Dogging update; atheists

Wow! I've been working on a new training game with Petra and it's making a big difference. Here's the idea: you and your dog are walking along and your dog sees something distracting and heads toward it. You stop, call your dog's name, and start to back up. When your dog turns her head, you mark it ("yes!") and give out some treats. (Several treats, handed out one at a time, builds duration of attention.) At level two, you do everything the same but don't call your dog's name. This teaches your dog "when there is a distraction, look at the Human."

I've been doing this with Petra for about a week, and she's making great progress on her dog-feakout problem. We even went to PetSmart yesterday with no major incidents.

There are some ads on the T that brighten my day every time I see them. They say "Good without God? 40 million Americans are." It's uncommon that somebody stands up for people like me in public life. Spreading the idea that atheists aren't bad people may seem like a small step, but it means a lot when politicians and other public figures like to use me as a placeholder for Bad People.

Farm shares are exciting

F. and I get to pick up our farm share today. Last week was our first week ever of farm share vegetables, and it's been awesome. F. has been making and freezing soup -- we would have just eaten it, but his parents visited and brought at least a week's worth of food so we have to store it somehow. This week we get some greens, various root vegetables, apples, and basil (from a local farm that has greenhouses). I might use the basil and carrots to make Thai curry. That would be delicious. So far I love having a farm share because I get a surprise every week. It's like Christmas but with vegetables.

Is this a joke?

What does a cow say?

language and mindfulness

I took a break from work to read about meditation:

http://antaiji.dogen-zen.de/eng/adult18.shtml

Its title was “Stop being mindful” – meaning not exactly that one should stop being mindful, but that if one is actively being mindful then one isn’t actually being mindful. I think.

Anyway, part of the advice in this article was to “let the walk walk, let the talk talk” – if you do sitting meditation, you aren’t “just” sitting, because you're bringing your concept of yourself along. It brought me to thinking about Hindi and the idea of saying mujhse meditation nahi hoga (“meditation will not be happening using me as an instrument”). Normally that kind of construction is used to deflect responsibility when saying things like "I won't be able to come to your party" ("Coming to your party won't be happening with me"). The active subject disappears, and so does the location of the blame for whatever is not going to be happening.

It’s kind of nonsense to say the positive version of such a sentence, but meditation is a somewhat nonsensical activity as far as I’m concerned, so I like the idea. Mujhse meditation hota hai: “meditation happens [with/using] me.” It removes the self/ego from the activity and lets the activity happen. I don't feel like I can actually do this very well in my own practice, but for me this is a new (and possibly useful) way of conceptualizing it.

I got a new gi

My new gi is one of those super-light Vulkan ones. I've only worn it a couple of times, but I like it a lot. It really is soft and light, and it's going to be great for summer training. It's slightly bigger than I'd like -- mostly it's just that the sleeves are too long -- but that's fine, I'll have the Atama women's gi to compete in. My favorite thing about the Vulkan is the pants. They're not too short! They're not too wide! The drawstring is a delightfully effective implementation of pants-closing technology!

Moving and its related responsibilities have kept me away from the mat more than I wanted in the past few weeks, but I think I've settled on a sustainable sports schedule. BJJ 3 times a week, biking to work 3 times a week (non-BJJ weekdays only, for scheduling reasons), and strength training at the Lady Gym twice a week. It sounds like a lot, but it feels like a light schedule compared to when I was also trying to work in that boxing class. It helps that I'm getting more used to the cycling, too.

Hey wow

I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I've finally gotten used to the biking. I biked to work yesterday (and back, of course), and I was not exhausted afterward! I was tired, but I was still capable of doing things like cooking dinner and hanging out.

The bike still needs some adjusting so it will fit better (I feel like the handlebars are too far away). But yesterday any soreness I had was from that, not from the actual exercise of biking. Maybe that means I should dial up the effort a bit, now that I've settled in. I would like to work on getting faster.

My parents are in town and we've been talking about wedding stuff. At the risk of cross-pollinating with the Other Blog, I will tell you what's up. First, I had ordered some sample invitations from Saima Says Design. They arrived, and were awesome. Second, Mom and I started talking about where and how to plan the mehndi party (my mom gets to be in charge of it). It will be extremely fun, but difficult because we don't have a house locally. We're thinking of getting a B&B for the day instead. That would be exactly the kind of living room environment we need. Alternatively, I bet we could ask a hotel to set up a meeting room with couches and coffee tables instead of the usual conference chairs.

train eat rest

That's the advice I got from Alvaro Romano's ginastica natural seminar. Train eat rest, in that order. No skipping the eating or the resting. No train eat eat eat rest, no train rest eat, no train train rest train... you get the idea. He actually talked through various disallowed permutations of training, eating, and resting for several minutes.

I have not exactly been following that advice for the past few days. Tuesday wasn't that bad -- I biked to work in the morning (it took about 1:20) but I got lucky and there was a severe thunderstorm in the evening so Feanil came to pick me up. Wednesday was ok, too: my first personal training appointment. She's going to help me come up with strength training workouts that will fit in with my biking and BJJ!

Thursday, though, was brutal. I biked to work in the morning (1:10) and then biked even harder on the way home because I had to make it back for BJJ (also about 1:10 because I stopped for lemonade). Got to the house, picked stuff up, and went to BJJ. I should have been exhausted at that point, but I guess biking muscles are not required for BJJ because I was not having any trouble rolling. In the future we're going to try to hit the advanced class -- we'd been going to the beginner class in order to coordinate with A., but I feel like tomorrow we should either go to both classes or just go to the later one. After BJJ we went to see a very cool band with some cool folks. So Thursday was more like train eat train train eat drink rest. Note how there is no drinking in Romano's prescription? There's a reason for that.

