fire breathing dragon

today in my bikram class, i decided to challenge one of my patterns and move my location. i set up in the front row in the far right corner and prepared myself for class. i felt a little unnerved this morning because of a fatigue day (due to a monthly cycle thing...) and i thought being right up in front would keep my mind from wandering. little did i know i was setting up right below the dragon. you see, the vents are apparently in the front and the back of the yoga studio. hot air blasted through the vents the entirety of the class. it did help my focus. i had to concentrate on staying upright! ultimately, it was an amazing class. i did all of the postures to the full extent of my energy and only slipped out of bow early. i had my typical hopping around session in bow pulling, but one day i will do a full split in the air.

in the middle of the class.

pizza and ice cream kinda weekend

seriously, the most delicious things ever.

i was bad this weekend. well i guess you would call it bad. i celebrated memorial day with ice cream, pizza, beer, grilled corn, and burgers. i didnt eat all of this in one sitting, but still.

first, the ice cream. i had never tried vegan ice cream before until i tried soy delicious. its apparently sweetened with fruit which i initially thought was strange, but it is so yummy that i dont care! another thing i appreciate about this product is that i dont have to eat a ton of it to feel tasty ice cream warm fuzzies.

now, the pizza. another thing i had not tried- follow your heart mozzarella on pizza. i followed the crust recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance sort of (i added spices to my crust), topped it with the FYH and vyes peperoni. dear Lord, thank you for pizza. i am sure it is the food of heaven. (cant get the picture to load cuz blogger is being retarded.)

otherwise, i had a nice three day weekend vacation with Brandon. hooray!

tulsa

this face i am making is scary and hilarious. but you better believe she did not knock me down!!

well it is summer and that means Hustlin' Rollers season.
we went to tulsa this weekend to face off with the Green County Rollergirls who stood 12th in the region. i say stood because we knocked them out of their spot. Memphis beat them 87 to 130. we maintained the lead the entire bout. i went out as second jammer and claimed 10 points for memphis.
i have to give these girls their props though. they are not exactly small and they hit like mac trucks. it was a hard fight but in the end, we just played well as a team and we played defensively. its a good thing that we had that atlanta experience to give us a better idea of how to keep an opposing jammer down while helping our own out.
we also got to do a bit of venturing through the city's mayfest while we were in town. they had a fabulous representation of artists along with rock climbing, and very nonvegan fair food that i stayed far away from. rock climbing at the festival was exciting because i have always wanted to do it but because i am a bit scared of heights, i have never had the nerve. i found it surprisingly easy. Jessie said i just scampered up the wall like a spider monkey.
look i am lead jammer!!! (love it when that happens!)

they say the heat makes people crazy

in memphis, people commonly say, "it isn't the heat it is the humidity." but the end result is all the same. people get cranky when they get hot. add that with the humidity and some folks lose they dang minds.

since bikram yoga is heated to around 105 degrees, i always wondered if people sometimes got really frustrated and ran screaming out of the room. instead, today i witnessed a student arguing with the teacher in the middle of class. really weird. let me backtrack a bit- first she drank water while the rest of the class was in the middle of a pose. that's not a good thing to do in a bikram yoga class as it distracts the others in  class. a few poses later, she refused to get into the pose and was told to just sit down. after that, the whole arguing thing happened. so it was more of a continual disregard for the class and the teacher. all that to say, it put the rest of the class in a weird place. our teacher was able to pull it all together anyway and we got through the class with smiling faces. it was strange, then annoying, then comical.

things i have learned from bikram yoga:

if it hurts, you need it. 

life is not comfortable, learn to be present and ok with being uncomfortable and/or suffering. let it be. 

triangle is not easy. most people's hips are not as strong as they should be. 

lock the (freaking!!!) knee. 

locust is not really the devil, the attitude i have toward it is.

commit.

less think, more action.

BREATHE!!!

oh! and as an aside- i got an A in methods. that's right. heh.

weekend paintball, i.e. Underdog's Birthday Bash

Brandon and i traveled to Nashville this weekend to celebrate Third Eye Vision (pump paintball team) member Underdog. His lovely wife Fatine (and i hope i am spelling that right) threw him a surprise birthday party. it was fabulous to hear everyone's excuses for not being able to hang out after playing paintball until about 3:30pm.  Jeff (Underdog) and the usual suspects plus some Memphis Flair (Brandon) went to Ruby Tuesday after embarrassing some military paintball players out on the field. its always makes me giggle when people shooting 15 balls a second accuse pump players, who have to pump the gun each time they want to shoot, of cheating. usually it just means they are mad they got beat by someone playing with a slower gun. 

this is Jeff swearing at everyone for lying to him/not telling him about the surprise party:

and Underdog and Assassin 8 (wearing a true ballers jersey for irony's sake)

$5 cover

filmmaker Craig Brewer has created a web-based miniseries for mtv, casting memphis musicians as partially true-to-life partially fictional versions of themselves.  within each mini episode, memphis musicians are showcased. viewing $5 cover made me aware of memphis music that i had not previously been exposed to. i have heard other people mention similar phenomena: "we have roller derby in memphis??" memphis is an unquestionably rough and tumble city with lots issues we will not discuss here, but the artistry of Craig Brewer puts all that aside in an effort to return to the heart of the music and the characters that live in this city. $5 cover promotes this city in the way it should have always been promoted but no one could quite figure out.

be on the lookout for musicians Amy LaVere, Valerie June, and bands Two Way Radio and Snowglobe. i must admit to being impressed with the talent in this town!

check $5 cover out on:

http://www.mtv.com/fivedollarcover/videos.jhtml

the fine folks at live from memphis have also created accompaniment material in the form of short clips called flipside memphis. where $5 cover has fictionalized memphis, flipside shows the world the reality.

http://www.livefrommemphis.com/projects/flipsidememphis