Ghost

Since teaching yoga has complicated my availability for working at Austin Java, I've been working only one shift each week; Tuesday is my night at Austin Java. The restaurant began staying open for dinner just recently, so traffic is very light during that time. In fact, from 7pm to close I am the only employee out front. All this changes the experience of working there significantly.

At night, Austin Java seems like just a shadow of what it is during the day. When I think of Austin Java, I think of people bustling in and out, or my coworkers standing around talking. At night the restaurant looks just the same, the music plays like always, but there are no customers and no coworkers. It reminds me a bit of The Langoliers, the movie of a Stephen King story that I saw when I was 10 years old. In the story, some people on an airplane get caught in the recent past where there are no people (because they are all in the present), only places and things. The only seemingly living things they encounter are the Langoliers, creatures that eat up the past.

It's a little bit creepy, a lot solitary. Now that I've come to expect it, I like it, in a way. I just can't seem to give Austin Java up, and a weird, solitary Austin Java is better than no Austin Java.

The Aftermath

Home again, home again, after a lovely Christmas holiday. Our hearts, bellies and suitcases left Plano fuller than when we arrived on Wednesday, and now we're sorting through everything, trying to get back to normal.

I will be attending my first yoga class in a week, which is somewhat daunting. The first class after a break always feels like the first class of my entire life, which leads me to an important question: is having a healthy lifestyle all it's cracked up to be? I eat a healthy diet, exercise most every day, my jobs keep me active the rest of the time and I almost always sleep at least 8 hours a night. It's everything that everyone says you should be doing to feel good and ensure long-term health, but I find that I simply fall apart during the holidays.

I have no moral problems with taking a break from my healthy habits for the holidays, my problems are physical. I just feel weird after a couple of days of staying up late, sitting around and eating pie and mint M&Ms and cookies. Food ceased to taste good, I began to have aches in my lower back and I felt tired. Even my skin began to feel weird. Is this what it's like to be old?

A gal from my church who is a nurse and has gone on many mission trips to foreign countries said that she's noticed that the people who have the most strict diets tend to be the ones who get sick on mission trips. Similarly, I've heard that (based on observation, not scientific experiment) people who live in ultra-clean houses get sick more than people who don't.

So what conclusion am I to draw from this? If I am keenly aware of the effects of being sedentary, decadent eating and irregular sleep after just a few days, does that mean I'm more in tune with my body than those who don't notice? Is this just the tension of being healthy in an unhealthy world? Or does it mean that I've babied myself so much that I can't handle deviation from my normal practice? Maybe I just didn't have enough to keep me busy, so I spent all my energy dissecting every little feeling I had?

Last Tomato

Merry Christmas, from the Casterland Farms last tomato of the season! (Picked after the frost, and has been ripening on our counter top since then.)

Happy Winter!

Happy winter, solstice, full moon and lunar eclipse! We kicked off the new season by waking up in the middle of the night to witness the full lunar eclipse, but instead we saw the reflection of the city lights off the clouds.

Today is the last day of work before Christmas vacation, and it's simply gorgeous outside-- it reminds me of early summer in northern California (except maybe warmer). If it weren''t for NPR, we in Austin would be totally oblivious to the crazy rainstorms out west and the very wintry weather in the northeast. I'm enjoying shorts and sunshine today!