Yoga Bear

There is this neat organization that's pretty fresh. And by fresh I mean awesome. It is designed to provide free or next to free yoga classes to cancer survivors. My lady friend helps head the Denver, CO chapter. It works by organization members contacting surrounding yoga studios and introducing said studios to the idea behind the organization. I think the idea is yoga as therapy. Or relief through well being. It's an alternative to traditional means of recovery and the message has been getting through to studios across the country. Survivors are taking advantage of the pure humble generosity that Yoga Bear and participating yoga studios  are offering.

 It just seems like a perfect fit. Yoga as therapeutic relief - free of charge to those who feel the inspiring/inspired yoga community is the embrace they need to eudure.

http://www.zemanta.com/bloggingforacause/

Rainy Sunday

My father proposed to his girlfriend of 9 years. The ball is now in her court, he says.

I couldn't finish Bill Bryson's "Notes From a Smal Island" so I started Stross' "Accelerando" and it has totally inundated my mind with almost too many awesome ideas and settings and locations and entity descriptions to continue reading (for the moment). I had to get on the internets and check out the tech news and the followed blogs just to calm myself down.

APPARENTLY the new form of the flu is going to wipe out the human race. WASH YOUR HANDS, PLEASE!

Oy Chivez

Here I sit/lay after a Thursday of mostly working and them some drinking. The fine establishment that is called "Sancho's Broken Arrow" has aided my thirst for drink. I suppose the subject matter of today's post would be "A Prayer for Ownen Meany", "Iron Sunrise", "B is for Beer", and "Notes from a Small Island". 

Actually, my girlfriend, Kate, was kind enough to allow me to meet her parents down in their Florida beach condo a few weeks ago. I finished Mr. Meany. Pretty dynamic book from about the 2/3 mark. Totally different ending to the book from the "hey look at the little person walk around and be sensitive because he's religious" style of prose presented at the beginning. I had a blast reading this book and hope that Kate finishes it in time to see the play here in Denver. We rode the chair lift (Mary Jane Ski Resort) with a fellow who recently saw the theatrical adaptation and I must admit it sounded like it'd be right up my alley.

Stross' sequel to "Singularity Sky" was a different note in the same universe. The action was less intense but more even. The environments were more tangible but the ideas weren't as fresh as it's predecessor. Not as humorous and not as wonderful (how can you beat a cosmos travelling AI called Festival who drops whatever one wants from the heavens to whomever has the gall to ask for it?) as the prequel but a great extension to the marvelous spine that is the setting of the two books. I can't wait to read "Accelerando" and I hope Charlie the best in his nomination for best Novel (Hugo). Wednesday (character) reminds me of the gal from Stevenson's "Snow Crash".

Tom Robbins deposited a children's book for adults or an adult's book for children pertaining to beer. I read it last night in a couple hours and had a blast. I plan to see Robbins in a week, hear him banter about the new work, get him to kindly sign my purchased copy, then give my copy to my cousin so he can read it to his daughter. Wonderful book.

Bill Bryson wrote a book about his 20 year residence that is the Isle of Britain. He gonzos his way though the countryside. I haven't finished it, and dearly wish I was reading something a bit more exciting. Sure, if I were a citizen of  England or any other country of the group of islands I'd relish in his descriptions of my countryside... but to me it's just descriptions (in the first person, not much dialogue) of somewhere I've never been and not as interesting (just yet) as a fiction novel. I picked it of because of my love of London as setting - see "The Baroque Cycle".

Which brings me to beer. I've had a few. I feel great. I can't wait for the summertime. Hopefully I can score some Phish tickets for the Red Rocks shows. My dad proposed to his girlfriend of 9 years last night (her birthday) and apparently my mother is planning on visiting this summer with my stepfather for a week or so. The snowboarding season is over and its time to start climbing, after work, in the canyons again. 

