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August 31, 2007
As date's go...
it went pretty well. Real nice girl, real easy to talk too. Quite enjoyed it actually! So there's a nice end to the week for me :> Will just have to see how it goes from here.
BTW, Thanks V for the advice, spot on.
Posted by graeme at 9:32 PM | Comments (1)
August 30, 2007
Update
Well, it never happened, the date thing. I got a text message mid morning saying she'd woken up with a bad sore throat so couldn't make it. So we've re-arranged for tomorrow all being well. I hope she's not having to rough it too much.
Posted by graeme at 6:05 PM | Comments (0)
Where'd the enthusiasm go?
Dee dum, dee dum.
Yup. I guess the long leave of absence from the shala over the bank holiday has brought me to a point where I find myself with little or no enthusiasm. I've been working pretty hard these last few days, even missed out on a lunch break yesterday, and I've had to play catch up on a lot of things as I wasn't here on Monday. I also caught myself in Mari-C bind where my nail of my binding hand cut the inside of my second finger right on the bottom of the knuckle. It's not deep but it's as painful as a paper cut. Ouch.
So today I have to try and lift myself for this date. Jeez, you'd think I'd be happy for some company for a change, but as the flatmate put it so well last night when I told her what was happening today - "You said that like you'd just found out you've 3 months to live!"
Hmmmmnnnn. Maybe I'm just no ready for all the stuff that goes on with getting involved with another person. Maybe I'm just too used to being on my own.
:|
Posted by graeme at 9:06 AM | Comments (2)
August 28, 2007
On a day like today
I realise it's been 2 years to the day since I started blogging here. Jeez, doesn't time go past quickly when you're enjoying yourself.
Good thing is it gives me something good to do... drag all the pages down onto my Mac and re-arrange into a quasi-diary book. Something for the grand kids...
And on a happy note to finish year two on, I've a lunchtime date this week! Yippee!!
Posted by graeme at 6:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2007
Notting Hill Carnival
Here's some snaps from the Carnival. It's something else for sure....
One of the amazing costumes
These head dresses looked really heavy as well...
The people who live on the parade route have the best views...
What can you say?
They say there's 2 million people come to see the carnival over the 3 days...
... and when you get to see the likes of this I'm not surprised!
Big is beautiful...
This little lot caused traffic jams of people wherever they went...
This troop were bang on with their drumming...
And this young lady had the biggest smile of the day!
Colourful to the end....
Posted by graeme at 7:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2007
Holiday
It's the bank holiday weekend so I'm taking a couple of days off to do nothing but get drunk and dance around like a nut!
Posted by graeme at 4:16 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2007
Helping hands
Shala was busy first thing so I had to start in the finishing room though with only 3 people in front of me it wasn't a long wait. It's quite funny that the assistants in class are there every morning and as they often are either practicing before I finish or after I start I don't get much of a chance to thank them for the invaluable help they give. I'm lucky I guess as I get to practice at a cross over point so I've the benefit of adjustments from 3 different people, the teacher and the 2 assistants. All getting so much help these days it's great. I'm the proverbial pig in s*@t, so to speak.
It's been pretty wet here most of the day though that gives me a lot of time to catch up on book work and things I've been meaning to do for ages. The tax man's caught up with me so I'm in the process of doing my tax return which isn't so bad now you can do it online. Still, getting all the details together is a bit of a pain.
Roll on the weekend and the long lie-ins
Posted by graeme at 4:44 PM | Comments (2)
August 22, 2007
Conference ear
I've been on a conference call this morning for over an hour. During that time I'm also developing software, checking customer websites for images, and, err, writing my blog. Through out I've got my ear pinned to the phone and my shoulder lifted up to hold it in place. My ear's getting warmer by the minute and I can feel my shoulders beginning to complain. For sure I should just stop what I'm doing and listen in, holding the phone by the handle as I'm supposed to. Thing is, an hour's an awful lot of time to lose when I can be doing something more productive, err blogging, than just listening in to the conversation. I'm the typical Gemini, doing multiple things at once.
Chuck, you sure are missing a lot of fun !!!
:<
Posted by graeme at 9:45 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2007
Wrist
I should've guessed this might happen, but following on from the teacher training weekend my left wrists giving me a bit jip. It's been a while since I've done any adjusting and along with the extra effort I've been putting in to my jumpbacks, I'm pretty sure I've over done it on the wrist. I can't think that the job, where I spend most of my day typing, is doing it much good either. It's funny how I don't really notice how much I use my wrist in every day activities until it starts to ache.
Shala was busy this morning. I was aware of the return of the faces waiting at the opening to the practice room, waiting eager to get going. There's a nice long break coming up this weekend with the bank holiday so I'm looking forward to getting a bit of a longer rest.
