Ballooning in Napa

Since I insist on calling my blog a "vlog" as if there is a bunch of video content here, I thought I'd add the video I made of our recent balloon ride in Napa. It was so much fun making the video I was really excited to make another one, but filming stuff and taking pictures of xmas and xmas eve made me realize how fortunate I was to have that ballooning footage to work with...most of the time things are just not that exciting or picturesque.



and then I found this...



Probably just as well I didn't watch that BEFORE we went.

Veggie Pr0n

Fact...Ladies in the orient used to make dye from the skin of eggplants, which they then used to stain their teeth gray, because it was thought to be very stylish.

Today I thought I'd FINALLY inoculate and sow my lady peas, which should have been done about two months ago when the fava beans were transplanted into the raised beds freeing up my grow lights. Not sure why I procrastinated so long, but while the peas were soaking in some water and inoculant for a bit I checked the mail and found my box stuffed FULL of big, glossy vegetable pr0n catalogs.

I guess it's that time of year...the time when you start going through these things, dreaming, planning, circling stuff, figuring out how much you can spend, where you'll put it all. I'm trying to be annoyed that these places would so wastefully send me these big, gorgeous color catalogs full of exquisite vegetable (and and fruit and flower) pictures and luscious descriptions claiming each hairloom tomato, french melon hybrid and Thai eggplant is better than the last, especially when this is all available online, but I have to admit I really enjoy getting these stunning catalogs.

I was trying to pick my favorite, but it's hard...

There's Johnny's Selected Seeds, which has a huge selection and allows you to buy seeds by the pound (I figured out from their catalog that 1 pound of lettuce seeds is aprox. 232,000 seeds, which MIGHT be a few more than I need, since so far my bf has only allowed me to plant lettuce in one small windowbox.) Despite the quantity and selection, the pics are small and the descriptions terse. Also, I was excited to see they have sweet potato slips but it seems they can't/won't ship them to California.

Then there is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Their catalog has some HUGE and gorgeous vegetable pictures, and some other funky pictures, too. This place tries to preserve rare and heirloom seeds and they are located in Mansfield, MO. a kind of historic town where they have "Heritage Day" festivals all year round and you can listen to people wearing straw hats and overalls or long dresses and bonnets singing bluegrass and yodeling, when they aren't churning butter or something. I was inspired to buy the book, "Good Bug, Bad Bug
" after seeing it mentioned in their catalog, and the only thing I didn't like was that they don't have a picture of every item. I definitely want to order some stuff from them again, especially the "Moonshadow Hyacinth Bean" which says this in the description: Pick when small and tender, as old pods and dry beans may be poisonous!

Last but not least today was Territorial Seed Company, a place in Oregon which also won't ship sweet potato slips to California but at least they print their catalog on non-glossy paper, and they have an interesting variety of stuff that goes way beyond vegetables, like mushroom growing kits and vegan fertilizer mix. Oh, and they have an INDEX, which is one thing that was quite lacking in the other two catalogs.

All this has served to be quite inspiring to me today. I'm not placing an order (yet) but besides the lady peas I now plan to start germinating a few other things tomorrow (like some pepper seeds I got from Australia a few months ago!)

I'm really missing all that fresh produce we had in August/September, but we should be eating our own lettuce any day now, and it won't be too long before we have fava beans, garlic, and shallots. I wish I'd planned the winter garden better (or hadn't basically forgotten about it for a month or so) but I'm back on track.

Wavy Gravy and the Ultimate Citrus Juicer

I couldn't let the whole month of December go by without updating my blog even once, so to try to get back into the swing of things I'm posting something I realized about myself...

Yesterday I realized I only like ice cream with chunks of stuff in it. Well, or floating in alcohol sometimes maybe. The thing is...I'm vegan and there isn't much of any vegan ice cream with GOOD BIG chunks of stuff in it. I want like, Chunky Monkey, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, the one with the giant chunks of Heath bar in it, Chubby Hubby with its huge chunks of peanut butter filled pretzels.

Not for me though. Vegans do get a selection of different rice, soy and coconut ice creams but at best they maybe have anemic little flecks of chocolate or microscopic and dissolved bits of cookie that you wouldn't know were there if they weren't on the label. I guess I could make some cookie dough or maybe chop up some vegan sandwich cookies and mix them in myself, but for the most part I'm thinking I probably will eat less ice cream. If this prevents me from just grabbing, from the store or my home freezer, and downing a whole pint of Wavy Gravy in the future (actually, they don't make Wavy Gravy any more...which is nice of them because it makes becoming vegan sooooo much easier) then it's probably a good thing.

Of course they still make tasty vegan ice cream sandwiches, like mocha ice cream between two oatmeal cookies that has all been dipped in chocolate, or the classic Tofuti Cutie. Yum. So I guess it shouldn't be too hard to be vegan and still eat junk.

In other news, I make myself some fresh citrus juice almost every morning. Lately it's pretty much always been grapefruit, but I do use fresh orange juice when making a post-workout smoothie for my bf and I after the gym. Why am I telling you this? Because my juicer, my second cheapie $20 juicer in six months, has really been limping along and annoying me with its design flaws but for x-mas, I got the Breville 800CPXL Die-Cast Stainless-Steel Motorized Citrus Press. That thing is like, the Cadillac of citrus juicers. It's supposed to be so efficient at extracting the juice that you end up with a totally cleaned out peel that is all prepped and ready to use as a bowl for some frozen fruit sorbet. I'm not going to do THAT today, but I AM going to try my new juicer (wooohooooo!) today and then I'll be sure to report back.

Geeking out in Napa

I took some video of the Robert Mondavi winery last week when we took a tour there, so here it is...the tour guide geeking out about wine. It was a great tour if you are interested in wine or even if you just like somewhat sciencey and historical stuff...

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Mondavi may not have my favorite wines, but it's a great piece of Napa/California wine history and this was definitely a tour I think you could take over and over and it would be different and interesting every time. I especially want to go back around August when we could taste grapes right off the vine!

Halloween part 2

My mom just found this picture of the cape (and tunic) that I made when I was 15.

So, I'm sewing my cape for Halloween this year (the fancy cape with the hood and lining and trim and such) and trying to make a dress to go with and remembering the dress I made for my costume the year before that had 18 pieces that had to be cut out and sew together (and then the stitches ripped out and resized, etc) and I think of the time, thought and expense of putting a costume together and I start thinking to myself, "why do I go to all this effort?"

I KNOW that pretty much everyone else at the party is going to go to the Spirit Store the day before or soemthing, and they are going to pick out a $10 "sexy cat", "sexy witch" or "sexy devil girl" one-size-fits-all generic Halloween outfit and that's that. I have to question why *I* can't do that. Why, why, why? But I can't. The idea of picking out a costume like that is just totally...icky...to me. I can't do it. I won't. No matter how little effort other people might be making, the idea of wearing one of those mass-produced, cheap generic costumes is completely anathema to me.

So this begs a few questions. The first is...why do these people run to the spirit store and grab a cheap, generic costume? Why are they content with that? That's a bit complicated I'm sure. You can't lump everyone in together except in perhaps the most general way. Maybe a better question is, "is it them, or is it their expectations of the party?" Is it the people that I know, or is our party just not fabulous enough?

Maybe it's a little of all of those things.

The other question is "why do I have this need to put so much effort into a costume?" And I suppose the answer is that I don't like to do anything halfway. This sometimes leads to not completing things or to miserable failure, and it sometimes leads to spectacular success, and sometimes it leads me to having a costume that looks really out of place.