Instead of starting the next

Book in queue, I took the morning and read sci fi author blogs as well as slept and slept. My gal, Kate, and I are going to read Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany", then go see the theatrical interpetation. I really wanted to start Stross' "Iron Sunrise" but I suppose this dose of dual media consumption will do. 

"Drood" was fun. I typically don't have a problem with endings, and shouldn't say I have a "problem" with this one. The plot just sort of died out with Dicken's death and I really wish there were an explanation to the monster(s) in the servant's stairwell besides the opium illusions.

I was recently informed of how to contact an old friend who is currently peace corpsing it up down in El Salvador. I'd link to his journal site, but he has it password protected and I'm not about to jeopardize his political situation in that country as his journal site includes info likely not wished to be shared with the world.

I found that Robert Charles Wilson has slated for release his new book "Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America". I'm looking forward to it. Its nice to see Wilson steping away from "Spin" and "Axis". I enjoyed the former much more than the latter and heard he was considering continuing with another installment. 

Its going to be summer soon and that means no snowboarding and yes climbing. Phish sold Red Rocks out in what must have been record time (I'd bet no more than 20 seconds) and I was unable to grab any tickets to their return to Denver, my hometown... The most recent winter storm to hit the rockies unfortunately left Winter Park off the radar with low snow totals yet the fresh snow that did fall was much needed.

1.5 weeks 'till vaction in Florida. The dishwasher is still broken.

Drood

So, I finished Stross' "Singularity Sky" and thought it was an intelligent and spectacular first novel (I think it was his first). It was more spectacular for it's ideas concerning this supposed "singularity" and the associated technologies/ideologies/information evolution than for the plot. I put off reading the sequel, "Iron Sunrise" to leaf through Dan Simmon's latest doorstep, "Drood".

So far the pacing in "Drood" is wonderful. It's great to be back in London after Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I have never read any Dickens, this current book may push me in that direction. I'll certainly pick up another Simmon's novel. All I want to do is read... stupid work.

The only solar system is ours?

I recently started Charles Stross' "Singularity Sky" as part of my sci-fi binge and began thinking of relativity and causality; etc. In short, I decided to toy with the idea that the only set of planets and star (solar system) in the universe is the one we beings (hello, beings!) reside in. That we are revolving around a singularity with an event horizon proximal enough to skew our view of what we think is the vast universe. When looking at the stars, we are looking into the very distant past... looking at anything is looking at the past. We look into the night sky, thinking we are seeing the vast cosmos when it is really just the past or future of our current system wrapped around a violently accelerating gravity well warping the space-time continuum. My problems are accounting for multiple star systems and and other characteristics as such that have been observed to be far unlike our own system. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

The World According to Garp

The second (first being UIFY) Irving novel to grace this reader's eyes was his 3rd and vaulted him into the "everyone-shall-henceforth-read-the-crap-out-of-your-books-from-now-on" status. The story spans a time frame of about 45 years and includes the main character's entire life, most of his mother's, and just the tip of his father's. Just the tip?

The best of the book was written when Garp was amok with energy; his passion for writing, running, cooking, taking care of his two boys, and trying not to be sexually involved with too many baby sitters or son's friend's mothers. Then people start dying left and right and Garp (the character) has less energy, and is less amok... less entertaining. 

I'd wager Irving pours a lot of himself into his books, or the two I have read, therefore tending to rewrite similar themes. This book was a sort of manifest destiny in its day, I presume, for it was written almost mocking feminism in that the feminists embraced an unintentional feminist book in the story - I'm guessing it has a feminist aura about it now, too. Before reading the book I heard it described in one word as a book about "feminism". I got the same sort of feeling  finishing UIFY where the main character's life was "the" story told to his therapist revealed in the last 100 pages or so of the 800(+?) page book.

It seems like Irving has these sort of planned out conclusions ready before starting his books. His stories are thrilling enough for fiction, its the way he spans his stories to his "manifested destinies" that make it Literature.