Thoughts for Company

I’m about to do something that I should’ve done a long time ago.

Now before you let your imagination run wild here, I should warn you that it’s probably not what you think. *cut to random Family Guy sketch that is related to nothing and goes on forever plus nine seconds*

Instead, I’m going to plant my butt on this stool, throw my fingers onto my laptop keyboard, and blog for the next half hour.  It’s already 3:03 PM on a Tuesday afternoon though, so I suppose I’m going to blog for the next 27 minutes - actually, make that 26.  Isn’t it mind-blowing how quickly time flies?  It’s July 2010.  I remember when 2010 seemed like a million years away.  I was going to be beautiful and accomplished and all that jazz by 2010.  Damn.

I say that I should’ve done “this” a long time ago because it’s been a good month or so since my last post.  Remember?  I wrote about pizza.  Because I like food.  And I like when people talk about food.  So you know those manuals on using Twitter where they tell you never to write about what you ate for breakfast because no one cares?  Well, obviously they don’t know much about anything and certainly shouldn’t be writing a manual, because I care!  And would you call me a “no one”?  (Gah, walked right into that one…)

Anyway, I can’t exactly articulate why I haven’t blogged in the past month, except to admit that this is, at least in part, due to laziness.  The other part, I’d speculate, is attributable to… life.

Life always gets in the way of all the important stuff.

Like blogging.

And flossing.

I’ve mentioned this before, but when people ask me what I blog about, there’s no other way to put it than, “It’s about me.”  A fascinating topic, I know.  Kindly hold your applause until the end of the presentation, please.  Why would anyone not be checking my blog every single morning as part of their daily routine, along with a cappuccino and a croissant (or is that just in Italy)?

I miss Italy, and I don’t even like croissants.

It is now 3:10 PM on a Tuesday afternoon.  I am attempting to blog, but things keep interrupting.  I can overhear my neighbours, who (very suspiciously) can be found lounging in their backyard at any and every time of day, blasting the Red Hot Chili Peppers or sawing something into smaller pieces.  I don’t care what they’re sawing, except that it can be very noisy when I’m trying to get some serious work done and am forced to open all the windows in the house lest I melt in the hot summer heat.

Unfortunately, the extreme temperatures that graced us with their presence last week seem to have abandoned us now.  I’m hoping summer isn’t over quite yet, but I try not to get my hopes up.  I’ve been burned far too many times - except by the sun.  That would be a nice problem to have, no?  It makes me sad that the first day of summer is the longest day of the year, which means that the days get progressively shorter after that.  How’s that for half-empty glasses!

It’s 3:13 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and I’m reminded that I enjoy the process of writing.  Look, in the last 15 minutes (it’s actually 3:15 PM now on a Tuesday afternoon - everything else is so entertaining!) I’ve managed to string together a good number of words.  And the beauty of the Internet is that it doesn’t matter how painfully verbose I am because I own this space.  I can do whatever I please.  I bought this space with my own money.  (I could have bought five cent candies.  I should have.  Are they still five cents?)

And so I will continue to jot down randomness until I feel like stopping.

I like the freedom of this.  Now, where was I?

Right - a blog about me.  Or, as Seinfeld might put it, a blog about nothing.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

The thing is, with a topic like this, sometimes there’s not all that much to report.  (”Dear Diary: today, I didn’t leave my house, not even once.”)  But then sometimes there’s almost too much to report, and at those times I struggle with the decision to keep things to myself or to make them public.  I’m always conscious of how much to give away, because (contrary to popular belief) the things that go on in my life tend to involve other human beings who may not share the same affinity for TMI (that’s Too Much Information to those of you who are too cool for acronyms).  And part of me is scared that some random weirdo knows what I’m doing, but then again I guess I’m asking for it.

Lately, there’s been an awful lot to share.

I shouldn’t say awful.  Allow me to rephrase that.

There’s been a lot to share.  Only some has been awful.

I don’t even know where to begin!

I’ll start by saying this: I am so incredibly fortunate.  How else can I put it?  I am very lucky.  I am blessed.  I must have done something right in a previous life because things are pretty darn good.  Don’t mean to rub it in your face; it’s not as though I’m enjoying a massage on my hundred foot yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean.  I’m just saying that I shouldn’t complain.

