Three observations about handstands from last week

Monday -- Pokemon was gone, and my class turned into a semiprivate with someone else and a substitute teacher who I will call Sink-Or-Swim. My results with SOS tend to be mixed, but she did something on this day that I really liked: had me kick up sideways to the mirror-facing wall, with one foot braced on it for balance, so that I could see myself sideways in the mirror. This let me, for the first time, adjust myself around AND see the adjustments. Sure, I've peeked sideways in the mirror before ("see that?") but somehow never when I could control my own body position and ALSO not worry about falling. Anyway, that stuff about pelvic tuck and "old man pants" is for real, my friends. The straight body is actually pretty extreme. Working on it.

Wednesday -- Pokemon still gone, this time the substitute was the tumbling teacher. Always a good time and a weird one, getting the gymnastics perspective. For this class we tried shoulder taps (none of us can do them) and then walking on hands, which is foreign but wasn't quite as awful as I expected. I managed to take 3 steps forward, 3 steps backward and, most fun anyway, 4 steps sideways. I like the sideways crab-walking; it's like block traversal but safe and reasonable for me to practice on my own.

Thursday -- we went to see Varekai, and the handbalancer was pretty funny. She pressed up on the same side every time she went up, and did about four really long one-arms all on the same side. A lesson. I wonder who it was... certainly not Alona Zhuravel, who's been in that role fairly recently, unless she was injured. I think we may have gotten an understudy.

My wrist's been a bit tweaky, and I'm taking good care of it because Bender is coming back for a four-week miniseries on pressing! That means I'm up to four handbalancing trainings per week for a while. I'm excited to see what Bender can do for me at this point, given that I've improved since the last time I worked with him.

The minimalist collects.

I got both of these at a local street festival yesterday:

Then, realizing that in the case of earrings I'm gaining much more quickly than I'm purging, I ordered a new earring rack. My current one is 17" by 17" and, though part of this may be the fault of necklaces, it's gotten pretty cramped. The replacement is a matched set of two new ones the same size. This seems okay -- just one collection, and of small items at that.

This post is also a test of the new LJ app for Android, which seems to streamline the inclusion of images rather better than the last one I tried.

Linky post: childfree, racism, stoicism, humor

I keep having these open in tabs. Time to post and close them.

270 reasons women choose not to have children. This page is definitely a superset of my own reasons -- the only big one of my own that I didn't see is "pregnancy and motherhood REWIRE YOUR BRAIN and that terrifies me. I don't want my brain rewired! I want at least a little bit of choice regarding who I love." But my favorite one on the page is the simple "I like to take naps".

I, Racist is quite good. It focuses mainly on how black people (should we just say "minorities"?) tend to think in terms of the group, where white people (should we just say "individuals who are part of the majority group"?) tend to think in terms of individuals, and feel individually attacked by discussions of majority/minority relations. Really interesting. I tend to think, maybe too simplistically, that such things would improve if we all thought more individually about everyone. I mean, I have minority status in some ways (woman in tech! woo!) and I hate hate HATE the idea of representing all women in tech in any way. But, at any rate, racism: frustrating issue for the ages.

7 ways to use stoic philosophy to improve your health and happiness -- Mark's Daily Apple gets around to reading Irvine. It's a good article, though not as good as the book it's talking about. I like the "control grid" idea a lot... "get out your graph paper. At the top – issue du jour. Across the page – what I have total control over, what I have some control over and what I have absolutely zero control over. Instant perspective if you’re honest."

10 signs you've got a good man is better than it sounds. He rarely hides wolf spiders in the popcorn bag at the movies. Yes indeed, I like that in a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Or anyone who happens to sit next to me in a movie theater, really.