On Friday I was beat. I dragged myself through a day of work, then came back to the neighborhood for a boxing class. The workout is usually challenging, but this time it was rough. I still hadn't recovered from the day before. In fact its been a few days now and my leg muscles are still much tighter than they ought to be. Lesson learned: biking to work requires extra stretching. I took yesterday as a rest day. F. and I played some tennis, but I'm not good enough at tennis yet to actually get tired doing it. I feel a lot better. I've been thinking I may want to only bike to work 2-3 days per week until I get more used to it. Since it's not my only activity, I can't have it killing my energy for my real sport.

And today's round two of the personal training! I'm excited.

proof of purchase

Now... where should I bike to?

mission accomplished

A month ago now, F. and I drove to Boston. Petra slept the whole way. When we got here, our house wasn't ready to move into yet, but we took a walk around our neighborhood anyway and checked it out. This park is at the end of our street:


...and this bike path is behind the park:


F. and I moved into the new apartment yesterday. The movers couldn't schedule delivery until the 6th, so right now we're sleeping on an air mattress, sitting on the floor, and eating a lot of take-out. But the place is awesome. This is our house:



Petra raced around the place all day yesterday while we cleaned and settled in. I think she likes it. She's still avoiding the roomba, though.

Things to do in Boston

It's not that I am looking for things to do in Boston. I mean that there are a lot of things that I already need to do once I arrive.

STEP 1: Buy (probably) this bike.


STEP 2: See if I want to get married here...

or here...

or here...

or here...

or here...

etc.

STEP 3: Find a place to do BJJ.


STEP 4: Go on dates.

current events

A couple of weekends ago I made a delicious breakfast. That's a tortilla topped with baby greens, a homemade veggie burger, cheese, a fried egg, and salsa. There's avocado, tomato, and jicama on the side. We were just trying to use up the food lying around my kitchen in preparation for the move -- lucky that my kitchen has delicious things lying around.


Then guess what I did.


I know, right?

my new work wardrobe

I've been thinking about what I'll need to wear to work now that I have an actual job. I have some clothes I like already. For anything else I need, I plan to make sure it fits in with a particular style, so it all goes together. My new aesthetic? "Hot Librarian." I mean, I've already got the glasses.

I got new glasses

My new glasses are so stylish. I kind of think my face looks better with them than without them. I just want to wear them all the time.

I also had a good BJJ day. But I am still dissatisfied with my guard, even as my top game improves steadily.

goshin jitsu

I am ashamed to say I sandbagged a little at my first day back to goshin jitsu. I could have put a lot more into the conditioning rounds, but my body was feeling whiny so I slacked off. I want to say it was because I wasn't quite sure what would be in the next round or how many rounds there would be, but I would be putting a pretty face on the plain old lazy reality.

Still, I was glad to be there and I'm definitely going back. It's a good workout and I learn a lot about stand-up fighting, which is a weak spot for me. Goals for next time:

1. Tire myself out. Leave it all on the mat.
2. Think about posture a lot. Weight off my heels, no slouching, etc.
3. Punches with good form.

Today's jiujitsu day. Rokk!

Re-BJJuvenation

I went to two BJJ-related seminars in the past month, and they have kick-started my motivation to do lots of BJJ. The problem is that I am supposed to be working on my thesis, so I can't actually train as much as I would like to. There's also the chance that once I get done with the thesis-writing, my motivation will evaporate.

But! The thesis will be substantially finished today, if all goes well. And it'll be really really complete by Monday (after I build and measure the antenna I'm tweaking). The sooner I do this stuff, the sooner I can start kickin' ass.

I had an ass-kicking-related dream last night, too. I was at a conference or tournament (I'm not sure which) and a guy I didn't know kept trying to grab various parts of me. Wrist, chest, arm, head, whatever. And I kept beating him up. That's actually pretty unusual for me, because normally I fail at dream-fighting. For some reason it worked this time. I was really vicious, too. The guy would grab me, I would choke him out or punch him (there was one time I kneed him in the head), he'd quit, and I'd walk away. Then he'd turn up again. I should be tired from a night that active, but I feel pretty ok.

to the gun show

I'm in Boston right now, at the end of an apartment-hunting trip for my new job. I've been staying with A., who took me with her to a very nice gym. It was only for women! It was pretty and clean! It had all kinds of classes and things that you can go to, but which I probably would not have time for.

What we did was better than classes, anyway. After running for a half hour, we lifted weights! It is so much better to do that with a buddy. Weight lifting is boring, except that afterward you have more muscles. I would like to have those. And y'know, I'm glad there were only women there, because I was a lot more comfortable not knowing what I was doing without the stereotypical Gym Guys of my university hanging around. And now I know what I am doing, so I can go back to school and not feel weird.

Steamy

I microwaved a samosa this morning. It was inside a baggie, and when I opened the bag the steam burned both my thumbs. It's been making things difficult for me all day. I know this was a dumb thing to do. I'm not proud of it.

But I am happy about something else! There's a bike trail from my new neighborhood to my new job! It's about a 10 mile ride-- enough that I will probably need to buy a new, more distance-oriented bike. Did I say "need to"? I meant "finally have an excuse to," hooray!

Dear Petra,

I am starting to understand that you were reacting that way to strange people and dogs when you were on a leash because you associated badness with them. I imagine I can't have improved matters at all by correcting you for barking at strange people and dogs. That just led to more bad associations. Am I right?

Anyway, I hope you are enjoying all the treats you're getting when we go on walks these days. If you keep acting calmly around other people and dogs, you will keep getting treats. I, for one, am enjoying how you seem to like me more these days (is it because you finally know what I want from you?) and how our walks are a lot less stressful. A little change in training methods goes a long way, huh?

Love,
KC