My bf and I talked about it, and for us the solution is "have a more fabulous party". So that's what we're going to do. A fabulous party, with plenty of advance notice, an emphasis on dressing to impress, an expanded guest list that will hopefully include plenty of people who are already predisposed to put effort into an original costume, written invitations, and perhaps a costume contest.

We've already invited some people...I hope 11 months is enough time for them to prepare.

halloween

 Well, Halloween has come and gone, my month of yoga has come and gone and somehow the blog fell by the wayside. I was just so wrapped up in preparing for Halloween and then preparing/hosting out of town company that I got wayyyyyy sidetracked.

I didn't do yoga for the last week of October. It's funny, when I told my bf about my "31 day yoga challenge" he was like "why 31 days? Why not 3100 days or 31 years or something?" Hey, baby steps...I think that's a GREAT idea, especially after the yoga I did do, but it would be great to finish 31 days first. In the midst of working on my cape, I would be trying to do yoga so late at night (and for me that's pretty damn late) that I'd be falling asleep in the middle of a pose...and they aren't that comfortable!

I'm back to doing yoga now though...it feels so great and even three weeks of it definitely made me more flexible. I'm a little stiffer from my little break, but I can now do saddle pose without a bolster pillow, so I think that's pretty awesome! If I have some new yoga news to report, I'll be sure and do so.

 

So meanwhile I was sew, sew, sewing with several seasons of "Project Runway" to inspire me and keep me company. I don't know why a darned cape should take so long...part of it was the cutting out of the pieces which were too big to properly fit on the table I was cutting them on. Then there was the part where I put the two pattern pieces together wrong (two parts were pinned together and then were cut out of one piece of fabric) and cut them out. When I discovered one piece had been upsidedown when I was cutting (perhaps not the best idea to cut pieces out at 3am) I was so distraught I immediately went to bed.

Going to bed wasn't such a bad thing to do. I am reminded of a cape I made oh-so-many Halloweens ago when I was 15. I didn't really know how to sew...we had home ec. in middle school but although I aced  the cooking part I totally flunked the sewing part...and I was in my mom's basement trying to use her sewing machine to make a cape and I didn't have a pattern so I'd basically just cut out some big semi-circles that had a small part cut out for the neck and I needed to sew them together and then hem the whole thing. Somehow it all just seemed soooo beyond me and I remember crying in frustration. 

So here I was again, still not really any kind of expert sewer, trying to sew a cape, but this time with a lining and a hood and some trim and a clasp...and cutting the damn thing out of the huge piece of fabric (of which the fabric store had no more...and I actually checked several stores around town, nobody had it) totally wrong...and I didn't cry! Pretty good, if you ask me! After making sure I couldn't replace the fabric, I ended up cutting the big pieces back into two halves (like the way the pattern would be if you didn't pin it together) and flipping half of it. I was afraid it would be ugly, but in the end I think that new seam I created actually made the cape look BETTER. 

  

So I managed to assemble the whole thing, put cute little heart trim around it, sew a decorative border for the hem (little flower stitch) and the fox clasps I ordered

arrived in the nick of time, so I somehow managed to sew them on unevenly but what-ev. The petticoat and the wig actually showed up later the same day I was accusing the mailman of dastardly deeds in my blog, I whipped up a simple white peasant shirt (of which the elastic in the neckline broke during the Halloween party) and ended up forgetting about the dress (although all the pieces were cut out) and just wearing the peasant blouse with a black skirt, petticoat, white stockings and chinese style mary jane shoes. Oh, and the wig which I braided and I think it looked very cute but I didn't have a camera with me and nobody has sent me any pics yet!!!

I really think my bf and I had the best costumes by far at the party.

Karaoke didn't go quite so well...I ordered two Halloween karaoke cds and a large set (hundreds of songs) of non-holiday karaoke cds but NONE of them arrived in time, so my bf went to target and he picked out a cd of Frank Sinatra and his 15 yr old daughter picked out two more cds which contained mostly music I'd never heard of, and my bf was practically the only one who sang karaoke that night (he has a great voice for Sintra stuff)...BUT we have about 700 songs now including "Me Gustas Tu", so we are way over-prepared to have another karaoke holiday party.

Hot Nude Yoga!

You know, they have nude yoga classes in San Francisco. That probably won't surprise you. Probably won't surprise you either, if I tell you they are for gay men only. But did you know...they have nude yoga classes right here in sleepy Redwood City?!?!?!? Neither did I, until today. I asked my bf if he wanted to go, but much to my relief he said "no". Still, it's nice to know there is a comprehensive yoga studio just two miles from where I live, and I'm thinking of taking some private (clothed!!!) lessons there because the place sounds awesome...like they really put the emphasis on stretching and have even worked with olympic swim champions! I could have the same guy stand on my lower back while I'm in downward dog as Dara Torres!

I've missed a few days of yoga, though. After doing kettlebells, my back felt a bit hinky or something. Who knows, perhaps doing yoga would have been the best thing for it, maybe I should have at least tried. The thing is, I was kind of upset about my websites breaking after being transfered by my host to a new server. I am very fortunate I had someone helping me set everything up on a brand new virtual dedicated server where *I* get to set ALL the permissions so this can't happen again...and finally last night everything was back to normal and I'm 100% back in bidness, but meanwhile I was in a sort of denial about it or something and I didn't do much of anything for several days besides play Puzzle Quest (which is totally addictive anyway, it's like Bejeweled with a purpose.) I just didn't want to have to deal with anything, and I wasn't sleeping right, either.

Everything is pretty much back to normal now, though, not just my sites but me too. After I finish this blog post I'll be doing my yoga and I also watched most of the rest of Paul Grilley's Anatomy for Yoga dvd earlier AND read a few yoga magazine articles.

In other news...my bf and I went to this very cool movie theater in Menlo Park so we could see the only movie out right now that actually has a decent review rating (Rachel Getting Married) and guess what? They had vegan cookies! So that place rocks although the seats are not that comfortable and the hand-held cameras used in the movie made us both kind of queasy.

And...I contacted the eBay seller I bought the wig from for Halloween and they gave me the DELIVERY CONFIRMATION NUMBER for my package. According to the post office they left me a delivery notice on October 10th and then they actually delivered the package to me on October 22nd. Well excuse me but they did nothing of the sort! It's bizarre. First it's weird because LAST YEAR I didn't get the wig I ordered either, and second I don't understand why the postal carriers keep lying and saying I wasn't home to accept delivery of packages when I was, and third...where the heck did they deliver the package to???? The seller said they will send me a new one for shipping plus 15% the price I originally paid for the wig, so when the post office calls me back on Monday that's what I may end up doing. I should get the new one by Thursday in that case. Well, at least the postal carrier should. Maybe he's wearing it....geez I hope he doesn't steal my petticoat, too!

Did you know?

"Both the teetotaller (le buveur d'eau, or water drinker) and the drunkard (le soûlard) have traditionally been criticized for their extreme habits: the wine drinker, meanwhile, has been praised as a model of moderation. Even into the twentieth century, doctors administered wine to their patients to fight alcoholism."

From Wine Politics; How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink by Tyler Colman

crossdressing fashions and sucktastic domain hosts

Last night I watched "La Vie En Rose" and it got really late and I sooooo wanted to sleep, but I still did yoga. I seem to remember saying I'd do a little cleaning before each yoga session, but I so totally haven't and my "stuff" is again encroaching on my yoga space. I'm going to have to work on that.

