Oh, wow, do I love this song. So mellow, it just swoons me off to serenity. I could pass out to an album of this song.
My Cat Catches a Bird
I'm sitting in my apartment, working, and I notice Max come up to the window to be let in. I get up, and then upon noticing that he brought home a present, I excitedly grabbed my near-by camera and shot 2 quick ones before I opened the window. After he get's in, he quickly moves under the table, deposits his bird, then busts back outside quickly, I presume to catch another. I look outside to watch, but he only gets about 10 meters before he turns around and acts all cute, aparently not interested in catching another bird. I turn back to the table to check out the victim, but he's gone. "Surely he just squirmed under the water heater." I thought. Nope. I begin to look around in many possible places with no luck. Giving up, I assume that my cat will surely go back after his prize. Not really. He just starts chilling, looking out the window. As of now, the bird is still MIA...
Beer Review: Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible is an Imperial Stout Barrel Aged & Bottle Conditioned by Big Sky Brewery in Missoula, MT. A limited release, I got bottle 1133 of 1152. The label mentions using "English Hops" and "American Malt". The pour is incredible dark with a large, creamy, dark head. The lacing is very good and lasting. The aroma is one of the most notable qualities that delivers a knock-out earthy oak smell that is very malty. The texture is thick and bourbony alcoholic. The bottle says 8.75% but I think that it is way more. Overall, I'd give the beer an 8.5
Purchased from Worden's market in Missoula, MT for $9.99
India Trip Trials:The USPS Lost my Passport
I had to send my actual passport in with my Visa application for India and the United States Postal Service lost it. Why didn't I get certified mail, you ask? I did! Tracking number and signature guarantee upon arrival were a part of this service. After it had been 10 days with this informative website you see a screenshot of, I decided to call into a real person, surely they can get the wheels turning and find out what happened to my passport. Once I got a hold of someone, I was told they would look into it and they would get back to me the moment someone found anything. So, I waited. I got a hold of them later that week and she told me that no one was answering the phone down at the Embarcadero Post Office and since I didn't call her she thought I got it all worked out. What? They aren't answering the phone? Yep. That's what became the final answer to this fiasco. After 20 days missing that's all they ended up telling me was that no body at the post office was answering the phone. Isn't the Post Office a government agency? This seems ridiculous to me. I have lost all faith in the USPS. Fed Ex and UPS for me from now one.
So I've rush ordered a new passport complete with a RFID chip. That's the thing that pisses me off the most out of everything. Even more than having to pay $135 for there mess up (not to mention the payment for the rush delivery down and back to San Francisco because I still have to get my Visa in time). My old passport was aqcuired June 2006, months before the US started putting RFID chips in their passports. Not that being tracked by Big Brother bothers me, but the fact that identities can be easily faked because the security the US government choose sucks really bad.
I'm going to India to practice yoga
So I'm going to India from December 3rd, 2008 until January 13th, 2009. First, I will meet my great friend there, Ben Little, who has just got done with 2 years and 4 months volunteering for the Peace Corps in Tanzania, Africa. We will be practicing Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore for 2 weeks at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute, home of the founder of this style of yoga: Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Afterwards, we will venture north, through Goa, a beach paradise. Then up further north, we will stop by the famed Taj Mahal in Agra. Then it's up to Rishikesh, which is suppossed to be the "yoga capital of the world". This is in the foothills of the Himalayas. Although I know it's improbable that we actually get to hike in the Himalayas, being able to see them in the distance would be a dream come true. Being a Montana boy, I love mountains.
This is all subject to change of course (not the first 2 weeks, that's pretty solid), as Ben has still yet to preview these plans. I'm sure he'll be down. Our 2 weeks in Mysore was unexpectadely cut down from the traditional month. I'm kind of glad that I get more time to check India out though. We will be on the other side of the world (12 hour time difference from Montana) and it would be a shame to stay in one town the entire time.
I've been practicing yoga since I was 19 (I'm almost 28 now) and I've been practicing Ashtanga yoga for about 5 years. I've taught it for the past year, and was a teacher's assistant in the Ashtanga yoga class at the University of Montana for 2 1/2 years under Katie Heath, owner of the Yoga Fitness Center. I've always enjoyed yoga (what made me love it at first was getting a good night's sleep). Coming across Ashtanga was a whole new world though. It helps my ADHD so much. It gives me energy, flexibility, strength, and humility. Getting to share this with my students has meant more than I imagined. Hearing many of them come up and tell me how much better it makes them feel makes me smile. I love the new-comers who walk up to me after their first class and tell me how they thought it was SO much different than they thought and I'd definitely see them next week makes me realize why I do it for free (the probably wouldn't be as likely to come if they had to pay). I hope to learn a lot as a teacher in India.
I'll be doing my best to keep my blog going, complete with pictures (feed in through my Flickr account). If you want to keep updated, jump on some email updates (see sidebar) or subscribe to the rss feed. You can also, of course just come back to the site. :)
Here's a map of a couple of the places I mentioned and am thinking about going to:
View Larger Map
Yoga class continues to grow
I had my weekly yoga class at the Church of Expression (which isn't really a church, just 8 people living in an old church) last night. It's been going every Wednesday at 7:30pm since January of this year. I'm quite proud of how long I've been teaching it. However, I'm more proud of how far all my students (which are mainly my good friends) have come. I don't even really have to demonstrate the poses anymore. Usually I can just blurt out the sanskrit name of the pose and most everyone takes it, with a few others following in the motions of those who understood. Most of the time I'm just saying "inhale up", "exhale down" for the entire practice. Sometimes I think that people just need the drill sargent there keeping them from stopping and saying to themselves "that's enough for today".
Creating a blog and personal site, again...
God, will it never end? Starting the ultimate back-burner project, again, that is. Being a web designer with clients, your personal site is the most back-burner, I should be doing something else but I don't want to, project. I mean, my freelance web design business site should be even more important of a non-paid back-burner project than my personal site. But, alas, I am feeling the distraction demon strong right now, so here I go...
I had to write this last paragraph because if I wrote another "this is my first blog post" post, I'd freak.
