Bionic Teutonic

I was in a meeting yesterday where I looked around and realized that every single one of the 12 or so people in the meeting had wedding rings on. This was odd to me, because while I have a clear sense that work and real life are different things, during the time I am at work, these are my peers. Now, in real life, I am one of the few people I know who is married. The vast majority of people I hang out with aren’t. It was a strange moment, because in some ways it made clear to me just how different my work environment is from the life I have chosen for myself outside of it. It’s kind of like the feeling I get every election, when Republicans win and I think “where the hell are these people?” Nobody I know votes republican (or at least that they will admit), but obviously they get half the votes in this country, which makes me feel very disconnected somehow. Like the reality I live in is somehow very much not indicitive of anything except the reality I live in. I suppose that in one way, it’s a blessing that work provides a place where you come across a different set of people than you might normally be around. We self-select the people around us so much that we can forget that people different from us exist sometimes. This is an odd thought to have begun in a meeting where everybody was married just like me, but there you have it.

I made this resolution at new years that I was going to try and get in shape, drop a few pounds and really rock the whole aerial thing. I’m pleased to say that I have managed to lose about 10 lbs so far. I’ve been getting a lot of exercise (lots of yoga, running, etc), but one of the main things I’ve been enjoying is not eating to the point of being full. It’s amazing how little we notice that we are overtaxing our digestive system by overeating until we, well, stop. I haven’t been going through as many energetic ups and downs during the day and after an initial period of having to overcome all my eating habits, I’ve been finding that I just don’t need to eat that much at one sitting. Also, I’ve been rocking my aerial class the last couple weeks. Obviously, it makes sense that the lighter you are, the easier it is to haul yourself up a rope, and I’ve really been enjoying it. Mostly because it hurts less to do drops. Less weight to catch = less pain. Which is good because I’m a total wuss.

I saw two good, but dark movies this past week: Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. Both were very well done, but both leave you kind of depressed thinking about the ability of humankind to do terrible things. I’ve been looking forward to Pan’s Labyrinth for a long time, so much so that I have it set as my desktop at work, which has the opening date in the bottom left hand corner. This ended up being frustrating as it didn’t open in Seattle at the same time it opened elsewhere, so on opening day, as I excitedly flipped open the newspaper to check for times, it was nowhere to be found. It turned out to be wonderful, although in a completely different way than I was expecting. While much of the movie is spent in a fantasy world, this world exists mainly to mask a very dark, brutal, and violent reality. Not a children’s movie in any way.

Ariel and I also went to 14/48, the world’s quickest theater festival this weekend. As one would expect with theater created in 24 hours, it was a little hit or miss, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Written, directed, and performed all within a day. I hope everybody involved was able to get a good night of rest after it was all over.

Last night, Ariel and I watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (I really, really wish he was our president). If you haven’t seen it, it’s sobering to say the least. He puts together such a compelling argument. It baffles me that global warming still has detractors. I also came across this today. If the link no longer works, essentially, Greenland’s ice is melting so fast that much of what was previously thought to be part of the mainland turns out to be a collection of islands that were joined to the mainland by the ice (which is no longer there). This scares me more than I can tell you. If Greenland loses all of its ice, the oceans will rise 23 feet! I have no idea how this will all pan out, but humanity’s ability to stick it’s collective head in the sand is almost impressive in its persistence. While I sure hope the world doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket, I’m kind of worried it will.

On a brighter note, it continues to snow here in Seattle. Our house is wonderfully covered in beautiful snow that is actually sticking. With more supposedly on the way! Yay!

It snowed last night! 3 inches even! Yay! On my way from work yesterday, I was walking through town and it was so beautiful. All this snow falling through the urban canyons of downtown, illuminated by the light of the street lamps. It was gorgeous and I had a big smile on my face for my whole walk. We don’t get light fluffy snow here in Seattle normally, but it was so light that I had a hard time making a snow man last night because the snow wouldn’t stick together. I love it.

It seems like every year, somebody comes out with a study about happiness as it relates to country of habitation and every year, the Danes seem to come out on top. I’ve always attributed this to a great welfare system that has virtually eliminated homelessness, a healthcare system that provides medicine to anyone who needs it, and a general level of tolerance that has allowed a bunch of anarchists in Christiania to exist for 30 some years (although that may be coming to an end). A study has come out though that pinpoints the source of danish happiness: Low expectations. Ha!

Happy New Years! As somebody on the radio said today, it’s a perfect time for getting a gym membership you will never use:) I will admit that I’ve gone through the exercise of making a few new years resolutions and am trying to enact a few changes, which feels a little bit cliched, but whatever. My yoga teacher had a great thought she imparted the other day that I’m trying to incorporate into my resolutions, which is that the new year always seems to be this time when people decide they are going to be different than they were last year. Somehow, we seem to focus on the things we are doing that we want to change and the ways in which we are not adequate. Our teacher had us actually write out some things that we felt were already good qualities we had or that other people tell us we have and then suggested that we focus on just doing more of that. The yoga center I go to does a lot of work with kids that have disabilities (autism, physical disability, etc), and one of the core tenets is that you build on what’s already there. As my teacher said, it’s the idea that we are already all the things we want to be. We each have anger and peace, patience and impatience, etc and if we focus on giving support to those good qualities we already have, the rest of it sort of falls into place. I really like that thought. Does that make me a hippy?