strength vs. flexibility

It's Tuesday. I missed posting yesterday, and I'm sure you all noticed. That wasn't meant to be sarcastic, so go back and read it with an earnest voice.

I drove up to Michigan on Sunday night. If you're in Chicago, you may remember the snow storm that happened right around then. The roads weren't great but weren't terrible. The worst of it was driving from Downers Grove to Indiana. On the highways, there was about an inch or two of something in between snow and slush but closer to snow: snush. I stayed in the tire ruts as much as possible and never really felt out of control. Being so warm, almost 30, the roads didn't seem slippery, just sloppy.

The weekend consisted of two operas, coffee or tea with some of my favorite people, hot dates, and a trip to see my sister and baby at my parents' house. Chocked full of nuts! Looking back, it was perfect: crazy and sane, planned and unplanned, all balanced. I reviewed both of the operas, so if you're interested: usw was on Friday; La Damnation de Faust was on Saturday.

Yesterday, I did no music, mostly recovered from the weekend--sleeping till 11:30!--and started another blog. Yes, another one. In the future, you'll probably see the Seeing Ear blog (the music-focused one) trail off and be absorbed by Beyond Words, a classical music blog on the Chicago Tribune's blog site, ChicagoNOW.

And then I watched 5 episodes of Lost, season 2. I'm starting to not care about the characters. Somehow, now that things are changing so much, there are too many loose ends; it's more about the plot (twists) than the characters, in spite of the flashbacks. But I'm curious. I'm going to take tonight off and watch the South Park movie that I've still not seen and then try to ground myself in real reality.

I'm back to my yoga "routine". I'm much more flexible than I was. I can do a headstand for almost a dozen seconds--for the first time in my life. I may be losing leg strength from not biking so much, but maybe if I can achieve a healthy level of flexibility I can maintain that as I do more miles in the spring. Just like life, you go through different periods. Thank goodness I'm in a place where the seasons force you into periods of outdoor and indoor growth. Having nice weather all the time would make it too easy to focus on outdoor activities, allowing people to forget about their interior.