donutszenmom.com

Last night, My Gift flew out to spend the holiday with her dad. First, though, she, The Frenchman, The Cop and I had our traditional pre-holiday sushi dinner at the traditional restaurant in town.

She called me when she got into San Franciso, and told me that she’d been reading Hardcore Zen during the flight, and that she really is enjoying it. It’s always funny sharing ideas with people, because you always imagine they will “see” it the way you do, and appreciate it for the same reasons you do, but in the end, you just never know. It’s like when people wander into Saturday led class. I always wonder if they “read” the class like any power or vinyasa class, if they realize that the sequence is always the same, etc. Never mind the philosophical underpinnings, which are a whole ‘nother layer completely. In the end, though, what does it matter? If someone’s karma is bringing them to a place, a class, a book, then there is something going on there, though it may be very different from what is going on with me in relation to that place, class, book.

Anyhow, My Gift is amused by the book and I’m not terribly surprised. She has been exposed to plenty of monks and lamas in her life, but none of them had that punk perspective. Haha! Interestingly, I think she’s been immersed in zen long enough that she’ll “get” that all those perspectives are the same. And different

Even turning her on to books and experiences, I am always a little wary of inducing a case of spiritual materialism. I fight that enough myself, so worry about setting My Gift up for the same thing. In the end, though, it’s nothing I can control. We were driving to lunch the other day and she was saying she needs to get the Om tattoo on her foot touched up. I asked her if she remembered what the dot on the symbol represented, “Enlightened mind,” she replied. “And the little mark under the mind?” I asked. “Maya,” she said. So she is conscious of illusion. What she really makes of the concept, I can’t say. She’s still very young, and she’s a different person than I — so she’s on her own with this one

Practice at home this morning, as the Volleyball Guy/Sanskrit Scholar Great Northwest Ashtanga Tour is not over yet. Back to Mysore practice on Wednesday. Yeah, I know, the Moon Day. I’m going to take it tomorrow. I want to make a point of getting some rest on Moon Days, but I don’t want to miss a chance to go to Mysore practice. So a compromise.

Practice today was good. I am still scared doing kurmasana at home. It’s a little cooler here than at the shala, and I worry about torquing my hamstrings again. So I don’t lift my heels. The hand bind in supta kurmasana hurts more here, too, I guess because of the cold, but I braved through this morning, so yay me.

My knees have felt kinda stressed lately. Not injured, but as if they are being asked to do new things. I imagine this is from bhekasana and maybe even dhanurasana. Have to remember to contract my quads — I believe that’s supposed to protect the knees. And a tweak in my upper back. Perhaps from the stretching sequence I’ve been doing on the rope wall as an extracurricular activity.

Sat for 10 minutes at the end of practice. Ditched the zafu and just sat on the zabuton. In lotus. Hey, I started practicing yoga in order to be able to sit properly in zazen! I’m finished! LOL! Oh wait, there’s nothing to attain. Well good, that gives me a reason to keep practicing…

***

For the guys on the mountain, climbers and SAR: Kwan Seum Bosal.

Glued to the computer these days, looking for updates on the search for the climbers on Mt Hood. This morning, the mother of one of the climbers said, “The mountain has no right to keep our sons.” I understand why she is saying this, in her fear and grief, but it reminds me of when I was climbing a lot, how my family just didn’t understand the whole mindset of climbing.

When you start a climb, there is a vast sense of possibility. You think about when you are due to return, and you project yourself to that (safe) future, but then you come back to the present moment and recognize that you are now going to move into a reality where you take one step at a time, where you cannot predict the outcome, and where you will try to minimize your risk. It’s imperative that you stay deeply connected to your actions in the present — lapses in attention can add up to problems in the future (and some lapses have immediate consequences in a split second). Basically, you try to stay attuned to the present moment, listen to your intuition, and factor in everything you’ve experienced, or heard other people tell about their experiences.

Climbers are great talkers. It’s a responsibility to the community at large, to share information about any problems or disasters or near-disasters that one has experienced or been told about. All climbers have when they go out into the wilderness is their equipment and their wits and an encyclopedic array of stories of other climbers. Equipment, human psychology, human physiology, the physical terrain, and weather — all of these factors play out over the course of the adventure. You never know what’s going to happen, with so many variables in the mix.

