Category Archives: links

Forever Bicycles

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(Preface: My dad gets anxious when I am late with my posts like I was yesterday/am today. For that reason, I’m posing something that I think he will find to be pretty awesome.)

James Gaddy writes:

As part of what the museum bills as the first large-scale solo exhibition of the artist’s work to be held in the Chinese world, Ai Weiwei’s most recent work, Forever Bicycles, installs 1,200 bicycles–some hanging from the ceiling, some standing upright on the floor–one behind the other. The bikes have no handlebars and no seats and instead use those parts of the frame to extend upward and outward to connect to other wheels and other frames, creating the illusion of a labyrinth-like space in a three-dimensional area.

On Christmas Shopping for Men

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Zack meandered into the office the other day holding all the catalogs I’ve been getting in the mail from stores wanting me to buy their stuff this Christmas season. He set them down in front of me on the desk and pointed out that he’d kindly dog-earred some pages for me, you know, if I happen to be interested in figuring out what he wanted for Christmas this year.

Since then, I’ve caught the shopping bug. But instead of browsing websites endlessly for my primary benefit, I’m browsing for my secondary benefit. Because, while I’m shopping not exactly for me, let’s be real: Zack dressing all sexy and sharp definitely is a very good thing for the both of us. Hubba, hubba.

P.S. To those of you who love Zack and were planning on writing me soon to be like, UH, WHAT THE WHAT SHOULD I GET YOUR HUSBAND FOR CHRISTMAS BECAUSE, I DON’T GOT NO CLUE: I have good news. I have created a pinterest board called For Zack, and it is filled with sexy, (sometimes even) purchasable, Zack-approved items for your shopping inspiration. 

10-Year Reunion: The Closet Rapper Within

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Zack read this article to me the other day that is full of reasons that we won’t (shouldn’t?) miss our 20s when they are over. Buried in the article, there’s a line about how in our 20s, everyone is trying on different personalities like outfits in an ’80s movie dressing room montage. Now, I’m not saying that I haven’t done a lot of that in my 20s, because I certainly have, but I didn’t wait until my 20s to get my personality-swap on.

And the only reason I mention that is because there was a time in high school when I hopped out of the movie montage dressing room donning a full-blown RAPPER CHICK persona. It was short lived. Well, mostly. There were a few parts of it that stuck.

My junior year of high school I drove a 1989 Chevy Suburban to school every day. SisterKaty and Boo were both at the same school as me that year (private school), so they rode to school in the giant white Suburban with me. It was during that year that I decided Ghetto Cowboy by Bone Thugs n’ Harmony was the epitome of cool.

Because Katy and Boo were young and easily influenced, they, too, believed that Ghetto Cowboy was the best song in the world. We listened to at least a few times every time we got in the car together; we all got to the point where we knew every single word to the whole song. At some point, rapping the song to each other no longer satisfied our need to prove our awesomeness to one another, and it was decided that we must divvy up the song into parts, and have each person be responsible for his or her lines. Katy was Thug Queen of Horse Stealin’, who is introduced in the above video at the 1:20 mark. Boo, who was in 3rd grade at the time, chose the small-but-powerful Powder P (3:20) as his main character. The next time you see a 3rd grader, imagine him or her in a blue plaid private school uniform, complete with tie, rapping, “My name’s Powder P, can I get a 12-gauge? Outlaw, everyday! On the front page!” and see if you can keep a straight face. It was kind of awesome.

I have to admit, just like most white kids born in the 80s, that the first rap song I learned all the way through was Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby. And I also have to admit that the reason I knew the song all the way through was because it was featured on one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, along with a dance which I mimicked endlessly. After that, the next rap song I learned every word to was Regulators. Boo and Katy can awesomely say that their first all-the-way-through was a rap song wherein the rappers pretend to be outlaw cowboys. That’s cooler than Vanilla Ice. Way, way cooler.
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For those of you who, like me, have not entirely shucked your rapper-within: I’ve been listening to a lot of Childish Gambino (Donald Glover’s rap persona) lately. (See links below.) His beats are fully dance-worthy, and I like the way he maintains all of the anger and intensity that is usually buried in rap lyrics, but still manages to weave in some of his signature humor. He’s super clever. If you’re language sensitive, however, his stuff is not for you. He definitely rolls Rated-R. Consider yourself warned. His new album, Camp, comes out on the 15th of this month.

Bonfire   -   Heartbeat   -   Break (All Of The Lights)   -   Freaks And Geeks

Bon Iver

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Bon Iver released a new album and it is outrageously delicious.

