I’m in a quandary over whether I should allow myself to skip today and post two tomorrow because my BFBeth is coming to town, and I must leave toute suite.

I’m electing to reprogram this apparent Kobayashi Maru and make a simple post of one of our last days together here in DC in 2008 before she up and left me for some bright lights and a big city.

For the nine years we’ve known each other, we’ve celebrated our birthday together eight times. We had an awesome surprise on this last one. Look who was sitting next to us.

B. Stan Lee and Me!

I’m not one to like to bother the celebrity types when they’re out living their lives, but I’m a huge Stan Lee fan.

He could not have been more kind or gracious. Good karma.

One of my favorite moments from Burning Man 2009 was arriving at the Opulent Temple to the spectacular madness of Infected Mushroom. (Warning to my webby friends, on this side of the looking glass, this site is a usability nightmare. Why do music groups and DJs insist on weird for weirdness sake?)

I’ve been listening to and dancing to the electronic/DJ music scene for a number of years now, so I was completely blown away by their live performance – vocals, guitars and all. And after four days in the desert at that time, I thought I might actually Becoming Insane myself.

Insanely Opulent Temple

I didn’t choose an Infected Mushroom song for my “tea-dance” today because, like a lot of electronica songs, most were longer than my 5-minute water boiling window would allow.

However, I was super psyched to be reminded of this smile producing Karmic Coincidence:

• Infected Mushroom’s breakout album title – Vicious Delicious!

So while dancing into the wee hours of my funemployed Monday morning, I may have encouraged one or more friends to consider “slick-leave” in lieu of work. To the detriment of Greater Washington’s January productivity numbers, a few dear souls accepted the challenge and opted for various and sundry varieties of invented aches, pains and stomach disorders.

In an act of karmic justice, I awoke today, in those very same wee hours, to all of the above in a very real fashion.

To add insult to deserved injury, nearby convenience store carries only Nabisco, not Keebler saltines. Only the elves know the for these ails.

Woe is me. Please forgive me Universe. I was only kidding. Mostly.

So much fun, even I might stick with it. I’ve wanted to learn for several years. It’s been my “intention” to do so, but 2010 is the year!

I listen to a lot of electronica music and started seeing hoop dance performers at shows. Since that first show I thought, “I want to be that girl.” Here’s one of those girls I saw at Burning Man 2009. I was at both the FreQ Nasty and Bassnectar shows. Unfortunately, I never made it to the Hoop Jam.

Thanks to a little Karmic Coincidence (KC) – my friend, neighbor, and belly dance troupe pal Sharon sent me an invite to today’s class, and just to make sure I signed up, KC arranged an encounter with our other mutual friend, neighbor and troupe gal, Melissa, clear across town at a random Starbucks I’d never set foot in! I hadn’t seen either of these lovely ladies in a very long time, so I thought, “Okay, I can take a hint, Hoopin’ is my destiny.”

I thought I’d get a little jump on the class and grabbed my daughter’s hoop. I was mortified to be utterly unable to hoop it up. My 10 year old was visibly disappointed and dismayed, since I do generally have the rep for otherwise shaking the proverbial booty quite well, despite not doing so as often as I should. She could keep it going forever, but my hula hips just weren’t having it.

After considerable frustration, I googled “how to hula hoop” and was delighted to learn that when it comes to hula hoops, size does matter. I was hoping that this would be true and that I was not doomed to hear the constant clatter of my hoop on the floor.

So when I got to class, I picked one of the larger hoops, and what do you know? First try, I came out swinging and kept it going for a good long spin.

Surprise!ingly, we learned a number of other cool moves in this first class. Here’s a peek – from my very own instructor, Surprise! aka Katie Desmond.

And guess, what – she’s also a Yoga Instructor! Very cool. I’m totally psyched for the next 4 weeks.

I was just going to repost MDFWP and shut the hell up, but I haven’t learned that one yet.

Last Monday Rob (re)posted this brilliant “My Distraction Free Writing Program” via Frageelaytwit via terrybain via brilliantorange:

terrybain:

brilliantorange:

1. Get a pen.

2. Get some paper.

3. Fine, you baby, use your computer.

4. TURN OFF THE INTERNET.

5. I SAID TURN OFF THE INTERNET.

6. Open a program. Start writing.

7. SHOOT ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STOP YOU. WARNING SHOTS ARE OKAY.

8. If silence isn’t ambient enough for you, try the following:

Lou Reed – METAL MACHINE MUSIC

George Winston – December

The Carpenters – Gold

Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue

Remember, kids:

Formatting is not writing.

Font size or type is not writing.

Research is not writing.

Writing is writing.

Good luck!

What he said.

Also: Turn off the fecking internet already.

It’s only available for Mac, but OmmWriter is a lovely way to accomplish this. I keep stealing Dan’s MacBook to work on essays and fiction.