I also did kettlebells this morning!

See, this is what happens to me...

I decide "I'm going to do kettlebells! Kettlebells will be cool and a great workout and something fun and different that will get me exercising at home!" So I research it, order some kettlebells, order a dvd...then I wait for them to arrive. When they finally DO arrive, they just don't seem as of-the-moment any more, or I'm busy or I'm tired or whatever. You can remove "kettlebells" and insert many other things and it will still apply to me. I usually come back around to whatever it is, though. And that's how, when I decide to do yoga for 30 days, I already have yoga magazine back issues, yoga dvds, yoga anatomy books and puke-ready yoga mats.

 

And in other news, I decided my little red riding hood costume might be better with a petticoat, I searched the web for just the right one, not too long, not too short, not too full but not skimpy on the material either and I finally found it. I almost didn't order it though, because it was on a crossdresser supply website, and I dunno...I guess I'm just afraid of what mailing lists I'm going to end up on now. We shall see. As long as I'm not getting adult baby stuff, I'm cool I guess.

And finally...today could have been a whole lot better than it was, but noooo....the place that hosts some of my domains, easycgi.com, has been transitioning all domains over to new servers, and they finally got to mine and...they broke it! Not only did they break it but it took almost all day to find out that they won't fix it. So, I haven't had any ecommerce going on at all today...hoping maybe something will be jury-rigged by the end of the night so that at least ONE of my sites works, and I really, really hope that they can all be made to work on some brand new hosting I ordered elsewhere within the next few days...otherwise, I shall cry!

2am Yoga and Tencel obsession

Since my bf enjoyed the yoga we did Friday, we decided to do it again. This time I brought over the Paul Grilley Yin Yoga dvd. We ate rather late and didn't want to do yoga right afterwards, so we watch an old italian (Fellini) film about an eternally optimistic prostitute searching for love.

When the movie was over, it was nearly 2am but we still did yoga anyway. The hardwood floors were killer on knees and tops of feet, but it was still a blast. For me the late hour seemed pretty normal, since I've been doing quite a lot of 2am yoga these last few weeks just to get it done and because I ate a little late or whatever. If I'm left to my own devices, I will go to bed about 2 or 3 am every night anyway. Or later. It's just so much easier for me to get work done late at night when things are quiet and it feels like I'm possibly the only person left on the planet. Works out great until I start trying to coordinate my schedule with other people's.

Last night I did yoga really late, too, but I had to do it sans-bf, since between baking experimental vegan cake and having his family over to eat experimental vegan cake, it got a little too late for him to stay up on a weeknight.

Here's a tip:
When you are buying fabric on eBay and the auction description says the fabric has a "nice drape", don't believe it! It's quite likely they don't know what they're talking about, maybe they saw it in another auction and it sounded good so they copied it, maybe they think it would "make nice drapes", maybe your idea of "nice drape" is completely different from theirs, maybe they're trying to tell you their carpet matches their drapes, or who KNOWS WHAT THE HELL is really going on in that sellers mind when the word "nice" shows up followed by "drape".

I've been faithfully trying to work towards having a halloween costume done before halloween. I spend quite a while looking for some fabric for the dress I'm making on eBay, after not finding fabric I wanted at JoAnn fabrics. When it arrived I was really disappointed in it. I'm thinking I really need to find something else. Yesterday I spent quite a long time in JoAnn fabrics since the correct cape pattern FINALLY arrived...actually now I have two of the correct pattern, since I ordered a backup just in case. So I was looking for fabric for my cape. They have the most gorgeous red velvet, but not only is it $25 a yard, I don't really think Little Red Riding Hood would wear red velvet. I mean, she's just a simple girl with a simple life, bringing some home baked goodies and maybe some whiskey to her grandmother's little cottage, and I think she'd wear a very nicely made red cape, but with a sort of homespun feel to it.

I wandered around the store looking at everything again and again until I finally noticed some red fabric in the red-tag sale section. I hadn't noticed it before I suppose because I was looking for a deeper red, but it was a tencel fabric with a lovely drape, a nice tactile feel and a subtle waffle weave, and I decided that perhaps this is what LRRH would wear. Then I had to wander around some more holding this fabric up to everything in the store to find something to line it with. I finally found a brown fabric with a bit of a reddish cast to it, which was also in the red-tag section and also made of tencel.

I love that tencel, and I'd love to maybe take the cape apart afterwards and make a dress (or two) out of it! The fabric might get cut in the wrong places for that I suppose...sigh. Today I'm going to go back to JoAnn and MAYBE...cross your fingers...find some tencel fabric in blue for the LRRH dress. That would be so awesome. And maybe see if they have any of it in ANY other colors. If not, I'm going to start stalking other JoAnn stores, even if they are full of rather cranky employees most of the time.

Too farty: a yoga tale

QUESTION: Why did the Irishman only put 239 beans in his bean soup?
ANSWER: (in best Irish brogue): Because he didn't want it to be too-farty.

Last night I did yoga with my bf and I remembered one of the reasons why I'm not eager to take an actual yoga class. I'm sure I'm going to be that person in class who keeps farting. Yeesh, it's just not right!

We had fun, though. First we tried to do Dynamic Partner Yoga, and I like the whole idea that we're doing yoga poses together and that there are ways to use that to get a better stretch, but it felt like we were doing speed yoga and we're noobs that don't even know the poses so we were really lost and eventually collapsed on the floor laughing and then changed the dvd to Micheline Berry's Liquid Asana Vinyasa Flow Yoga: Beginners Flow.

I'd done this one before but had to stop after 20 minutes or so due to some time constraints so I wasn't sure what to expect of the whole thing. It's the one that "had me at juicy" a few weeks ago. Well, we ended up having a lot of fun and really enjoyed this one. We did give up at one point, but when Micheline moved on to the next section we decided to start up again and ended up finishing the dvd. My bf really enjoyed it and said he felt great (albeit hungry) afterward, so we're for sure going to do yoga together again (tonight!) but I realized that the Yin yoga I've been doing is really great not just because it stretches your connective tissue but because of all the great info Paul Grilley gives wrt the different ways one might hold a pose depending on body type and where you are supposed to be feeling it...or even the different places you may CHOOSE to feel it depending on your goal at the time. Since you are holding a pose as long as five minutes and he's giving you info pretty much that whole time (although you can also play the dvd with most of the commentary turned off) you really end up learning a lot, and even when you are doing more Yang poses at some other time, it helps you think about feeling your muscles and joints and be more aware of your body. Also, there are a few areas (mostly spine and sacrum) I think my bf really needs to stretch out to help him with some poses (although in other areas, for a guy...especially one that's never done yoga...he's pretty flexible.)

So tonight, even if it's at 1am (because of having company over), we are going to be doing some yin yoga. It's great that my bf is into it because it makes it much easier to find the time to do it knowing he'll do it with me if I'm at his place. It's also relief to know it's fun to do it together. Probably a silly thing for me to ever have worried about anyway.

I was so encouraged by our co-ed yoga that I even ordered "Yoga in Bed" from Amazon today. Not sure if two people can do yoga in bed at the same time, but it was only five bucks and I figured it would be fun to try!

Pooooot.....poot!

Snips and snails and puppydog panting

You know, it's actually hard...probably not worth the effort, even, to try and drink a glass of wine and do ANY kind of yoga at the same time. I guess it's partly because breathing is a big part of yoga...even if you're not doing something like Breath of fire...

