This past Friday, I attended my first yoga class through the campus gym. It wasn’t bad. The class consisted of relative beginners and more advanced folks who were very limber. The instructor who comes in was very nice, and told me to take it easy by being “true to my body”, and only stretch as much as your body allows.
The first thing I learned is that socks have to come off, because there is no traction on that yoga mat. Socks came off halfway through the session, as I kept slipping.
The second thing I learned is that it’s hard to keep all those poses, while remembering to breathe. Breathing at least once in 60 minutes doesn’t sound difficult, but I noticed that I was holding my breath while trying to get into the various poses. I suppose I was concentrating as I moved into the various poses. I had to remind myself to, hello, breathe.
The third thing I learned is that you can break a good sweat just stretching. Yoga is just stretching and breathing, so I felt initially bored while I wondered when I was going to do something exciting. Towards, I was breaking a sweat as I moved back and forth from downward-facing dog to student pose, to warrior pose to that weird pose with your arms interlocked around your back and under your thighs. I tried all the positions, except that pose where she had us put our rears and legs straight up in the air. I couldn’t do that, but I sorta gave it the old college try. She then had folks move the legs over their heads like a fishhook. I laughed, and gave in. There was no way I could do that, so I waited until they were done.
Strangest part? During one of the poses, the fellow in front of me farts audibly. I gave the back of his head a dirty look. All in all, I’ll do yoga again. I’m certainly not as limber as I used to be, and this would be good for me at least twice a month.
To keep more than $50,000 in jewelry safe, a woman named Robin Griffin hid it inside a teddy bear at her house in Renton, Washington. When she discovered her jewelry missing, she called the police.
In a strange-but-yet-I’m-not-surprised case of irony, Griffin was a thief herself. Prosecutors allege that Griffin, who works as a courier for FedEx, had stolen the jewelry from shipments to high-end jewelers Cartier and Ben Bridge.
I’ve seen the ads on TV and newsprint about the Smile Train, with Jessica Simpson as spokesperson. We should really donate to that charity. I’ve got to talk to my wife about it. Anyway, there is a documentary, “Smile Pinki,” that has been nominated for best short documentary Oscar, and chronicles this little girl’s surgery.
Maybe I’m just out of the loop on reality TV, but I just found out that Stephen Fowler, a recent participant on the ABC TV show Wife Swap, came across as a jerk. His performance has inspired a Web site, StephenFowlerSucks.com, a Facebook group, “I Can not Stand Stephen Fowler from `Wife Swap,’” and public condemnation by his own wife, who on her blog urged him to get professional help. He’s facing a bit of a fallout online because of his bad behavior.
I’ve watched a few episodes of Wife Swap, but not regularly. It’s somewhat uncomfortable TV– I still won’t forget the episode I saw with this extreme right-wing Christian family where the husband dictated the rules. All of these shows where you see people acting so arrogant, and so disparaging of other people and their beliefs and lifestyles. I just don’t get it. Why can’t people be more open-minded?
I watched the highlights video on YouTube, and you know what? He is a jerk.
CNET reviewers recently published their latest “prizefights” between products, the Xbox 360 vs. PlayStation 3. They compared various facets, such as overall design, game library, features, etc. I’ve been heavily weighing the same choices in my own mind for months now, and I was interested to hear who the winner was in this comparison.
Am I ruining the surprise if I tell you the verdict now? They rated the Xbox 360 slightly higher. They rated the Xbox 360 the best gaming machine, and the PS3 a “compelling, do-it-all” machine. I still like the PS3 better. I would have felt a bit more sure of myself if the PS3 won, but I still think it fits my simple needs best.
I think the PS3 comes out on top as having the better hardware between the two. Most in the gamer community are well aware of XBox 360’s infamous “Red Ring of Death”, the ominous console harbinger, which signals that the XBox must be sent away for repairs and will be out of commission for at least a month. The “Red Ring of Death” occurs on a reported 16% of all XBox consoles, according to an article on ShackNews about the XBox 360. According to the article, Microsoft contends that the failure rate is only at 3%.
