Crossword acceptance! DDR! Bad and good moods. We have everything this week.

[flexagon]

I had mood swings this week, more than usual, enough to be notable. First I felt bad about handstands and acro, and couldn't shake it all day Monday despite doing all the mood-shaking self-care things. Moods are just part of the human condition, and I try not to overthink them, but that was a sticky one. Tuesday I played DDR and had lunch with friends and a) that was it for the mood, b) I maybe want to get DDR set up at home now? The game thought I was awful but who caaaaares.

Vaguely related: Singing Carrots looks like a lot of fun. Gamified vocal training? It really looks like something I envisioned when I first did the singing for Rock Band.

• Vigilance continues: I did indeed draw up a little graph of how my income works these days, or will start working soon, and somehow noticed that my automatic COBRA payments had increased in January without any notice that I can remember (though I must once have noticed that they vary by calendar year). So I had to pass along half that cost to the poor bug. Also Adobe is charging me for something monthly? And like, why? And like, don't.


• Futher vigilance: started weighing myself every day, mostly to see whether I can actually do that without forming any unhealthy behavior around it. What have I learned so far? Well, the day I ate a bunch of salt, I was 1lb heavier the next morning, and back to normal the day after that. Also, pooping is an effective and quick weight-loss technique.


• Reading someone's sewing tutorial, and she wrote "I hope you will pick a simple shape with not too many sharp corners, if you are a beginner." That's so kind, compared to the usual "I'd recommend" that you'd have seen in most American tutorials.


• The Olympics are so brutal. I woke up a few mornings ago to read about Lindsay Vonn's catastrophic fall in Alpine skiing, and today to read about Ilia "The Quad God" Malanin folding under pressure. He's calm in his interviews, and discusses a feeling of losing time during physical motions that I understand all too well.


• Understanding something better: I had a little breakthrough on understanding a circus move, and that circus move is a press. This would take a lot of words to describe properly, but, improperly: pressing into a forearm stand, from a forearm backbend. Feet up on a surface because I'm not THAT bendy. And it suddenly made sense to me that I could hold a shape with my body/legs, shift my shoulders enough to hover the shape, and then roll the unchanging shape as my shoulders came back to a more sustainable position. So I suddenly did three in a row, without cramping up my hamstrings like usual. It's on video and you can clearly see how the second rep is way smoother and looks easier than the first. It was only later that I realized all these same words, especially about rolling and staying rounded, are the ones my coaches use for a forward handstand press. The shape looks pretty different but the idea -- at least the way Spring teaches it -- is the same. Whoa.


• Finished watching Season 1 of The Leftovers (TV show), as well as finishing the book, which I'd started reading in order to better understand the show. Then we looked at the summaries/blurbs for the next two seasons, and... nah. It seems to go in weird directions I'm not going to follow. I like the idea of picking up a story a few years after some world-shaking event, but When We Were Real does it better and without falling into misery porn.

And let me not forget! On Wednesday I got an acceptance letter from a crossword I submitted to NYT Games! Gonna be published, baby. And yes, I am very happy about that. :D

Comments

[mindways]

> On Wednesday I got an acceptance letter from a crossword I submitted to NYT Games!

Wooo! Congrats!

> I maybe want to get DDR set up at home now?

I will play that with you virtually anytime that my foot is up for it. (Plantar plate injury that's been lingering for years sometimes says "no".) For over half a decade it was my primary form of aerobic exercise, and I am *quite* fond of it.

(We have a setup for it at our place, though it requires making the kids clean up their mess from the library floor.)