Now I’m free to post only when I have something real to say, instead of telling you all that I am eating organic honey-nut O’s for breakfast.  Future topics shall be limited to craft (non-surprise) projects, Shiva Nata progress reports, and all of my mental baggage and verbal diarrhea.

I’m under a self-imposed cone of silence at work today, so this is it for now.  TTFN!

I found a ballet class in Vegas – a GOOD one!  It’s not really near my house, but it is so worth it to have a class at a nice challenging level for me.  To top it off, there were only three other girls in the class, so there was a lot of personal attention.  The teacher was Russian (who danced with the Kirov ballet and was trained at the Vagonova Institute), as were two of the other girls – so the teacher was seamlessly changing languages when she was correcting us.  It was all extremely cool, except for the part that I haven’t danced in 6 months and it shows.

Other than that, I got some more chores done, practiced Shiva-ing it up again, hung out at the mall for a little while, and made myself a tasty stir-fry for dinner.  GREAT weekend!  I like this motivation thing!

Today was actually a pretty good day.  Our game is getting a little bit awesome, and I expect it will be a whole lot more awesome in the next week or two.  I can’t wait until we get to show it off!  This is the first time I’ve worked on something that 1) I have had a significant hand in, and 2) will actually ship.  Yay!

To celebrate a good day at work, and relax right into the Just For Me weekend, I bought myself a nice sushi dinner.  I’ve been to Tokyoto Sushi several times, since it’s tasty and very near my house, but I think it freaks them out a little bit that I’m always by myself.  Anyway, today I ended up sitting next to these two guys who have been eating at this restaurant pretty much every Friday for the last 5 years.  I loved watching them interact with the sushi chef, who they knew on a first-name basis, and it made me want to dine there more so I could be a cool regular.

When I went to pour my first cup of sake, one of them leaned over and said “I can’t let you pour your own sake.”  I replied, “I’m not going to fight you over it.”  That started an off-and-on conversation through our dinners, and made the meal a lot more enjoyable than if it had just been me and my iPhone (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  Maybe we’ll run into each other again some other evening, and we can all become sushi buddies.

I got home, and immediately washed the dishes I had left in the sink last night (fell asleep on the sofa again.  I won’t go into it; we are moving forward here).  After that, I was wondering what I should do next, and ended up staring at the empty sink for a minute.  I had a flashback to FlyLady, who I used to follow for get-your-shit-together advice (although she probably wouldn’t use those words).  She always started by “shining the sink” – it served as a symbol for having control over a tiny part of your house/self/life.  Once that is done, the order begins to spread to other areas.  For me, it led to finally finding a place to store my liquor (moved things around in the dining room), dusting, a few loads of laundry, and making – my favorite! – listy lists detailing all the stuff I can work on this weekend.  I won’t bore you with the details, but let me tell you….

…I am going to take a dance class!  I found another studio in Las Vegas that has about half of its classes designated for adults.  It’s a little farther than I’d prefer to drive, but if it’s a good, challenging class, it will be well worth it.  Sunday is the big day – jazz at 3:00 and ballet at 4:30.  I will probably start with a single class, and observe the other, just so I don’t kill myself.

Excited!!!

Santana was great!  I crashed on the sofa as soon as I got home, woke up at 5:30, thought “oh – that happened – again – I should go to the bedroom.”  Then I went to bed for reals.

Got to work in the nick of time this morning.  Again.  This is getting old.  I’ve already decided to clear my calendar for the entire weekend and take care of myself – gym, healthy cooking, house cleaning, organization, and hopefully some crafting (I haven’t forgotten about you, Eileen!).  Then Monday, we are down to business with the waking up thing.

If I have taken anything from the little Shiva Nata practice I’ve had, it is that the power is there if I want it.  I have started to become aware of that, but I haven’t taken advantage of it yet.  I’m not sure why I’m holding myself back.  Coming back from the indulgences of last weekend, seeing the scale, looking around at the disaster site that is my apartment, and just feeling dumpy in general has woken me up.

