Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Yoga

I Duz Yoga Ta Relax


I have long been interested in yoga classes in a theoretical way. Taking one has been one of those things that looks pretty from a distance, one of those things that I keep saying that I should really check out more thoroughly some time but that I never quite get around to doing. I used to practice on my own in a tiny way through a Gaiam DVD recommended to me by a very yoga-chic friend, and I always found even that small routine very relaxing.

Rifling through the electronic version of our local paper, I came across an add for our branch of one of our state universities. They have decided to offer a yoga class, and it turned out that one of my all-time favorite professors was teaching it. I had to sign up.

The resulting flurry of emails back and forth yielded the information that there should be "space left," something of an understatement since I think there were fewer than 20 of us in the class, but I was still pretty happy to have been included. The class itself was just exactly what I was looking for. I didn't have to feel afraid since my professor was the one teaching, and since many of the people there were beginners, I didn't have to feel self-conscious (any more than I usually do, anyway) or intimidated.

It felt good to use my body again. I am stiff and tight as I knew I would be. I don't know how long it will take all the old rags and bones to limber up again, but since one of my main goals for this is flexibility (along with stress relief), I'm willing to be patient and work on it. Just the doing of it, no matter whether or not I am ever any good at it or not, is a victory for me.

Monday, January 19, 2009

George Orwell Quote

"When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls."

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Silver Anniversary

This year marks 25 years of playing a keyboard instrument for me. I had that odd realization recently. It's hard to believe that much time has gone by since I was a small child struggling with my Brownie book and getting shaped erasers for a weekly lesson well-played.

Music is such an ingrained part of my life that I can hardly remember a time when I wasn't playing. I began taking lessons in first grade, and I can still recall walking down the cracked sidewalks carrying my music books to the tiny room in the gym that housed the piano. Later on, I started taking lessons from the lady who was the organist at our church, and she taught me to play the organ as well. Now, I play the organ much more than the piano as the night organist for my church.

The playing gives me so much pleasure, but I don't really have any gift for it. It sounds okay when I play, but the sort of dedication and art necessary to take the playing from performance to power have always been beyond me. I have a friend who has that power, and to hear him play (on the rare occasions our two spheres cross anymore) is to hear what is possible, what should be.

As I look forward toward the future, I will continue to enjoy what I can do in my small way and continue to appreciate the greater gifts of those who have been blessed with them. I am grateful for the richness music has added to these 25 years.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

No Cancer

I got the results from my biopsy, and I'm free of cancer. The telling of it was simple. The aftermath of it was odd. Once the results were told, my doctor started talking to me about options for my future. Most of them were serious, intense, and life-changing. Since I'm not ready to have a baby right now and by myself, the most extreme changes are not going to happen. I can't say I didn't think about it. I just don't feel that's what I'm supposed to do right now.

It's a relief to know that I'm, well, I don't guess I can say healthy, but at least not fighting cancer. Everything else I can fight and endure. It was a good feeling, disturbing conversations about motherhood aside.

LOST Season 4

I finished season 4 of LOST on DVD last week. I am still pondering where they plan to take the plot arc in season 5 and grinding my teeth in frustration that it is going to take a year for me to get it on DVD. I wish they converted TV as quickly as movies!

In the meantime, I think I'm in love with not only Desmond now, but also with Sayid, too. I know that Sawyer and Jack are the "fan favorites," but Desmond has the whole Odysseus thing going on, and since I've always found Sayid intriguing, seeing him in a tux during season 4 put the frosting on that. So many pretty men on that one tiny island....

Even the villains are good. I have grown to find Benjamin Linus one of my favorite villains ever. He is menacing and dangerous, capable of screwing with anybody's mind, a truly ruthless killer, but also urbane, cultured, and a man with a bone-dry, ironic sense of humor. He gets some of the best lines in the show. Even when he's getting beaten by someone, one always knows that he is going to turn the tables somehow. It's scary.