This idea has been on my mind of late, as many around me enter the second quarter of their lives (knock on wood) and I eventually follow them.  It’s now 3: 24 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and I have a roof over my head and a belly full of popcorn.  (Random, I know, but such are the luxuries of working from home.  The comforts are available on demand, except when you run out of popcorn and don’t really feel like getting changed out of your pjs on a Tuesday afternoon to go to the store.)

So what’s been going on around here?  Well, everyone around me is having babies.  (Not everyone - just the women.)  It is a very exciting time in this regard.  I have a new appreciation for the wonders of the whole process.  The human body is amazingly resilient.  And life makes sure that everything works out just so.

On another note, I recently learned that someone I was once very, very close to but with whom I lost touch in recent years has fallen ill.  This broke my heart.  I cried when I found out.  Life isn’t fair.  Life makes no sense at all sometimes.

Suddenly, the fact that I had to wait two+ hours at the border in a sauna (some might have incorrectly referred to it as a “car”) and then three hours at the ferry terminal because we missed the boat by, oh, about two minutes (!) seems so petty.

Why do we need reminders to be grateful for life itself?  Regardless of how bad things may seem, there is still so much good everywhere.  I am surrounded by family and friends.  I am happy.  I am healthy.

What more is there?

It is 3:31 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and I have missed my self-imposed, half-hour deadline.  But I don’t care.  Remember?  The Internet and the wonderful freedom that it affords?  I’m going go take the next few minutes to re-read what I have written so far so I know where to take the rest of this post.

But quite frankly, I’m surprised that you’re still reading too.   Thank you.  It means a lot.

It always surprises me to hear people say, “Hey, you haven’t blogged much lately!” or “How are things going with your music?  I haven’t seen any new videos.”  How would they know to say this?  Call me self-important, but it makes my day to know that maybe, just maybe, someone cares that I do “this”.

Which is why I make a point of telling people when I’ve been stalking them on their blog or Facebook or Twitter or [insert name of today's social media darling here], because as creepy as it might sound, it’s also important that they know.

Sometimes I hear that someone stopped blogging because there wasn’t a point.  But there is a point.  Whether you know it or not, someone is following you (in the good way) and cares about you and what you have to say.  You may not believe it - trust me, I know from experience that it’s very easy not to believe it - but it’s true.

What you do impacts other people, even if you’re just writing your “stupid” blog.  I happen to like your stupid blog.  Very much!

And now it’s 3:36 PM on a Tuesday afternoon, and I am riding my unicycle down a one-way street to brevity school.

They should have that, brevity school.

I think it’s called Twitter.

Except sometimes people abuse Twitter and write these tweets where you have to click on a link to read the rest of the message.  Not a link to another site or article, but to the rest of the tweet.

Isn’t that crazy?

Brevity school.  There is still a need.

And now here is a random picture that I took.

I played Raiden Fighters at the ferry terminal.  But boy, was I ever pissed that it ate my quarter.  It was an American quarter!

Also, I don’t understand sponges.  How am I not spreading salmonella all over my almost-clean utensils?

It’s now 4:11 PM on a Tuesday afternoon. You’re still here?!

“Cooking shows again?! What, you wanna become a chef or something?” *smirks*

My mom asks this every time she walks into the family room and sees anything food-related on TV. Sure, the television has always been a great educator in our household, but really now…

She is hardly a fan of my cooking. Turns out my creations don’t slide down the throat as easily as the traditional Chinese dishes for which she is famous.

I do watch a disproportionate amount of the Food Network, though. No argument there.

One of my fave shows is, without a doubt, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. It’s not that I necessarily have an appetite for all of the down-home fare featured on “Triple D’s” (as it is affectionately known to fans).  The appeal lies in the notion that one’s pores and arteries magically seem to clog with the mere act of watching the show. And at least half the fun is simply marvelling at how the incredibly likeable host, Guy Fieri, can actually down all that food without it showing more than it already does.

That said, there are inevitably at least a couple options from each show that would warrant a long road trip across America.  Or in my case, a short flight down to San Diego!

Life is tough, eh? Weekends in sunny California, digging my toes into the warm sands of Coronado Beach… But before you airmail me that jealous punch to the nose, you must realize my life is a picnic no longer. My European adventure last year certainly left me worse for wear, cibariously speaking (and yes, I had to Google that word too!). There is no real gelato or pizza outside of Italy.