Posted by graeme at 6:31 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
Shoe laces
I was thinking this morning at the end of class that as soon as I got up from tying my shoelaces and made for the door, that all hell would be let loose as it always is. When I step outside and put one foot on the pavement, as soon as it hits the concrete my life just kicks into super fast mode and it doesn't stop until 12 hours later I'm sitting on the couch with the laptop in front of me and a blank blog entry staring back at me, asking me to remember what happened that day.
I like to sit there, even after a 10 minute savasana, not only to catch my breath but to soak up a little more of that bubble that is the shala here. And it gives my legs a chance to stop shaking a little bit more before hitting the concrete too, which is a mighty help. It's nice just to sit there and remember sometimes, of the path that led me to where I'm sitting, to ponder the life changing decisions I'd made that got me to the point I'm at, and to be happy that I am where I am. Just being for a few seconds more a yoga student before rushing back into the depths of the world and all it's confusion.
Today I was introduced to Rebecca. My best friend's baby girl who was born some days ago now. I hope that the world she grows up in is a little less of the world outside the shala and a little more of the peace found therein.
Posted by graeme at 7:06 PM | Comments (1)
August 17, 2007
Oh, that doesn't feel so good
For the first time in a while I actually walked out of class this morning thinking 'owww' that's gonna hurt. Along with the nice purple bruise on me left cheak, the little bump on my right wee toe I've added on a sore left lower rib and back ache.
Atleast the last one was to be expected seeing as how I haven't really bent backwards for some 6 months now. I took it really easy as well but as soon as I stood up after savasana I could feel my back just lower than my ribs begin to ache. Sweet pain, I guess you could call it, but it's aching a bit now as I sit and type this.
As for the ribs, well I was well and truly squished in Mari-D again today. My foot's getting right in about my hip and I could feel it dig into the bottom of the rib. Thankfully tomorrow's a day off, and seeing as how there's teacher training this weekend it'll be monday before I'm back at the mat.
Good news today, which I'll post about later once I've told my parents.
Have a great weekend !
Posted by graeme at 4:55 PM | Comments (1)
August 16, 2007
He knows you know
I'm sure he must've twigged that I had something on my mind today. Teacher was standing pretty much where he always does when he's not adjusting but today he looked like he was almost inviting the question behind my lips.
Err should I be doing backbends before...
"Oh yeah, for sure"
Hmmnn. So the 6 months hiatus over non-backbending has come to an end. To be honest it's been that long I can't even remember what the reason for me stopping was. Certainly wasn't due to any back problems, which teacher was quick to ask about.
I think I'll just take it easy. It has been a while. There's another 10 minutes on to my practice!
:>
Posted by graeme at 6:05 PM | Comments (1)
August 15, 2007
Down with a thud
Today I fell out of headstand for only the second time since starting practicing. No big thing but I kinda crashed into the shelving at the side of the finishing area in an attempt to stop myself before rolling over the girl who was lying at the foot of my mat. My right wee toe's been sore for a bit this afternoon, but least I never squished the girl's head.
Other than that it's been a bit slow day. Nowt much has happened (again). Thankfully there's the teacher training weekend fast approaching to give me something to look forward too.
Yeah, I know. Live in the moment. Sod that. I'm a bit bored.
Posted by graeme at 7:38 PM | Comments (1)
August 13, 2007
Well that wasn't so bad after all
The commute into class this morning went pretty smoothly this morning. Ok I got up a bit early as I was a bit worried about missing the first train but other than that it was pretty laid back. In fact, since moving out of the hostel it's the earliest I've arrived at the shala for a couple of weeks. Nice thing too, I managed to snag a nice practice spot to boot!
Strengths coming back slow but sure. Teacher's only needing 1 attempt to help me into bind on both sides of Mari-D though I'm still getting help from Mari-C too, which is actually getting more into my hips than D. D's stopped being more of struggle to simply get into the posture, past the ok I'm alive part, into the 'let's see where this goes from here' phase. In other words, it's great fun.
It's great to come back to a place now and find a flatmate here to kick back with and talk over some eats. We've had some great conversations already and she's been real cool about giving me some space and not being the least bit worried about me disappearing to bed before 10pm.
Posted by graeme at 6:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2007
Silly bugger
Note to self:
Must put note in diary when MOON DAYS are.
Yup, you're right, I did.
Numpty!
Least I found out how long it takes to get to the shala by bus!
Posted by graeme at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2007
You've Got Mail
It's Saturday night and you'd think I'd have something better to do than sit on the internet typing away whilst watching "You got mail". Hmnnnn. Well, not really. I've been up since 5am and really to be honest, I'm quite happy to be in, doing nothing.