Work is already improving – my focus is up, and I am feeling much more productive.  I find it easier to “activate” myself there, because there I am answering directly to my team members.  I just need to carry it over into my personal life, where I am the only one who directly benefits. Realizing that I am carrying all of this mental baggage around with me, indirectly affecting others, should help me along on my path.

p.s. Gym 3 days this week!  And counting!!  Yay!!

I get to see Santana tonight!  This is two concerts in a row (after U2) that I get invited to on the day of, because someone wasn’t able to make it.  Disco!!

I had this crazy dream this morning where Trey Parker and Matt Stone were over at my apartment and we were playing Guitar Hero.  Only it wasn’t a real version of Guitar Hero – it supposedly had all the theme songs to their shows/movies, but I didn’t recognize any of them – except that I found myself playing “Daria” by Cake.  I was trying so hard to prove that I knew all of their stuff, because they had offered me a job, and I didn’t want to screw up!  I went looking through my DVD collection to find all their movies that I owned (I don’t), and couldn’t remember anything.  Stress!

After that, it was a pretty crappy morning.  Remember the “tight pants” issue from earlier in the week?  Yeah – it gets worse after you eat a bunch of sodium-laden ramen for lunch.  At least it will should go away after a day or two.  Leaky bathtub, running late, ran out of cereal, yadda yadda.  Once I got to work, it got better.  I did not let the (invisible) man get me down!

No gym tonight on account of the concert.  I’ll have to make up for it with a little boogie

We interrupt this viewing of Pineapple Express to say, well, it’s a pretty bad movie.  The only good part for me is Daryl from The Office as one of the henchmen.  And the doctor from Knocked Up.  Aside from that, not really doing it for me.  Maybe it would be different if I were high.

I went to the gym tonight!  Two nights in a row!  It hurt, again, but I went anyway.  And as soon as this movie is over, I am totally going to sleep.  I am gonna sleep the shit out of tonight.  I don’t even know what that means, but it sure sounded cool in my head!

It has been a while since I actually went to the gym to lift weights.  I went a few times in the last month for Pilates class, but I need to get my ass in gear!  I have a five-pound range where i am “just okay” with my weight.  Below that, I’m very happy.  Above it, I want to shoot myself.  In that five-pound range, I can live with it, but I’d like to do better.  This morning, I was at the very tippy-top of the range.  Sigh.

So anyway, despite feeling like utter crap today (a combination of weekend overeating and airplane sinus issues), I dragged myself to the gym.  I ran was on the treadmill for 30 minutes, did chest press and row exercises, and some abdominal work on the exercise ball.  So.  Painful.  I’m glad I did it, though – no way to get fit without starting from the beginning. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, right?

I did get two Shiva Nata practices in over the weekend, thanks to my trusty laptop!  It sounds so silly now, but as I was working through the first transquarter exercise on the DVD on Sunday, these words actually came out of my mouth: “Huh.  I couldn’t do this yesterday.” Still no more life epiphanies, but progress in the practice is always good.  It couldn’t have helped that Jon was sitting on the bed 5 feet from me, playing on his Nintendo DSi.

I definitely am more aware that my life is what I make it – and if I want it to be better, I have to do it myself.  Awareness: check.  The next step, changing things for the better, is an ongoing process with a lot of bumps in the road.  I’m still working on getting out of bed.  I still spend a bit too much time watching TV and not doing anything else.  I did, however, buy food for the week on my way home from LVAC, and look forward to fresh steamed veggies for the next few days!!

My favorite part was the Giant Camera, a working camera obscura (look it up) that offered panoramic views of Ocean Beach. I was amazed at the resolution of the projection, and then realized how silly that was – there is infinite resolution when you’re just refracting light!

Photo!!

Regardless, dinner was fabulous. I highly recommend 54 Mint in San Francisco – though if you are there on Friday or Saturday, you probably want reservations. It’s all sustainable, local, organic homemade Italian food. If you get to sit in the wine cellar room downstairs, it ceases to feel like a busy restaurant. The dessert I ordered, panna cotta with aged balsamic vinegar, was unbelievable. Enough superlatives for you?

Tonight! Town’s End, down near the ballpark. Tomorrow! Cliff House Bistro. Then I have to go back to Las Vegas, with all the crappy no-name chefs like Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, and Thomas Keller. I will surely suffer.