Puppy Update

It turns out there were some complications with Riley, the mother of my puppy to be, and given that she might not get pregnant, the breeder put me in touch with a breeder friend of hers who has three male golden retriever puppies ready to come home next week, so I'm getting a puppy sooner rather than later. Here are pictures of the already in existence, soon to be my puppy...

Pizza Crusts

When Jeff and I first started dating, we ordered a pizza one night and I noticed that he was not eating his crusts. Pizza crusts are one of my favorite aspects of eating pizza. Particularly now that I'm vegan, mostly. I figure the crust of the pizza doesn't have any cheese.

Anyway, I wasn't vegan then... but being the sort of person that I am, I just helped myself to some of the pizza crusts piling up on his plate, I mean he wasn't going to eat them and they were perfectly yummy crusts sitting there. Jeff kind of looked at me strangely, well sheepishly if not strangely and he said, "those are for Q." He put the pizza crusts in a bowl for Q whenever he gets pizza. I did think that was pretty cute and he did generously still let me have some of Q's crusts.

Anyway, Jeff was getting a couple of last minute slices of pizza at the airport and lo and behold he put the crusts in the ziplock bag and brought them home for Q. Q pronounced them yummy. In fact, they were so yummy she didn't want to eat her regular food the next day.

Fun time in NYC

Well, New York City was really fun. Here's a six word summary for Pammy.

NYC for me: food, yoga, philosophy.

I really just love walking around there and stopping in a cool looking place the most, well, that and the yoga. And the philosophy conference was actually pretty good also. I was actually a little more apprehensive than usual about giving my paper. I think because I'm a bit out of academic mode in that I'm not teaching and expressing my ideas out loud so much. Sometimes, I think that I've forgotten how to do that. Both this year and last year the same thing happened when I was reading my paper, I thought to myself, "you know this sounds much better out loud than it does when I'm constantly reading it in my head as I'm writing on the computer."

Let's see Thursday we visited Anusara Land and took class with Elena Brower at ViraYoga. It was absolutely the most sattvic Anusara class I've ever taken. Lovely. They have a nice new space in the same building as before, ate at a nice French Cafe for lunch and then went to Lure for dinner. My student, Natalie, is a wine sommalier there and she led us through a lovely meal with some really great wine pairings.

Friday I went to Iyengar Land and Jeff with to Anusara Land in the morning. I did some philosophy stuff in the afternoon and then we went to the first session of the John Schumacher workshop at the Iyengar Institute. It just happened he was in NYC the same weekend and that you could just take the Friday class, which is the only thing I really could have done. It was nice to work with him again, though a Level II class was not quite the same intensity as the big kid's group at Feathered Pipe.

Then we went for dinner at this lovely Belgian Cafe Markt right near the Institute. Here's a picture of me at it from our last trip.

Saturday was all day philosophy for me and Jeff walked around the city, though this picture is actually taken on Monday morning.




Saturday night we went to the BurningMan NYC decompression party with my friend, James. That was a lot of fun, it involved a lengthy car ride out to the darkest Brooklyn and a trip to costume shop on Broadway. Here's one scene from the festivities.

Sunday more Iyengar Land and Ethiopian Food at Meskerem with James and Natalie joined us for a bit. We also stopped in this really lovely place, The Waverly Inn. We just walked by and thought it looked cool and went in. It turns out it is this sort of uber-trendy place that is often quite hard to get into, but we had more of the we just stopped in great experience that several others comment on. Really, it was quite magical.

Monday, a quick visit to Anusara Land, a last minute pizza slice and a long ride to the airport and a long plane ride home.

Today, I caught up on various things, subbed this morning for Heide and am getting ready to go teach CTs two classes.

Getting ready to go to NYC

Here's a picture of me during my last trip to New York. On our way to find ViraYoga, Jeff and I passed by this very cool clothing store that used the word philosophy to sell its wares. Philosophy for sale. How about that?

