Is this what they mean in yoga when they say ‘tree pose’?

(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 6)

If I have one flaw, it’s that I’m inflexible.

OK, maybe two flaws. Because I am inflexible in both meanings of the word.

We all know that I like my routine…but I pretty much can’t touch my toes either.

Over the years I’ve gotten better with thinking ahead and planning ahead and doing everything I can to prepare myself for changes in routine. I’ve become a little more flexible in that way.

But I still can’t touch my toes.

So my second goal that I’m telling you about in February so we can revisit it later in the year is that I’d like to become more physically flexible.

So I think it’s time I try yoga.

I’ve thought about yoga a lot over the years.

And I still don’t know if I know what it is.

Well, I guess I know that it’s a bunch of poses…but if you asked me to do one I’d only be guessing at what they were. (Downward Dog is maybe hands and feet on the ground, butt in the air?)

And the reason I haven’t tried yoga is because I’ve never been flexible at all. I just didn’t think I could pull it off.

But now I’m starting to think maybe, instead of being a challenge to my inflexibility, it could be the solution to my inflexibility.

Imagine I do a steady regimen of yoga and then suddenly I’m turning myself into a pretzel?

I don’t need that, necessarily.

I just wonder if it would help loosen up my muscles. Make me feel less tight when I go for a run or do some other exercise that I haven’t done in a while.

With the warm weather I’ve tried to sneak in a couple of runs the past couple of weeks. They’ve gone OK…but I am so sore afterwards.

I wonder if yoga will help me in that department.

So we’ll give it a shot. I doubt I’ll join a class. That doesn’t seem like something I’m ready to do at this point.

But Kathy has oodles of yoga videos, I think. And I’m sure I can find stuff on-line.

And we’ll see if I can get into doing it regularly enough that it makes a difference. And then, if it does, if I can stick with it.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Writing

*I kind of settled into a good routine this week. This week was the start of a six-to-eight week stretch where my schedule will be pretty much set with a lot of work during the day. I set the schedule for the week and pretty much stuck to it. And I worked in an aforementioned run, which obviously hasn’t been happening a ton. I think I might be able to keep to that moving forward…we’ll see.

Comedy

*I had a great night Monday - McGreevy’s was a blast. (I have never really had a bad time at McGreevy’s.) When I was done there I made it to the open mic at Sally O’Brien’s before it finished up…and then I hung around The Comedy Studio a bit. I had originally planned to go out on Wednesday, but that fell through. So I didn’t get out a bunch this week, but Monday was a quality night. (And I forgot Kathy is away a bit this coming week, so February isn’t quite the non-stop comedy month I said it might be last week. More on that in the Notes below.)

And then, of course, Saturday was the second edition of Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’. It went exactly as I’d hoped. Laura Burns and Jeff Medoff were great and Carmen Lagala was a killer headliner. It seemed like the audience really enjoyed the show. I love that I get to do this every month.

Sorry if I tricked you in previous postings - I misunderstood when tickets were going on sale. Tickets to the March show will go on sale at this link sometime today - maybe by the time you’re reading this. I think it’ll be after 10am.

What i’ve Been Enjoying

*I told you I’ve been doing some reading. I borrowed two books from the library in recent weeks, one of which was David Sedaris’s newest book, Calypso. I enjoy his writing. I wish I could write as honestly and humorously as he does. The newest book is mostly about his book tour life, with a lot of current family (as opposed to early family in his other books) stories…and the evolution of his relationship with his father. It’s a good read - and I accidentally took out the large print edition, which I think made it a quicker read. (Side note: terrible to go from large print book to small print on my phone. My eyes are bad enough without that added challenge.)

The second book I took out on a whim and I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it - Vacationland, by John Hodgman. I didn’t think I’d enjoy Hodgman’s writing. (He’s written history books with made-up history, I think - it never sounded appealing to me and I don’t know what even compelled me to take this book out but it was a memoir.) He was tremendously likable in the book, though. Self-deprecating, charming. Great stories. I loved it.

Notes

*First I’ll start by updating you on last week’s challenge…The reason Tuesday didn’t factor into the comedy section above is because that’s when I met with my friend Ellen for my first cribbage lesson. It went very well - I picked up on the rules enough to play again on Wednesday with one of my daughters. (On Tuesday when I got home I played part of the card game with all of the girls, to 1) plant the seeds of the basics of the game in their head, and 2) to reinforce the rules a bit in my own head. It’s going well so far.)

*I forget if I mentioned this last week, but cribbage and yoga - these are definitely things that could have been part of ‘365 New Things In 2013’ but I just ran out of days. (Storytelling - like at a ‘Moth’ event - was another one that I kept thinking about that whole year but never doing.) So it’s kind of cool to be able to once again do some new things and write about them.

*So Kathy is away for the early part of this week which means I’ll be watching some shows. I haven’t yet watched any of the ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s that have been on NBC so far, and I still haven’t watched the second season of ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’. (I plowed through that last year when Kathy was on a trip.). I think I’ll be starting with the Ray Romano Netflix special, though. I haven’t heard much about that other than it was coming out in early February…but I can’t wait to see it.

*It’s always a good thing when I fell behind on TV, though. That means I’m out at night doing other things…usually comedy.

*Friday night I had a chance to do some public address for middle school basketball. I do this every now and again and I always forget how much fun it is to do. Also, I got to see some old friends I used to work with, which is always a bonus. That makes my heart happy.

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