Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

i feel like i’m finally starting to adjust to this east coast time and now i’m leaving in 24 hours. there has been no real jet lag but what i’ve noticed was that my internal clock had me staying up until 1am or so and then sleeping until 8am … in la, i am almost always asleep by 11pm (or earlier) and am wide awake by 7am at the latest. sometimes those times get extended, but it generally involves too much alcohol and late night greasy food.

i still have yet to practice more than 15 minutes these past few days, in fact this sat will mark two weeks of not doing an entire primary series. i can literally feel my belly and i’m sure that unless i get a SERIOUS case of diarrhea (and shit out all this weight) there is no way that i’ll be able to do marichyasana -d when i arrive. i guess i shouldn’t think about such things tho, guruji says that the poses are not important, the only thing that matters is a consistency to the practice … meaning doing practice every day, something i obviously have not been doing. more so than my belly getting bigger i am noticing an increase in my mental chatter and anxious energy. some of this is probably related to my upcoming travel but i think that it’s mostly due to a lack of practice.

assuming that all goes well with my standby flights, i will arrive in mumbai just after midnight on 12/31 … then i have to find a flight to bangalore and on to mysore. wish me luck … lots of it.

i finally gave up on getting my camera to work with mom’s windows 98 machine, but then she pointed out that i could transfer my pics to CD at the drugstore …. scroll down

i’ve been pretty bad about keeping up with news these past few months, local la news is all about car crashes and often feels much more like a jerry bruckheimer movie than real news …. in my car i listen to npr, but have started getting depressed by the constant iraqi body counts so lately i have just been shutting it all out. given my lack of news input, i really didn’t know what to think when i started getting emails from people asking if the tsunami got me …. i’m still in the states, but have finally started reading about the tragedy in asia. the latest body counts are over 12K for one of the largest earthquakes (the real damage was caused by a series of tidal waves aka tsunamis) ever recorded.

mysore is pretty far inland so i doubt there was much of a direct impact there.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041226/ap/d877jta87.html

this article is in thai, but has some pretty scary pics of the destruction

http://www.thairath.co.th/thairath1/2547/page1/dec/27/p1_1.php

most of the snow has melted and it’s a balmy 20F but it does still feel like christmas, i guess the tree covered in lights, family brunch of latkes (my step dad is jewish) and just being with family really helps. i leave for india on wed and apparenly my mom is very worried about me being hungry on the plane and having trouble adjusting to squat toilets. she gave me lots of snack items and told me not to open them until i get on the plane and also lots of pocket sized things of tissues and some moist baby wipes …. i wonder if i should tell her that i have been practicing by sanding on the toilet seat and doing my squat elimination that way. i think that my method is probably much more challenging as the toilet seat isn’t very wide and sometimes “releasing” from that far up causes quite the splash.

it’s nine in la now, i think that i will call tee pretty soon …. he’s got the apt to himself over christmas and i hope he’s not too lonely. it seems that every year he can’t get off work during the holidays and ends up being stuck home alone, hopefully next year we’ll be able to get him here, i miss spending christmas with him.

i’ve been taking tons of pics but my mom’s computer is running windows 98 and i can’t seem to get my camera drivers to work with it. maybe later in the week i’ll go over to someone’s house and try to use a mac or winxp machine.

way too much snow on mom’s car

zak chilling on xmas morning

mom with earl (her hubby)

mom by the christmas tree

i’m in kilington, vt now visiting my dad … there is snow on the ground, barren trees and not a chance of sun. in some ways it is really pretty. i don’t think i could stand more than a week of it and the temps have all been around the 20s-30s (F) which isn’t that bad i guess.

i’m staying at his girl friend’s house which is a converted one-room school house from the late 1800s, they heat totally with wood (which they chop themselves) and about 5 cars per day drive past the place. if it doesn’t rain later, we’re going to throw on snowshoes and head into the woods out back.

the cloud cover is too thick to see the sun and tell which way is east, so i just did my yoga practice facing the wood burning stove. it was the first time that i had practiced since last fri (almost a week), which is really too long but in some ways i think the break can be really helpful. when i practice 5-6 days a week, i’m always feeling the effects of the practice. when i get away from it and come back, i notice a change in the way that my mind and body feel.

click on pics to see a full version

see, i told you i was butch

dad with one (of MANY) wood piles

people in california should get a kick out of this

walking in the cold with my brother and dad

a somwhat frozen stream near my dad’s

a bird feeding out the back window

damn beavers

getting warm by the wood stove

perhaps i’m reading a bit too much into things, but i’ve decided that today was the day that i was meant to begin this trip … it is the winter solstice, which seems like an auspicious day to start a three month trip to india. then again, perhaps i am just reading into things too much.

the flights were all pretty uneventful, not a huge amout to report … listented to lots of new music on my iPod (thanks deb), made progress on my book (more random sci-fi), napped, drank a few glasses of bourbon and ate lots of pretzles. there is only a dusting of snow here so i haven’t taken any pics, but some will follow.

heading up to killington, vt tomorrow where the elevation will make it even colder than here … hopefully the wild turkeys (not the bourbon, the real thing) will be hanging out in my dad’s yard again.

well, it’s a long boring story but i am still here in la … i did get up at 4am and go to the airport but there was a snafu with the ticket to so i’m here until tomorrow probably. it’s kinda intersting tho because i have no car, no work to get done …. absolutly nothing that i have to do.

had dinner with blake, michael, tee and keith last night …. blake and michael might be moving to hotlanta while i’m in india. i’m going to miss them if they leave, but it seems like a good thing for them and blake does promise to return in two years ….

well we had south american food and in contast to my review of friday night, this meal was amazing …. really good fresh fish, great veggies and nice waiter.

well the big news is that aside from a few minor things, i am pretty much packed and ready to go tomorrow.

as much as i love la, i really miss the food culture that permeated san francisco. there really seems to be a deep love of food up north that i have found totally lacking down here.

tee and i went for a going away dinner at some restaurant called mix over on santa monica and crescent heights …. the waiter didn’t know what he was doing, the food was either lousy or just ok and it was really expensive. on the upside we did have a great bottle of wine. at first it seemed kinda cute that the waiter had to look at his book more than once to read off the special list, but once we realized that he wasn’t going to stop by to pour more wine or check on the food that cuteness wore off. i ordered swordfish over pumpkin and chestnut risotto and had to send it back because the fish was cold … after taking it back the waiter actually came back and asked if i wanted a new piece or for the old one to be re-heated and he even had said that the chef cut off a piece and said it was fine. when it finally came back, i ate half of it realizing that the risotto was too sweet for the fish and the dish generally tasted lousy.

what really got me was that our waiter never stopped back to see how the dish was. another waiter finally cleared the dish and i told him that i didn’t like the dish, he agreed with me saying that he thought it was too sweet too …

ok, i’m usually not this bitchy …. :)

had an incredible lunch today with bob, maria, brian ernie, michyl-shannon (i hope i spelled that correctly) and jullien … bob made sushi and i drank probably too much sake for noon on a friday but i didn’t have to teach that night and, well …

bob serving his lobster sushi

« Older Entries