The combination of having to be intensely connected to the moment and the unpredictability of the outcome is what makes an adventure so compelling. No one ever goes alpine climbing or rock climbing without recognizing that things could go very wrong. At least, no experienced climbers do. It’s a perfect example of recognizing reality and choosing to be optimistic. I’ve met climbers who were severely injured, who’ve lost friends and climbing partners, and not one has ever suggested that their optimism was misplaced or mistaken. Things happen. Sure, you put yourself on a mountain in winter and a storm may come. Or it may not. You put yourself in a car and drive to work in the morning and a drunk driver and a head-on collision may come. Or not.

I’m not sure why I feel like I need to make an argument for climbing. I guess I worry that people look at these stories and say, “Why’d they do that, anyhow? Why do something so crazy and purposeless?” Yeah, um, okay. Better to do sensible, purposeful things, like watch TV and buy things, right?

The Human Route

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like this.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
What is that one pure and clear thing?

–Seung Sahn

I’m at work, whiling away a few minutes. It’s the damn Secret Santa present. I picked someone who is ALWAYS at his desk, so it’s pretty much impossible to drop the secret gift off. LOL! Everyone in the office hates this tradition, and yet it goes on and on.

I think I have a little more patience with it than other folks, because I don’t have other traditions that I have to deal with — you know, like real family traditions. Both The Cop and I are minimalist and not big fans of tradition (though we both have our weaknesses: he likes dojo tradition and I like zendo tradition), but anyhow, we don’t have things that we HAVE to do during the holidays. Oh wait, The Cop said a turkey was required for Christmas, so I guess that’s a tradition. And I always spend too much money on My Gift, so I guess that’s another. Anyhow, you get my drift. The Secret Santa thing is my only Christmas annoyance. Wow, now that I write that, I feel so lucky!

Weird to write an entry so late in the day. Practice seems AGES ago. It was one of those days at the office: in early, working lunch, wall-to-wall meetings, late to go home. All in all, though, a pretty good day. Luckily, I like the people I work with. All my crankiness about organizational behemoth sluggishness pales when I think about how I pretty much like almost everyone I work with.

So, as I think back to the murky beginnings of my day, I vaguely recall waking and having coffee and reading email and showering and putting on the Meow hat and going to Starbucks of Yoga. It was dark out. Gee, all of my mornings are remarkably interchangeable Practice was good. I felt strong and not light. I know, huh? Weird combo. I’ve been eating more, I guess, and I don’t feel as light as usual. But it’s one of those deals where being a little heavier makes me feel stronger. This used to happen when I climbed. My weight drops and I feel really light and strong, and then, over time, I start to feel kind of weak and burnt out. So I put on some weight, feel strong and energetic, and then, over time, feel kind of heavy and lethargic. And the cycle starts again. We’re talking like 4 pounds, so it’s all kind of stupid. But hey, here I am with a keyboard at hand and my Secret Santa recipient still working away in his cube.

Oh wait! He’s leaving. Score!

I will end with a note I got from My Gift this afternoon, which amused me to no end:

Public Service Announcement

I would like it to be known that:

1. I got an A on my art history paper.
2. I totally owned my art history final.
3. I finished my 7 page math final, which we weren’t supposed to be able to finish within the 2 hour time limit, in an hour and a half.
4. I owned that, too.
5. I survived my first finals week of college without having a nervous breakdown, crying, pulling my hair out, or melting. The fetal position was applied only once.
6. Energy drinks do not make you less tired at 6 30 in the morning, they just make you tired and twitchy.
7. Pomegranate lemonade is quite delicious.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

The Cop and I are not doing any Christmas/holiday decorations, and My Gift is old enough to get non-object Christmas presents (a snowboarding holiday), so all I really have to deal with is the office Secret Santa and the office parties. Thursday is the all staff luncheon and Friday is the department party. And the senior designer on my team is in town for the quarterly planning meeting. Which means I took her out for drinks and dinner last night. Luckily, we’re actually friends, otherwise it’d be one of those weird business events where you have to make a whole dinner’s worth of small talk with someone you really don’t know at all. Can you tell I’m an introvert?

