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unexpected visitors
Dec. 1st, 2017 11:08 pmIt turns out that I am not the only individual living in my neighbourhood who wasn't happy with the warm weather last weekend melting part of the snow before everything froze back up again. Or so I assume by all of the deer tracks in the yard this morning. They are coming right up to the edge of the house, where there is hardly any snow, to paw through and expose the grass and whatever else is growing there, presumably in search of lunch. I don't think they would bother with grazing right up against the walls of a house, even when the humans are asleep, if it were any easier to find good food in the forest right now. But the crust on the snow is pretty solid.
In other news, acroyoga at Phire practice tonight was much fun, I am glad I made it. I don't make the Friday practice all that often, sometimes because I am out of town, and, when I am in town I often am tempted to stay home and do stuff here instead of heading in to Porsön. But yesterday Ellinor sent me a message wondering if she could borrow my car for moving this weekend, since the one she had planned to borrow has broken down. So I said yes, and we agreed that I would meet her at practice, and she could drive me home afterwards.
Even so I was late tonight. Around 15:15 I opened up that book on soapstone, thinking I would just do a couple minutes reading, to get back into the habit of daily reading in the literature before I start my second PhD in January. Next thing I knew it was 17:00, and I had downloaded several other papers and sent an email to the author of the chapter I had read. However, I was supposed to be at Phire at 17:00, so I hurried out the door, and arrived there only 15 minutes late (the advantage of living only 4 km from campus and having a car--while it takes me 45 minutes to walk, and 20 to bike, it is only 5 minutes in a car).
We started out with just Ellinor and I doing our normal warmup, and then she wanted to try a new trick that she has seen on line, so we talked Anton into coming over to spot us. It turns out to be *much* harder than it looks in that video! She and I couldn't manage the first several times we tried, as her arms weren't up to holding me like that. So we decided to see if Anton, who is bigger and stronger than Ellinor, could manage. It didn't go much better. Then, after he rested a bit, we tried again, this time with Ellinor flying to his base. Still nope. We tried me flying again, first with one, and then the other as base. Perhaps we are getting closer, but, nope. Then we went back to stuff we know how to do, and that went much better.
Anton is a trained gymnast and does parkour, so he is quite strong. However, he doesn't have any prior acroyoga experience, and he had injured his hamstrings some time back, and has only recently recovered enough to be able to hold his legs up at 90 degrees when he lays on his back, and so when he is the base things are still a bit wobbly when being supported by his legs. However, I think it won't take him long to learn to be as rock steady as base as Ellinor is. After a bit of acroyoga they did some gymnastics backwards vault training, and I practiced my handstands. He had some very good pointers for me, and even in the short time working on it I can see improvement. I still only hold the handstand without a wall or spotter for a couple of seconds, but I am holding it for a couple of seconds. I *will* get to the point of just being able to hold it on my own. And on one arm, too. It will just take time and practice. (He can already do this, and hold his body out in flag position when holding the climbing bars on the wall, too.)
Edited to add: I meant to go do yoga promptly after posting this, but got distracted, and haven't gotten to yoga yet. I give my plants water each night before yoga, and tonight suddenly had a brilliant idea to keep them happier in the winter. So I went downstairs, found a chunk of foam in the bag of foam that is exactly as long as a window segment is wide, and brought it upstairs. Determined that it was twice as tall as it needed to be, cut it in half, cut two bits of fabric the right size, used my new treadle sewing machine to sew each shut, stuffed the foam into them, quickly hand-tacked the ends shut, and put them into the window between the plants and the glass. Now, now I can go do that yoga.
In other news, acroyoga at Phire practice tonight was much fun, I am glad I made it. I don't make the Friday practice all that often, sometimes because I am out of town, and, when I am in town I often am tempted to stay home and do stuff here instead of heading in to Porsön. But yesterday Ellinor sent me a message wondering if she could borrow my car for moving this weekend, since the one she had planned to borrow has broken down. So I said yes, and we agreed that I would meet her at practice, and she could drive me home afterwards.
Even so I was late tonight. Around 15:15 I opened up that book on soapstone, thinking I would just do a couple minutes reading, to get back into the habit of daily reading in the literature before I start my second PhD in January. Next thing I knew it was 17:00, and I had downloaded several other papers and sent an email to the author of the chapter I had read. However, I was supposed to be at Phire at 17:00, so I hurried out the door, and arrived there only 15 minutes late (the advantage of living only 4 km from campus and having a car--while it takes me 45 minutes to walk, and 20 to bike, it is only 5 minutes in a car).
We started out with just Ellinor and I doing our normal warmup, and then she wanted to try a new trick that she has seen on line, so we talked Anton into coming over to spot us. It turns out to be *much* harder than it looks in that video! She and I couldn't manage the first several times we tried, as her arms weren't up to holding me like that. So we decided to see if Anton, who is bigger and stronger than Ellinor, could manage. It didn't go much better. Then, after he rested a bit, we tried again, this time with Ellinor flying to his base. Still nope. We tried me flying again, first with one, and then the other as base. Perhaps we are getting closer, but, nope. Then we went back to stuff we know how to do, and that went much better.
Anton is a trained gymnast and does parkour, so he is quite strong. However, he doesn't have any prior acroyoga experience, and he had injured his hamstrings some time back, and has only recently recovered enough to be able to hold his legs up at 90 degrees when he lays on his back, and so when he is the base things are still a bit wobbly when being supported by his legs. However, I think it won't take him long to learn to be as rock steady as base as Ellinor is. After a bit of acroyoga they did some gymnastics backwards vault training, and I practiced my handstands. He had some very good pointers for me, and even in the short time working on it I can see improvement. I still only hold the handstand without a wall or spotter for a couple of seconds, but I am holding it for a couple of seconds. I *will* get to the point of just being able to hold it on my own. And on one arm, too. It will just take time and practice. (He can already do this, and hold his body out in flag position when holding the climbing bars on the wall, too.)
Edited to add: I meant to go do yoga promptly after posting this, but got distracted, and haven't gotten to yoga yet. I give my plants water each night before yoga, and tonight suddenly had a brilliant idea to keep them happier in the winter. So I went downstairs, found a chunk of foam in the bag of foam that is exactly as long as a window segment is wide, and brought it upstairs. Determined that it was twice as tall as it needed to be, cut it in half, cut two bits of fabric the right size, used my new treadle sewing machine to sew each shut, stuffed the foam into them, quickly hand-tacked the ends shut, and put them into the window between the plants and the glass. Now, now I can go do that yoga.