And work in plain text (that’s what Notepad produces for you Windows folk, and TextEdit for the MacHeads).

Plain text is the lingua franca of file formats. You can easily go from plain text to Word, HTML, whatever.

Yeah, right. Nice thoughts. Although I have to credit the article for ultimately acting as the the final catalyst to get me to start this thing, here’s a list of distractions I came up with as a result of this post -

1. I actually downloaded OmmWriter, and it is quite possibly the coolest, most beautiful app I have ever seen. And, duh! it’s an “Om” writer.
2. During the first use, however, it also provides just enough distraction to fool around for a good 40 minutes while you try to decide or imagine what would be your own perfect personal settings for the ultimate writing-without-distraction ambience – the next time you use it.
3. My 10 year old daughter came home and started doing homework in the same room. She wanted to know what I was doing when she heard the music and typing, so I had to do a complete demo of all the features for her.
4. I told her to stop being distracted and do her homework. I started mine too.
5. I wrote nearly the first paragraph then decided for some reason I really needed the internet. I realized that I didn’t know how to escape OmmWriter. I couldn’t escape OmmWriter. I hit a magical set of keys and my recently Snow Leopardized MacBook produced the spinning wheel of death and eventually crashed.
6. I now long for and fear OmmWriter. It was so beautiful. I found the perfect settings, but I think that lonely tree is there just to steal my words. The crash may have something to do with the fact that I had 5 windows and 32 tabs open in Firefox, because, well you’ll get the picture…
7. I started writing directly in Wordpress.
8. I did not heed the suggestion of writing in TextEdit. I hit “save draft” after number 5. It took me to the Wordpress login page. It lost my words. I rewrote Numbers 2-5. I’m sure they were better the first time.
9. I wonder why Terry Bain says, “fecking internet”. I imagine it said with a Scottish or Irish brogue. I realize I don’t know how to spell “brogue”. I look it up. I wonder if he’s Irish or Scottish. I wonder why I assume Terry is a he. He has a twitter post on his widget about shoe size. I wonder if he wears brogues, because I’ve just learned that brogue is also “A heavy shoe of untanned leather, formerly worn in Scotland and Ireland.”
10. Copying that definition from dictionary.com has changed my font. I fight the urge to change it back because “formatting is not writing.” I’m glad I won the battle because I realize the CSS overrides the edit view.
11. I think about how awesome the George Winston December album is. I’ve always loved it. Wait, that’s not true. It’s the Autumn album I love. (Why would that brilliantorange character suggest you listen to christmas songs to write. That’s just stupid.) I (used to) play the piano and have written some songs almost as good I think. I wonder why I have no Windham Hill music on my iPod. I know I have the CD somewhere. I wonder if I have any Philip Aaberg. I used to. I fell in love with a boy once at his concert. Later we kissed in the rain. I reconnected with him recently on LinkedIn. He lives in “the other Washington.” It was a long time ago. I’ve been in love with someone else for 20 years.
12. I realize Told or Known is an anagram for Rod Knowlton. I think anagram has two N’s. Google and Wikipedia tell me I’m mistaken. I’ve never been able to spell. I suspect I have a slight dyslexia. I remember that Richard Branson and someone else really cool supposedly has dyslexia. I decide (once again) it doesn’t matter that I can’t spell.
13. Yesterday TK posted something about a Yoga Sign. I think it’s “a sign.”
14. Today he asked about a “woobie”. I knew the answer, but someone already posted it. Both my kids and I had them. I wonder if it’s genetic. We all sucked fingers. I wonder if TK knows I’m stalking him yet. He’s very funny.
15. I wonder if I go to the trouble to find the December CD if it could possibly be any better for writing than Bonobo – Dial “M” for Monkey. That album title cracks me up, but really anything by Bonobo will do the trick. I can listen to Noctuary over and over.
16. For reasons I can’t quite put together at the moment I realize I’ve been planning to write a post about Monkeys.
17. I think of the pose – Hanumanasana – Monkey King Pose. Holy crap. I can think of nothing more awful and painful.
18. I can think of nothing more vicious.
19. So it seems like I can stop procrastinating now.
20. And just WRITE

It’s kind of funny to me and a one of those mysterious coincidences of life and the internet that I found the link while checking out my friend Joe Grossberg’s blog for a post he’d written a long time ago about how to make Indian curry .

Karmic Coincidences:

1. Another one of my “resolute intentions” for this year: learn more about and eat more Indian food
2. I became friends with Joe when we started taking a yoga class together offered by our employer of the time, RevolutionHealth.com

These karmic, what-goes-around-comes-around, don’t-be-a-jerk thoughts reminded me of another new spin on The Golden Rule I’d come across recently.

Although I’m not religious, I can definitely get on board with this.

You can too.