Yoga -- You Go!

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to walk up the hill... or rather, attempt to. It glistened with ice from the overnight storm. Everything glistened with ice.

I took two steps and started to slide backwards. I tried lifting my right foot again, but the left one still slipped. I tried lifting the left foot, but the right foot had no traction and it too, started to slip. I had to think on my feet (literally!).

I firmly planted my right foot behind me, my left foot in front of me, and slightly off to the side. I stood tall and balanced the weight between both my feet, allowing my weight to be distributed over the arches of my feet. I felt tall, I felt strong. I stood tall, and I stood strong. And that's when I realized: this was the same pose we did in yoga class the day before. I briefly considered moving deeper into the pose by adding some arm actions.... but then remembered that survival was my goal at the moment.

Who knew that I would be practicing yoga outside at 6:30 on a Saturday morning.

The end of the world as I know it....

It did not feel fine.
In fact, it felt so scary and so confusing, I had to phone a friend. I had to run through a disaster plan in my head as I tried to make sense of it all.

I woke up in complete darkness.
The house was not empty when I went to take a nap. Now it was deserted. It was dark. I could not find my alarm clock, my lamp would not turn on. There was a powerfailure. I looked out the window and saw nothing but darkness.
I tried to make sense of it. I had gone to bed when it was light out. I had been awake for 32 hours. At 3:00 in the afternoon I was finally ready to go to bed. Now, I had no idea what time it was, if I had missed going to work, and where anyone was. Logically, I concluded that the world had ended. I wandered around the house nervous and afraid. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Finally, after minutes of searching, I found my head lamp and subsequently my cell phone. I didn't know who to call. And as I hit my address book, I went with a close friend who lives nearby.
"Hey Tracy". I breathed a hefty sigh of relief as he answered the phone.
"Hi, it's dark at my house, are my roomies with you? What time is it? What day is it?"
We chatted for a few minutes. I felt better, but still distraught.

With the help of my LED headlamp, I wandered around the house lighting up my path one step at a time. Checking the windows I noticed our street and the street behind us were without power.

So I did what any smart girl would do, I went back to bed. I sat and thought about how I was going to take a shower and get ready for work without power. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably closer to 20 minutes, I heard the gentle whir of electricity. The clock radio flashed 12:00 impatiently. I flipped on my bedroom lamp and got ready for work.
Shortly after that, my roomies returned home. And I was happy to know that the world hadn't ended after all. Finally, I felt fine.

Cooking with Gas

Saturday morning's jewelry class did not come without it's fair share of challenges. The goal was to finish assembling the 4 links to my bracelet. It was going to be a 5 link bracelet, but last week left me with one casuality. The links have 6 solder joins. Tricky.

I couldn't get my torch to maintain a flame that equal in size and strength. And as my frustration grew with the torch, the more likely I was to ruin my project. I turned it off and on numerous times, opened and closed the main gas valve to ensure that I had turned on the torch properly, but nothing seemed to work.
My bench buddy (Drake - our benches face each other) watched as I furrowed my brow, muttered under my breath and talked sternly to my project, hoping it would do what I needed it to do. He made a couple of suggestions which I tried, but still, no luck.

"I'm not using my torch. Do you want to switch benches?"
"Yes." There was no hesitating before answering that question.
We left our stuff at our respective stations and swapped sides.

The soldering went much better. Three links went without hitch. I was thrilled. Finally -- progress. And that's when it happened. A HUGE explosion. I looked up and saw one large ball of fire emerging from the torch in Drake's hand. I immeadiatly switched mine off. There was nothing to do but wait. He held the torch (or fireball) in one hand and tried to switch off the main gas supply. The main gas supply is never supposed to be turned more than a 1/4 of a turn. It took him 8 full turns to get it turned off. Once the gas was gone, the fire quickly extinguished itself.
Drake was left with a minor burn on his hand.
Black dust kept falling from the sky and lightly coating my workstation. We were all okay. Nothing caught on fire.... which is nothing short of a miracle considering the extra crap on my desk.

When the torch had cooled, the instructor went to examine it to find the fault. The tip wasn't properly attached. Minor error with major complications.

I think I remember him telling me to loosen one part of the torch, which I did. Funny enough, it was there that the seal wasn't tight enough, thus causing a massive explosion in his hands. Ooops. Big oops. Big Big oops. It's a good thing he still has his eyebrows, or I'd feel extra awful.