not just hockey

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so the leafs are out.

bye bye my loves, i'm to be a calgary fan this year it seems. [see you can have one team per conference and then you only have a problem in the final and what are the odds of that?]

i love the leafs but i've acknowledged publicly that they sucked up the ice this year so i can't be too stunned at their outness. i only hope that sundin's stellar play in the latter part of the season puts the focus squarely where it belongs which is on pat quinn.

that guy is a relic and he should let go now.

i'm sad. it's been a while since i haven't watched the leafs in the playoffs. i mean calgary rocks but well... okay fine i'm in love with kippersoff and iginla but still. it's nice to cheer for two teams at once.

calgary is having a pretty good year though and they're going into the first round with home ice advantage so they're doing all right heading into the second season. the general sentiment in the hockey community is that the cup is going west this year. apparently the teams are so much more well matched that everyone is playing better.

or something.

either way? the leafs are out.
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i have just had two days off.

now because i'm insane i went climbing on the first day off and took a nasty pilates class on the second day off. it was actually a more brutal class than usual because something was up and i couldn't get my spine to loosen up and move. it felt like i lost control of a bunch of muscles.

this does happen on occasion and i am due to get cranky and have sore boobs any day now. actually this is really interesting. it means that you lose your abs before you actually start to menstruate. hrm, i wonder what the lead time is. [update - about 16 hours]

of course i could have killed my abs at the gym yesterday...

i'm climbing really well lately but i'm still not happy. there's some fundamental thing about what you do with your weight and your centre of gravity that i am just not getting. i've had this problem before with other sports as well and up to now i haven't managed to get it.

i think maybe i should either ask rr or take some modern dance classes or both. i can see moving from the centre and i understand what it's for and how people do it when i *see* it but i can also tell that i myself am not doing it.

this got me in trouble in footbag too.

i feel that pilates will help send me in the correct direction and that further climbing will teach me to fake it and from there i can learn it. and yet still i just know that there's some thing i'm not finding.

in some ways i think it sort of relates to sex.

the really good climbers (in other words? all the ones you want to fuck after you watch them ascend something?) all move from the same place. it's between the belly button and the pubic hair and it's the centre of everything.

in martial arts they call it the kiri or belly and when they refer to it they mean the soul or the centre or your 'self' or your power ... cause yeah i'm not a translator but you get the gist. [that's why they disemboweled themselves... hara kiri was sort of to separate the spirit... ack i'm making a hack of it.]

regardless it's the same thing.

the good dancers and the good high jumpers and the good skiers and climbers and fuckers and acrobats and hula hoopers and martial artists and movement specialists and everyone else that has it? they can do anything they fucking well please with their bodies. anything.

i mean i suck in comparison and i can do ridiculous things with mine. what it must be like to have that much more control and comprehension.

like wow.

the difference is that i am a trained body. trained from like birth to play at sports. but i don't have that natural grace that some people have. i do have a lot of innate talent with sport but a lot of it is learned for me.

i'm cool with that, but sometimes it's hard when i watch the naturals just walk in and a month later they're better than me.

it's okay though, in about two or three years i'll put a pile of shit together and suddenly bam. i'll ascend to another level entirely. or at least that's what happened in the pool.

it took almost three years to put together my stellar kick with my natural stroke. but when it happened? i knocked twenty seconds off my time in an event that took under a minute. (fifty free at age nine or ten should take between 40-50 seconds. the world record might be under twenty... google... is 21 seconds for men and 24 seconds for women. i dropped to something around 41 from about a minute)

so training works over time but is a lot more frustrating in the short term *laughs*

i haven't seen the videos from yesterday. well one but it irritated me. well except for the laughter after i fell. it was taken before i was really warm.

anyway, i've had two days off.

in a row.

and it was so lovely i can't even put it into words. now i'm going to go to bed and then i'm going to get up a little bit early and go for coffee and a few more little treats for a gift i'm constructing.

teach a class and then head out of town until monday afternoon.

this long weekend is turning out stellar for me i must say and i'm actually feeling a little better. my body is *pissed off* with me for all the work i threw at it and because it's about to remind me once again that i was born with ovaries but i feel so much more human.

it didn't hurt at all that the weather was freaking stellar and looks to continue. i walked around in sandals today!

sandals!

i know, i was so happy. i even left the jacket in the car and wore a tank top around. that was slightly chilly but i didn't care. i was shopping for presents in the sun on queen west in my favourite town after having a little snack and a cappuccino at terroni [good italian pizza joint says the girl who has a dad with more than one pizza oven]

then i rented (yes i'm admitting this and fuck you if you make fun of me) the perfect man and three kings. so i came home and i watched the perfect man and i smiled at it's adorableness and cringed at the embarassing bits and actually found it to have quite an excellent message in the long run.

and then i watched the last relevant leafs game of the season (they won 5-1 but it wasn't enough) and then othercat dropped in for the second movie.

three kings is really fun, if you missed it the first time around? go rent it!

night all, hope your weekend is as stellar as mine!