After seven years at the Mysterious Workplace, you are allowed to take a sabbatical, which is three months of paid time off. Not many people achieve this milestone and some of us are such workaholics that we put off our sabbaticals for years, or we don't manage to take them at all. One of the lawyers made no less than three separate attempts at ( Read more... )

Everything that is left of my cat is in a little pine box decorated with a plaque labeled "Ada." It came with a couple of pieces of paper with Ada's paw print on them--I remember rolling my eyes and asking them not to do that--and some poetry. I haven't read the poetry. I glanced at it and whatever primitive part of my brain recognizes bad poetry ( Read more... )

This is not my life. I can tell because I seem to be living in a beige Mission Bay blahplex and driving a Chevy Impala. This is a temporary state of affairs. J and I are living in the only corporate housing we could find that would take our cats while Bunker 3 is being remodeled. And the Impala is a rental that I'm driving while my Golf is at the ( Read more... )

I am a little bit afraid to go to the gym and see how much of my skill and strength and flexibility I've really lost.Total number of days it took me to face my fear: 5 ( Read more... )

Oh, my few remaining readers, remember those halcyon days when I returned from the Dominican Republic feeling stronger, smarter, and more flexible, capable of achieving all things in relation to the aerial circus arts? That was nice, wasn't it? I'd grown comfortable with the idea that, while I will never be as good as my teachers, who can and do ( Read more... )

I never wrote about my vacation because I returned from vacation and was immediately promoted at the Mysterious Workplace. The more I write at work, the less I write here. I only have so much writing in me, and right now it's all going to Skype security problems, Syrian malware, and Pakistan blocking Twitter. I will skip the traditional recitation ( Read more... )

I'm not going to talk about my act because I don't have one. That's the problem. In March, I am performing at the Hubba Hubba Revue's goth-themed Deathguild anniversary show and I have nothing: no music, no costume, no choreography, no concept. To make matters worse, March is a scheduling nightmare for gym time. My East Bay gym has just sent out a ( Read more... )

Very very late on Friday night, so late that it was early Saturday, I performed a new aerial act for the first time this year. I stepped out of the tissu and picked someone to flirt with. I stayed in character, varied the rhythm of my movements, and pulled different elements out of the music. Onlookers reported that my toes were pointed and my ( Read more... )

The human spine is surely strong evidence against intelligent design. When building the human body from scratch, what engineer in his right mind would put us up on two legs, supported by this stupid stupid stack of nerve and cartilage and bone that fails when we bend or walk or sit or back walkover? I look forward to the day I can have this ( Read more... )

2011 has not been an auspicious year for my hobby. First, I got sick and missed performing at the Soviet show. Then the Very Serious Circus School had Very Serious Financial Problems, so I switched schools. None of the really good teachers are teaching anymore, so classes have devolved into an open gym environment, where I work out on my own for an ( Read more... )