Anyway, our plane leaves this afternoon and we get in late tonight and get back late Monday. I really love going to New York City. I love the food, the art, the yoga (the Iyengar Institute is there and ViraYoga is pretty cool as well). Basically, I like the overall energy of the place. When I was a child, we lived outside of NYC and going into the city for field trips kind of scared me, but as an adult I love it. I started going there pretty regularly in grad school and it just has turned out academia has offered me quite a few occasions to go. Every fall, I have the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy up there (though I did find out that this may be the last year it is held there).

I'm also looking forward to seeing my good friend, James, and hopefully my former student, Natalie, as well. And also all my philosophy conference buddies.

Well, off to do a bit of pre-flight yoga, print off my conference paper, pack, and head to the airport.

We are out of vegetables

Here is a picture of my step-daughter, Christa and her fiance, Chris. . Christa has been teaching English in Thailand since May or so and for a variety of reasons she decided not to return for the final semester. She has a job doing wedding dress alternations at a nice place in Salado and wants to get into the Renaissance Fair costume making trade. Christa is a very gifted seamstress, as evidenced by the above outfits that she made.

Christa's engagement party was at La Fiesta, a Mexican food place in Waco. Anne, in newly vegan mode was greeted with vats of queso on the table, but luckily it did not look like very good queso...I just had salsa, Happily, salsa is vegan. After careful study of the menu, I decided on veggie fajitas... The waitress comes back to inform me that We are Out of Vegetables." Hilarious, completely out of vegetables. Imagine. I had guac and black beans and rice.

That aside, it was a nice trip up and back. Lenore and Henry were there and it was really nice to catch up with them. Lenore had just gotten back from a week in kentucky and Henry basically took the week off of Law School to take care of H.W. for the week.

Sunday Afternoon

Here is a picture of me and Jeff at the Trinity Alumni Event, last Saturday.


It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon here in Austin, truly gorgeous weather. Mom and Dad, the weather is really getting not hot now... . I'm getting to drive up to Waco for Christa's engagement party.

Yesterday, Jeff worked at the Austin Home Brew Octoberfest Sale and I taught yoga and then took Devon's special backward bending class. Then I made amazing Veggie Enchiladas and helped Jeff press wine.

Here is a picture of the wine press.


Here is a picture of me using said wine press,
That's the weekend update.

Golden Retriever Update

I mentioned in a previous post that I decided to get a golden retriever puppy.





Here is a picture of Lisa's step-daughter's Golden Retriever, Sammy. As a "former" step mom, I really love this story. Lisa's step-daughter really wanted a dog when she was like five or something and her parents said she had to wait until she was 8, (probably thinking she would forget)... Then on her eighth birthday, the step-daughter said, "Where's the dog????" Here's the great thing... the Golden Retriever goes where the kids go. So Lisa also has part custody of Sammy. Christa, my own step-daughter, didn't come with a dog, though she had many of them at her mom's....

Lisa, upon hearing that I wanted a Golden, brought Sammy and her non-step dog, who she brought into the marriage, who I think is Jack Russell Terrier and whose name I do not remember unfortunately, though he was super cute and seemed to deal well with the fact that I was obsessed with Sammy of the giant paws .. to meet me last Saturday after yoga class.

Anyway, the dog update is that I've found a place outside of Houston that breeds lovely Golden's (Renegade Goldens) and have reserved a soon to be created puppy from the litter matching of Ryder and Riley. Ryder will be donating sperm from his location in St. Louis I think. Here is the link. The above puppy picture is a picture of the mom, Riley, when she was a puppy. Here is another one



Riley is set to be impregnated next weekend and assuming all goes well, I should be able to get the puppy around the end of Feb. Very exciting. I've wanted a Golden Retreiver (and a BMW) my whole life, so waiting another four months does not seem so long... We'll see on the BMW. I have grown increasingly fond of the Honda Odyssey/ Shuttle Craft.

