[Second Saturday after Epiphany] joy sadhana

[hermionesviolin]

I have been spending lots of time on Tumblr in recent days, and this might be relevant to some of your interests: mountain goats singing the mountain goats

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"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [ more info]
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. And they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. (Isaiah 9:2, Handel's Messiah)

Good things about today:

• I got about 7-9hrs of sleep, which I guess was sufficient, since falling back to sleep wasn't really happening after the second time I woke up.
  
• [see below] bicycle is repaired (and gloves have been obtained), certain household items are restocked, i had an enjoyable ~half hour walk outside this afternoon
  
• bff phonecall
  

Things I did well [since last joy sadhana]:

• Turned the heat back down before going to bed.
  
• Actually went to bed rather than stay up for hours doing write-ups.
  
• Walked my bike to Wheelworks to get the creaking fixed.
  The woman told me I needed to inflate my tires. When I walked into that store in September and said I hadn't ridden a bicycle in ~10 years? Yeah, perhaps it would have been optimal for me to act questions about what bicycle maintenance entails... (It occurred to me later that this is probably why bicycling uphill was seeming more difficult recently.)
  While I was there I bought Srs Bznz gloves. That plus the $26 replacement part + $10 labor got paid for with money left on the giftcard Prof.D. gave me for Christmas 2010.
  When I had to have my bike pads replaced recently was when I realized: bicycling actually costs money beyond the sunk cost of vehiucle, helmet, etc. I'm used to pedestrian-ing, which is free. My T-pass is 50% subsidized by work and automatically recharges, so it's basically an invisble cost -- and I'm not gonna cancel it because I'm still gonna use it some and the amount of $ I would save by just loading money onto it and paying on a trip-by-trip basis isn't worth the hassle. So while yes, if I switched from driving to bicycling I might actually save real money, bicyclin is actually COSTING me money.
  I like being able to bike places -- it improves my life in various ways -- but ugh, spending money.
  Also: when I got my brake pads replaced, I expressed my distress that I'd had the bike ~3 months (and it's not like I do a lot of hard biking -- ~8mi/day, <7days/wk, on city streets) and the brake pads had already worn out. Apparently braking in the wet wears them out more, so okay, duly noted. The said he mostly doesn't use his brakes, and I v. much had that in mind the next few days and yes I can coast at times so I'm using the actual hand brakes less to stop myself but dude, I dunno about you but I am biking on city streets alongside giant fast metal vehicles and there are lots of intersections and srsly this is not really an option for me.
  While I'm taking about bicyling (I'm really bad at doing joy sadhana not as a faux structure for updating, aren't I?) ... biking after the accident, I've fairly consistently felt more nervous/scared while riding -- v. aware of how easy it would be for a vehicle to hit me (esp. since I can't see behind me -- and yes, I have considered getting a rearview mirror, but I'm not confident of my ability to be able to usefully parse that information ... spatial relations r not my strongest suit).
  
• Bought bagels and paper towels.
  
• Bought a couple items at CVS & picked up my ILL copy of Radical Love (which apparently I only have on a 2-week loan).
  • Crossing the street at the library, I opted to walk down the stairs by the church and walk along the river -- and now I have a slightly better idea of how to get from my house to the Medford library without having to cross all those intersections along Main Street.
  • At least from a quick look in the index, Patrick's book doesn't actually say much more about BDSM than the "God of Israel as leather daddy" that I was remembering offhand, but footnote 7 on page 104 does include a couple citations and finding that one of them is at Chicago (the other is at EDS, which is more accessible to me -- though yes, I did consider asking Scott to bring me a copy next time he's out here) I looked on half.com and hey, reasonable prices ($7.07 for the @EDS book [though GR is making me hesitant about that one] and $10 for the @Chicago book -- plus $3.50 shipping/each, but still, <$25 total; this totally makes up for the fact that I haven't finished a Council agenda or prepped for SE or anything, right?).
• Sent my mom pictures I found on the Internet of cute animals :)
  
• Fed the cat, and myself.
  

Things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]

• church