Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

Wednesday I did something I have never done before:  bought something knowing full well I was going to return it.  My search for boots in Harvard Square turned out to be, to use an entirely appropriate word, bootless, so I resorted to ordering a couple of pairs of boots online from onlineshoes.com, which like Zappos has free return shipping.  I'll keep the pair that fits best and ship the other one back, or ship them both back if neither fits and have them ship me some more.  It seems awfully decadent to have stuff delivered to me just to try on, but I guess that's the modern world we live in.  Another advantage of doing it this way is that I get a cashback bonus for using my Discover card at that vendor, so I'm saving money on top of it being more convenient.  Still seems terribly profligate and wrong somehow though.  Shnells, I'd still be into going shoe shopping sometime though, I want to find cute shoes that don't make my feet hurt and that I can go out Arabic-dancing in, if such shoes exist anywhere in this world.

In other shoe news, three days in a row of wearing my Earth shoes has made a real difference in the plantar fasciitis in my right heel.  If you've got PF, I highly recommend Earth shoes.  They continually but gently stretch your calves and ankles and hamstrings.  Good for the hips and lower back, too.

Finally had a chance to get in some yoga last night.  It was much needed.  Of course as soon as I reached savasana the neighbor kids started rampaging, and M was twanging away on his guitar (he uses headphones, but the physical strings are still fairly noisy).  I held an image in my head of the earth lying solid and silent and dark underneath all the activity of life on top of it, eternal and never changing despite all the fuss and bother on its surface, and it was surprisingly effective at keeping all the commotion from affecting me.  I really didn't think I had it in me to relax under the circumstances but I'm glad I did.

Started Season 2 of Torchwood last night, with the famed James Marsters-John Barrowman liplock.  Oh those naughty captains.  And poor jealous Ianto.  The show is rather veering into Lex territory but I still like it.  Pretty people being cool and sexy and tossing off one-liners, nothing wrong with that.

Dreamed last night that it was Raks Spooki showtime, and I realized I'd never written up a schedule.  It's too soon for me to be having anxiety dreams about the show!
 

Saturday my massage therapist worked small miracles on my foot.  I think all my muscles had seized up in response to the constant pain and swelling and were stressed from walking oddly.  I'm still not pain free but I'm considerably more comfortable.  As I said to M, my foot now feels like it has the occasional dull ember in it and not a constant hot sharp knife.  My toes actually hurt more than the ball of my foot now.  I have to be careful not to over use it in the coming weeks but I feel much more optimistic.  I may survive the Morocco workshop and trip to Vegas in decent shape after all.  I ordered a balance board for myself because I think using that in physical therapy really helped keep my arches and ankles strong--I just sold some back issues of a belly dance magazine which covered the cost of the board almost exactly, making me feel quite clever.

Saturday I also watched the Wood Memorial and the Santa Anita Derby.  I'm doing much better this year in keeping up with the major prep races for the Kentucky Derby.  I thought for sure Colonel John was going to fade as they entered the backstretch in the Santa Anita, even saw a moment where I thought he was out of gas, but boy did he dig in deep.  He came out looking really good, too.  Big Brown is still my sentimental favorite, but I think this year there's a lot of talent and a lot of heart going into the Derby.

Sunday I danced!  and did some yoga.  Not as much as I wanted of either, especially given that I'm supposed to present a piece in AJ's class tonight, but still.  I wasn't any more achy after dancing than I was when I started, and I think the yoga actually helped a lot (see above about seized up muscles).  We did a bunch of shopping that evening and I had a little trouble negotiating the endless aisles of Target, but the soreness left after a bit.   We now have a brand new suitcase that is not mildewed from sitting in basements for too many years and a new trash barrel that is not falling apart and has an honest to goodness lid.  Also I now have a pretty plastic swan.  I try not to buy more junk but sometimes it just sticks to you, you know?  Those Schleich models are very cool, I would have flipped over them as a kid and as it was I had to convince myself that we did not need extra horses and elves and unicorns and okapis in the house.  It's like the next generation of Britains Ltd, bigger and more detailed.

Last week I watched Paprika--I think Satoshi Kon is one of my favorite directors ever, anime or otherwise.  His films just keep getting better and better.  I somehow hadn't realized that he did the Paranoia Agent series, but it makes perfect sense.  I love the way he blends the fantastic with serious social commentary.  There's an interview with him, the author of the manga Paprika was based on and the two lead voice actors in the Paprika DVD extras, and he's just so charming.  I'm aesthetically and intellectually smitten.

Dreamed very vividly of Seti last night, I think for the first time since he passed away, or at least the first time this vividly.  It was nice to see him again.  As usual when I dream of past ferrets, the overwhelming sensation was tactile, the feel of fur and warmth.