Or so I thought, until I caught the Real Deal Italian episode of Triple D’s featuring Pizzeria Luigi.

*Watch for the multiple Nick Nolte appearances, beginning at around 2:42.

Our party (and oh, what a party it was, lounging on the patio beneath a large beach umbrella and a clear blue sky, within wafting distance of a couple of hoodlums smoking up!) ordered three varieties of the famous Luigi pizza: the Leonardo, the Donatello, and the Vegan. I guess they ran out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle names.

Oh, the crispy, thin crust; the sweet herbed sauce; the fresh and delicate toppings; the generous wedges… 18 inches of gut-busting bliss.  The meal was fantastic.  Light and delicious and flavourful and not at all like what North Americans mistakenly call pizza.  For those looking for the stuffed-crust, been-to-the-edge-and-back, stacked-high-and-mighty novelties, your style this ain’t.  But if, like me, you yearn for the kind of pizza you enjoyed in a Tuscan castle but without the long flight, look no further.

You certainly can’t argue with the price, either; just $2.50 per gigantic slice, or up to $18.50 for the most ornate version.

A few words of caution: don’t forget to BYO fork and knife (if that’s your style) AND don’t be shy with taking a napkin to the tops of certain varieties of pie before shoving them into your piehole (unless you have an aversion to chewing) AND don’t forget that (IMHO) food never tastes as good when you’re still - very blissfully - in a food coma from a delicious lunch of BBQ chicken from the La Jolla Open Aire Market (that’s la-HOY-ya and not la-JOE-la, FYI) AND don’t think you’re being prudent by saving a slice for the plane ride because the crust will be a soggy mess after you cleverly smush it between two paper plates and stuff it in a big paper bag and close the top while your dinner is still warm because this hardly does the flavours any justice at all and then it will definitely taste like tomato-topped cardboard that you dropped in a puddle (though this is hardly Luigi’s fault).

But aside from that, Pizzeria Luigi will still be on our hit list the next time we jet set our way down to San Diego.  Until then, I’ll just have to try out their recipe for the Mona Lisa pizza - arm-hair optional.

Standing in the painfully long and unnecessary queue for the 9:20 pm showing of Iron Man 2 in Imax, I reluctantly leafed through a complimentary copy of Famous.  Sex and the City 2 was featured in article after article after article, none of which interested me whatsoever.

But then something caught my eye.

“Is that a nipple?!” I shouted, incredulously.

Fortunately, it was not a nipple of one of the Sex ladies (though I hear the movie just might feature such frightening images).

Instead, it was the nipple of a hairy man whose armpit had become the unlikely home of an avalanche.

And next to the avalanche was an invitation to “rub and sniff” it, “to start an avalanche of fresh smells in your nose cave”.

I couldn’t recall the last time someone had invited me to engage in a good “scratch and sniff” - or if I’ve ever, in my entire life, had an avalanche of fresh smells in my nose cave.  I was used to scents like grape and strawberry and chocolate, but never anything nearly as potentially exciting as body odour and/or a mask for body odour!

And besides, who was I to argue with the hairy-nippled, avalanched-armpitted man?!

I must admit though, I thought at least thrice about actually raising the magazine up to my face.  Sure, maybe if I took it home with me, but in public?  In the presence of people with whom I wished to remain friends?  And I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward about bringing that hairy nipple dangerously close to my mouth.

But I did it.  Right there, in the middle of a long theatre lineup, with plenty more time to kill in the presence of my fellow moviegoers.

Wouldn’t you?

According to Old Spice, the Matterhorn Antiperspirant “smells so much like a fresh mountain that if your lady friends ever summit the actual Matterhorn they’ll think, “This mountain smells just like (insert your name)’s armpit.”"

I didn’t really know what an avalanche would smell like, but if I should ever find myself caught in one, I’d hope that my last breath was surrounded by that sweet stench of the Old Spice man’s armpits.

I am one lucky devil, spoiled beyond all reason.

I know I live a life of great privilege, not the least important demonstration of which is running in the right social circles.

Take this week’s most thrilling event as an example.

My ultimate groupie friend took me as her +1 (literally - my name was “+1″ on the guest list!) to The Peak FM’s intimate acoustic concert by David Gray, who is in town for two shows at the Orpheum.

If you’re not familiar with David Gray’s music, check out his latest video, for the song “Fugitive“.