So it was a kick-off to my week of holiday business drinking. It’s fun, on the one hand, but it also messes with my yoga. I don’t sleep well after drinking, and it makes me sluggish and mildly depressed in the morning. Plus, I end up eating really weird things: last night I had fried clams. (How did that happen? I ask myself now. Those musta been some strong pomegranate margaritas!) We were at a restaurant owned and operated by Bostonians, and I think I had a flashback to my childhood. I don’t often get a strong craving for particular foods, but I totally wanted fried clams. Enough so that I didn’t even question myself, “Seriously?? Fried clams??!?!” That would be my usual question-to-self re: fried food, and re: strange food that I would likely regret the next morning right around Marichyasana C and D.

Regardless, I got up and practiced this morning. The clams were mildly regrettable, but truth be told, I’ve managed to make myself feel worse with Mexican food. Apparently my Bostonian roots are still with me and I can eat fried clams and still feel heartbroken about the Sox, even though they WON the World Series, finally. Some things just stay with you forever, I guess. Haha! That’s probably my deepest karma. Clams and baseball melancholy.

I’m reading a new book, How To Raise An Ox. Ox-herding images are popular in zen. The ox represents one’s true nature/one’s practice. So I love to think of the dazzling ox in this quote as one’s practice/mind:

All I did was raise an ox. When he wandered from the path into the grass, I pulled him back; when he ran amok in someone’s garden, I chastised him with a whip. Now he has been tame for some time. Unfortunately, he used to pay too much attention to what people said; now, however, he has become a pure white domesticated ox. He is always right in front of me wherever I am, dazzling white all day long, and even if I try to drive him away, he will not go.

Today was my first day wearing the Meow hat to practice. No, this isn’t a reference to Super Troopers (which is a favorite movie at my house, and which even inspired The Cop and some of the other guys on his squad to grow ironic moustaches for a while there). Anyhow, the Meow hat was purchased by My Gift when she was in middle school. It is a black beanie with little knitted cat ears, and the word “Meow” printed on the forehead in red. I always loved that hat, but of course, being an adult, I couldn’t actually wear it anywhere.

Until now. Thank you, morning Mysore practice! For my 5AM commute, I can wear the Meow hat and my fuzzy black slippers! I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s such a treat.

When I got to Starbuck’s of Yoga, the only cars there were Volleyball Guy’s and Returning Guy’s. I was running 15 minutes late, and usually almost eveyone who’s going to show up is in by 5:45. Hmmmm, perhaps something to do with the holidays? Returning Guy was off and running, so I joined in. A little while later Sanskrit Scholar and NY Chick showed up. Okay, now things were starting to feel normal. The British Director even stopped in. She is nursing a back injury (not Ashtanga-related) and wanted to stretch out a bit.

My mind was…how shall I describe it? Terrier-like. Yes, terrier-like: very alert, very quick, and rather bullheaded. Just like the dog is when she’s trying to convince me that I should give her a cookie or throw a ball for her. It was hard for me to put down my thoughts. And when I did manage to put them down and just practice, after a little while they’d snap right back, right where I’d left off.

Miraculously (or actually, not that miraculously, given that this started last March) my right hamstring is starting to feel normal again. For a long time, both hamstrings were shot to hell, and then the left one, eventually, went back to normal. The right one’s been persistently achey, but not too bad. I think I was actually used to that baseline level of achiness because I was very surprised to notice this morning that it is going away. I’ve been keeping at the samakonasana/hanumanasana add-on, using a block on the right side, and I guess it may be helping the injury. Or else the injury is just healing despite the hanumanasana. Either way, I’ll take it.

Once again, I feel like something is coming loose through practice. I first had this experience about a year ago. I’d been practicing for six months, and I started to notice that something was happening in my lower back and hips, as if lots of old habits (physical and mental) were coming undone. And now the feeling is back. It’s in my back and shoulders now, though — at least the physical part. The mental loosening feels more generalized than last time. Not sure where this will go, but at least I’ve learned that these loosenings and realignments are positive.

Baddha konasana update: I can now get my head on the ground with a push from one sandbag. Volleyball Guy came over once my head was on the ground and squished me even more. Until there was a nice, satisfying crack from my sacrum. I am so addicted to that feeling. Funny how when I first experienced it, I was terrified.

