way too much about yoga

     I am registered for this conference and am super excited about it. I've lived here in CO for 16 years and have yet to travel to the southwestern part of the state. I hear it's gorgeous, though It's kind of a "can't get there from here" path. I will have to drive backroads for hours, though with lots of beautiful scenery.

     I also am in need of a lot of yoga and a f'in' vacation, though it's still sort of funny that I am arranging to have vacations that require me to get up super early to meditate.

     They tell me that there has been a good response about the festival. I got all of my first choices for my classes! I'm taking nine classes over three days with ten different teachers, seven different yoga styles:

Tibetan: Straub
Vinyasa/hiking: Park
Satsang/Ayurveda: Blossom/ Svoboda
Iyengar: Stechert
Jivamukti: Kaivalya
Ashtanga: Freeman
Forrest: Zwilling
Vinyasa: Blossom
DIscussion of sutras: Modestini and Doane

    I hope I can hack it, physically and mentally. I've missed so much with my sad tooth and feel like I'm not in the best shape I could be in. Working on it. Training as I can before leaving Denver on 7/9 or 7/10.
     I still don't have a place to stay. There are campsites, but you can't reserve them in advance and I worry about showing up and finding no place to sleep and having to sleep in my car or breaking down and shelling out trillions of $ for a hotel room. I'm still trying to find someone to share a ride/room. Let me know.

     I am going to the first and hopefully not the last Telluride Yoga Festival. Does anyone want to share a ride from Denver and/or room? I am particularly interested in sharing a room. The cheapest room I can find is $120/ night and those places have bad reviews. The $137 rooms sound agreeable.

     OK, so I said I wouldn't be able to die happy until I had seen Nick Cave live. Now I am going to do it! I am going to see him in September. At the f'in' Ogden. He's not doing many North American dates on this tour and one of them is in my town at a fairly small venue. I hope I have not tempted the universe too much and that I won't spontaneously give up the ghost on September 27, the day after. Of course, the concert is on Friday night and in the middle of the Yoga Journal conference. The regular conference is Friday- Sunday, and that would necessitate a drive back to Denver on Friday and then back to Estes Park on Friday night or Saturday morning. I haven't registered yet, though, and was thinking about maybe doing the beginners' conference, which has a great and inexpensive program and runs Saturday - Sunday. I was also thinking about doing the Anusara gathering earlier in the week or just doing one of the intensives on Thursday. How to balance one's obsessions? Yoga and Nick Cave.

     Wow, that new Nick Cave record is frakkin' amazing. Since I've been getting ready for the reunion, I've been thinking a lot about twenty years ago. I adored him then, and I can't think of any other artist I'm still listening to, listening to their *new* stuff, and finding it as relevant as I did back then. Well, that new R.E.M album is pretty good, but they don't count since they sucked for so long.

I don't know about the stache, though.

Nick Cave

He drinks your milkshake! He drinks it up!

It looks even freakier in the video.

More good news: they're doing a North American tour! I have to go even if I have to fly to get there. I've never seen him live and won't be able to die happy until I have.

     It was a great class tonight, hip-openers! I love hip-openers, perhaps because my hips are relatively flexible and they're not so hard for me, but also because they really help keep my back pain and stress at bay. Who knew that I hold so much stress in my hips?
     They're also preferable to shoulder-openers, as my shoulders don't seem to change much, but my hips *do.* It's nice to feel and see progress, as in "Wow, there's my toe!"

     I'm so glad I went. Note to self: remember that the next time you don't want to go to class.

     I have never regretted going to yoga class (ok, maybe *once* a long time ago with an evil sub that I wasn't ready for and maybe an Iyengar class or two when I was expected to frakkin' *stand on my head* before I felt ready), but I have often regretted *not going.* Turn off brain, listen to body, go to class. Lather, rinse, repeat.

     The teachers are doing advanced teacher training right now and learning all sorts of new things to inflict upon us. A couple of poses to remember before I forget:

     A pigeon relative in which you put your hands down below your shoulders, walk your foot in between your hands and bend your knee out to the side while pushing down on the outside of your foot. It really gets to that spot in my upper outer hips or saddlebags ;) as they are more commonly known. The only other posture I know of that gets that spot is the one where you lie on your back at the end of class and take your legs out to the side. Yum.

     We also did a very interesting pose where I totally mixed up my feet, so weird to look at your feet kind of backwards. Stand in tadasana, move your left foot to the other side of your right foot, try to line up your toes, baby toe to baby toe etc., keep your heels as close as possible, but mine were pretty far apart. Now choose a drishti and bend over slowly, using your hands to help walk down your legs. Breathe. Try not to fall over. Go as far as you can and then r-e-l-a-x. Wow, my toes are backward! Now reverse the process and use your hands to help you walk back up.