And of course that's not true. There's stuff I've just done, you got mail styley, in the sense that I ran into the girl from match.com in the park today. Ran into being a bit of an exaggeration. I kinda sauntered past with my friend that I'd met for lunch, and, good lord, there she was, doing that thing that she does.
It says on her profile that the best thing about her is her backside. True. It has to be said. Well, of course I'm going to check it out. Wouldn't you? So I sent her an email, no, not about her backside. Just short and chatty.
Why don't things turn out the way they do in the movies.
And what's worse is the new flatmate can't understand why I'm single. Hmmnn. Me neither. But I am, and that's where I am, for now, but hopefully not for long. And yet, there's nothing wrong with that, the single part anyway. The 'me neither' is just ego, I guess. But there again, she did have a lovely backside.
Both me and my ego agree on that.
Posted by graeme at 9:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 9, 2007
Bhujapidasana - day 2
Practice was really hot and sweaty this morning, so much so that I reverted to putting my cotton rug back down on my mat. It's something I'm not too keen on as I've still to work out how to practice without ruffling it all up each time I move. I spend more time (and breaths) fixing the cotton mat than I do practicing, so a couple of months back I stopped using it until finishing. Downside is my mat's now smelling a bit worse for wear though I washed it thoroughly just the other day. I'm hoping with the new move a foot that I'll be able to wash it good and proper atleast every week now. I'll need to invest in another 1 or more of the cotton mats as well so I can rotate them more.
I'm getting tonnes of help at practice these days. And now with the new posture I even got a wee helping and in that too. I guess teacher was seeing how far pinned my foot was against the floor, how much it was propping me up. I worked really hard in Miami to get a clean exit, swinging my legs round the side of my knees and back into bakasana, it's just the slippery-ness of my arms before entering that's always been a bit awkward. I'm going to try and stick with it though, as I was resorting to putting t-shirt on before entering Bhuja to help prevent slipping and I know that's not really the way to go. Still, it's early days yet and it was fun again to feel I had enough energy left to make a half-assed attempt at it this morning.
Tomorrow's the day of upheaval as I move to a more permanent resting place. A chance for a new start, with a new flatmate, and hopefully some new friends and experiences along the way!
Posted by graeme at 5:07 PM | Comments (1)
August 8, 2007
Just when things couldn't get any worse
I'm beginning to believe the hype about this teacher y'know.
I had a shit of a morning. I'd planned to meet my friend at the shala at 7.30am, nearly at the time I'd normally be leaving, so I thought I'd have a leisurely morning, sleep in a little, a long shower, drop off my other bag at work, then wander over to class.
But I over slept, even though I woke up at the usual 5am (arrrrgh), then decided I'd be better to get off the bus and try the underground connection. Except I managed to get on the wrong line, and the wrong train. So two stops down the line I changed tack back to the known line which involved a 10 minute hike across the train station only to find the next train was 5 minutes away. What was supposed to be a time saving short cut added nearly 25 minutes to the commute (double arrrgh).
Then when I did arrive my friend wasn't there, even though I was 15 minutes late for our meeting time (triple arrgggh).
Needless to say my mind was all over the place during practice. Here I was nearly 90 minutes later than usual, surrounded by people I only see when they're coming in and I'm going out, trying to work out where the morning had gone.
Then I recognised my friend in the corner. She'd snuck in 10 minutes after me. Oh, that's good. I was so looking forward to catching up with her aswell.
Practice got better though the girl in front of me just had the most amazing practice I've ever seen. Y'know, standing splits in Utthitta Hasta, floaty jump backs, oh and jump throughs where she would suppend her feet in mid air neatly beside the back of her wrists, cross them there, THEN sweep them through underneath her. Yikes!!!
And then he said it to me.
"Try bhujapidasana".
Err, are you sure?
Like he might've said, "no, no I was only joking!" or something. Doh! numpty that I am.
Did that just happen? Did he just give me the next posture?
Posted by graeme at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)
August 7, 2007
Friendship
Tomorrow I'm hoping to run into one of my friends that I met on my world trip when we were both in Mysore at Xmas last year. She stays in Japan and is such a nice person that I'm really glad that she's across in the UK visiting friends and family. There was a couple of people I really appreciated when I was out there, especially when I was going through the 'bored' stage, and she was one of them. It really comes home to me how small the planet is when people travel all over the world, one from the UK, the other from Japan, and meet up in India to share for a little over a month their life journey. It's just fantastic. And what with email, the internet, facebook and the like, I've still got a fairly good idea of what's going on her life. Nice.
