Sitting in Central Market

I'm sitting in a big booth at Central Market. I'm just hanging out waiting for Celina to finish making the house all sparkly. I have a few provisions to pick up for the trip up to Feathered Pipe. Chocolate espresso beans (as the coffee there leaves something to be desired) and ginger and vitamins... Then I'm going to buy a vitamin organizer at Whole Earth and get my nails done and go home and write for a bit before meeting Devon for practice. I was planning on writing here, but it is way too noisy to do any real thinking/writing. Not that blogging isn't real... but it doesn't really require my analytical mind...

Let's see I've had a fun last few days. Jeff and I had a late lunch celebrating our five month anniversary... I ended up subbing for Mandy at the last minute on Wednesday and then since it was north, I decided to go to Asthanga Star with Sharon Moon rather than sit in traffic. She was really amazing. Very different practice in so many ways but there are threads that are similar. More on that another time .... It was strange hearing someone else besides B.K.S. being called Guruji... Anyway, I did sweat a good bit. Perhaps a trend is forming...

Thursday... I ended up subbing CT's classes while she was stuck in traffic (see her blog). We worked on making our feet sparkle in inversions and dhanurasana and then at 6:00. We restored ourselves... Craig's talk was great and the energy in the room was also just so sattvic.

Then Jeff and I went over to Matt's for a little while for some late night curry and that was fun as well.

This morning, I was really wanting to do some yoga, since I didn't get to last night... so Jeff and I went to Jeremiah's class. Lots of pigeons.... Gruelling to do, great afterwards. Jeremiah's fifty hours of teacher training with CT was really apparent. She's right. The process really does work!

Pictures of My New House

Well, mostly I've been hanging out at home and trying to get some writing done. I'm making some progress. This morning I actually woke up with a very very mild urge to write, so I did before meditating... Then wrote a bit more this afternoon. Now I need to do some Carlos homework, invert, and then meet Christina for Matt's yoga classes. When Christina and I were young, we spent a lot of time together in the summers. We never went to the same school (being three years apart) and mostly had different sets of friends, but in the summer things slowed down and we went to the pool and the lake and to aerobics and body sculpting classes and movies and the like. I was just thinking that our various summer Austin jaunts have a similar feel and CT just phoned and reported feeling exactly the same thing...

Anyway, here are some photos of my new house. I'll have a house warming party soon!

This is the living room with Christina's old furniture.

Bedroom with new bed I bought at Marigold.

Yoga room with props.

Bathroom. I already had matching towels.

Kitchen.


view of lower back yard from deck. Needs sparkle lights.

Jeff on back porch. Isn't he cute??

Happy to be back home

I've had a great past few days reintegrating myself into my life in Austin. One really great thing about living here is being able to come back to such a cool amazing place after being on vacation at a cool amazing place. It makes vacation reintegration much easier.

Mostly, I've been hanging out with Jeff, organizing my study, running errands, and doing some yoga. I haven't had the most productive week writing, but I have gotten a lot of work related tasks accomplished. I am getting ready to spend a couple hours with Plato before meeting CT for lunch at CM.

Other big news, I've decided to stop teaching my yoga classes up in Waco, a little vacation clarity. I realized that it was a pretty big drain on my time and that I'd not really feel like I had a sabbatical if I was still driving upto Waco every week and I just did the math on how much I was actually making and decided that the money, though nice, wasn't enough to justify the disruption of energy. Also, I'm anticipating that my new job as BIC director will be more time consuming and it will be easier just to be doing that when I'm in Waco. So I'm choosing to do less to be able to do more.

Kelli, my former housemate, let Dylan spend the night last night. It was great to see him. Here are some pictures of me and Dylan when Dylan was helping me move in.

At the Fairmont, Vancouver Airport

Christina flies in and out of Vancouver a lot and she's always wanted to stay at this hotel and so we decided to splurge a bit and do so. Great choice. We are sitting in the lovely lobby, checking email and catching up on blog world. It is just great to land here and be mellow after a long day of travel back from Tofino.

Brief update since spa day..... Spa day itself was really fabulous. Lovely facial, lovely massage. I really needed the facial given how sun burned my skin was after the whale watching... Then we shopped a bit. I bought a great pair of jeans and a perfect summer dress that will work well into the Texas fall. Then we walked down to Sarah and John's, which was a longer walk than we expected.... Then we kayaked... my second time (check CT's blog for the gory details). Let's just say it is a good deal more challenging up here than in a nice residential inlet of Galveston... We had a good dinner at Breakers and finished off season two of Big Love.

We decided to skip the Ashtanga class and head on back to Vancouver. Stunning scenery on the way down. The ferry ride was also great. It took awhile to get over to the airport, but now we are here. Tomorrow we leave. it has been a totally fabulous trip!!!

And I'm really excited to be coming home to my new home in Austin!!!

Wednesday Pre Spa brief Post

We got the weeklong wireless access at Cafe Vicente so we are here checking email and basically waiting for our spa appointment. We watched two episodes of Big Love last night. Christina made great whole wheat pasta with veggies which we had for dinner and a slight variation for lunch. We also did a nice flow based practice this morning.

I've read a lot on this trip also. So far I've finished Christina's new book. It's gonna be great! Actually, its already great, despite the fact that there are no photos of me in it... But I am now prominently featured on the blog... so it goes. In terms of books in print: I've read most of Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, most of Kofi Busia's edited collection of essays celebrating BKS Iyengar.