(wow, I love the rugs they're sitting on here, and also wow being told by a woman in a turban to pant like a dog is a bit weird)

And I've never seen any instructor/guru/yogini/swami person instruct you to breath in to your belly, pull that breath up through your lungs, hold it for a few seconds as you reach for your wine glass and take a sip, then exhale and push the wine chi down into your abdomen. I think it would get you all messed up. There is no room in conscious breathing for quaffing of anything.

Or imagine trying to take a sip during Snail Pose, which I totally kind of suck at and can't stay in...

Actually, that could work out really well for me...if we're holding the pose for five minutes and yet *I* can't stay in the pose for that long, while I'm watching other people hold it for five minutes I could totally drink some wine, chill out, maybe have some cheese and crackers. Oops, wait...I don't eat cheese any more...

I've been doing yoga every day despite its interfering with drinking wine other activities I might enjoy. Last night I did yoga at 3am. It reminds me of this guy I used to know, he was a doctor and so you can imagine him with some rather stereotypical doctor personality traits like being very disciplined and doing the things he set out to do (that may just be the trait of anyone who has gotten a phd within any reasonable amount of time) and he would work out all the time lifting weights although every day he was crazy busy...but he'd never let being busy keep him from his workouts. Soooo...he'd end up working out at 3am many times.

I thought that was kind of crazy at the time, but now here I am doing yoga at 3am. The difference, though, is that he would still get up at some ungodly hour like maybe 7am or something, and there's no way in heck I'm getting up at 7am if I've been up that late no matter what I was doing.

Today I went to do yoga and SOMEBODY had thrown up on my yoga mat, AGAIN. If the catfood is still in somewhat firm form, it's relatively easy to clean the yoga mat and feel only slightly queasy at the idea that you are pressing your face down right where here used to be cat puke...

 

But if the puke is a bit mushier, it really gets down into the texture of the mat and it's hard to feel any confidence that you really got it clean unless, perhaps, you have access to a powerful garden hose and a special yoga-mat-scrubby-cleaning-thingy (if such a thing exists) but I don't so today's puke had me a bit grossed out. It's my own fault, really, for leaving the mat down any time I'm not using it. I've told myself not to do that (and there it sits on the floor EVEN AS I WRITE THIS). This time I cleaned it as best I could and then flipped the mat over for today's yoga. But first, I went to amazon.com and ordered a new mat.

Note to self: for goodness sake, if you couldn't put the old mat away (and others you have owned in the past) please, please, please put this new one away! 

Halloween shopping on eBay

I've come to the conclusion that if you want to buy stuff to use for Halloween from eBay, you should do it at least three months ahead of time.

I found the shoes and tights I wanted for my costume on eBay and they arrived just fine, but I also purchased what I HOPE is the perfect fabric or my dress and it was just finally shipped out today. I guess the seller ran out of ink in her printer, so she couldn't print out a shipping label using PayPal. So, I had to wait for her to ummmm....but more INK before sending my package. That's a little weird if you ask me...can't she just take a pen and write my name and address on the envelope?

Also delayed is the cape pattern I bought/won. Oh, I received a package from that seller in the mail, and it even had a cape pattern in it, it just wasn't the correct pattern. I don't know if I'll be able to get the correct one from them or if I'll be expected to send this one back or what, but without the pattern I don't even know how much fabric I need to make a Little Red Riding Hood cape. Oh, and a wig! I ordered a wig as well and there is no sign of that, which is actually rather funny because I ordered one last year as well and it simply never arrived at all.

I was really trying not to procrastinate on my costume this year, but now I'm afraid I may be doing a repeat of last year's "stay up all night cutting and sewing, grab a few hours of sleep in the morning and then frantically sew the rest of the day, finally sewing the second sleeve on while your bf waits in the car for you, and then finding out you sewed it inside-out."

In other news, who knew yoga was so addictive? I even did some vinyasa type yoga on Sunday, AND I did yin yoga. The two types should balance each other, since one is more active and the other more passive. One works the muscles, the other the connective tissues. The only thing is, to do both of them took me TWO hours. I wasn't really counting on giving up two hours of my day to this. It's great before bedtime, though...really clears my head and helps me fall asleep. At least it does if the person in the dvd isn't telling weird stories about elephants and how her kids aren't four years old any more.

Last night I was doing my yoga (just yin) and I was wondering if it would be so very wrong to have a glass of wine while holding these poses. I mean, I'm holding these poses for five minutes each...surely there is some time in there to take a sip now and then? That's when this chick on the dvd starts talking about how these poses are really good for the liver, which works so hard ridding our body of toxins both from the environment and from the things we do to it like um....drinking alcohol. I'm just not sure how to interpret that...does that mean I shouldn't do it because it's taxing my liver, or that while I'm doing a pose that stimulates my liver would be THE PERFECT time for wine?

Femur rotation and cat puke pose

Well, I'm doing my yoga every day, even if it's at 3am. I'm finding it very addicting as long as I enjoy the DVD I'm using.

A while back (like ten months ago) I purchased a bunch of back issues of Yoga Journal on eBay...that's a great way to immerse yourself in a topic without spending a lot of money. Something happened where I guess the post office never notified me I had a package (yeah right, like I wasn't home when they supposedly tried to deliver it in the first place) and since I didn't get the notification, I never picked the package up and it ended up being sent all the way back to New York where it came from. The guy on eBay emailed me about it, and I had totally forgotten I'd purchased them. He was so nice and paid for the shipping a second time...he didn't charge me for shipping! That was very cool.

So yeah, I got the magazines finally about two months after I purchased them and then they sat around until this month when I decided to do yoga every day. They actually have some very interesting articles and moves and stretches you can do to try and correct different problems...even pose modifications that are supposed to help with scoliosis, either lessening it or at least preventing it from getting worse and/or painful as you grow older. The ads are great too...I love reading the ads in the back of magazines. These ads aren't funny like, say, the ones in Men's Health, but it's interesting to see what people are selling wrt a particular subject.

Today I was watching a DVD called "Anatomy for Yoga" and it's really interesting. And now I understand something better...

When my bf and I go to the gym and we are doing squats, my bf, once he gets warmed up in his first few sets, will be squatting almost all the way to the floor...his butt will only be about an inch from the floor at the bottom of the movement. When *I* do the squats, I can't go down NEARLY as far. But he'll tell me "try to squat lower". I try but...I just can't, and it makes me feel wimpy and inflexible. Now, watching this dvd and seeing how the different bones meet each other in different places, I am pretty sure my "problem" is simply a matter of where my femur meets my pelvis during rotation. BUT this doesn't mean I can never squat down until MY butt almost touches the floor...I probably just need to put a 2x4 under my heels or something. We haven't been going to the gym together much lately, but now I'm kind of looking forward to trying that. I have a body bar at home, maybe I'll just try doing squats with that and a 2x4 and just see what happens.

And in other news...I woke up verrrrry early this morning to the sound of Rodney puking on my yoga mat. I suppose I should have put it away, but can't he pick somewhere...ANYWHERE else to do that? I mean really.

I was lucky it was Rodney, though...when my other cat, China, throws up, it always seems to catch her by surprise (what's this spewing forth from my mouth? ¡que extraño!) and she ends up throwing up wherever she is, whether right over her food or water dish, or on my ankles/blankets in the middle of the night.

Great Chefs Cook Vegan

Wow, I think I'm getting addicted to yoga...who'da thunk it? I wish I could spend a couple more hours doing it today but I have other stuff to do.

