Party Prep

We're having a fondue party for my birthday in three kinds... cheese...Tomato marinara (for the vegan and lactose intolerant)...
and chocolate for dessert...All of my friends are graciously bringing the bread, veggies, and fruit for dipping (THANK YOU!)

And we're using pretty plates borrowed from our church...
YUM YUM!!

All in celebration of me! I'm a lucky girl!

Tall People

(I'm 5'0" so just about everyone seems tall to me, but I am specifically writing this letter to people greater than 5'10" and who have predominately tall friends)

Dear Tall People,

I understand your desire to stand in the front row, because everyone should be able to stand in the front at some point and everyone wants to have that privilege. However, God and your genes made you tall and with that comes some responsibility. Please follow some sincere advice that will help you on your way.

The first thing you must always do is look around you. Tall people, you usually take up more room (I'm know there are many short fat people around the world, but still, even thin tall people have more mass than thin short people) and since you take up more room, please be careful when you move around. Look to your left and right. Look behind you. And most importantly, look down, because when you are a tall person, most of the world is below you, vertically that is.

The second thing you must do is yield the front row to the shorter people around. Even with a short person in front of you, your face will still have a front row view. Does your whole body have to see what is in front of you? I don't think so. That is why your eyes are close to the top of your body. Kindly let a shorter person, whose eyes are lower than yours, move to the front.

Lastly, tall people, you must not clump up together around a short person. It is very claustrophobic. Give us some space. It makes you seem like you have no awareness of anyone else's physical presence but your own. You are big. Your shoulders are like a wall. Your butt is too high. (probably because your legs are too long). You must be careful about what you do with these body parts!

Tall people, thank you for the things that you reach and the sites that you can see before anyone else. Thank you for telling us about the weather. I know that I will see better behavior in the future, if you follow my advice above. You will have many more short people as friends... just wait and see!

Thanks,
A short person

On Vacation

Sorry for the lack of posts around here. We have been very lucky to have Grant's parents visiting us from Michigan for the holidays. We spent the last couple days in beautiful and wintry Yosemite National Park -- pictures to come soon. Today was spent so far enjoying a Kwanzaa worship service this morning and cleaning the apartment for my birthday party. Soon we'll be heading out to a play, dinner, and stopping by my church for Singing for Your Life - an amazing 12 hours continuous circle singing event.

For New Years and for my birthday, which is on Tuesday, I'm having a party and I am challenging myself and others to complete an old tradition of 108 Sun Salutations to welcome in the new year. For my distant friends who can not join me in person, you can still join in for the sun salutations. Do as many as you can or desire. Give up some thank-yous for another year ending and a new one beginning. Do it as a meditation and prayer, reflecting on who you were in 2007 and discovering the path you want to take into the new year. Do it as a celebration of your beautiful God-given body.

I'll be turning 27 on Tuesday, January 1, 2008. 27 is the natural number following 26 and preceding 28. Twenty-seven is the smallest positive number that requires four syllables to say in English though it can be defined in just two: "three cubed." (3x3x3) It is odd and has many odd friends like 1, 3, and 9. It is a perfect cube. It is the number of books in the New Testament. It is the 28th (and 29th) digit of pi. It is the number of moons of Uranus. 27x4=108, a significant number in many traditions, and therefore the number of salutations I will try to complete.

Believe it or not, there are actually several people who want to do this with me!

And then there are the others who will be just coming for dinner after... yummy fondue!!

Yum, That's Some Good Baby Food!

Not really. I would not recommend adding baby food to your normal diet, unless you're a baby.

So on Tuesday night we emptied all of those jars of baby food that I showed you on Monday night into some plastic containers. We purposely picked out baby food that we thought we might enjoy, like applesauce, pears, and bananas. The apples and pears were ok. The bananas were questionable. And surprise! who stuck in that jar of peas? (still untouched in the fridge)

The jars were quickly washed and baby food labels were removed
As of Thursday labels appliedand homemade presents emerged... a little sampler pack of teas for the Grandparents (I think it's safe to post here... do they read my blog?) We had three types of tea but I forgot to get pictures of the other two once they were done.

How Old is the Baby?

Seeing these on the conveyor belt tonight at Whole Foods, the cashier asked us how old our baby was. We looked blankly at her, what baby? We don't have a baby. Why would you ask such a thing? No, we didn't actually say that. We thought that the question made perfect sense since we were buying baby food after all. If we did have a baby though, the baby would be "4 months & up."

No, we don't have a baby.

No, we're not expecting one either... don't get those ideas in your head!

Surprise! It's a Celebration Dinner!

Robin picking up Grant from work on Friday night and heading out for dinner in the city.