I’ve been slow to jump on the Bon Iver train, but he’s been growing on me steadily for the last year or so. This album, though. This album is everything. It is soulful weeping, and it is the moment when the weeping stops because you’ve mined a gem of buried strength that helps you go on. It is haunting and beautiful and the album’s undertow is this palpable hope, making it so that listening to the album feels like a coarse thread pulling through your center of chest, but, if you let it, it will lift you off the ground.

On Dabbling in Acrobatic Yoga

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You know that a yoga class kicked your ass when you have to take a shower after it’s over because you’re soaked with sweat — but you can barely wash your hair because it requires you to lift your arms up over your head.

Needless to say, I caught a yoga class at Dayme’s Yoga Studio today. Specifically, I caught a Rock Body Yoga class taught by Bruce, who I have renamed Bruce the Barbarian. That’s a fitting name for anyone who starts a class with 10 second handstand inversions and then keeps you in high plank for at least 20 collective minutes of the hour-long class. Honest to God, we were about 7 minutes into today’s class when he uttered the phrase, “You are all going to feel this tomorrow.” You know it’s going to be bad when your instructor says that you’re going to be sore, but it’s especially bad when your instructor says that and he’s just warming up. Warming up!

At the end of the class, Bruce (the Barbarian) was nice enough to do a few Acrobatic Yoga (or, acroyoga) moves with me. Dayna has been telling me about BtheB’s acroyoga classes, and I’ve been dying to see what it is all about. If you’ve ever fancied yourself a closet circus freak, acroyoga is pretty much as awesome as it sounds.

Okay, fine. The acroyoga that I did tonight wasn’t really that insane. I will feel like the world’s most awesome human if I can ever pull off the crazy move they do right at the 1 minute mark, nevermind the bonkers crap they do for the rest of the video. While the stuff we did tonight was awesomely fun, it was really more this speed:

And, just for the record, I’m talking about the super-basic acroyoga moves they do in the first half of the video. Bruce did not perform any kind of balancing magic on my pelvis while I was in a full back-bend. Because, seriously. Who does that? I still can’t even figure out how suspension bridges work, so I’m not about to walk up to somebody who has their body that contorted and precariously positioned and be like, “Y’all, I have an idea. I’m going to perch myself here in such a way that when both of us collapse under the weight of not understanding how physics works, we will both seriously injure ourselves. You game?”

Dayme’s Yoga and Massage Studio

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One of the things I’m looking forward to the most about my post-nursing school life is re-claiming my yoga practice. Lucky for me, one of my good friends just opened up her very own yoga studio.

I went to her class on Tuesday morning, after a long weekend of traveling and meeting Zack’s extended family in The Land of Lincoln. I’ve taken a handful of yoga classes with Dayna, but Tuesday was the first time she’d ever been my instructor. As soon as we went into our first series of stretches, I knew it was going to be good. Then when she made a lap around the room and stopped to apply *just* the right amount of pressure in *just* the right place to help me get the most out of my pose, I was sold. Dayna does yoga just how I like it. I couldn’t be more excited about her place.

But if you’ll notice, the place is called Dayme’s Yoga and Massage Studio. “Dayme” is the combination of two sisters, Dayna and Jayme. Dayna heads up the yoga portion of the business, while Jayme runs the massage side of things. I’ve mentioned Jayme before, here and here. She’s freaking magical. She’s the one of the only people in this world who can tackle my shoulder/tension situation and fix it in 2 hours without leaving me the least bit sore the following day. If you have ever had a massage, you know how astounding that is. If you haven’t ever had a massage, or are blessed with shoulders that do not feel the need to hold on to every single moment of stress (that you may or may not be consciously aware of) that you’ve ever experienced in your entire life, then you’ll have to trust me on this one. Jayme is bonkers good at what she does. Bonus: her massage room is super cute, too.

If you are in the DFW, especially in the South-of-Dallas area, you should check them out. The yoga is awesome and the massages are bonkers. Plus, odds are good that we could be doing yoga together. That would rule. Come do yoga with me.

On The Mavericks Winning the NBA Championship

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Tonight in Texas there was much screaming, yelling and pounding of the earth. Many chests were puffed out and pounded upon with fists of celebration and vindication. And when the Heat quit playing 3:00 minutes before the game even ended, there were a lot of people absolutely losing their minds.

At the particular Mavericks watch party that I attended, there were many men cannon-balling themselves into a swimming pool lit with Mavs-blue lights. Because sometimes, the only way you can truly express the raw emotion of your team claiming a NBA victory is, apparently, to launch yourself into the nearest body of water.

On Barefoot Technology

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So, I bought in.

