The Saturday of Physical Making

This morning I got up and finished knitting the last few rows of this hat:



Then I walked across the room and took a picture of this, my little office corner.



Hardware store. Measure, measure, measure, level, level, level, drill, screw, hardware store again, spackle, level, screw, sweep, clean:



My great triumph was getting the two 36" shelves on the top to line up almost perfectly, creating a single 72" shelf (counting the OTHER top shelf that turns the corner, it might even be a 102" shelf). And the eerie blue glow on the top shelf? Courtesy of a string of LED christmas lights. I don't think they'll last long. I do want lighting up there, to keep myself from presiding over the Corner of Shadows, but the LEDs have a frequency like a computer monitor; I get that strobe effect if I look in their direction and wave my hand in front of my face.

So, 198" of brand new shelf space to fill up with crap! YAY! ...and just kidding. Soon enough a contractor will come to rip out my half-closet, and so these shelves are likely to end up storing my clothes for a while while he does that small renovation. After that, I have other plans, especially including the new desk and new office chair that are supposedly being shipped in my direction.

In which my life is taken over by acrobatics.

My back walkover, which I'd still like to improve a LOT but which makes me happy already, has been caught on video:



For Halloween, I and two other co-workers dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 (that's me!) and Thing 2. Here we are, doing some acro to entertain ourselves and some random children at the office Halloween party.





At this point you probably think my life has been taken over by acrobatics, but we haven't even gotten to that part yet! The media is all from October; the takeover of my life really happened just last week, when I took a week off for an acroyoga acrobatics intensive in North Adams. :) It's hard to say what went on in my head except that I think I really got into the groove as a base and as a spotter for the first time. As for what went on in my body, that's easier: my first time doing handstands up on handbalancing blocks, my first time basing any number of tricks I've only flown before, my first time piking up to a handstand (with a spot, but still). I came back with a lot of new perspectives and a desperate need for a massage.

I've also been working hard, and was even able to launch something just before going on vacation. Sadly, the something is invisible to you, the consumer, so there's not much to talk about.

Update on my after-school activities

I've finished not one, but two new sweaters since the last time I updated this blog with my knitting activities. (How did that happen? Well, one took nine months, and then I wanted something easier so the next one only took two months. Extra credit if you can figure out which is which.)





In acroyoga news, I've been accepted to a 1-week acrobatics immersion in early November. You can tell I'm getting better (or more into it, anyway) by the fact that I now have to apply for things.

A patron of the arts does a handspring.

Here's an 8-second video of my front handspring from last Tuesday. It's a little surprising how solid and gymnast-y I look here. And it's way annoying how anticlimactic and EASY it looks. As with so many things, this move takes only moderate physical effort once you know how to do it, but learning it as an adult isn't easy.



In other news, I'm buying a statue, one that I've liked since 1997 or thereabouts. The one I'm getting is the very last one the studio had (though there is one more for sale at a gallery in Dallas, Texas). It's my first serious art purchase ever and I have nowhere good to display it, but if I hadn't made a move I would have regretted it intermittently for decades...



To hell with intermittent regret, I say.

Family connections and a welcome to Pogo

Two weeks ago today we said hello to a nervous ball of growls and hisses, who eventually resolved into our new cat Pogo:



Pogo a 12-year-old kitty who came to us from our friend Bree, and when he's not freaking out he's a very soft cat who likes to snuggle. (In case you're curious, he's named not for the cartoon, but for another cat named Pogo, who was in turn named for his bouncy walk as a kitten.) There's still a bit of a standoff between him and alpha cat Serabi, who likes to keep an eye on his every move:



...but overall, we think they're getting used to one another. Only one real cat-fight so far. Pogo and Ralph have already gotten on with the mutual ignoring that we expect will characterize the next several years.

Last weekend, with some trepidation at leaving the delicate feline situation, Alan and I went to visit my dad and his wife in Montana. This is nowhere close to as complex as family can get, but terminology got dicey once or twice. Alan would start to say "your parents" and then stumble, and things like that. We found it worked best if we, the younger generation, referred to the older pair as "the parents" and they referred to us as "the kids". I found this a fairly graceful way of acknowledging our generational places in the loose family structure, without putting undue stress on the presence or absence of blood ties.

The parents:


The other kid:


And, of course, me:

Claiming geek credit

Randall Munroe, author of xkcd, visited the office today... here he is painting a small Black Hat on the wall about 15 feet from where I sit.





I know you're probably thinking that working where I work is almost cheating, when it comes to the geek culture points game. You're right! And I do so love a good cheat.

It's all kind of a blur

Do you ever have a crazy night, one of those ones where you eventually stumble home thinking I can't believe I actually did that!?

So do I.