G: Which restaurant are we going to?
R: I picked the furthest away of the three that you picked since you're not on call tonight.
G: Good thinking.

Robin and Grant arrive at the restaurant to find it empty... well, it just opened a few minutes earlier...

R: I guess we didn't need reservations
G: It was good to have them just in case.
R: Why isn't this place busier? It looks really nice. There should be a line. I guess it's just early.

Robin and Grant look at the menu, the server is very, very attentive. Robin and Grant discuss how to best use the gift certificate that his parents gave him. Moments later he decides...

G: To hell with it! I being way too serious. Let's just have a good meal.
R: I should have planned something for us to celebrate. What are we celebrating?
G: I've had a long week. Let's celebrate surviving the week!
R: I know, happy 3.5 year anniversary!

R: I feel like I'm dating you again.
G: Because we haven't had a real face-to-face conversation since Tuesday?
R: That could be. So how was your week?

Robin and Grant continue talking about Grant's week at CPE and figure out what they want to order and their server was more than ready.

First Course
2005 5 Rivers (Central California Coast) Pinot Noir
Mixed Green Salad with Beet Tartar, Pear, Goat Cheese Mousse and Pecans
Butternut Squash Soup (served in the cutest little espresso cup)
Bread and Butter

Robin and Grant's server walks up to the table, then steps back and allows two other gentlemen to actually set the plates on the table.

Robin and Grant's server tries to give them extra plates. They look at him confused. Robin puts her plate under her bread dish and continues to eat the salad from the plate it was served on. Grant does the same, only he doesn't move his plate.

Second Course
Gambas al Ajillo (white shrimp, garlic, chili and olive oil)
More Pinot Noir (we got a whole bottle and it was yummy!)

Grant tries a few shrimps, decides they are not for him and Robin slowly enjoys the remainder throughout the rest of the meal.

This is Robin's super hot date:Robin and Grant's server takes all of the silverware and plates away and then places new silverware on the table, steps back and the other guy sets the plate of ravioli and cauliflower on the table.

Main Entree
Butternut Squash Ravioli with Brown Butter, Sage and Amaretti (this could have been dessert)
Roasted Cauliflower with Capers and Lemon

Robin pulls out her camera from her purse... the camera that she always carries around with her.

G: You're going to take pictures of this.
R: Of course! This is a great meal!

Robin suddenly feels self-conscious of taking pictures of her food in a fancy restaurant, so she decides not to use the flash and will put up with a slight blur in her pictures.

This is our YUMMY Ravioli:
Robin notices that fancy spoons seem to have appeared on the table out of no where. She then wonders about current state of mind as Grant gentle slips her wine glass away from her.

R: When did we get these spoons?
G: I'm not sure

Robin breaks out into giggles.

Dessert
Chocolate Pudding with Cream and Port Soaked Figs

Robin and Grant almost die with joy after their first few bites of dessert. They then ponder the implications of licking the bowl when the pudding is gone...

By the end of the evening we were just giddy with delight of our excellent meal together. What an unexpected treat! Besides reading the menu online, we really had no idea about what we were walking into. Palmetto was a great choice. See more here.

Robin and Grant start getting ideas in their head that more fancy restaurants might be in their future...

Thanks Mom and Dad for the certificate!

Dealing with Stuff

In an earlier post I shared my frustrations about dealing with all of the stuff in our apartment.

Last night, Grant and I were sitting on our couch and I was sharing with him about my frustrations with our current stuff management plan.

G: What bothers you the most?
R: Cardboard. I hate cardboard.
G: Ok.
R: If you lived alone, do you think your apartment would be full of cardboard boxes?
G: Not that I would like it, but yes, it probably would be full of boxes.

The easiest thing I can think about doing is moving apartments and then being really selective about what we choose to take with us. But neither one of us wants to move yet, so we're stuck going through everything and trying to thin it out. Either that or I will never feel comfortable in my own home.

How many towels should two people own?

Is it really necessary to have a back-up for all toiletries? Or can we just buy stuff as we run out of it?

Why are we still holding onto the nativity set? It has been 3.5 years since the wedding. The nativity is ugly and we've never set it up (not that we have a clear surface anyways!) Why are we keeping something I really really hate?

Would any of you be willing to come over to my house and scan all of my notes from college so I can recycle the paper?

Do I really really need that Abstract Algebra textbook?

Does he have to fill each desk drawer with wires? Wires wires wires... and only one would fit into the camera... and that was the only wire that wasn't in any of the desk drawers... it was in the closet... in the cardboard box that the camera came in... I'm NOT SELLING the camera... CAN WE RECYCLE THE BOX PLEASE?

