Happy Valentine’s Day

I’ve seen this before, but worth another look. Love.

CFH Paleo Challenge

Today, I started the Crossfit Hoboken Paleo Challenge that runs for the next 45 days!  In a nutshell, that means no whole grains, dairy, peanuts, sugars, or legumes.  Everything should be natural/unprocessed foods which is great because I try to eat only organic meats, veggies, and fruits anyways.

However, being an Asian gal, I just LOVE noodles and rice…and dumplings.  So it’s going to be tough but I’m looking forward to it.  I’ll try to document my food log, progress, etc on here, although with my track record, I won’t make another blog post until Christmas.

Here are some links provided by the coach so we can learn more about the Paleo lifestyle.

• Robb Wolf (www.robbwolf.com)
• Everyday Paleo (www.everydaypaleo.com)
• Caveman Cooking Tv (www.cavemancooking.tv)
• Nom Nom Paleo (www.nomnompaleo.com)
• Paleo Comfort Foods (www.paleocomfortfoods.com)

Full Moon

Cold lovely full moon
O, why must you make me weep
Melancholiness

Sun Salutations

Samsara in action at the courthouse

Today is day 2 of jury duty.    We were told to come back at 9:30am and so I arrived around 9:15am. When I walked in, I was overwhelmed by how many more people there are compared to the day before.  That’s because there are the folks like myself who are on their second day and then there is the set of new blood. Yesterday, as I was sitting and waiting, I had a fleeting thought that the jury selection process is much like samsara…an endless cycle. The way it works is that you check in to the juror waiting realm.  Here’s where you can sort of relax, read, or surf the web if you bring your laptop (I brought it today).  Then the system randomly (or is it that random?) selects a few names and when the staff person calls your name, you have to proceed to a judge’s courtroom realm.  There the judge gives a brief overview of the case and another computer randomly calls you into the jury box realm.  If you don’t get into the jury box, you can still see what’s going on.  The judge asks a series of questions to screen the potential jurors and the lawyers from each side also have the option to excuse a few jurors. It’s all based on knowing their prior experiences, formulating a judgement about those experiences, and then acting upon that judgement.  Karma.  If you don’t get selected as one of the jurors, you are recycled back into the juror waiting realm.  And then the whole process begins again. Luckily, I was not selected yesterday.  But it was a close one  since I answered one of the questions  in the affirmative and told the judge I might be a bit biased.   It was an honest answer

Jury Duty

Stuck in jury duty today. I’m secretly glad since I can actually be productive and get some reading done without being disturbed. It’s also one of the best places to people-watch. It’s like being in a library. People trickle in and take seats in different parts of the room. Intuitively, I think we space ourselves out. We establish “our zone.” Same thing happens in a yoga class. You wouldn’t normally put your mat right up against another’s unless you really had to. Amazingly, there at the social anomalies. One Asian chick walked in and plopped down next to this guy (when there were so many other seats) and started to chat up a storm, pretty much telling him her life story. Annoying. I moved far far away from them.

Suffering and Impermanence

Relationships

Keeping a journal/blog is like yoga.  It takes a lot of discipline and focus.  By nature, I’m not a writer but I appreciate how “writing” stuff  down is helping me to retain a lot of the new info. We learned that yoga means relationship.  Just as I am getting to know myself more through this training, this blog is another aspect of a relationship with myself.  >_<

The other night, I went to a professional talk on data visualization and it really inspired me to think about visualization projects I can tinker with.   Notable projects include Nicholas Felton’s data viz’ed annual reports which depict all aspects of his life from the relationships he’s made to the food that he’s ingested.  I mean, isn’t this a great way towards becoming more mindful and aware of your life? What if I tracked how many downward dogs I’ve done during the year?  Or how many times I’ve meditated?  Not really as a goal but just to keep stats.   Another project I loved was Laura Kurgan’s Million Dollar Blocks.  Saw this a few years ago when it was up and was blown away then.  The project has progressed and the numbers she shared that night regarding how much was spent on putting folks in prison was staggering.  During the Q&A session, someone asked about the speakers’ design process and Laura said that she sees it as the relationship between 2 data sets.  Hmmm.   Aren’t we just made up of data?  In class, we’re learning about the main relationships in each asana so maybe I can visualize that in some way.  :)

“Each time you make a decision to do or not to do something, that becomes data.”