Neither of us knew what to expect. My friend received the call a couple days prior to the event and was told to show up at the studio on Thursday afternoon. The message was taken by a family member, so she didn’t have the chance to get any details. Naturally, then, the caller neglected to mention that a) my friend was one of maybe ten contest winners, allowing us unprecedented access to the artist, b) we would have the opportunity to ask David (yes, we are on a first name basis now!) some questions, c) we would be able to take a photo with David, and d) we could ask David for one autograph each.

Say what?!

So our preparations were grossly inadequate. I took a short pause from work to attend, bringing little more than my camera. (I figured that I might be able to sneak a quick photo when his handlers weren’t looking.)

But then I found myself in a room of about 50 people, one of whom was David. Gray.

And he was, maybe 10 feet away from me.

Shocking.

After the usual introductions by the radio station’s DJs, David took to the little stage with his acoustic guitar and another guitarist, performing four songs before engaging the audience in a brief Q&A session. This was my first time seeing him live, and despite the pared down accompaniment and notable absence of any sort of production gimmicks often used by artists of his calibre, I was blown away.

David Gray earned the right to my attention, my awe.  His music is art, an incredibly powerful tool to evoke emotion - and David is a true master.

Of course, I hadn’t prepared anything intelligent to ask him, but the rabid fans next to me on the couch (we were seated in couches!) had more than enough questions for the rest of us. Grown women, gushing like giddy little school girls, clutching every one of his albums, crying during the performance, rambling like idiots, offering to do a duet with him… it was almost embarrassing.

Never before have I felt more civilized!

I thought of asking, “Man United or Manchester City?” after learning of David’s birthplace, but decided against it. I was acting civilized today, remember. (Well, that and I didn’t want to look like I hadn’t done my proper Wikipedia research before attending.)

David stuck around after his set to take photos and sign autographs, despite having just done a radio interview and likely needing to rest and prep before the evening’s performance. He took it all in stride, joking with the group and demonstrating that some international superstars are indeed down-to-earth folk. Not a single diva move from David - how refreshing!

But what began as a generous offer by my contest-winning pal became a catalyst for what should be a turning point in my musical endeavours. Someone else in the room (but not Ryan Johnson*, who was also there!) asked David what inspired him.

And his response was something along the lines of,

You can’t wait around for inspiration to show up. You have to make yourself sit down and just write a song.

Time to get off my ass, I see!

So if you don’t like what I’m about to create, you have David Gray to blame.

*Why didn’t I talk to Ryan Johnson? Because I didn’t know what to say, besides inviting him for a round of golf. It’s just too soon for me…

To continue our series of pho-themed posts…

The City of Vancouver has introduced a new payment system.  Citizens now have the option to “pay by pho”, as evidenced by Exhibit A.

It was only a matter of time before the delightful Vietnamese noodle soup became the currency of choice for local governments.

I love brainstorming funny names for things.

If there was a marginally respectable job that would allow me to do this all day and somehow be compensated generously for it, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

My brother and I recently amused ourselves during a long car ride by taking turns spitting out options for driving schools.  (In the end, I think it was a toss-up between “Good Enough Driving School” and “Near Miss Driving School”.  My mom unfortunately missed the point of this exercise and, with a straight face, offered “Ace Driving School”.  Pat on the back!)

Pho restaurants are another popular topic.  I’ve got a few gems up my sleeve but can’t share them here for copyright purposes, obviously - much like how some women choose baby names long before they are pregnant (or even in a relationship) but refuse to tell anyone lest their best frenemy steal it.

After all, it’s not entirely inconceivable that I open up a pho restaurant solely for the name.  (Trust me; it’s that good.)

But I must say, I was extremely impressed with the ingenuity of one particular restaurant at the holy grail of funny store names, Parker Place in Richmond.

And so, naturally, I had to take a photo to share with you.

I immediately sent this to a friend who (for some reason unbeknownst to me!) doesn’t hear things in an Asian accent in his head, and the joke was lost on him - so you may or may not be entertained.

Although… I’ve been informed that if one were to pronounce the word “pho” correctly (like “fuh”), such a restaurant name would not actually be remarkable at all.

Oh well, at least I got mine!