Into the Wild -a bizarre story about a 24 year old who goes into the wilderness to find himself (Jeremiah - dangers abound in this story); Grace Eventually by one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott.

Here are a couple great passages:


“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch on the floor, in silence, in the dark. I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess you’d miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog. I grew up thinking the lessons should be more like the von Trapp children; more marionettes, more dirndls and harmonies. But no: it’s slog, blog, scootch” (51).

“Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos” (56).

“you can’t go limp in the face of this world’s horror and barbarity. Limp is what they want, in the paranoid sense of the word they.”

“the best way to change the world is to change your mind, wihc often requires feeding yourself. It makes for biochemical peace. It’s almost like a prayer: to be needy, to eat, to taste, to be filled, building up instead of tearing down. You find energy to do something you hand’t expected to do, maybe even one of the holiest things: to go outside and stand under the stars, or to go for a walk in the morning or in such hard times both” (253).


Now I'm reading Escape which Christina gave me (about a woman who escapes from a polygamy sect... Big Love influence).

Day Two and Three in Tofino

Monday highlights. Christina and I woke up really early due to the very early sun rise and the fact that I, in addition to having t-rex arms, have very thin eye lids. (This is a private Frosolono family joke- Dad always sleeps with a t shirt over his eyes and I like to sleep with knot- pillow (pillow I've had since childhood which is pretty well decomposed foam ) over my forehead. One day, I asked Mom if she liked to sleep with anything over her head and she said, "No. I can make the room dark just by shutting my eyes. Your father has very thin eye lids).

We had a great morning practice and checked email and shopped in Tofino until it was time for our surf lesson with Sara, Surf Sister's sister. Christina will post photos later on her blog. I did manage to get my feet on the the surf board and assume an almost upright posture a couple times... Christina did much better. She really got a couple good rides in... The water was really cold and it is really hard work surfing.... We came home, showered, and went to dinner and a great place, Shelter.... Ate totally yummy pizza and salad, then we went to Sara and John's house for a little while after walking on the beach, then bed...

We both slept until 7:30 or so (I aided by a t shirt over my head). We practiced and had breakfast and then prepared for the whale watching tour. Wow. What a great experience. It is so so so beautiful here. It is easily in the top five most stunning places I've ever been. Delphi, Samari Gorge Crete, the Grand Canyon and Tikal come to mind as others in the ball park.

We rode on an open air Zodiac about an hour and a half (look forward to pics with us in red parka gear). We saw Bald Eagles and three bears on the way up. Then we hiked through the forest to an amazing hot springs... Super hot water running in pools and showers through boulders right up against the ocean ( we got some great yoga shots also)... On the way back, we went on the open water and looked for whales. We saw Baleen whales. Lots of spout action and their bodies emerged and even one nice tail... It was just an amazing day!

We'll eat something yummy for dinner I'm sure. Tomorrow is SPA day.

In Tofino

Greetings from Beautiful Tofino. It is absolutely stunning up here. You can read Christina's blog for more details and pictures I've been catching up on emails and am a bit too tired of being at the computer to write much.

I got to Vancouver late Saturday evening and stayed at her friend Shelley's place. Watched a totally gorgeous sunset out the window. Sunday morning Christina and I went for coffee at a near by coffee shop and got some Ethiopian Yergachife to bring with us (we had the coffee this morning. It is about the best coffee I've had, if not ever, at least in recent memory). Then we went to Shelley's class at Yaletown Yoga. Very swank place.

A very circuitous drive to the ferry, a two hour ferry ride to Vancouver Island, and a three hour drive and here were are. It reminds me a lot of family vacations we used to take to Maine and Canada though the mountains are bigger and it stays light forever. We walked on the beach last night and we are getting ready to do another walk before our surf lesson.

Stay tuned for future updates.

Writing on Wednesday

Craig Williams says Wednesday is a great day for writing because it is Mercury's day. Our word, Wednesday honors Woden, but think of Spanish, Wednesday is miercoles. Mercury's day.

In any event, writing did go pretty well today considering the complete disarray of my study. I wrote on the dining room table instead. I rewrote the section that deals with Socrates' conversation with Cephalus in the Republic. Cephalus is an aging patriarch who enjoyed the Greek equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in his youth, but now finds himself in a forced state of renunciation due to his age, his inability to indulge... I wrote/revised 1016 words which is a decent amount for the day and now I'm taking advantage of Mercury's energy and updating my blogs....


Update of events since my last post. I drove back to Waco and loaded up the mini van with more stuff (hence disarray of study). Christina and I had a fun day hanging out on Monday and then I taught a hatha star class at 6 PM which was tons of fun. Standing pose week.

Yesterday was Jeff's 40th birthday. He took the day off work and we spent the day together. We saw the new Indiana Jones movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the popcorn was good too. Then we went to Alligator Grill for dinner, which was not so great, even aside from the fact the have no real veggie options. It does have two virtues: a great deck with an extensive misting system and it is extremely close to the house. Despite the fact that the food was not great, the day was and Jeff is so far handling the being 40 milestone very well.

Well, I'm going to eat some lunch, organize more things, get a massage and go to Devon's class.