I think my frustration for still not having a name for this blog thing is apparent in my new title change. Even though I kind of like it, it's not going to stay. At least I didn't try to morph any clarinet puns into the title, like "Good Reeds". That makes me both cringe and feel nauseous.
My summer goal was to get through a bunch of James Joyce books. I am about halfway done. With the first book. Okay, if you have read Dubliners you may agree or disagree with what I'm about to say. If you haven't read it, in my personal opinion, you aren't missing much. I get that the stories are supposed to be snapshots of life in Dublin, and that the main character of the stories have some sort of revelation in the last few moments of the story (which seems to be building toward a major event in the plot, but each story grows increasingly more anticlimactic), and that's really all it's been for the eleven stories that I have ambled through. The only story that was memorable was the one about the two boys who skip school and befriend a perv. I guess it's less of a befriending and more of a creepy crossing of paths. Nevertheless I am still reading whenever I get a chance, since the last story, entitled The Dead seems the most promising (but that's based wholly on the title), but of course it's the last story. I might even skip Portrait of an Artist (etc...) and read Ulysses and then stop after that. Finnegan just seems like too many pages of...I don't even know.
The most recent focus in my life these past couple months has been working out, which should have been my summer goal. If you had told me a few months ago when I joined the gym that is literally across my street (really no excuses) that I'd spend a lot of my time doing yoga, I totally would have believed you, as I have done yoga before, really love it, and it's held at a reasonable time. If you had told me that I would become the type of person who would wake up at 5:30 AM for a spinning class that starts at 6:15, or buy boxing gloves and take that on as a new hobby, there's no way I would believe you.
I feel like doing yoga is comparable to enjoying a fine wine. You appreciate it over a long period of time, the smallest of details become important, everyone gets something different from the experience, and you can go at your own pace. Except for this one time in class where we had three minutes of "free" yoga time where we could do anything we wanted. Everyone went nuts with super advanced poses. Some dude did a hand stand against the wall, this girl was doing some amazing other thing where just her hands were on the floor; I just did a few poses and then sat on my mat sipping water, feigning exhaustion and dehydration.
If yoga is like wine, then boxing and spinning are like shots (typical server/musician comparing things to booze). Small doses, but holy crap it does the trick. Plus it gives me the chance to wake up in the morning and I have more daylight to actually get things done instead of waking up just in time to throw on my black uniform and rush to the T.
But my brain doesn't always work. For instance, just a few days ago I locked myself out of my apartment. No keys, no phone, nobody home. So I was forced to climb in through my window...we've all done it, right? And since I realized I was locked out half way through switching my laundry from the washer to the drier, the blind panic I felt prevented me from even attempting to start the damn drier. Which I realized almost too late. Clothes were dried, and I had to take a cab into work.
At this point I'm just rambling with no real thought process as to where this post is going. I guess I'm just having a reality check that summer is almost over. I didn't really do a whole lot aside from working out, and working at work, but it was relaxing. With the significant other back from Europe, life is even better. And he helped me film this work of art which has become inescapable:
And if you're wondering from where the title of this blog came, here is the incredibly explicit song, that I am currently enjoying way too much. Once again, incredibly explicit. You have been warned.