I like to rent various yoga DVDs from Netflix, in a try before I buy kind of plan.  This afternoon, I did The Firm: Power Yoga DVD.  It was short, about 32 minutes, but packed a fair amount of activity into those 32 minutes.  And therein lay its flaw, at least for me.  The DVD describes itself as being yoga without any of that spiritual stuff, just a pure physical workout, and that's what it is.  I do feel that post hard workout feeling, but what I do not feel at all is the sense of ease and balance that comes after a good yoga session.  I've often maintained that I learn something from every DVD, no matter how good or bad it is, and what I learned from this one is that I have come to really crave the spiritual/mental benefits of yoga.  So despite the DVD's avowed non-spiritual take, it still provided me with a form of enlightenment ;-)

Was back and forth about going to a party tonight but I fell sound asleep on the living room floor during savasana.  The world is a very strange place right now.  Think I should stay in.  Just me and the weasel and dance dvds, if I can keep my eyes open...  This is what happens when you start your day off with a massage.

Watched the Boston belly dance documentary last night.  For a student project, it's really pretty good.  The sound levels had some problems and her filming conditions weren't always optimal, but I think an interesting portrait of a community comes across.  Hate my footage dancing in the ME, I look like Ms. Pillsbury Dough Lady, but I have to admit that objectively speaking, other dancers filmed on the same night look much larger than I know they are in real life so I am trying not to beat myself up too much about it.  The interview portion is funny, I'm used to watching me dance but it's odd to watch myself talk.  I totally get the Jodie Foster thing now.

Such an odd yoga class I just had.  We had a substitute teacher, and at first i thought she was taking things at a way too basic level for us.  But of course, I soon found/remembered that sometimes with yoga the simplest things are the most difficult, if you throw your whole mind and body into it.  So in some respects it was good, but in other respects--we did a lot of work with folding chairs, and I think I pinched something in my upper back doing that backbendy legs through the back of the chair thing, plus we hadn't been doing any breath work at all, so my lungs and diaphragm weren't really prepared to breathe upside down and stretched out.  I got value out of the class, for sure, particularly with some pointers about creating space in your knees, but all in all, I'm not entirely sure what I thought.  It was kind of like that rosemary-infused gin gimlet I had at Tryst earlier in the week.  I *think* I liked it, but I'm not sure that I didn't also dislike it.

I put my yoga mat in the washing machine.  I'm a little afraid to look at the results...

The internet is choosing to work this evening, yay.  Earlier in the day it was sulking.

Just finished re-watching The Chronicles of Riddick and I have to say, the movie does stand up.  I probably enjoyed it more now than I did in the theatre.  I think when it came out, it was somewhat hurt by the hype about it being a serious sci-fi epic in comparison to Pitch Black.  It is certainly a more ambitious film than Pitch Black, but I think everyone involved in it, right down to Dame Judi Dench, had a healthy sense of perspective about what they were doing, which was not creating a sci-fi masterpiece but rather creating a solid piece of entertainment that called strongly to the inner geek in all of us.  Well, all of us geeky people anyway.  The writers and producers still should have chosen a better bad guy name than "Necromongers," but all in all, it's a satisfying flick.

Oh, all Riddick does with his sabre claws is punch with the serrated bits and stab with the pointy bits, which would be of limited usefulness for dancing unless I really take a dislike to the front row.  But he does carry them in this neat rigging on his back in a way that makes them reminiscent of angel wings.  I had been thinking about how to start dancing with them, whether to just have them in hand from the start or plant them on the floor ahead of time, but this has some possibilites.  I should write Vin Diesel and tell him about all this, I suspect he'd find it amusing.

I was the Riddick of kitchen cleaners today--the floor still needs a proper scrubbing, but otherwise the kitchen is spotless.  I even scrubbed the dishdrainer.  Yoga class was very good.  The teacher was pushing us, but it was good.  It's interesting to discover which of your limitations are mental rather than physical.  I went into half-handstand thinking "oh, I can tell this isn't going to work" and then to my surprise it did work.  Crow pose did not work but I could feel how it could, I can be patient with myself.

Ronan is already showing distinct signs of improvement after three doses of medication--the vet said it would work fast, but this is impressive.  Even his belly looks less distended.  It was funny looking at the x-rays, even though it was just his insides it still looked like him.  I would have recognized his x-ray in a pile of ferret x-rays, I'm sure.

Speaking of insides, I was surprised to hear my mom say today that she wants to go see Body Worlds at the Museum of Science.  Don't know why, but I didn't expect her to.  Maybe we can have a family outing.  Because really, who better to view dead people with than the people who made you alive?  I think I want to see it, although I am somewhat turned off by von Hagen's self-promotion (necromonger!) and I don't think he was ever able to disprove the allegations that he has used the corpses of executed prisoners, though nobody else was able to prove it, either.  Dead prisoners should have the same rights as all the other dead people, I guess.