Today teacher managed to get me bound both sides of Mari D. Hmmmn. And the quizzikly weird popped rib behaved itself this morning too. All in a fun filled practice. I even got to practice up the other end of the room.
And as a follow up to the 'escapee' of the weekend I managed to leave my shorts at the studio this morning. Maybe I'm subliminally thinking I should practice nude? Naw. Though I did have a most fantastic dream about doing effortless jump backs last night. Lovely.
Posted by graeme at 7:36 PM | Comments (0)
August 5, 2007
Bollocks!
Or rather that needs to be bollock! The dreaded day came when I finally rediscovered which of my adidas shorts is the pair with the somewhat slack inner pants. Yup. You can guess where this is going. Half way through practice I'm like, Oops, that shouldn't be there!!! Gads, what if someone saw that. Ach not to worry, they've all got great driste in here so they're all focussed in on their own thing. Cool.
Practice was good. Nice and slow, especially after the escapee was discovered I paid a little bit more attention to getting sorted before each side of each posture. Finishing was a bit quick, well, I didn't particularly want to be upside down too long if everything was on display, so to speak. Got a great adjustment on Prasarrita C and again in Mari-D though afterwards I thought I'd popped a rib again but thankfully it faded pretty quick.
So I thought I'd escaped un-noticed, when my friend, sitting beside me as we waited for another friend to finish, turned to me and said
"You really should get longer shorts!".
Oops....
Posted by graeme at 6:15 PM | Comments (5)
August 3, 2007
It'll be Friday then. Good, another lie in!
For the last 3 fridays now I haven't managed to drag my body out of bed to make it to class. Practice doesn't seem to be taxing these days but come the end of the week I'm totally zonked out and the lure of the shala just doesn't seem to have the pull on me that it does on a sunday or monday. Again this morning I just rolled over and went back to sleep.
Half day of sorts today. I knew it was going to be pretty nice to be in the park today so the extra time I put in on the project at work at the start of last week came in handy today when I skipped work for the afternoon. I'd recently found that half of my iTunes library never made it from the DVD backups into the library but fortunately I'd discovered some of the backups at work and started loading them back in. Great! Music I hadn't listened to in ages to fill my ears with. Pitty that my earplugs started to play up this morning on the way in to work. Darn.
So my last week of house sitting starts today. This time next week I'll be in with the new flat mate. Had to write a massive cheque just now for the deposit and 1 month's rent. Yikes. I was skint before but now I'm super-skint. One nice thing out of this is the flatmate's going to put me on her company insurance so I can drive her car. It's a brand new M3 330 BMW. Yikes. Me thinks she's a tad crazy, she could give Julie a run for her money in the fast-driver stakes!
Posted by graeme at 6:15 PM | Comments (1)
August 2, 2007
Funny thought for the day
I've just tossed my apple core towards the bucket at the side of the room. It missed :<
Funny how as soon as it left my hand I knew it was never going to reach, yet when I've thrown before and hit the target there's never the certainty there, only the hope.
Shala this morning helped me to a slow, deep breathing practice. That's the second time now I've been up against the wall in the corner, not one of my favourite slots for sure, especially when the guy next to me started to swing his arms out across my face in sun salutations. Arrgh.
Teacher made a joke this morning about needing to put more effort in to hold my arm over my knee in Mari-D. Funny thing is after I came out I realised how much I'm resisting him internally. I can feel the tightness there as I'm held in the full position. More letting go to come.
Had a really unexpected pop from my sternum on the very last up-dog prior to moving to the closing room. Ahhh, was nice!
Posted by graeme at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)
August 1, 2007
New place to stay
I'm just back in from south of the city. I'm happy to say I've signed the lease and I'm there to stay for the next 6 months at least. I was pleased to find that if I time my connections right I can get 'home' from the office in just over 35 minutes, which is 5 minutes quicker than when I was going by bus to work in Glasgow. It was nice to be back there and get to know the flat mate a bit better. This is going to work out really nicely.
On the other hand, I've been suffering a bit recently from what I'll call 'close-proximity-anxiety'. I'm perfectly happy having the teacher or his assistants mush me up in Mari-C and most definitely in Mari-D, both of which I got helped with this morning, or any of the other postures come to think of it. It's just over time I've noticed a bit of an 'eeaakk' if I get close to anyone else. Maybe the squishiness of these twists is bringing something up in me, but there's certainly something going on. Mind you, it's been a while since I've had a good squeeze and cuddle, and I'm getting to the point where it's hard to remember how that stuff all feels. Huh. Funny how I'm so sure I'm missing it!
Posted by graeme at 9:09 PM | Comments (0)