There are two desk drawers not overflowing with wires. Those drawers hold files in carefully labeled file folders. Labels made with the label maker. Because everyone needs a label maker.

G: There are times when I think it would be wonderful to have a nice, clean, orderly apartment. But that is just not who we are. We would have to change a lot of our habits.
R: You mean that habit about collecting cardboard boxes? I have an idea. Stop buying stuff off of ebay.
G: Make a list of where you want to focus on in the apartment.
R: Item #1 of 1 - Get a box. Put all of the other boxes in the box. Recycle the box.
G: OK, but you have to find a new organized way to store all of the stuff that was in the boxes.
R: UUGGGGHHHH!

Yeah for Poland!

I got my first blog visitor from Poland today... around 11:30am. I don't know what s/he was looking for but I'm glad they stopped by! Hope they'll come back again!

7 school days until Christmas break... I'm so ready for a break! 10 days until the bonus parents come to visit! A trip to Yosemite! Being a tourist in SF! Lots of fun to look forward to! 19 days until my birthday... at first I was sad, but now I'm warming up to the idea. 27 is such a cool number and I have some exciting ideas about how to spend my special day.

Are You Reading This?

If you haven't started reading the No Impact Man blog, you're really missing out. The reflections on how life is after the project is done, in my opinion, are even more powerful than during the project. READ IT!!

Why NOT the Other Things

Why not Running?
Are you crazy? Running? Yes, I love the lake BUT I love my knees more and I really love that breathing thing. NO RUNNING FOR ME.

Why not Cycling? You have a really nice bike!
The streets are too busy. There are too many lights. It's all stop and go. It takes too long to get to the good places to ride. Long curvy roads with gentle hills. I have to wear my special bike shoes, so we better not stop anywhere where I would have to walk while we're on a ride. No bikes on single track trail? What are those guys doing in all of those pads? They call that mountain biking? That's just hurling yourself down a large hill. Cycling is not my sport. Cycling is just transportation to places close by where I don't have to carry much stuff.

Why not Kayaking? Isn't it worth giving up your closet space?
Come on. You already know how hard it is for me to regulate my body temperature in a heated room with adequate clothes on. Now you want me to wear a rigid and tight wet suit (plus paddle jacket and PFD and helmet and cap and gloves and rubber shoes) and you want me to sit out in the sun (which is in the 70's) on the water (which is in the 50's) with the waves that make me seasick? All that after I've already been driven crazy by all of the gear we had to pack and carry out to the car and unload and walk to the shore and then we had to assemble the yaks and talk to the people who stop and look at us putting together the yaks and then pack the yaks. NO WAY. Maybe in like 20 years I'll have the energy to do all that... plus we'll have an old enough age to actually fit in with our kayaking club. But I just can't bring myself to sell the boats.

Why not join a gym? There's one down the street and you friend teaches pilates there!
Ah yeah. You don't remember trying that 3-month special teacher summer membership thing that you did this summer? How often did you go. Yeah, I thought so. Big waste of money. Too many people caring about how they look when they're sweaty.

Ok, Ok, so why do you have those skis in the closet?
For long weekends away to Lake Tahoe or Yosemite! But you won't find enough snow in the bay to make skiing you're primary exercise.

Why Yoga?

One of my favorite regular readers recently asked a great question... why yoga? Of all activities that I've participated in, why would I choose this one to focus so much of my attention on?

This question will take a long time to answer so it will be something that I will have to come back to in future posts. Let's start with how I discovered it.

In Alma (winter 2002), I had this boyfriend who's dorm room with just across the way from mine and I would watch for his light to come on... he was home... and I would visit him and he had this wonderful book, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Silence that he would read and then move his body. Sometimes he would let me join him.

In Berkeley (spring-fall 2004), walking down Shattuck Ave or Telegraph Ave, we would walk by several yoga studios/schools. They would have flyers outside their doors and occasionally I would pick one up and ponder attending a class. I never did.

In Berkeley (spring-summer 2005), we lived about 5 blocks away from an Elephant Pharmacy which had a video rental section. $1 DVD rentals for 1 night. Every time we went there I would notice the shelf with all of the workout videos. Pilates, Yoga, Kick Boxing, Step. I was already interested because the store had this huge display right by the entrance of all of their fancy workout equipment: mats, straps, blocks, balls, books, and dvds. Not wanting to buy anything without trying it out first, I opted for renting a couple dvds. I would watch them over and over... and eventually I would do the sequences without the dvds... and the cheesy background music.