Joshu asked Nansen: `What is the path?’
Nansen said: `Everyday life is the path.’
Joshu asked: `Can it be studied?’
Nansen said: `If you try to study, you will be far away from it.’
Joshu asked: `If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?’
Nansen said: `The path does not belong to the perception world, neither does it belong to the nonperception world. Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.’

Okay, I get it: achey hamstring, sacrum crack. Neither good nor not-good. Just practice.

Irishseoul sent me an email today saying she missed hearing from me, so she read my blog. She said Maneki Neko just must have the picture of me in garbha pindasana. Apparently Maneki Neko is fascinated by the pose. LOL! Weird kid!

The picture isn’t as awful as I might have imagined, though that may be because I am older now and able to put these things in perspective. Or perhaps I am older and my standards are lower

Led practice today was lovely. Crim Girl practiced next to me, and I had the wall on the other side, so I was a happy Rain Man. Kurmasana felt really good. For the past couple of practices, there seems to be something happening with kurmasana (and, by extension, supta kurmasana). It all just feels easier, somehow. I can’t quite say how, so sorry for even bringing it up. Ha! The point, though, is that practice does make things happen. Whether I worry the issue and do research poses or not. Not that I’ll quit overthinking or doing research poses, of course. That’s my nature, at least at this moment. Nice to know, though, that the practice itself goes its merry way, regardless my greedy and impatient habits.

Most interesting pose of the day was laghuvajrasana. I had one of those moments where things just all come together (largely because my mind wasn’t busy overseeing the proceedings). I just exhaled into the pose easily. “That was your best one ever,” Volleyball Guy said from the other side of the room. Indeed. Okay, the coming up part sucked, but hey, it’s a start. Usually I go back, kind of slow to a creaky stop a few inches from the floor, and then crash land. Today, though, it was all just one smooth out-breath. Nice!

Before practice, I read a cool koan:

Zuigan asked Ganto, “What is the original, permanent principle?” Ganto replied, “Moving.” Zuigan asked, “How about when it moves?” Ganto said, “You don’t see the original, permanent principle.” Zuigan was flabbergasted. Ganto remarked, “When you agree, you are not liberated from the senses and their dust; when you don’t agree, you sink into life and death forever.”

The opening sentence of Gerry Shishin Wick’s commentary rocks: “In this koan, Master Ganto vividly points out that if we hold onto the notion that there’s no fixed thing, an ‘original, permanent principle,’ we’re stuck there too!” I am amused. And I love that Zuigan was “flabbergasted.” For some reason, the idea of a zen monk in 9th century China being flabbergasted just cracks me up.

What also amused me was yogamum’s Grinch meme. I did my Christmas wrapping today. It involved putting gifts in tissue paper, then putting them inside a box that has a Christmas print on it. Yup, a box that is printed to look like wrapping paper. Well, the top part of the box is printed. The bottom half is white. The Cop suggested I put directions on the gifts so recipients would not turn them over. I did tape the boxes shut. That counts as “wrapping,” right?

Ah, Christmas. I’m not a Christian, I’m not a shopper, and I don’t (generally speaking) care for too many objects. Plus, I’m hypersensitive to avarice. All in all, it doesn’t add up to a cheery Christmas participant.

Once upon a time, someone actually gave me a Christmas sweater. Seriously. The very idea still kind of freaks me out.

And one year, my Mom, realizing that the previous year’s gift of a button down sweater with three-dimensional appliques of a Mexican village (no kidding: people, donkeys, carts) had threatened our relationship (the I-must-be-hallucinating part was when she said, “When I saw it, I thought of you!”), asked me what I wanted for Christmas. My answer: a 100% cotton wrap-around bathrobe in a dark color. When Christmas rolled around, I received a blue and pink diagonally striped zip-up fuzzy polyester turtleneck bathrobe.

When it comes to Christmas, The Cop shares my value system. We decided that this year, we would skip presents for each other, and, instead, get new fixures for the master bathroom. Off we went to Lowe’s, where fixtures, for some reason, are remarkably…well, rococo. Maybe this is just because we were at the Scottsdale Lowe’s. Scottsdaleans seem to have a remarkable appetite for the…um, hyper-designed. Note I didn’t say grotesque and tasteless. Oh wait, I guess I did.

