assume the AC is still shot, but that seems to be the extent of the problem. I drove him to work and back this morning with no trouble. We've got an appointment for the mechanic to look at it tomorrow, but I really wonder if he's going to find nothing wrong.

Perhaps the truck gets pissy when we leave her alone for long periods of time.

The vacation, however, was delightful. I got caught up in work a little longer than I had hoped, but when it was over it was OVER, and I spent five days reading trashy novels, chatting with the in-laws, snuggling with Poindexter, shopping, and enjoying Katrina before she turned deadly. I've always liked storms. Where we were, we just got some rain and wind, but I didn't see any damage other than a few roof tiles missing or a tree limb down here and there.

I went shopping at the fancy mall on three separate occasions, and the sum total of my clothing purchases was a whopping $0. This is partly because I mostly shopped in places with prices I wouldn't be caught dead paying, and because I am trying to be patient and wait for sales on the more reasonably priced clothing. Although I did try on a $385 pair of (what else?) tweed pants and $395 sweater (by Valentino Red, a "cheaper" label than their runway collection, at Nordstrom) when I was out with my MIL, more out of curiosity than anything else. Both of them did not fit me at all, and were cut funny besides. I was disgusted. I'm more and more convinced that designer clothing is complete bullshit, and the only thing you're paying for is the name and perhaps a bit of creativity that you won't find elsewhere, and that's it. Sure, they use "quality materials", but IMNSHO there's a diminishing marginal utility on "quality", and I'm not impressed by bizarre expensive rare leathers. They can do amazing things with manmade materials these days.

September 1, 2005

While I was on vacation, I borrowed a beginner's yoga tape from the library, with Rodney Yee. This turned out to be a waste of time, since it was not captioned but the entire tape was voice over. I could imitate the poses, but I was missing everything that was going on internally, like breathing and sucking in the gut or whatever. And I realized that even going to a class would be useless, since I can't read the teacher's lips when I'm touching my nose to the floor or looking at the ceiling.

So I picked up a "Yoga For Beginners" book at Waldenbooks off the bargain books table for $3.99. It talks about positions in detail, including how to modify them if you're too stiff to manage them, and they talk about the breathing and tell you to hold positions for X number of breaths and when to inhale and exhale. It'll take me a while to be able to remember all the little details and not have to break a position to check if I'm doing it right, but I'm on the right track.

So far, I like it. I like the stretching. I find the whole thing extremely amusing for the reasons that LJer theferret describes in his post yesterday morning:

"But to me, yoga consists of getting into the most uncomfortable positions you can imagine and staying there.

It's a trick, since after about five seconds your entire body starts to quiver. You're trying to keep your balance while your hamstrings are shrieking in agony, and you have to push up with your left arm as you extend your spine. Your muscles ache as you try to explode your body outwards, every limb reaching in a different direction. You're not doing any exercise other than just standing weird, but oh my God does it hurt."

I've only done very easy beginner positions, so most of them don't hurt. They feel challenging, but not painful. I like feeling the muscles stretch. I don't have much of a need lately to clear my mind and relax, but that part could come in handy next time things get crazy in life or work. I certainly can't clear my mind and relax with Poindexter around. He kept coming into the room to check on my progress and laughing at me, or groping fun body parts that were brought into sharp relief by certain positions. There was one interim position where I was kneeling on the floor, butt on my heels, and I was told to clasp my arms behind my back and arch my spine. They should call that one the "Grab My Tits Pose".

Right now my favorite pose is the Extended Child's Pose. I feel my back stretching but it doesn't feel like work. ;) Although another fun one was the Tree Pose, which I found quite do-able as long as I kept my eyes open. The book suggests that you close your eyes "if you can", but as soon as I do that, I lose my balance. It's very funny.

One thing that confuses me a bit is the breathing. They'll tell me to hold a pose for 5 breaths. But if a pose isn't difficult, and I'm relaxed, sometimes it'll take me 10 seconds to do one breath (inhale and exhale and a pause, I think, before inhaling again). So they're talking about holding a pose for almost a minute, and then they want me to repeat it five times. But when I watched the video, there's no way Rodney Yee was holding those poses for that long. Maybe 20 seconds, max. Plus, if I'm focused on my breathing like that, I can't breathe "normally" -- I breathe more often or more deeply than usual because I'm thinking about it too much, and I get dizzy. I don't have this problem with aerobic exercise. Until I can get an instructor to watch my breathing or something, I'm thinking I'll just count instead, and make sure I'm not forgetting to breathe.

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