Anyway, I have this new cookbook called "Great Chefs Cook Vegan", and last night I brought the book with me when my bf and I went to Palo Alto to eat at Tamarine for the first time. We didn't have a reservation, but we thought we'd give it a go anyway. Just as we drove by and said "oh, there's Tamarine!" we saw a parking spot right there. Well, not saw it so much as my bf and his vehicle seemed to sense it and as one they turned into it and there we were, parked!

The restaurant looked kind of crowded but we saw some seats at the bar so we sat there and found they have some very delicious red wines.

The bartender was super nice and he helped us order everything vegan and he was very interested in the book we'd brought. He's been working "in the industry" for quite a while and has worked with some great chefs, and he knows people all over the place, like at The French Laundry where I guess he got engaged...wow, we can't even get a reservation and he got engaged there!

He gave us some great tips for dining out in general and because of him we are eating at Jardiniere in San Francisco tonight, and as he was telling us about different restaurants he's worked for and eaten at, and all the things they could and would do for vegans and others with "special dietary needs", which basically consist of great chefs using their considerable skillllzzzzz and making something special on the fly, I found myself thinking "maybe we've been going about this all wrong!" (And also thinking about how books have been good conversation starters for us almost every time we've brought one.)

By "this" I mean eating out as vegans. Rather than trying to figure out what restaurants ARE vegan or vegetarian or raw or what restaurants have a few dishes on the menu that are vegan or scanning the menu for items that we can request be served separate from their meat components, perhaps we just need to be paying attention to who the chefs are at each restaurant and what their reputation is for accommodating people. It's not the menu that matters, it's the people, both front and back of the house.

So, that's my new theory, I guess we'll see how it goes!

vMTV and IMVU majorly sucking

vMTV and IMVU are both causing me problems right now. Yesterday I spent hours relisting my vMTV auctions...since there is no listing tool, and no way to really know if your auctions are expired, the experience is a rather traumatic one. If you go to the Galleria (ooh la la) there is a link you can click to see all (but not really all once a certain amount of time has passed and you have a certain number of them) your past and present auctions. In one big long list. One. Big. Long. List. Current and expired auctions all jumbled together. Let's say I have a pair of black hightop tennis shoes...it will show all the times I have listed them in auctions (without actually showing me any more specifics, like was that the men's or the women's black hightops?) jumbled in with EVERYTHING ELSE.

Fortunately for me, almost all of my auctions were expired, so I could go through and relist pretty much everything. NOW, though, the old expired auctions and the current auctions are all jumbled together, and the 20 items still to expire in the next week...not only will I not be notified when they expire (that would be really nice, an email to let you know your auction expired) but I won't know WHAT ended. The thing to do is to cancel all your auctions at once (using Clobber Auctions) so you can just spend 8 hours or so relisting them all at the same time, but I didn't do that (curses!) It's sooooo frustrating and so totally not what I wanted to be doing with my time. It's insane that There and vMTV have never fixed their lousy systems. With There at least you have a third party listing tool (jinXplorer), but with vMTV there is NOTHING. It majorly sucketh.

If there were a small silver lining, I guess it would be that this forced me to spend a lot of time looking at each individual listing (which at the same time is the worst part about it) and do some price adjusting. Of course, a good listing tool should allow me to do this as well, but more easily.

It's sad, you know halloween is about three weeks away and there are only 8 pages of featured auctions on vMTV. I think that number would be MUCH higher if people (developers) could actually take vMTV seriously. Like, there is actually a humane way to relist your auctions, and of course vMTV would let people advertise their vMTV$ sales (and actually allow them to sell vMTV). Because, seriously, why would any devs want to submit stuff to vMTV if they can't make any money doing it? (And if they have to spend a whole day trying to relist?) People do sell vMTV$, even though it is against TOS, and that is the only reason most if not all of the experienced developers keep developing and relisting...so they can sell vMTV$ on what I suppose you could call "the black market".

It took me until 2am last night to finish listing my auctions...I still did yoga after that, though. Geez, I had to because I felt so kinked up from hunching over my desk for a zillion hours and not getting any exercise. If I had to do my There auctions manually like that, I'd cry.

***********************
So let's talk about how IMVU majorly sucketh...

IMVU recently made a new rule whereby credit resellers can't advertise off-site credit sales in their shoutouts. At least um...I don't think they can. They seem to be tweaking the rules on the fly, which is horrible for resellers since nobody knows what they can and can't say in a shoutout. First they say you have to be creative about what you can say...you can't say "cheaper" or "discounted" or even say that you sell credits. You can only say you have INFORMATION about credits, and you can then link people to a page on the IMVU site, like your homepage or a catalog page. But the rules seems to be changing, daily if not hourly. And you look at the shoutouts that are running and you say "heybutwaitaminute..." as you see another reseller with something in their shoutout that you thought wasn't allowed..and you don't know if they just got through with something they are going to be chastised for later, or if there is a new policy and now they simply have a better shoutout than you.

The effect in general, though, of not being able to link offsite, is devastating. It seems like the rules have settled down to be "you can post most of the stuff you were posting before, but you still can't link offsite." But, to get people to click one time and then buy credits is one thing...to get them to click twice to get to the ordering is harder. Like, multitudes of harder. Personally, my sales have dropped like a stone. Of course, this is the slowest time of week generally, but really...sales are really, really bad. It doesn't exactly help that IMVU is running a special where you get your avatar name and 15,000 credits for $9.95. That's just cruel. Why not offer your avatar name plus 10,000 credits for $9.95? Still a great deal, but doesn't damage resellers so much.

Argh.

Groom Mate Platinum XL

Okay, this is probably not a topic for polite conversation, but today I'm talking about nose hair. As adults, we have nose hair. It acts as a filter to keep unwanted stuff out of our nose, and by extension out of the rest of our body. Who needs to walk around wearing a surgical mask when you have NOSE HAIR!?! Nature's original mask/filter!

In fact, many doctors recommend not trimming your nose hair at all. Y'know, for your health and stuff? But the thing is, it's really not very ladylike to walk around with visible nose hair. In fact, it's really not very gentlemanlike, either. So, because it is soooooo important to me that people not look at me like I am some kind of freak to be ladylike, I have been trimming my nose hair ever since it first appeared quite a few years ago with a pair of pointy little scissors...



Probably not the safest way to trim the hair in your nose, sticking a little pair of pointy scissors up your nose, but I sustained no injuries this way over the years and that's what I did.

At least it was until I misplaced my dangerous little spears of nose-doom. That's when I thought "hey, I'll get a nose hair trimmer!" So that's when I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon and ended up ordering a Groom Mate Platinum XL. It trims ear hair, too...something I don't have, but if I ever do, I'm ready!

It was a little scary putting this contraption up my nose and twisting it, but it didn't hurt at all. In fact, I liked it much better than my stabby mcstab scissors. I wasn't sure what the "XL" in the name meant, but when it arrived in the mail I found it fit in my not-XL nostrils just fine. Oh happy day!

Then, a few days later, I opened my mailbox and found...another Groom Mate Platinum XL! Ermmm...that was odd. I checked PayPal and Amazon and it looked like I ordered a second one. Nooooo! But I didn't!!!!! What do I need two for??? I swear I didn't!

So yesterday, I opened my mailbox and found...TWO MORE Groom Mate Platinum XL nose hair trimmers.

What...

the...

hell?????