I wanted to launch into the talk I give to the design team, the one where I say the words “elegant” and “Occam’s razor” a bazillion times, but the Lowe’s employees did not look eager for a lecture. But seriously, elegance in design does NOT include swirls and geegaws and a dozen materials thrown together to give a supposed sense of “luxury.” I wanted to run out of Lowe’s clutching my head and screaming “Mad! Mad! We’ve all gone mad!” I didn’t though, because I felt that would diminish my credibility as the voice of reason.

I will have to do research and find out if simple plumbing fixtures are still manufactured and, if so, whether they are allowed within the city limits.

Now we’re off to Mexican food and margaritas. I’ll close with the wikipedia entry for Occam’s Razor. May the buyers at Lowe’s stumble upon this link.

A zippy home practice this morning, and then I spent some time on the rope wall. Stretching my shoulders. I think I need to spend some time on the shoulders — they’re the weakest link in my backbends, though my hip flexors are a very close second.

Anyhow, lots of passive stretching over the Swiss ball, lots of stretching on the ropes, then more backbending over the kitchen stool that The Cop tailored to my needs (he cut a few inches off the legs so I can backbend over the stool).

As I lay in savasana, it was quite clear to me that the tightness in my shoulders is about fear and the tightness in my upper back is all about grief. This morning, though, what I also felt is that this tightness is guarded by a tightening around my core. If I try to relax into the shoulders/upper back (the fear and grief), there is a reactive muscular tightening around my lower ribs. Not quite sure what’s up with that yet, but certainly worth exploring.

I’m not someone who cries or yells very much. In emotional situations, I just try to be present and pay attention. That’s always been my inclination, and it’s been reinforced by years of zen practice, but the catch in the system, apparently, is that I tighten around the lower ribs and hold my breath a little in response to emotions.

So now I have my list of things to work through: shoulders, upper back, hip flexors, fear, grief, reactive response to fear and grief. An optimist would say it’s a good project: like a nice, fat novel, it’s a list that promises to entertain for a very long time.

Other news: The Cop is spending this week doing bike squad training. He does not want to be on the bike squad, but he was curious about the training and wanted to give it a try. Plus he gets to work days all week and spend lots of time on a mountain bike. Why a bike squad, you ask? It’s for policing congested higher crime areas (e.g., downtown). Ah yes, The Cop, armed, dealing with criminals. With a bike. If shooting breaks out, duck behind the bike, right? Uh huh.

A little more fear energy for your shoulders, Ma’am?

A sky full of stars when I went out to the car this morning. Time for the Mysore commute outerwear: fuzzy hoodie, fuzzy slippers. I actually had my hood up this morning. Brrrr.

The room, when I got there, was nice and warm. Volleyball Guy announced he would be taking pictures. It’s been a while since he did his photography thing. “This must be for the Ashtanga Christmas cards,” said The British Director.

In the past, he’s photographed us on our mats — just snapshots as we went along. This morning, though, he set up a little area at the end of the room, replete with candles for that authentic twinkly yoga feeling. After garbha pindasana, he asked me to do the pose again for a photo. Alrighty then. A head-on shot of garbha pindasana. I needed to bolster my body dysmorphia, right? And what better way?

Other moments of note:

Hanumanasana: I went for the samakonasana/hanumanasana West Coast combo pack after the prasaritas. The right hamstring is still hinky, so I’ve been limiting use of these add-on poses to led class on Saturday. I don’t know if adding it in aggravates the injured hamstring, or if the stretching will actually help heal it. Sigh. I’ll know eventually, I suppose. I’ve been liking hanumanasana, though. I use a block under my right side to coddle the injury, and skip the block when I turn to the left. There’s a part of me that is happy I’ve accepted the limitations of the hurt hamstring, and there’s a part of me that wonders if this isn’t going to end with wildly unbalanced hips and hamstrings. Another thing I’ll know eventually.

Bhujapidasana: I have discovered that if I hook my toes around my forearms, I can use the resistance to hover with my head above the mat. Is this cheating? I know, I know, I should ask my teacher. And I thought of it, when I was upside down, with my toes curled around my forearms. I couldn’t see him, though, and I really didn’t want to yell, “Hey, Volleyball Guy! Look over here! Am I cheating??” LOL!

Upavistha konasana: Just ow! In and of itself, this is a perfectly lovely pose. After a baddha konasana weighted with sandbags and held for extra breaths, though, it turns into the pose from hell. Just FYI.

