Grateful for:
- 3.5 intense hours of yoga with 1 hour break in between. The wimp in my reared its ugly head again and questioned me several times why the hell am I doing this to myself and cried many times that it’s just plain HARD! But I persevered. My legs were already so sore it was painful to walk after the mad party and a whole night of dancing the other night, in addition I was completely wooden and unbendable, could not even touch my toes. So it was really supposed to be yoga hell but surprisingly, being so unusually limited in my range of motions forced me to really take notice of the instructions of this refresher course and focus on all the “other” elements of yoga practice like breath, core, slight muscle movements and pivots and adjustments in the poses. So yeah, all in all, I got to be grateful for even the stiffest of bodies and sore muscles as they somehow granted me a deeper experience of my practice than ever before. Gearing up to a hard core January of Ashtanga to instil it as a daily practice habit.
- Discovering an awesome bustling rustic vegetarian restaurant in Fitzroy. I think these types of places for me are almost like fine dining experiences for me – so many exciting fresh juice and smoothie options, cool recipes from the menu that I always want to try at home, etc. For lunch which doubled as a breakfast I opted for a huge (and I mean it was huge!) home made raspberry muesli slice (brick) and a banana carob wheatgerm smoothie since I overmeditated (go figure! totally zoned out) and thus was late for yoga and had no time for breakfast in the morning.
- I surprised myself in condensing a 30 minute ride to yoga into a 20 minute one. I can move fast when I want to, it is exciting, but only to be used in extreme circumstances because I DO know better.
- Buying a stack of specific fashion magazines as a home work assignment in preparation for my lessons in fashion. Very exiting!
- Running some errands and doing some shopping. It is bizarre the amount of enjoyment I can derive from doing “normal” things since I don’t get to do them very often. Supermarkets are officially some sort of weird parallel reality to me. It baffles me to think people can shop there on a regular basis.
- Exchanging one shirt for a cardigan, hat, some tea and a glass. Very grateful for Christmas sales.
- Feelings super sexy, summery and feminine in my new hat. Also spotted the hat in the fashion magazines I bought which makes for double feelings of sexiness 🙂 Can’t yet own the purchasing decision as my own as I was told by my stylist I should get it, but one day very soon I too will know what suits me and what doesn’t.
- International cuisine for dinner has definitely put me in the international mood. It is going to be another crazy whirlwind of a year 2011, I can feel it.
- Having the best ice cream in the world! Fritz on Fitzroy st St. Kilda. Italian organic gelato multi award winning flavour. Cinnamon and Ginger was to die for. As I was leaving St. Kilda that night all I could think about was gelato and was already planning what flavour combinations I am going to have next time I am there. Melbourne is really bad for my diet and figure, for that reason alone I would not be able to stay and live here all year round, I will need a break otherwise I will grow fat.
- Seeing penguins in the wild at St. Kilda pier. It was weird. But I guess that’s Melbourne for you.
- Enjoying the most spectacular sunset I have witnessed in Melbourne to date (and I have witnessed a few). Long after the sun has set it kept lingering and changing and illuminating in various shades of red. As we were walking away every time I looked over my shoulder it would just take my breath away again and again, and again I would need to stop and take just one more picture.
- Turns out my phone can not reproduce red really well so after tonight I have vouched to carry my proper camera along with me. Time to brush up on my rusty photography skills and capture some of Melbourne’s magic. It is everywhere, I am so totally in love with the place.
- Being given food to take home after I mentioned my totally empty fridge. Made me laugh, still does. I am becoming a pro at soliciting food donations. It all started with the organic grocer at QV markets a few months back…
- Spending a few hours doing “stuff” at home. I seriously can not remember having to spend so much time on stuff in my travel days. It baffles me, what is it about stationary living that makes it so much more expensive, complicated and time consuming than travelling. If anyone has a theory please share.
- Receiving my new keyboard in the mail today. Now my standing desk is complete with laptop on one shelf of a wardrobe and keyboard and mouse on another. When done, just close the door and voila – zen room. If I choose to roll up my “bed” (3 pillows and a couple of blankets on the carpet) I will be left with a empty square of a room. Zzzzzzzzzen squared. I love it.
- Putting the rabbit to bed using the trusty “carrot in the hutch” method.
- Cleaning the fridge at midnight. Yeah, fun times at Polina’s place 🙂 Needless to say, the experience was very enjoyable, again due to its uniqueness and the uniqueness of time it was taking place at. I could not resist sharing with a girlfriend, it is so much more enjoyable to laugh at your life with someone else than by myself as I usually do.
- Bringing my accounts up to date. The geek in me loves to know how much I spend in every category monthly and all the other little details of my financial well being.
- Grateful for the modern technology that can pull all my expenses out of cyberspace and categorise everything neatly for me so I only need to update cash expenses and gleefully check my graphs and reports.
- Attempting to fulfil my 2010 resolution of 1 Kiva loan a day today just to be greeted with “We don’t know what to say but… All loans are fully funded” message on their home page. Silly me, with all the latest publicity there must have been 1000s of people who received Kiva gift cards for Christmas so I should not have left it that late, considering I need to make 50 loans to hit my target! Oh well, might just need to fund my account and wait till all the commotion dies down to then distribute the funds. This has been such an exciting challenge I will be sure to make a separate blog post about 2 things I dedicated year 2010 to and 2 things I am going to dedicate year 2011 to. Fleshed them out in my mind tonight while cleaning the fridge! It is exciting but scary at the same time, which means I am on the right track 🙂