For breakfast, breakfast-dessert; brunch, brunch-dessert; lunch, lunch-dessert; linner, linner-dessert; dinner, (dinner-)dessert; plus lots and lots of snacks…

…I could just swim in peanut butter all day.  *drools*

I wonder how many of these 10 (ten!) kilogram (kilogram!) buckets (buckets!) of peanut butter I would need to fill a swimming pool.

Maybe I should get a swimming pool first…

Baby steps.

Ooey, gooey, peanut-buttery baby steps.

Mmm…

What pride I had in Vancouver’s collective conscience last week!

Walking to the Canada Line after the glorious Round 1, Game 1 victory of our beloved Vancouver Canucks, we came across a young woman strutting her dog down the street.  (I say “strutting” because this was oh-so-swanky Yaletown, after all.  And who wears sunglasses after 10 pm, anyway?!  And high heels to walk their dog?!  But I digress, as usual.)

The poor cars attempting to exit the downtown core were at a standstill in the street, so the young “lady” (term used loosely) had a rather sizable audience when the big pooch did his business on the sidewalk.  Silly girl - she didn’t even bother to pick up after the beast.

But rest assured, the dozens of Canucks fans who caught her brown-handed (or not, because she didn’t actually pick it up!) gave her a giant, excrement-laced piece of our minds.  I swear the heckling could have been heard across the bridge.

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEY! Aren’t you going to pick that up?!” we all screamed in unison, fuming with rage and indignation.

To which she replied, “I know, I forgot a bag.  So I’m just going to get one, and then I’ll come back to pick it up.”  (And I’m pretty sure there were more than a few “like”s peppered throughout those sentences.)

Man, you should’ve been there to hear the riot of laughter that ensued after that gem… You would have thought Conan stayed in town an extra night!

Fortunately, a generous and well-prepared passerby offered a bag from his car, which was parked near the scene of the crime.  So not only did the entire city have a laugh at the dog owner’s expense, she still had to pick up her crap in the end.

I hope there was a hole in the bag.

What a most entertaining way to cap off a most entertaining evening!

Running is widely regarded as the simplest form of exercise.

Want to get fit, quickly and easily?  Just lace up your running shoes and go!  There’s no need for fancy gear or equipment that you don’t already have.  It can be done any time, anywhere, and by anyone (barring some sort of physical impediment).  So what if your gym is closed all week for the Jewish holidays, or even a forklift can’t lift your gym partner off the couch?  It’s just you and the open road.  No more excuses.

But, as I learned the hard way this weekend, there’s a lot more to the art of running than you might expect - and it’s going to require serious commitment and mental faculty to make it work.

You may recall that I’d been taking some lessons in the Alexander Technique with local guru Dr. Gabriella Minnes Brandes.  So when I learned that Gaby was bringing renowned running innovator and Alexander teacher Malcolm Balk from Montreal to deliver a series of workshops, I carved 4 hours out of my busy weekend (ha!) and patiently waited for Malcolm to turn me into a running artist.

About the clinic (from the Art of Running website):

Learn to run efficiently, effectively and enjoyably at one of Malcolm Balk’s ART OF RUNNING workshops!

‘Art of Running’ workshops are based on the proven principles of the Alexander Technique, which encourage good use of the body and greater awareness of the way it functions. Malcolm Balk is a Level 4 athletics coach, certified Pose Method instructor and a world expert on Alexander Technique and running. He shows how to achieve and maintain fitness without injury and overcome self-imposed limitations to successful running.

I have to admit, seeing this video of Malcolm running on ice in regular running shoes didn’t exactly make it a tough sell.  And I figured the $100 fee wasn’t too steep if I considered how I’d be able to avoid all future ice skate rentals…

To be honest, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with running.  My dad was supposedly a runner in his younger years, though my mom never saw such a need to rush anywhere.  And I’m no scientist, but I guess the powers of genetics managed to create a wholly mediocre hybrid.  I recall participating in grade school track and field clubs, though I certainly can’t claim to have excelled.  I favoured events like the 100 m “dash”, 4x100 m relay (can’t blame me, it’s a team effort!) and long jump - anything under 30 seconds, I suppose.

At that age, you’re encouraged to try basically everything.  There were years when I, the least tall of all girls in my class, was selected for high jump training at a nearby school.  (Maybe I was so bad they brought me just to catch up, or they just wanted to stop me from distracting our legitimate athletes during practices.)