I have FOUR nose hair trimmers (so far) and Amazon says I placed four orders. I'm drowning in nose hair trimmers here.

I was about to contact Amazon and say "What the hell is going on????" I order quite a lot of stuff from Amazon and nothing like this has happened before. This was from a third party seller but still...

But just before freaking out, I figured out what happened...

I use Firefox for my browser and I usually have oh, about ten pages open at once. That's fine but after a while Firefox leaks a lot of memory and I have to restart my browser so my computer won't run slow as molasses. It seems I was on juuuuuust the right page of Amazon that every time I rebooted, I was ordering another nose hair trimmer.

Yikes.

Why did it have to be nose hair trimmers? Why couldn't it be chocolate bars or something? What am I supposed to do with them? My bf and I are planning a Halloween party that we need some party favors/prizes for, but he already said "no" to the idea of giving them away as prizes. So now I'm thinking...well...Xmas IS just around the corner...

Yin Yoga Weekend

Too bad my dedication to posting in my blog every day this month isn't as good as my dedication to doing yoga each day. It's not likely to happen when I'm at my bf's house, though. What am I supposed to do, say "Baby, I can't spend quality time with you right now because I'm too busy posting in my blog about how we aren't spending quality time together because I'm too busy posting in my blog"?

Wait, did that make sense?

Well anyway, I rolled out of bed on Saturday and dragged my sorry ass to the farmer's market just in the nick of time. I love to argue with myself about how it would be sooo much better to stay in bed and then go to Whole Food's or Sigona's later, but the rational line of thinking is that the farmer's market is actually closer and there are loads of good reasons to choose getting your food there, and plus I'm not actually getting out of going somewhere by simply procrastinating about it, I mean...I still have to buy food. It just would have been better if I hadn't had a little too much wine the night before and/or stayed up way past any normal person's bedtime.

After that, I didn't really feel like doing any yoga but lucky for me I had a copy of "Yin Yoga: The foundations of a quiet practice", which is a two dvd set. Disk one is a two hour lecture about body meridians and yin yoga and football players and corpses, and I figured I really should watch the lecture first before doing the practice on disk two, so it gave me a good excuse to sit there for two hours eating raspberries and picking all the seeds out of a pomegranate. It's too bad it would be hard to peel/eat one in the dark because that would be awesome to do in a movie theater instead of having popcorn.

Finally I got to the Yin yoga practice and I really enjoyed it. Depending on what you think my goals are for doing yoga, you might think I was kind of cheating. Yin yoga involves taking a pose that stretches your connective tissue and hold it for five minutes or more. So that's what I did for 70 minutes. Actually, it can seem a bit tortuous about halfway through a pose but overall I really love it and it's yet another thing that is way better than those so-called ballet stretch dvds. The only thing is, I can't just do yin yoga forever because you need to balance it with yang yoga (which is basically almost any other form of yoga.)

So then Sunday I was at my bf's house and we have (unopened) yoga mats there and I brought the dvd I thought would be good to do together and we had a list of things to do that went something like this...

1. Plan and practice making cake (for halloween/birthday party - we want to make something vegan but we also want it to be really nice.)
2. Work in garden
3. Watch "Mondovino" (maybe)
4. Something else I think I forgot
5. Do yoga

But it ended up being more like...

1. Stay in bed having coffee until 1pm and planning cake
2. Work in garden
3. Watch HBO (we seem to have become addicted to "Little Britain USA" and "The Life & Times of Tim")

So yoga kind of fell by the wayside. It was actually rather tiring working in the garden, or maybe I was just dehydrated. We cut down one of the stevia plants, but we left the other one because it was covered with bees and bees are scary mofos we want to encourage them to stick around and pollinate stuff. We also picked more tomatoes including FINALLY one from the plant that I guess is the "Hugh's". You can see it above in the lower left corner, and behind the basket you can see the carrots and radishes that we were trying to sprout under newspaper. It worked! I mean...they sprouted under there but I guess we left the newspaper down too long and the poor things, I don't know what they're going to do. I can be a bit of a control freak and I find it stressful to be so far away from the garden so much of the week...I don't know what's happening and I have no control over it.

We also planted our garlic and shallots and the tigger melon that I sprouted at home under grow-lights (hey, at least I have total control over the first several weeks of the lives of the plants I start at home) and transplanted the basil that had been so ready to leave its pot that it had sent a crapload of roots out through the drainage holes and rooted itself to the ground. We tried to cut the pot away but in the end had to cut those roots away...hopefully it will be okay. We also found that our Nasturtium has completely disappeared. It used to be a huge plant in a big pot and now there is just a mostly-empty pot with a few straggly weeds in it. WTH? One of our self-watering planters was totally flooded, too...it looked like hurricane Katrina hit it or something...I think we are going to have to be more careful with putting some extra drainage holes on the sides of any self-watering containers as well as maybe doing all our own watering.

Oh, and we have been planning our halloween costumes. Last year after being the devil, my bf said "next year I want to be a bumble bee ala John Belushi", and in my mind since then I've been thinking how to do that and figuring I'd probably be a bumble bee, too, and it would be kind of funny to be two plump, plush bumblebees waddling around together. However, it seems during that same time my bf has slowly been changing his mind about what would be a good costume and now he wants to be the Big Bad Wolf and have me be Little Red Riding Hood. I never thought I would be shopping for a nightgown and nightcap for my bf!

So now I'm planning my Little Red Riding Hood costume. I think we may have a bit of a disconnect though, and his idea of LRRH is something like this...

While I'm picturing something more like this...

So, ultimately, we just never got around to doing any yoga. I have only myself to blame because I'm pretty sure if I'd said "let's do some yoga now! Even if it's just for 30 minutes!!!" That we would have done some yoga. Or at the very least, I could have done it on my own while my bf was cleaning the kitchen (heheh...)

But guess what????!? I DID do yoga on Sunday! Okay, technically it was Monday because I did it after I got back to my place and it was about 1am, but since I hadn't gone to bed yet it still counts as Sunday. Ha...I bet you were thinking I didn't do it, weren't you??? I did yin yoga again, since the Paul Grilley dvd has several different practices on it. I like the dvd so much that afterwards I ordered another one by the same dude.

Yoga challenge day 3

A few days ago, when I started doing this yoga challenge, I had to clear some space in my apartment to do it in. After I did that, it felt so nice and...I guess you could say "peaceful" and "rewarding" and "tranquil" to have done that, that I decided I should spend at least a bit of time doing that each day...even if the place I'm going to do yoga in is totally clear and the clearing and cleaning is taking place elsewhere in my apartment. It just feels so nice and liberating to do that. Yesterday I was mostly cleaning the kitchen before yoga, and afterwards when I was making dinner it was a real pleasure to work in such a clean/cleared kitchen!

After doing some cleaning today, I was looking for some other ways to delay yoga and getting rather hungry as it was getting a bit late in the day, and I thought "hey, I think I have all the ingredients to make baklava." I've never made baklava before, but my bf and I have been taking cooking classes from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau from Compassionate Cooks and one of the things we learned to make was baklava, and since I had some filo dough in my freezer from a REALLY LONG TIME ago, I was procrastinating on doing yoga, it seemed as good a time as any to finally try it.