Zack got a book last month called Born to Run. It’s about this crazy tribe down in Mexico. All of the people in this tribe are still partyin’ like it’s 1599, and that’s weird. Another thing that’s weird about these people is none of them are ever sick, like, ever. Also weird, they can (and routinely do) run 50, 75 miles at a time, no sweat. I might not be doing the story justice, because I haven’t read the book. I’ve only watched the TED lecture the author did about it. (Zack said that it basically sums up the book in 15 minutes, but without all the cool character development.)

After Zack read the book, he started saying really strange things. Things that supported eating salads for breakfast. Things that leaned towards interest in barefoot running. Things about how our bottoms are created to be an anatomical counter-balance for our massive heads as we lean forward and run around on the balls of our feet chasing gazelles. I know that you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but I’m not exaggerating any of these things. Not even the gazelle part.

It wouldn’t be strange if I was the one that had become interested in this. I am a buyer-inner. I love new things, I love to be adventerous. Eating salads for breakfast is adventerous and chasing down game on foot sans weapons is downright crazy! So OF COURSE I would be in, right? But Zack, Zack is much more level headed. Not the type to read a book and want to change his life. Zack has to weigh evidence. Zack is a big believer in things like “research” and “thinking about what you’re going to say before you say it” and other such responsible nonsense. So imagine my surprise when all of the sudden, Zack was standing in the kitchen talking to me about going to the farmer’s market and eating more vegetarian meals! It kind of blew my mind.

So that was a few weeks ago. Since then, I have eaten a few more vegetables, and I had a few fruit-and-spinach smoothies for breakfast. Other than that, not much has changed. Even eating the smoothies for breakfast is kind of hard for me. I like them, and I would eat them every day, but Zack and I are on very different sleep schedules. Running the blender full of frozen fruits at 6 o’clock in the morning is kind of cruel. Life gets in the way of doing the good and healthy things. Good and healthy things are almost never the easier things. I hate that. I thought that Zack had abandoned his newfound zeal for our Pseudo Mexican Tribe Lifestyle Changes. Little did I know, he was only gathering data. He was weighing the evidence.

Today, we went to Backwoods to try on some shoes. Merrell, having realized that the barefoot running phenomenon is catching on, (and that there is a [counter-balancing] butt-load of money to be made) created a shoe that incorporates all the principles of barefoot running, but doesn’t have the unsightly toe situation that the Vibram fivefingers has. Because the store was mostly empty while we were there, and because the sales staff there is outrageously friendly and cool, we hung out in the shoe department for the better part of an hour. We tried on all kinds of barefoot-technology (yes, that’s a real phrase, and a fantastic oxymoron) footwear. Neither Zack nor I was able to find a barefoot shoe that really suited us. The store was out of a few sizes, and those sizes happened to be the ones that we’d like to have tried. We were about to give up and move along when the sales rep, who had been jokingly pestering us to give up and give into the TOE SHOES, finally convinced me to try on a pair. The difference between the regular shoe and the toe shoe was noticeable to me. When the sales rep asked me how I liked them, I said, “I love them, as long as I don’t look down. What I need is one of those dog cones to put around my neck, that way I won’t have to look at the TOES. TOES TOES TOES.”

I love the way that they feel on my feet, and I don’t mind the feeling of my toes being separated into their own little toe-slots. What I had a hard time getting over was a combination of the way they look (kind of ape-ish?) and how incredibly nerdy I feel when I’m wearing them. So I decided, dog cone aside, that if the only problem that I had with these shoes was that they are asthetically unappealing, I need to just go ahead and get right the hell on over it. So I did. I totally bought in.

Zack and I are going to start up a round of Couch-to-5K with these bad boys. (He didn’t get the toe shoes, he’s waiting for the right size to come in on the regular barefoot-technology [I can't say that without laughing] shoes. Zack is twee OCD about his feet, and couldn’t get over the toe compartmentalization. I told him to never go get a pedicure, cause he’d probably hate that too.) The problem most people have when they get these goofy shoes is that they do too much, too quick, and then they want to die. I’m going to try to avoid that. I can see how people get into that predicament, thought because running in them is kind of fun. It feels something akin to the way I imagine Phoebe felt as she ran through Central Park. You have to just bounce along like you’re a care-free toddler whose heels never touch the ground; while you’re bouncing around, the fun, care-free attitude a toddler has kind of starts to creep up on you. Which is awesome. So wish me luck — and resilient calf muscles. It’s about to get crazy up in here.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead

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CNN Headline

Overwhelmed with gratitude this evening for our Armed Forces who have worked so hard for this victory. Thank you for your relentless pursuit of justice, and for your dedication to our safety.

To me, this victory is not about Bush, and it’s not about Obama.  To me, this is about our troops finally getting the recognition they deserve for their heroic efforts in fighting a largely-forgotten war.