In any case, I enjoyed the social aspects, mainly -  “training” after class at the boys’ school and missing tests for track meets.  As for those “long distance” fitness tests (where the runs should have taken less than 10 minutes) in high school - I’ve effectively erased all memories of when we may or may not have hid behind some bushes and pretended we ran 3 laps instead of 2.

I’ve never considered myself a runner.  Sure, I ran a few Vancouver Sun Runs and posted decent times.  I even ran at lunch hours during some of my university co-op work terms, either with my manager or with a fellow employee who moonlighted as a running coach.  (Did I tell you about the first time we ran together?  I later learned it was a 7.7 km loop around UBC, completed in under 35 minutes - no big feat for real runners, but for a short-legged poser I’ll take it!  Anyway, mid-run and desperately out of breath, I told him I felt like I was going to die, and he ignored me completely and kept on his way.  And it wasn’t exactly like I could just stop by myself, deep in the woods of the UBC forest, without any idea of where I was… I still had to report back to work, after all!)  But I’ve never (intentionally) run more than 10 km at once, and certainly not with the same pretentious vigour of those virtuous marathon trainees around me.

Running simply failed to excite me.  I didn’t seem to experience the same “runner’s high” that I thought I was supposed to feel.  I got bored.  Still, I went through the motions because it’s good for you and, let’s be honest, I’m kind of a sucker for those things.  I was always far happier to be done the run than to have actually been running in the first place.

So when my knee started acting up (and I found myself facing an unrelated physical issue), I took that as my excuse to stop running.  Fortunately, this “ailment” didn’t seem to affect some other, more interesting physical activities.  Funny how that works out perfectly, eh?

When Malcolm first came to deliver the workshops in Vancouver last fall, we had the opportunity to meet, although my knee prevented me from participating.  Malcolm, bless him, called me on my bullshit and said that I could indeed still run, despite my supposed knee problems.  “Alright”, I replied incredulously, “I’ll come to your workshop next time!” - which is a particularly convenient line to use if you’re not sure exactly when “next time” is.

But “next time” turned out to be the past weekend.  I still hadn’t been running for some time, though it wasn’t for a lack of effort (not entirely, anyway.)  I had tried to run on the treadmill the previous week in Vegas, but my knee still hurt, so I was relegated to entertaining the spa’s trail mix dispenser for the remainder of our gym time.

Turns out the running motions I was so sternly attempting to execute were all wrong!  How is it possible that running - something considered so natural, so innate, so instinctual - could be performed so poorly after all these years of evolution?  Apparently, children running barefoot in the yard are fairly good examples of how we old folks should do it, how we used to do it, before we overcomplicated things, learned and then reinforced bad habits.

We spent much of the afternoon session outside in the gorgeous Vancouver sunshine.  And while I can’t explain the concepts nearly as thoroughly (or in such an amusing manner) as Malcolm, I did pick up a few good points.  That “heel-toe” business?  Now why would you want your momentum working against you, forcing you in the opposite direction as you try to propel yourself forward?  Putting on the brakes, literally, is a waste of energy.  Same goes for those long, grandiose strides (lean and leggy runners be damned!) and bopping up and down any more than a few inches.

Of course, Malcolm shared many more juicy tidbits, but I’ll have to leave some of those for him to explain.

Malcolm recorded a video of our running form “before” and “after” his workshop.  The whole group then watched as Malcolm ripped our form to shreds, albeit in his complimentary but constructive sort of way.  And although there were almost a dozen participants at my session, not once did I feel like I didn’t get enough individual attention.  In fact, the group setting gave us the opportunity to learn from others and ample time to work through each of the exercises.  We even did some short hill runs, which - and I swear it’s true - did not even feel like hills.

I managed to squeeze a few extra tips out of Malcolm regarding my bum knee, which shouldn’t be a problem after some basic exercises and adjustments to my running form.

And, perhaps most importantly, I left the workshop surprisingly motivated to take up running again.

If you’re at all interested in running, I’d highly recommend attending Malcolm’s next workshop, likely in Fall 2010.  But until then, you can get a head start by picking up his book, Master The Art of Running: Raising Your Performance with the Alexander Technique.  It’s no substitute for time with Malcolm in the flesh, but it may save you some jabs at your running form when he critiques your videos.

Dedicated to my brother, a new homeowner.

New Roommate

No one wants to find
A curly hair on their soap
So please bring your own