The baklava came out pretty good considering I lost the recipe. We'd gotten it on a little handout, a sheet of paper that I promptly lost. I realized later, once it was in the oven, that the recipe is also in her "The Joy of Vegan Baking" book which I own so I could have followed it instead of just making it up, but my bf actually thought my on-the-fly version of baklava was better than Colleen's. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

Then I realized "crap, I better do some yoga or I'm going to run out of time". I started a DVD called "liquidASANA The Fluid Dance of Vinyasa Flow Yoga" by Micheline Berry and I had to stop it at 30 minutes to get ready to go out for dinner in Palo Alto, but it felt really good. I like this dvd, even if it does keep doing "downward dog" over and over and over...it's fun and smooth and she had me from the moment she promised I could stay "juicy" as I got older. This is a definite candidate for doing yoga with my bf on Sunday, although there are quite a few poses where your knee is pressing into the floor, and I found that a bit painful even though I am using a yoga mat over a carpeted floor, so with his hardwood floors we are really going to have to figure out some extra padding or I am going to scream (in agony!)

In other news, my AT&T rollover minutes have gotten pretty ridiculous. I think I'm going to be up over 500 minutes next time I'm billed. I'd like to drop my service level BUT then I wouldn't get the data plan any more. Argh!

Yoga day #...ummm....?

Oops, I was supposed to post yesterday but I was soooo tired, I was reading an issue of Yoga Journal that promised to talk about Sex and Yoga, which was not nearly as lascivious as I hoped but was was still very interesting. Then, I fell into a deep sleep.

Day one of my Yoga Challenge went okay, I guess. First I needed to carve out an area to do the yoga in, and that took a while and it was rather humid out (it's been pretending like it's going to rain for several days now) so that made me a bit hot and cranky without even putting in a dvd.

I did everything I could think of to delay doing yoga, checked my sales transactions one more time, got a glass of water, picked out what I wanted to wear (something that made me really hope UPS wouldn't show up at the door), petted the cats...

Okay, I didn't really pet the cats. They were sleeping and I wanted to keep it that way, otherwise they'll be meowing at me and climbing on me the whole time. They're just so fascinated any time I'm actually on the floor.

I sorted through my yoga dvds and decided maybe I didn't have enough and could procrastinate by browsing amazon should order some more just in case. What I conveniently forgot until afterwards is that I have a small box of exercise dvds that I liberated from their cases, and some of those are yoga dvds, so I had more than I thought.

Finally I actually did some yoga. I chose "Yoga for Health with Jenny Cornero - Depression & Gastro-Intestinal Disorders" for my first day. The reason I have that video is because I was looking at possibly taking a class or lecture from Jenny and I wanted to check out one of her dvds first and she doesn't seem to have that many. The reason I chose it on Wednesday was because I figured it would be easy.

The first thing I noticed once we got past the hold and release your nostrils while breathing segment was that I really need a pedicure. I guess the video was okay. Jenny has an accent that is a little hard to understand sometimes, and she would start doing something and then get up and start correcting her students. I would have preferred she stay and do the poses with the rest of us...every time SHE stopped, I felt a strong urge to stop, too.

Halfway through the dvd, my carpet was obviously as bored as I was, and it started trying to engage me in a conversation about how I REALLY should get a Dyson vacuum. I tried to tell it we're in the middle of something spiritual here, and talking of worldly goods that cost hundreds of dollars like a Dyson was REALLY not appropriate but it just gave me a dusty stare and said "What-ev."

I don't think I would do this dvd again. It wasn't really too hard, but it was hard to understand and not really spectacular. It also made me realize that I've lost a lot of flexibility, so yesterday (day 2) I thought maybe I should do something to limber up first. Since there wasn't time to order a new dvd, like maybe this one...

I decided to try a dvd I already had called "Ballet Conditioning".

Ballet Conditioning had a really fabulous setting and very good production values. The chick doesn't talk as she's doing the movements, she talks as a voice-over in this really sort of sexy voice that was fun to listen to. The only thing is...although the cover says:

"Use fluid movement to stretch and strengthen your way to a graceful, sculpted dancer's body"

It doesn't really tell you the emphasis is on the "strengthen" and not the "stretch". Probably I should have figured that out on my own by the fact that it said "conditioning" in big letters. Oh well. I tried to be a trooper and did quite a bit of the exercises but I was afraid I'd be too tired by the time I started yoga, so I started trying to skip ahead to the stretchy bits. I didn't find too much, so I eventually put in another dvd called "Ballet Boot Camp Stretch". The "boot camp" part was what had scared me away from this one in the first place, but I decided to be brave.

This time I was not shy about skipping through looking for the "good" bits. This dvd has poor production values and actually the stretching part was quite meager. I tried to do one bit that was called "Splits Preparation -- learn how to do the splits", and I must say it should really just be called "jam your knee into the floor for a minute and then do the splits if you can, haha!"

By this time, I was tired, it was dinnertime, and I didn't feel any more limber and if it takes me this long to do yoga every day, I'm not going to have time for anything else. It was time FINALLY to pick out my yoga dvd. I picked "Yoga for Inflexible People", which allows you to pick from a bunch of different routines which are supposed to help you increase flexibility! So, I didn't need those dumb ballet dvds, I guess. I chose a 45 minute routine and although I only had a bench and not a folding chair, this one worked out really well for me, it was the perfect amount of challenging, gave me a really good stretch and I would totally do it again.

Now I still have to do my yoga for today, day 3...

31 day Yoga challenge!

I can't wait for my bf and I to try this pose!

I'm always saying I'm going to try/practice yoga. I say it over and over again. I have a yoga mat, a body pillow, those brick kind of things you use to modify poses, a strap, and a bunch of yoga dvds.

I've also gotten my bf to agree to do yoga with me, so I brought a couple mats to his place and then bought a pattern and some fabric to make our own personalized yoga bags (which I never finished.) Some of his family members even saw the yoga mats at his place and were like "we want to do yoga with you!"

Also, my gym, which is a ten minute walk from my apartment, offers yoga.

Despite all this, I never actually do any yoga.

But no more! I have decided I'm going to do yoga every day for the next 31 days (basically the entire month of October). Why not? It's just 31 days! I'm going to DO IT and I'm going to POST ABOUT IT here every day. I just need to make room to actually do it and then probably vacuum (goodbye dust, my old friend...)

Or maybe this one! 

Below I've listed a crapload of reasons to do Yoga...maybe after reading them you'd like to join me for 31 days?

Lowers blood pressure

Slows your pulse rate

Improves circulation

Lowers your respiratory rate

Increases cardiovascular endurance

Massages your organs (I'm pretty sure there's a joke in there somewhere)

Improves gastrointestinal functions

Strengthens your immune system

Increases pain tolerance

Balances metabolism

Delays aging

Improves posture

Improves strength

Provides more energy

Keeps weight in check and can lessen the buildup of cellulite

Improves quality of sleep & helps induce sleep

Improves balance

Makes you more graceful and more in control of your body

Gives you more body awareness

Helps with core strength (just like pilates)

Improves your sexuality (more control, more relaxation and more self confidence)

Improves your mood and over all sense of well being

Reduces stress

Reduces anxiety

Reduces depression

Increases self-acceptance

Teaches self-control

Increases awareness of the mind-body connection

Gives you a more positive outlook on life

Reduces hostility

Improves concentration

Improves memory

Improves attention span and focus (okay okay so that's kind of like concentration)

Improves social skills (not sure that's true if you're doing it at home alone...)