     Standing poses seemed harder tonight for some reason, especially my feet. Maybe I've reached another plateau and hope it's not that I've lost some strength.

     I am going to go to class on Sunday and then I will be on vacation. I hope I can make it to class in Louisville, Lexington, and/or Union and of course I *intend* to practice every day. ;)

     I went to the Saturday class and did ok. We have a substitute teacher for the next few months, and I adore Theresa as a teacher. She's new and great.

On Wednesday I did 1 hour+ yoga and then went to the beginners' class.

     The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica starts Friday! I was really late to the party and didn't start watching it on DVD until last year, after the third season had aired. Those DVDs just came out two weeks ago and I spent a ridiculous amount of time last weekend obsessively watching the third season, to the exclusion of doing almost everything else I planned to do. I had accidentally managed to hear about the "twists" in the third season and it actually pushed me to keep watching. I wanted to see *how* the twists unfolded, but of course they didn't happen until the very last episode! It just gets better every season and I can't wait to see how they finish it up.
     You don't like science fiction, or it's not your favorite, you say? Me too, hence my late arrival, even though the reviews were all amazing. Don't let the scfi turn you off. It's set in space and everything, but is really about so much more. I don't know that much about science fiction, but I'm less into the technology and am more interested in the sociological implications, the "what if?" and BSG really delivers. It's all about politics, religion, history, ethics, relationships, the human condition (literally and figuratively), and probably more *big* issues than I can even think of at the moment. Even more importantly, it's also just great dramatic storytelling with fascinating characters and great acting and writing. Tragedy and comedy, no less.
     Just in case you haven't been watching it, and you don't have time to fully catch up and watch it all: the miniseries, seasons 1, 2, 2.5, 3, and the special Razor --- before Friday -- the web site has a great "What the Frak Is Going On?" video. It recaps the entire series so far with commentary in 8 minutes flat. They do a great job *and* it's funny. It sounds like the same voice and tone from the Lost recap, though I think that took12 minutes to cover just three seasons.
     Why did I spend all those hours actually watching the show? Well, it's that good and you can always catch up later. Watch it now.
     Salon also has Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About Battlestar Galactica in text format.

    So, to sum up, catch up here:
     What the Frak Is Going On?
     Everything you were afraid to ask about Battlestar Galactica

     I went to yoga class on Sunday for the first time in several weeks, maybe a month. It was by far the longest stretch between classes since I started the bendy thing, almost 2 1/2 years ago. I muddled through somehow and am glad to know I don't have to start over from scratch. I'm still very sore but in a good way. My knee is fine and my cough is almost nonexistent now (finally!), so it's time to crawl back on the mat in earnest, no more excuses. I feel a little boost in my affect, though it's going to take more to get me back on track emotionally.
     I wouldn't say that I've fallen into serious depression, but I definitely notice the difference, particularly in my dramatically decreased resistance to stress. Work has been terrible and Thursday was perhaps the worst work day I've had in years. Not that it was all in my head; it was objectively a really shitty day, starting and ending with a customer from hell and a steady parade of freaks and idiots in between. But my reaction to it was less than optimal; it got to me more than I would like and now I'm so irritable and angry, I get peeved when someone just asks me anything. I hope this isn't the beginning of total librarian burnout and I can work my way out of this. There are a lot of mean people and a lot of crazy people in this world; those traits often converge and they *all* come to the library. And, believe me, these people can smell blood and know a wounded animal when they encounter one. They can sense my weakness and go for the jugular, and I need to be strong enough to deal with it and not let it get me down and carry over into my regular non-work life.
     I've also noticed that my eating habits have been slipping too. More emotional eating and less healthy eating. I even broke down and ordered a pizza the other night for the first time in months. Yes, it was delicious, and, no, I don't exactly regret it, but I know I can't continue like this and keep wearing the same pants. I'm trying not to let that get me down either.
     So, note to self: Unroll the mat, perch on the cushion. It may *still* somehow seem silly to my rational mind, but it's serious medicine and essential for my frakkin' health.
    

     I got my checks from the refi today! One is to pay off the damned credit card and I'm putting it in the mail tomorrow. Hello Sandman! The other is cash to put in the bank. I need to do some maintenance on the house and some of that money will go toward that in the next few months. The rest is going to start building up a bank balance. In a few months, I'm going to put some into CDs. By the end of the year, I intend to divert some income into deferred comp at work. Next year I plan to meet with a financial advisor. I can visualize a future where I'm not living paycheck to paycheck and am not so stressed about money. Did I say I *love* my mortgage broker before? If not, I DO.