One More Rock
I admire pyramid builders. I'm more of an epic sand castle man myself. ??? We'll get back to that in a moment.
I'm happy to report that I'm the proud owner of a 95% recovered left knee. Last Monday I hurt myself in a freak pre-yoga sandal removal incident. Here's how it went down.
There's a group in Manhattan that gets together and does yoga from noon to 1:00 every week day. The meeting place is on K-State campus, but I have a suspicion they aren't really affiliated with K-State. I have an mental image that there's enough professors and admins in the group that they just know how to find empty rooms and project enough authority that nobody bothers them.
The group welcomes all comers, is free, and has a different teacher for each day of the week. It's a pretty sweet deal and I got tapped about a year ago by my boss (Dan). I went to yoga most days for a few weeks, then stopped. It didn't really grab me.
Last Monday, I returned. I had told Dan that if he could get one of our interns to go, I'd go too. I was bluffing. I didn't think he could pull it off. Then... he actually did.
Thus it came to pass that Lauren and I were hovering at the top of a recently-painted (think smelly fumes) stairway at 12:05 on Monday. The yoga room I remembered was both empty and locked and we were both starting to wonder if we'd been somehow tricked. Then a different door opens, Dan pops out, and motions us into a different yoga room, complete with occupants preparing to start. We quickly entered and prepared to join the class in hurried, urgent style.
Simple tasks (fruit slicing, canon reloading, sandal removal) can become lethal when rushed, and Monday my number was up. I was somehow trying to squat down and hurriedly unroll my yoga mat (extra thick, for the heavier gentleman) while simultaneously removing my sandals (they are flip-flops and somehow this involved peeling...) when I heard a pop in my left knee. Soon, the nerves caught up and I felt the accompanying pain in my left knee. Calmly, I finished removing my footwear and stood up. This motion was accompanied by a smaller, less painful return pop.
I spent a few seconds weighing the shame of bailing on yoga against the certainty of additional damage and potential for a crushing mid-session pose fail, then decided to go ahead with the session. It was okay, but not very pleasant. Tuesday also was unpleasant.
As injuries go, it wasn't that bad. By Thursday, I was able to do a life-threatening stadium stairs workout with some other colleagues. (95 degrees, dew point of 72. I lost five pounds in 30 minutes. That's a cool story too, but we're running long.) And today, mostly healed. 95%, huzzah!
Fine. Charlie's can't take his shoes off, but what does that have to do with pyramids?
Right. Pyramids. Of my known character flaws, there are many. (I try not to think about the bottom half of the iceberg.) Captain among them, is a recurring problem that I've metaphor-ized today as pyramid vs sand castle.
As my stories go, the yoga/flip-flops thing wasn't half bad. For that matter, the Thursday's stair running story would have been pretty good too. I also deep-fried for the first time on Wednesday. I had a really good English muffin this morning. All good stuff, but I haven't been writing about it lately. Instead, I've been spending my evenings crouched in my cave, trying to get a "brilliant" rating on all fifteen missions in a free online flash game called Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems!
The sad part is, many of these gem-filled evenings began with me sitting down at my good old blog-makin' keyboard and thinking, "Hey, I should write about ____ today!" Then I thought, "No, no, that's not really cool enough to be 'blog worthy'." Then I'd mosey over to kongregate and bust open a can of evil ghost fire on those good-for-nothing gem thieves.
I'm not too concerned about the blog. It's just an example. The recurring problem is that I get it in my head that I can only interact with people when I've got some fancy reason. "Look at this epic sand castle I just made!"
Conversation starters like, "Hey! How are you? I saw a show about zebras today and I thought about you because you're kinda like a tiger!" are just impossible (obviously, a message like this would get me immediately un-friended on Facebook ...even though I like it when other people do it) and instead I wait around for some "legitimate" reason to bother my friends - which never happens.
I know this is bad. I have an epiphany every three weeks or so that instead of trying to do something awesome that is worth somebody's attention, I should just do small things and chill out (i.e. add one rock a day, thus eventually producing a mighty pyramid). Ooh, pyramid. We got there. Sorta.
Today, I told myself that I just needed to sit down and write a paragraph. It didn't have to be any good, but I wasn't allowed to chicken out and go hide in my pile of gems again. And hey, look at that! I think it worked. Now, the blog thing is no, "Hey, how are you doing?", but it's a step and I'll take it.