I guess that wraps it up, practice-wise. In other news, The Cop asked if we should have the squad Christmas party at our house this year. I asked, “What day will it be?” He looked at the calendar on his watch. “Monday.” Yup, this coming Monday. Neither of us is big on planning, so I suppose this will all work out just perfectly.

I exaggerate. I’m fine.

Well, actually, I am at work and there is a fire to be put out, or two or three fires, really. Or a billion. Apparently they never all go out and stay out. A never ending project.

This morning was an on-site class about global marketing strategy. Very interesting. I have to try to catch myself and not ask too many questions in classes. I wonder if that is an Ashtangi thing? Are we all really curious, and kind of aggressive about finding answers? Why can’t I just be quiet and wait and see what happens?

There’s a weird internal striving that I’m trying to get squared away these days. I mean, really, why do I have to turn everything into a challenge? It’s a little addiction, a behavioral tic. It’s the habit of my mind: it’s the karma I am making for myself. Honestly, I don’t understand it very well, this taste for difficult challenges. For many years I quite enjoyed it. I’m kind of over it now, though. Strangely, though, the impulse to be ambitious stays with me. I think that’s because I associate striving with my Self. And as has been demonstrated many times in my life, I find it hard to put down the things I think of as “me.”

This last paragraph makes me think of a nifty little saying I learned from my zen teacher: “Perhaps more suffering is necessary.” I like that, because it recognizes that I am making my own problem, and that for one reason or another, I might not quite be ready to put it down. Perhaps more practice is necessary.

I’ve been reading Iyengar’s Light on Life, and really enjoying it. It’s much more charming that I would have imagined, though I have no idea why I imagined Iyengar wouldn’t be charming. And there’s this measured quality about the tone of his writing, even as he is writing about something for which he (clearly) has so much passion. Geez, maybe I will finally be calm and relaxed and wise when I am in my 70s. Or 80s. Or 90s.

Be that as it may, here I am, well shy of 70, drinking vata tea, and thinking a bit about my morning practice. I rolled along through a usual at-home practice. It’s cooler in the mornings these days, but nothing the space heater and a long sleeved shirt won’t fix. As I worked my way through the marichys, I had to admit to myself that I am still feeling nervous around kurmasana. For a while there, I would feel kind of agitated from marichy D on: would I get the marichy D bind? Would kurmasana hurt? Would I get the bind of supta k? How bad would baddha konasana hurt? These days, both marichy d and the supta k bind are reliable, and I know how much baddha konasana hurts. Kurmasana seems to be the last hold-out, agitation-wise. I hurt my hamstrings almost a year ago getting my heels off the floor, and my psyche is not willing to let go of that memory, I guess.

Okay, no problem. Just more practice. A little grist for the mill.

Today’s one and only goal was not to get freaked out at work. Mondays are traditionally quite stressful for me, and a casual poll of my co-workers revealed that they, too, suffer through the Monday stress-fest. So, despite the fact that my goal would not directly affect the bottom line (at least not immediately), I decided that my only ambition was to make it through the day without forgetting to breathe.

Bring on the lunch with a couple of my work buds! (Usually I opt out of Monday lunches, because I need to be out there wrestling with all the stressors, right?) Did we talk about work projects at lunch? We did not. Conversation revolved around the current season of Survivor, which I don’t even watch. I didn’t care, though. It was nice to listen to them discuss the ins and outs of the program and just kick back and relax.

At 1 PM I had my weekly one-on-one call with our senior designer, who telecommutes from Seattle. I told her about my goal for the day, and how well it was working out. I had only one potentially confrontational meeting scheduled for the day, and it was coming up at 2 PM. All in all, though, I’d managed to avoid the frazzled chaos of Monday. And truth be told, I was pretty much as productive as I usually am. So whipping myself into a frenzy may not actually increase my efficiency. Note to self: Remember that!

At 1:50, the building alarm goes off, the lights flicker and die, and all computers and phones shut down. A few minutes of asking around reveals that the construction crew next door has cut through our power lines. Shortly after, the CEO declares work over for the day.

I call the senior designer back on my cell phone to let her know what’s going on. “Boy, when you have a no-stress day, you really go all out!” she said.

Who knew how accomodating the universe could be?