Wonderfully awesome yoga class yesterday, just the right balance of standing and twisting and backbends for me to be reduced to a happy little corpse at the end.  And I felt all proud of me because I was one of the few people in class comfortable in reclining hero pose--not because I'm super bendy yoga girl, but because to me, that's a belly dance move ;-)

The class left me a little too mellow for my performance at the Middle East last night though; I felt like I was falling all over my feet, between blissed out fatigue and the fact that my satin circle skirt's waistband is a little too loose so it was hanging down a little too close to the ground and tripping me.  It's a good thing that I've lost weight, but I need to alter all my costumes, if I am feeling optimistic about keeping it off.  Though maybe it's not so much that I've lost weight as I've gotten better with posture.  I don't own a scale because I find numbers have the power to make me suffer, so I avoid them.  Anyway response was positive to what I did, especially my drum solo (I got people clapping along), but I felt sloppy, like my muscles were mushy and had no pick up.  Which was probably exactly the case.

I stuck around for a little while to see some of classmate Nikki's set, and I was glad I did--that woman is seriously talented.  She did a sword dance to some kind of cheesy remix electronica but the cheesiness worked.  If you're familiar with Jehan's music, it was that kind of thing (maybe it was Jehan music, for all I know).  It's funny because I'd been watching The Golden Apple:  Bellydance Stars of New York earlier in the day and marvelling at how very talented dancers can be so boring when dancing to new agey 4/4 electronica.  Nikki blew those dancers out of the water last night.  Part of it is probably the difference between watching a staged DVD and a live club performance, but she had a dynamism and responsiveness to the music that I wasn't seeing on the DVD.  Anyway, she's a great dancer and a great entertainer.

Stayed up too late due to residual adrenaline and finding the movie Orgasmo while channel surfing.  Because it's not like I've never seen it before...  Had planned to bring my wings to my office to do some practicing after hours, but decided to give me a small break as I expect I'll be dancing every night until next Monday, and I did take pretty much everything out of myself yesterday and only got 4.5 hours of sleep last night.  The Yoga Journal e-newsletter thoughtfully sent me a recipe for sundried tomato and goat cheese penne, so I think I'll make that tonight instead of dancing.  I miss cooking.  (How the recipe can say the prep time is ten minutes when the first step is to soak the sundried tomatoes for 15 minutes, I don't know.  Maybe it's a yoga thing.)

Had a much needed weekend where much time was spent with M.  Life gets so full so fast, it's easy to let that time slip away.  Not this weekend though.  Among other things, we saw Nightwatch (liked it, it wasn't perfect but it was intriguing and I want to see more) and ate at Ole Mexican Grill, where I had the most amazing dish of sauteed mushrooms with sweet potato puree, green beans and mini squashes and spicy greens (watercress, maybe) with a mole balsamic reduction--it may not sound that exciting, but it was heaven on a plate.  And I had almond-flavored tequila as an after dinner beverage.  I don't know anything about tequila, but it was very very tasty.

Sunday I got up rather earlier than I would have liked for a workshop on feet at the yoga center down the street.  Was happily surprised to see shnells there.  The workshop was very good.  It approached feet from a Feldenkrais perspective, which clicks well with me because it's all about the actual bones and how they work together.  I discovered that I am somewhat wierded out by manipulating my toe joints and metatarsals, a mild version of the same feeling I get when I see/hear cracking knuckles, which was a little telling in and of itself.  But the lessons learned were valuable and I think this will help my feet.  Even by the end of the class i was thinking of my feet less as those things at the ends of my ankles that cause me problems and more as an interesting and useful collection of bones and muscles that have an effect on the rest of my body, and I do think a mental shift like that has the potential to affect my general foot health.  In my copious spare time I'd like to explore more of this Feldenkrais stuff. 

A couple of hours later I went back to the Arlington Center for my first yoga class in quite some time, five weeks maybe.  I've been doing DVDs at home, but it's not at all the same, especially when the instructor is focusing mostly on the types of poses that one tends to avoid on one's own--a lot of standing and balancing poses (I tend to focus on twists and hip openers at home, not that I'm especially skilled at either but they feel so good and help unwind a lot of dance-induced and sitting-in-a-chair-all-day-induced tension).  My endurance is pretty shot after these two and a half months of near-perpetual illness, I was sad to find.  Although it's also possible that the morning workshop was more strenuous than it seemed at the time, since it was all slow gentle movements, and had taken more out of me than I realized.  But it was wonderful to feel breath flowing up and down my airways unimpeded, even when my torso was upside-down, and I'll get my stamina back.  In a way, discovering I had lost stamina was an interesting lesson in itself; I've obviously been dancing throughout this time, doing some pretty physically grueling stuff, yet holding one pose and standing still with it for two minutes took far more out of me than a five minute drum solo would.  It is harder to be made of stone than it is to be made of water.

Watched the Nick Cave concert film Live at the Paradiso last night.  Sigh.  I wish Nick Cave were still that cool.  I think that's about my favorite era, too, just after Henry's Dream came out and before Warren Ellis got too involved with the Bad Seeds.  Not that I dislike Warren Ellis at all, but his arrival marked a certain turning point in the overall sound, for better or for worse.  Anyway, highly recommended to any Nick Cave fans who haven't seen it yet, and it's available from Netflix.  Watching it I was again reminded that From Her to Eternity is one of the most perfect songs ever, the kind of song that you could exist in forever while it's playing and leaves you shaken when it ends.