I'm happy to report that I'm the proud owner of a 95% recovered left knee. Last Monday I hurt myself in a freak pre-yoga sandal removal incident. Here's how it went down.
There's a group in Manhattan that gets together and does yoga from noon to 1:00 every week day. The meeting place is on K-State campus, but I have a suspicion they aren't really affiliated with K-State. I have an mental image that there's enough professors and admins in the group that they just know how to find empty rooms and project enough authority that nobody bothers them.
The group welcomes all comers, is free, and has a different teacher for each day of the week. It's a pretty sweet deal and I got tapped about a year ago by my boss (Dan). I went to yoga most days for a few weeks, then stopped. It didn't really grab me.
Last Monday, I returned. I had told Dan that if he could get one of our interns to go, I'd go too. I was bluffing. I didn't think he could pull it off. Then... he actually did.
Thus it came to pass that Lauren and I were hovering at the top of a recently-painted (think smelly fumes) stairway at 12:05 on Monday. The yoga room I remembered was both empty and locked and we were both starting to wonder if we'd been somehow tricked. Then a different door opens, Dan pops out, and motions us into a different yoga room, complete with occupants preparing to start. We quickly entered and prepared to join the class in hurried, urgent style.
Simple tasks (fruit slicing, canon reloading, sandal removal) can become lethal when rushed, and Monday my number was up. I was somehow trying to squat down and hurriedly unroll my yoga mat (extra thick, for the heavier gentleman) while simultaneously removing my sandals (they are flip-flops and somehow this involved peeling...) when I heard a pop in my left knee. Soon, the nerves caught up and I felt the accompanying pain in my left knee. Calmly, I finished removing my footwear and stood up. This motion was accompanied by a smaller, less painful return pop.
I spent a few seconds weighing the shame of bailing on yoga against the certainty of additional damage and potential for a crushing mid-session pose fail, then decided to go ahead with the session. It was okay, but not very pleasant. Tuesday also was unpleasant.
As injuries go, it wasn't that bad. By Thursday, I was able to do a life-threatening stadium stairs workout with some other colleagues. (95 degrees, dew point of 72. I lost five pounds in 30 minutes. That's a cool story too, but we're running long.) And today, mostly healed. 95%, huzzah!
Fine. Charlie's can't take his shoes off, but what does that have to do with pyramids?
Right. Pyramids. Of my known character flaws, there are many. (I try not to think about the bottom half of the iceberg.) Captain among them, is a recurring problem that I've metaphor-ized today as pyramid vs sand castle.
As my stories go, the yoga/flip-flops thing wasn't half bad. For that matter, the Thursday's stair running story would have been pretty good too. I also deep-fried for the first time on Wednesday. I had a really good English muffin this morning. All good stuff, but I haven't been writing about it lately. Instead, I've been spending my evenings crouched in my cave, trying to get a "brilliant" rating on all fifteen missions in a free online flash game called Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems!
Did I pull it off? Why yes, yes I did :)
The sad part is, many of these gem-filled evenings began with me sitting down at my good old blog-makin' keyboard and thinking, "Hey, I should write about ____ today!" Then I thought, "No, no, that's not really cool enough to be 'blog worthy'." Then I'd mosey over to kongregate and bust open a can of evil ghost fire on those good-for-nothing gem thieves.
I'm not too concerned about the blog. It's just an example. The recurring problem is that I get it in my head that I can only interact with people when I've got some fancy reason. "Look at this epic sand castle I just made!"
Conversation starters like, "Hey! How are you? I saw a show about zebras today and I thought about you because you're kinda like a tiger!" are just impossible (obviously, a message like this would get me immediately un-friended on Facebook ...even though I like it when other people do it) and instead I wait around for some "legitimate" reason to bother my friends - which never happens.
I know this is bad. I have an epiphany every three weeks or so that instead of trying to do something awesome that is worth somebody's attention, I should just do small things and chill out (i.e. add one rock a day, thus eventually producing a mighty pyramid). Ooh, pyramid. We got there. Sorta.
Today, I told myself that I just needed to sit down and write a paragraph. It didn't have to be any good, but I wasn't allowed to chicken out and go hide in my pile of gems again. And hey, look at that! I think it worked. Now, the blog thing is no, "Hey, how are you doing?", but it's a step and I'll take it.
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