A video! (finally)

So yesterday during open studio, I brought my video camera and my tripod and filmed myself doing a bunch of tricks I've been working on lately, and then put it all together into one video and uploaded it to Youtube!  Enjoy!



Just as a sidenote: things have been going a lot better this week already.

Comme ci, comme ça

For this week, I think that's probably the best descriptor of what's been going on.  I mean, it hasn't been a terrible week, but it also hasn't been incredibly spectacular either.  My body has been getting a couple weird semi-injury pains at various places around my body this week, and it makes me a bit resistant to push myself so far.  Back on Thursday of last week (week 6, October 15), I somehow moved my right leg  in a funny way during ballet and some tendoney thing started feeling a little wonky.  I don't remember really how it happened.  I wasn't doing something particularly weird.  It could have been from just walking or something.  I'm not really too sure.  It went away the day after, so I didn't think much of it, but on Tuesday of this week, we were doing some full speed double stardrops (i.e. - roll sideways down the fabric two full rotations) and the landing jerked my right leg outwards in an awkward way and that same part of my leg started to hurt a bit again.  Again, it didn't feel too serious, but it was just an odd pain I hadn't really felt before so I decided not to mess with it too much.  The really odd thing about it though was that when I would do a right leg sidestretch, I wouldn't feel anything from it, but when I'd stretch my left leg to the side, it'd start hurting a bit.  Muscles are weird.  That's all I've really got to say about that.  :P  On Wednesday, I went to the Outer Limits only instead of going to Open Studio or both just so I wouldn't strain that part of my leg.  By now my leg is definitely not giving me any more pain, but if it comes up again, I'll talk to a coach about it.

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

YES!  All of the rumors are true!  I am still alive!  I know it's been a very long time since I've last written a blog post (way longer than I had first expected), but last week I found myself inspired to keep all of you up to date on what has been going on, but then, all of a sudden, when I clicked "post," blogger completely digested my blog post and left nothing but the title (which is weird since I made the title for it at the very end...at first I thought maybe it wasn't saving properly, but that it deleted what I put in first makes me suspicious that blogger somehow has an evil plot against me...*shrugs*).  Anyway, here I am now, and happily typing this up beforehand in notepad before letting blogger touch it. ^_^

Anyway, the original reason why I hadn't been posting so much is because overall things have begun to settle down and I have found myself going through a relatively consistent routine.  It's at this point that the week numbers are beginning to surprise me (yesterday started week seven...I KNOW?!).  Anyway, we've been continuing steadily with our Tuesday and Thursday rotations.  As you might remember from a previous blog post of mine, we have a total of four rotations per week, and do an hour for each of them, making two rotations for Tuesday morning, and two rotations for Thursday morning.  Before that, we stretch and warm up for 45 minutes, and afterwards we condition for 15 minutes.  Below is the breakdown of the stations that my group has been having (the groups are fine tuned every week):

Rain

While I do admit that it is all very pretty (as I have always secretly enjoyed the rain), it has been raining a lot these past few days.  It seems like that too when I check in with my friends from scattered around the northeast, and some a little farther south.  It rained on Monday and Tuesday pretty much all day.  If it wasn't raining, there was still a bit of a mist to keep everything wet.  Wednesday was nice and sunny, but today I wake up on this Thursday morning to see it raining again.  It seems to be a similar case tomorrow as I saw by some weather forecast.  I'm just glad I took the opportunity when I was given it and went out for some food shopping yesterday. :P

Anyway, Tuesday was pretty intense.  I had to take another Wednesday because my body just felt so beat.  We continued with the same style of rotations, but they changed up the groups and the stations.  For some people (like me) the group remained mostly the same, but for others, they changed completely.  On Tuesday we did an hour of Spanish web, followed by an hour of duo trapeze.  Two hours of aerials really takes its toll on your hands.  I got a wonderful rip right at the end of duo trapeze on the outside bottom of my right ring finger, just above the tip of my little finger.  It's still right now not feeling so good, but at least the two rotations we have today are only pole and wire.  Wire doesn't really involve your hands at all (thank god), but I think I can work my way around pole without hurting my finger too much.  Web gave me a few slight abrasions in places I thought I wouldn't still be getting, such as the spiral around the leg and to the foot, from sliding down.  It wasn't a bad burn or anything, as just a day later it was like nothing had happened, but I found showering not to be the most comfortable of things that day.  We mostly sticked to the basics in both classes.  In web (with Serenity), we worked on opposite side hip-key climbs (if you don't know what those are, don't worry about it... they're basically just a great ab workout) and practiced spinning and being spun on a rope with a handloop.  In duo trapeze we worked on individual tricks, which ended up being difficult, but at the same time rewarding since we had to learn to work together with others on what becomes a very shaky apparatus.

Weeks 2+3

Hey guys. I know it's been a few days since I've posted last but the reason that I have not been able to post so much is because my computer has been in for repair. The backlight bulb for the monitor has been getting dark on the left side now for a little while and finally went completely out a few times. It has been doing nothing but getting worse. The repair ended up requiring more money than was expected, so I'm not really sure when it's going to be fixed. Anyway, this weekend, I've taken a trip up to my family's house upstate, where I have access to an actual keyboard (my iPod touch's keyboard gets rather cumbersome to use after a while, but if I don't end up getting my computer back for a while, I'll resort do using that for future blog posts), which is why I'm able to write this blog post and tell you guys about all the wonderful happenings.

Anyway, I heard some pretty shocking news this weekend about stuff back at home. My cat, Mystery, who we've had in the family for about the past 8 years started developing a tumor in his right leg. It only became noticeable about two weeks ago and has grown very rapidly to about a golf ball size now. They said it was a malignant tumor, which means it's of cancerous level and is likely to spread to other parts of his body. The one resolution they offered was amputation of the leg, but that seems to be a bit of out of the question given the time and circumstances (such as cost, his age, and quality of life post-operation). The ironic thing about it all is that it is a known side effect of the annually required rabies shot, which is also applied on the back right leg (a condition known as a Feline Vaccination-Associated Sarcoma). He's been having progressive trouble using his right leg when walking/running/going down stairs, so even without the spreading factor, it's still causing issues for him. We're likely going to be putting him to sleep within this next week.