In Oakland (may 2006), I asked around to a few friends for yoga studio recommendations. One friend talked about her Bikram experiences. But she said that a beginner shouldn't really attend. Another friend recommended Piedmont Yoga Studio to me and then took me to a couple classes with her favorite teacher. He quickly became my favorite teacher too and I have attended classes with him ever since. I even purchased my own yoga mat at a Long's Drug Store.

In Oakland (summer 2006 and after), I started to read yoga journal's website and started to practice on my own at home following sequences that I found in articles or some that I made up on my own. Eventually, I got my own subscription to yoga journal magazine. I made a commitment to myself to take one class a week (I allowed myself to spend money on myself... that's certainly a topic for another post) and I started purchasing a class "package" or "series" every two months.

In Oakland, (spring 2007) I applied for the program and we all know the story from here.

So, next before I write about why I chose yoga, I will start with why not other things.

Math Warm-up

I start every math class that I teach with a warm-up. When the kids are working on the warm-up, I have the opportunity to take attendance and check-in with each kid about their homework. I get a sense of how the class is doing and I know what to give more attention to as we check our homework together.

Here is the warm-up for Monday for my Advanced Algebra students. It ties in directly to what we are going to be working on for the day... finding the the roots of parabolas.

Warm-up: Write the following sentences as an equation. (HINT: only one equation and you've seen it before!) X is the sum of the opposite of b plus or minus the square root of the sum b squared minus the product of four, a, and c. All of this is then divided by 2 times a.

You can leave your guess as a comment and I will post the answer in a couple days. (give the name or the equation)

Giving your 100%

At my PYS Advanced Studies Program this week, our instructor, Tony, asked us, "How many of you are giving 100% to your yoga practice?" and no one raised their hand.

Ya'll thought I was just kidding with that Yoga Mat Sectrez on Monday, but it is sort of true.

This question came after Tony spent 10 minutes lecturing us about our behavior so far in the program. Regular people may come to public yoga classes late or leave early, but you're "advanced studies people" you should be more serious than the public... come on time! pay attention! don't leave early! do your home practice!!

So last night, home alone, as my husband was on call at the hospital, I returned to "the bible of modern yoga," to help give me some comfort and encouragement.

It worked. This morning I read through the appendix of the book (thank God my Sanskrit has improved and I actually know the name of the poses!) where Iyengar gives you a work out schedule for the next 180 weeks. Using this as a rough draft, I am going to create a practice schedule for myself. I've picked some key poses that I want to work on and then I'll build in some creative time to do poses that I feel like doing but aren't on the list.

Ok! Here we go... ready... set... YOGA!

Yoga Mat Secretz

In the spirit of lolsecretz and postsecret, I bring you Yoga Mat Secretz, the next thing in community blogging. Here is your first secret from the life of a yoga mat...
Please send me pictures of what your yoga mat is saying and I will post them here for the world to see.

The Yoga Journey Continues

Saturday was our fourth 6-hour Saturday class for the advanced studies program at PYS. We were sooooo lucky to have an amazing teacher for the whole day. Someone who has had an amazing journey with yoga and meditation. You can see more about Mary here.

The first three hours were spent on meditation and asana. We started with a 15 minute guided seated meditation followed by a long supported supta baddha konasana. Then Mary had us stand in Tadasana while we continued to focus on our breath. We did a very slow sun salutation, mostly with our eyes closed. We were the most careful to watch our breath during the transitions from one pose to another. There were times when I felt disoriented with my eyes closed, especially when I transitioned from uttanasana to a lunge. Like always, I doubted myself in my movements. So there were times that I cheated and opened my eyes to check on my foot and hand placement. Then, we had lots of fun trying to find our lower abdominal muscles. I thought this exploration was wonderful and enjoyed every moment. There were many other poses that we explored, then we ended with another seated meditation.

After our dinner break, we came back to class and talked about Mary's favorite topic: joints, especially the hip joint and its happiness in our body while practicing poses such as trikonasana. She gave us permission to explore how we placed our feet and hips in our practice. She told us to break the rules... a refreshing instruction from a yoga teacher.

At the very end of the class, we talked about teaching and did a 5 minute practice with a partner where we talked someone through a pose. This wasn't so bad for me since I teach every Thursday. The pressure is different since the person I was talking to was an experienced practitioner and I wasn't sure what to say to help her in a pose that she had already worked hundreds of times. So this prompted me to ask Mary about her inspiration for teaching. I asked her, "When you teach your classes, do you focus more on what your students need or are your instructions coming from what you are learning in your practice?"