I'll have to assuage the gnawing curiosity of how they're going to resolve the issue of Locke in a Box (I won't say more in case you're a person who hasn't seen season 4) by rewatching it from the beginning. I haven't done that yet, and I think that knowing all that I do will let me catch a lot of interesting details that I probably missed the first time through. At least I will be ready for the new season when it arrives.

Playing on Twitter

I love Twitter. I love the concept of people flinging bits and pieces of their lives, everyday trivia and important things, too, into space. I love the concept of people reading these pieces and enjoying them, like picking up shiny copper pennies from the dark sidewalks of cyberspace.

I love the fact that there are people on Twitter who pretend to be Darth Vader, celebrities, politicians, and other fictional entities, that everyone knows that it's fake, and that we all follow them anyway to see what they're going to say. (I personally LOVE Darth Vader's posts.) I love that yesterday was 70's day and everyone changed his/her photo to something appropriate (alas, I missed it because I didn't tune in until too late to get that put together).

It's just fun and fascinating. I don't get on it every day, but when I do, there is always something interesting out there, some bit of someone waiting to be appreciated. It's a lovely idea someone had.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Muninn



Muninn is the name of one of Odin's two ravens, Hugin being the other. Muninn is Memory and Hugin is Thought. Every morning, he would send them to fly across Midgard to gather information for him.

As a part of my continuing love of ravens, I named my new 500 G external hard drive Muninn. I thought it appropriate. I found the Seagate Freeagent I've been looking for on such a sale today at OfficeMax that I bought it early. I wasn't planning on getting the 500 G size, and I wasn't going to get one until next month, but the price cut was tremendous and it came with a free dock. I wound up saving about $80 on the whole deal.

The drive is sleek and lovely. It's currently in its docking cradle in the back devouring the memories contained in my desktop. It has an arc of LEDs on it that softly glows while it works, a gentle pulse of light. I love it when something functional is made beautiful as well. There's really no reason why things can't be both.

I am hoping Muninn is going to be a good solution to the problem of two computers, one at work, one at home, that I've been having. Despite my best efforts to the contrary and frequent emailings, there have been many occasions that the document I need has been the place I'm not. Since Muninn will fit neatly into my pocket and travel with me, maybe there will be less of that now. It won't be quite as amazing as having a raven on the shoulder, but I think it's as close as I'm going to get.

New Look for the Blog

What do you think? I found this new template for my blog, and yes, I know it's a bit ostentatious. However, I like it. It's how I want 2009 to feel. There's something a little old-fashioned mixed in with a great deal of exuberance, and I love the color palette, as well. I took down my Shelfari shelf. I may or may not put it back up. I think everyone who follows me on Shelfari knows my user name there, anyway. If you miss the shelf, you can let me know. If you're interested in looking for a new blog template of your own, try this website.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Bugs Bunny Marathon

I've been worthless the past couple of days as I've been recovering from Monday. It's been delightful. Today, I watched a marathon of Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network. It's still on, in fact, and I'm getting to see "What's Opera, Doc?" I haven't seen this one in years, and it's absolutely one of my favorites. This is the one with the "spear and magic helmet."

Every time I sit down to watch these cartoons, I marvel at how detailed the backgrounds are and how lovely the art in them is. There is such attention to detail in them. Even the crowd scenes where the doesn't need to be a lot of differentiation in the backdrop is lovingly done. They please the eye in a way that most of the digital stuff I see today just doesn't.

I also love the use of classical music in them. I'll never forget going to see either The Marriage of Figaro or The Barber of Seville at IU and hearing the music that Bugs is using when he's giving Elmer a haircut in "The Rabbit of Seville." The friend I went with and I were cracking up over it, and as I looked around the auditorium, the vast majority of the crowd was making the hand motions like Bugs massaging Elmer's bald pate. It was surreal. Uh-oh...it just came on, speak of the devil... Here comes the very scene....

Maybe it's just the loving nostalgia that comes to all things cherished in one's childhood, but these old cartoons never fail to bring a smile to my face. I have some of them in the big DVD collections Warner Brothers released a few years ago, and whenever I come home and feel crummy, they can always be relied upon to give me a good lift. I'm certainly glad I got to see all of these again today. It's been a great way to relax and recharge.