Increases feelings of calmness

Lowers cholesterol

Boosts immunity (by increasing flow of your lymphatic system)

Lowers blood glucose levels

Reduces sodium levels in your body

Helps regulate endocrine functions

Helps lower triglycerides

Increases red blood cell count

Increases the amount of vitamin c in your body

Lowers your risk of injuries (compared to other forms of exercise)

Stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system

Improves muscle tone

Reduces oxygen consumption

Improves breathing

Provides a balanced workout of opposing muscle groups

Is non-competitive and therefore stress-free (especially if you do it at home!)

Increases range of motion in the joints

Increases hand-eye coordination.

Increases dexterity

Improves reaction times (woohoo...get better at video game by doing Yoga!)

Improves endurance

Leads to increased depth perception

Lowers your risk of heart disease

Lowers your risk of Osteoporosis

Lowers your risk of Alzheimers

Helps prevent type II diabetes

Relieves carpal tunnel syndrome

Reduces symptoms of asthma

Relieves arthritis symptoms

Helps manage multiple sclerosis

Improves sense of well-being in cancer patients and reduces nausea during chemotherapy

Helps return some physical functioning to those with muscular distrophy

Reduces number of migraines and their severity

Helps straighten your spine (has even cured scoliosis)

Can prevent epileptic seizures

Can alleviate pain from sciatica

Reduces the symptoms of OCD

Helps relieve constipation and improve elimination

Can reduce or eliminate allergy symptoms and clear sinuses

Helps with side effects of menopause

Can reduce spinal compression and back pain.

camera, camera, camera, camera, camera!

Yay, my camera arrived! I don't really know what I'm doing, but I did manage to take a few pictures already, and not even on maximum size/quality! (Because I have no clue how to change that setting.)

First, a cat picture so I can be a crazy cat lady. Look how well my camera shows not only each individual hair on Rodney's head, but that Rodney's dust mite allergies are acting up and he's been scratching his right eye! Geez, I should get him to the kitty dermatologist. See, already my camera may have saved my poor kitty a lot of pain and suffering.



Then, I took a picture of my tablet pc screen...look how well the letters show up, and this is on autofocus! I could be a spy or something now!



Then, I tried doing the whole fisheye thing, which was kinda my main reason for getting a "nice" camera. Look how fisheye-ish my keyboard looks!



I even managed to make Mark Wahlberg look puffy and fat! Sorry Marky Mark.



Then the camera stopped taking pictures...I'm not sure why but I think a little RTFM plus maybe watching the tutorial DVD and taking a peek at the supplementary book I got just miiiiiight be a good idea at this point.

I'm loving my camera, even though it's um....super gigantic. Seriously, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to lug it around in my largest purse, and it's not exactly discrete. I'm going to look like a paparazzi stalker type anywhere I take it.

And...

I find myself questioning whether I am a person who should have a camera like this. It has lenses you have to take off and change. It comes with little cleaning kit thingies to keep little specks of dust away. It has lots of little parts that need to be clean and dust-free and not misplaced.

Meanwhile, *I* have sometimes been likened to Pigpen, with a trail of dust following me wherever I go. Oh, and hair...both mine and that of my cats. Not only is my apartment full of dust and hair (sorry Rodney-dust-mite-allergy-kitty!) but so am I and so are my clothes and everything I pass by.

I hear tropical storm "Laura" has been blustering away lately, and I'd have to say it's about time one of those was named after me, since I leave a trail of dust and debris everywhere I go.

But CAMERA NUTS are supposed to be neat and fastidious. Not messy, not always losing things, not providing the momentum for a cloud of dust and hair.

Maybe dust and hair on the lense can be my thing! Dust and hair with the fisheye lens effect! It's my schtick! Dusty bloated looking pictures with little bits of hair blurred across them.

Wow, I have a schtick!

The hazy glow of Sunday

Today, for most of the day, I still felt wrapped in the hazy, beautiful glow of Sunday. A day of lazing around in bed, homemade tortillas and blood orange mimosas for breakfast, from-scratch vegan pizza and lots of gardening.

It's true! We accomplished more in the garden today than perhaps at any other time, unless you count planting the tomatoes which may have actually taken longer, but planting seven tomato plants doesn't really seem as productive as doing a variety of different thing which INCLUDE harvesting vegetables.

Harvesting tomatoes and actually getting a second small crop of strawberries out of the season just seems so thrilling. It's a little deceptive to have so many things become ripe at once...it makes one feel as if one's garden was a BIG HUGE SUCCESS and makes one forget mistakes and neglect that made yields smaller, or all the expense that went into the garden from building the raised beds, to all the water used (we never did get the well hooked up) to the money spent on seeds (many, many of which never got used), garlic and potatoes that never got planted and eventually mummified, herbs that died...

We like to call our carrots "$10 carrots" because that's probably about how much each one cost us...although now the tomatoes are bringing down the average.

Sunday, besides watering the garden (somebody's mom is out of town for a while, so we have to *gasp* do that ourselves now, although you can get a timer for $40 that can do the same thing for you...not that I'm saying somebody's mom can be REPLACED for $40 mind you...) we took some more steps towards our winter garden.

For some reason we (oops?) forgot to plant the garlic and shallots, but the winter carrots are in (and hopefully we are remembering correctly how to sprout them under sheets of newspaper) along with some radishes.

Some thai cucumbers that I started under grow lights at my place are thriving (not sure how "wintery" those are but so far they are quite vigorous).

We installed a self-watering window-box that goes on a deck railing (ermmm....okay...a railing-box?) and, to my leafy-greens-challenged bf's dismay planted lettuce in it (LETTUCE? I charged up the drill and did all that just for LETTUCE??!?)

We also put up some blue solar powered string lights, which took quite a while and now it seems like they don't work. Quite frustrating. I hav some I got a few years ago on eBay that faithfully come on every night at dusk and stay lit until dawn for most of the year and my bf liked them very much so I thought I'd get him some and although they looked just the same in the picture, seen in person the quality isn't nearly as good and the solar panel is smaller and seems like just some cheap thing stickied onto a square battery box instead of being built into the box. I guess that would be okay if they worked, but they don't.


********

So then today, as I said I was still basking in the glow of a wonderful Sunday and I still had momentum going on the whole garden thang, so I started a whole flat of Fava beans after inoculating them in rhizobium, which is some sort of bacteria which helps the fava beans not only thrive but add loads of nitrogen to the soil, which is perfect after something intense like tomatoes has been planted there...plus they can grow right up the same cages the tomatoes have been on. Then in the spring, after feasting on tasty fava beans, we can cut them down and turn them into the soil and plant right over the top of them. I'm starting lady peas, too, as soon as I find the pea pack.

Also today I was soooo excited because I was expecting my new camera and the DOORBELL RANG and there was THE CAMERA SIZED BOX being held by the UPS guy....WOOT WOOT! I tore that box open and I was like, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!?" and I was completely mystified by this weird box that did NOT contain my camera until I realized that it contained my DSL install package from AT&T. I've only had one measly computer connected to the Internet for over a month now, ever since I told Comcast they can go to hell (the aren't the original ones who can go to hell, though) and have been using just my tablet pc with my bf's broadband wireless card...which is mostly great but likes to hang and/or disconnect and only connects one (laptop) computer at a time unless you are some sort of super hacker geek person, which I was about to turn into if I didn't get a better connection soon.

Supposedly my install date wasn't for another three days, but I tried it and it was really quick to set up and I have Internet through my phone jack! Finally my damn phone jack is good for something. AND I don't need a home phone to get DSL, which is very cool...I remember was NOT the case 8 years ago.

The connection seems pretty zippy, too.

Comcast = 0, AT&T = 1

Now if my new camera would just arrive.....