Pictures from San Antonio

Jeff and I went down to San Antonio for my 20 year college reunion. I had a good time, though really most of my closest friends weren't there. So I saw a lot of people I remembered and there were a lot of people I didn't. Trinity was really very much Anne, Julie, Tom, James, Claire, Greg, Ed so it was definitely a little strange being there and not seeing any of them. But oh well. . Everyone said I looked the same. Which is not true, but was still nice to hear. We went to an "I'm with the Band" reunion and then the 20 year party. Sunday, we went to visit with my former teachers Willis and Vicky.

The weekend in SAT itself was just fabulous. Lots of great food, walked around the King William District a lot and Q even got to go to Greyhound camp.

Here is Q in the car going to camp.


Here are the dogs meeting Q


Jeff and Kelly overseeing dog greetings.


Jeff saying good bye.

Panorama of us on the porch swing.

My feet on porch swing.

Jeff under the flowers

Grape Stomping Pictures

Here are some photos of the recent great grape stomping event. Here is a lug of grapes. Altogether there were 3 lugs of grapes.


Here is a picture of my foot, which will soon, be stomping said grapes.
Here is a picture of me dragging the bunches of grapes across a rack. Peel me a grape?

Here is a picture of me getting ready to enter the stomping vessel.

Here is a picture of me in the vessel, part way, shortly after this point is where I toppled over backwards.


Here is me having full mastered the stomping process.




This weekend Jeff and I are going down for part of my twenty-year college reunion. I didn't make it to my 20 year high school reunion. In fact, I think I went to my five year high school and my five year college and then I guess I was reunioned out for fifteen years.

Other big news, I have decided to get a golden retriever puppy.

Mid Week, Mid Day

It's Wednesday at Lunch. I'm having a difficult time sitting down to write today. It is just such a beautiful day and I'm looking forward to practicing with Heide and Gillian and Devon and then CT gets back into town so there's her class at 7th street.

The highlight of the last couple days is surely the stomping of the grapes event. Jeff orders a bunch (well three lugs of grapes ) that's quite a lot of bunches actually and they arrived from California on Monday. That was a lot of fun, except for where I toppled over backwards before my feet firmly hit the bottom of the container, sort of like being in cold quicksand or something. The even is commemorated on video, but I'll not make it available to the world wide web. Just use your imagination, Anne slowly floating backward and landing in a leather chair. I'll say it is funnier than the I Love Lucy grape stomping scene. Way funnier.

Well, off to read over my Republic chapter and ride on the writing waves of Mercury's Day.

Lift the Contents of Your Brain !

Lift the Contents of Your Brain!

Special Inversion Workshop Suitable for All Levels.

I'll be teaching a 2 hour workshop on INVERSIONS at Clear Spring Studio.

Saturday November 1, 2008 2-4 PM.

$25.00


To register Contact Anne at AnneBowery@yahoo.com or 254.744-7157

Friday After Lunch

This is a picture of me outside Devon's studio. I've decided that I should post more pictures on my blog and now that I have a new cell phone with a camera, that should be easy to accomplish. I'm getting ready to go practice with Devon in a couple hours. After that I'll come home and then Jeff, Jesse, Meg and I are going to a Dance Umbrella performance at an Old Dance Hall some where a bit north east of town. Should be quite a cultural adventure in many ways.

Let's see. I've had a good week. I had a very productive day yesterday. I revised the Intro to A Philosophic Muse (APM) and am pretty happy with it. I streamlined a lot of the unnecessary background info I originally had in there. I'm going to take another pass at it in a bit and do some more Republic reading. I also finally sent a proposal for APM to Parmenides press and the editor was enthusiastic about receiving it, so that is good.

I'm also continuing to feel a lot better with the new herb/veganism regime. I really feel like I"m coming out of this hazy fog I've been in for quite some time. I've been struggling a lot with mental focus and motivation for well over a year and yesterday was the first day I felt really sharp and engaged. It is strange to think it really could have just been a slightly out of whack thyroid all along and not some major psychological obstacle. Well, it was a psychological obstacle but how interesting to learn that it really may have been pysiologically based.

Yoga wise I've spent most of the week in Iyengar Land (except for CT's classes on Tuesdays and Craig's class last night ) but more on that on the Iyengar blog.