While the hardware repairs are paid for through Microsoft’s warranty plan, that’s a big potential minus for the 360 in my book. Not only does the PS3 have no major hardware issues, but you get Blu-Ray. The XBox 360 is cheaper but with worse hardware.
I do wish/hope that Sony incorporates Netflix streaming to the PS3 one day. That would be awesome, as you can already watch Hulu and Youtube. What I like about the PS3 is that it is regularly upgraded through firmware updates, so Netflix streaming is still a possibility. That’s just cool.
Now this is just peculiar. A 14-year-old boy in China was supposedly killed when his chair exploded, sending chunks of metal into his rectum. The bleeding this caused killed him. The alleged explosion came from the gas cylinder that was in the base of the chair.
How the hell does that happen? See the link from Gizmodo here.
I attended my first yoga class today. The company gym on our campus offers a number of free fitness classes, including yoga, Zumba, abs class, core strengthening, etc. So I decided to take a yoga class, as one of my coworkers said it was pretty good. I also realize that I’m not as limber as I used to be, so it couldn’t hurt to get limber again. Especially if I take Sting and his wife up on their offer to teach me that whole tantric thing.
I had no idea you could break a sweat during a yoga class. I got to class a little early, so I did some cardio, then went into the 1-hour class. Yoga appears to be just a whole lotta stretching, breathing, and some use of my 3rd eye. Who knew I had a 3rd eye? I thought it was blind? [chortle, chortle, I'm so witty.]
The instructor told me to take it easy as a beginning, and not to do anything my body wasn’t able to do “Be true to your body.” I did all the exercises, but when the class started raising their legs and posteriors in the air (supported by their hands), I hung back. When they then extended their entire lower bodies over their heads, I laughed and waited for them to finish. No, there was no way I could do that.
It was a pretty slow pace, but I think I’ll do it again next week.
I read an article this week by a Dr. Nick Neave out of the UK, titled Sorry, but women are dependent on men. I’m going to open the topic up for discussion. The writer is an evolutionary psychologist from Britain’s Northumbria University. He has arrived at the conclusion that not only do women need men, they are fundamentally programmed to depend on them. I don’t know if I fully agree or disagree with the good doctor, but he raises some interesting points. Heck, I was listening to a Trisha Yearwood song earlier, “There Goes My Baby”, and she was singing about abandonment.
You’re a successful woman with a job to die for, a fabulous home and a supportive husband, but do you ever get the urge to check his mobile phone for love messages? Or his bank statements for intimate meals a deux that you didn’t share? And do you lie awake at night worrying how you’ll cope if the worst happens, your fears are proved and your husband walks out?
Don’t worry. Your suspicion is only natural. At the risk of sounding extraordinarily sexist, I’m convinced that women, even in the happiest of relationships, are programmed to worry their men are going to abandon them.
And they’re terrified – in a way that most men find it frankly impossible to imagine. What’s more, if their forebodings come true, women are more inclined to forgive an affair than a man if the shoe is on the other foot. That’s not because they’re nicer, more easygoing individuals. It’s simply because their primeval urge to hang onto a male provider is so strong.
After reading the article, what do you think? Okay, now discuss among yourselves, and post back. I’d like to know.
I tell you, I like my Blackberry Curve a lot, and the iPhone is certainly cool. but there are so many interesting/exciting/amazing/neat concepts coming down the pipeline. See the following demo of the SPB Mobile shell running on an HTC Touch Diamond cell phone. How fantastic is this OS?
I am 99% sure now that I want to get a PlayStation 3 game console. I was talking it over with my wife this evening, and I think I want it. I’ve been weighing it in my head, but I’m overthinking it. It’s a game console that I can play some fun games when I need to decompress. Plenty of games that I want to play are now available, such as God of War III, Half Life 2, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and Bioshock. I think it would be fun to play games more often.