At first she told me that this was an excellent question and that I should ask every teacher the same question. Then she went further in her explanation saying that we teach for ourselves and we practice for our students. But she also went deeper to say, we teach for ourselves and we practice for the universe. If we bring our sincere intentions to our practice, then the fruits of our practice will transpire in our teaching and our students will feel the benefits. This explains how sometimes it feels like all of the yoga teachers I study from seem to have weekly meetings to game plan their teaching for the week. But it's really something greater than them... our connection to each other... is this purusa? I will have to think more on this, a great topic for another post.

More inspiration to get that consistent home practice going!

On a very positive note, I completed my first pranayama exercise this morning and wrote a journal entry, just as the pranayama book instructed. Yeah!

Witness in the Neighborhood

Warning... this post has some angry words in it. Sensitive eyes should proceed with caution... make wide turns and look both ways.

Dear Owner of the Red and White striped GMC Jimmy that parks on our street,

On Friday night just after 5:00pm, my husband and I were parking our car and we saw a very large (15 passenger size) white van pull out of a driveway and hit the back driver side of your vehicle. This extremely large white van was being controlled by a little old lady who didn't seem very with it when she hobbled out of the van to look at the damage she caused. We asked her if she was going to leave a note and she said no. She said, "I'll catch him later." We're not sure what this means. Does she know you?

Here is an example of the type of van that I'm talking about. We were trying to leave a note on your windshield to tell you what happened, but a very angry man walked down the street (someone who knew the little old lady in the huge white van) and stopped us. He tried to play it like he was the owner of the GMC Jimmy (with the red and white stripes that was hit by the little-almost 100 years old-lady in the extremely-out-of-this-world-big white van). We couldn't tell if he was telling the truth. He said, "Just go on your way, you mother fuckers, this whole neighborhood is a bunch of mother fuckers." We knew that he would take the note off of your windshield if we left one, so we decided to come back later. Later in the evening, you went out. But on Saturday, I saw your truck again on our street, so I'm assuming you live near by... in that case, you must be one of the MF's in the neighborhood. It's a nice place in our neighborhood, isn't it?

Anyways, I took some pictures of your truck. If any of these scratches are new as of Friday November 30, 2007, and you want more information, then please email me at someonehityourcarandran AT gmail DOT com.Sincerly,
Your Neighbor

PS You have many nice stickers on your truck.

Yoga Class Update

We just finished our 12th week (24 sessions) of teaching yoga to high school students in East Oakland. Our official average student attendance is 10.6, however, that number is bolstered by 3 really great weeks in September where we had 17-18 students each time and brought down by November where we hit our low of 4 students twice.

At first we were pretty strict about attendance. We told the students that they needed to attend 30 sessions by the end of the semester (Jan 25) to earn one semester of credit. (6o sessions for a whole year of credit). Now that our numbers have dropped slightly, we've extended the deadline to the end of the school year. So the students that could only come one day a week might still have a chance of getting 1 semester credit over the course of the whole year or our students who are athletes, could come during the off season even though the dates don't line up with the academic semester. Unfortunatley, this change in policy hasn't resulted in the surge of student attendance that we anticipated. We'll have to go back to other marketing tactics... signs on the walls, announcements over the PA's and encourage word of mouth by the students who attend regularly.

Just to be clear... there is no chance that the class will be canceled since we do have student who are depending on us for credit. It would just be nice if we could keep our numbers up and build the program up and keep it going into the next semester and school year.

A really great thing about the students who want to get credit for the course is that they are coming every time (we have 6 that will for sure get credit for the year if they keep up their attendance and another 5 that will definitely get semester credit) and on Thursday we did something special for the first 30 minutes of our yoga class.

You'll remember this post where I showed off my new collection. We decided that it was time to bring the collection to the students. We knew that if we showed them pictures of Iyengar (and his crazy poses like this) at the beginning of the course, the students would freak out in their usual teenager ways. They would make fun out of their nervousness and some lack of cultural acceptance and appreciation. But, after 23 sessions of exploring their own practice and learning several poses, they were incredible to watch as they thumbed through Iyengar's Light on Yoga and Light on Pranayama and all of my Yoga Journals, amongst the other books that we brought in. Their excitement was inspiring. There was so much of "look at this" "can we do that?" and "how does he do that?" All Tosca and I could say was... serious home practice, dedication and hard work. Like anything, if you really want it, sometimes it requires a lot of your time and attention! (something which is hard for our teenagers... in a world where TV changes camera angles every 5 seconds, it's hard to give your full focus to much- but that's another post).

Hmm, time and attention to a home practice. What a good idea.

BTW: Newest book on the coffee table is Richard Rosen's The Yoga of Breath: a step by step guide to Pranayama EXCELLENT! I'm about 50 pages into it and am looking forward to this new exploration in my practice!