Yoga is not for me.

But before I get into that, my mom calls me yesterday and tells me the story about how Law & Order is going to be used to film a scene for Law & Order. Pretty cool, huh? Supposedly Ice-T will be one of the actors there on that day. In my parents' living room.

It's been a little over month since I moved from Italy to Berlin and the biggest difference (other than cultural or geographical...or climate-wise.. or food-wise..) is that the time goes by much faster here. For whatever reason. It's 4:18pm on a Sunday, I just got done looking at hundreds of pictures of Southeast Asia from my friend Billy, who's been backpacking there since January (!), I looked out the kitchen window to see a bleary Berlin sky and.. *sigh*. I got a tad of the Sunday blues. Don't get me wrong-- I'm way better than I was a few weeks ago, or even last week for that matter and I do love this city (poor Michi has to deal with my high-anxiety, constant-crises personality on a 24/24 basis) but I just get really jealous when I see pictures of people I know in places I've never been. So my latest mini-crisis (just a half hour ago) erupted (there's always one brewing): when will Michi and I ever have the time to disappear and travel-- Australia, New Zealand, Tazmania and Indonesia? 3 months right there!-- while we're still young? (ie, before kids and possibly before marriage?) He's graduating next August but I still have to do my masters and doctorate, since my ultimate career goal is to be a professor. Usually, the answer (from Michi, or just the logical one that I refuse to admit to myself) is "you just have to wait and find out."

And that brings me to the subject of this blog post. I'm apologizing to my sister-in-law in advance (prego or not, I bet she can do the human pretzel position in under 5 seconds. Cirque de Soleil ain't got nothing on her yoga poses!)

So I've been trying several classes at Jopp, getting a feel for which ones I like, which I don't, etc. So, Indoor cycling? Yep. Fit Bo (kickboxing)? Yep. Power Workout (barbells, weights, and heavy stuff?) Yep. Yoga? *cringe* Nope. Michi actually suggested I try one to de-stress myself since I'm usually a nutty basketcase (with or without caffeine.) I've come to realize that I usually try a yoga class once a year and every single time, it's the same result. Yesterday, I did Power Workout class (about an hour) then did Yoga. For an hour and a half. Unfortunately, I'll never get those 90 minutes back. Let's see... I spend roughly 15 minutes looking at clock, 10 wishing I was home playing Super Mario Galaxy on our Wii, and another 5 making a grocery list in my head. And 20 napping on the damn mat. Ok, ok, there were some really interesting positions like this one:



I call this one the Nancy Kerrigan.


And this one the Olivia Newton-John (in the "Let's Get Physical" music video.)



This was actually fun.

But then there were several poses like this one, which, even though I used a nice foam yoga mat, were killing my hip bones (even though I thought I had enough fat there to cushion it..)




I don't even wanna talk about this one. If someone slapped me on the back, I probably would have stayed that way just like those little girls making the ugly pig faces in One Crazy Summer.

And whenever I look at pictures of yoga poses, I think about how cool it is and get all down on myself cuz I just can't seem to get into it. I say to myself, "You lack discipline!!!" (usually in the Ahnold voice for the additional verbal flogging effect.) Maybe Power Yoga would be better for me since it's more aggressive but Jopp doesn't offer that, so I'm SOL. But then I just realize that I'm more of a ju-jitsu gal and I really miss it. And piano too, since we're on that topic (actually learning/playing pieces.)

Anyway, I'll be back for about 2 weeks at the end of April for the birth of my nephew, whose name is Dario (and I quote my brother, who says it's "a nice guinea name" hehe.) He hasn't been born just yet but my sis-in-law already had false labor last week! (The official due date is April 24th I believe.) Put a cork in it!

I just put the first 3 seasons of The Muppet Show in my cart on amazon.com. I'm so excited to start watching hilarious stuff like this with my baby nephew!



and this, one of my favorites:


In case you don't know what Rickrolling is:

Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving Rick Astley's music video for his song "Never Gonna Give You Up". In a Rickroll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. It can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.
The practice began as a variant of an earlier prank called duckrolling, in which a link to a popular celebrity or news item would instead lead to a photoshopped picture of a duck with wheels.

Oh! and just to tie this all in with my prior post...

Scientology protests

In connection with the online meme, Never Gonna Give You Up was played and performed at some of the Project Chanology February 2008 protests against the Church of Scientology. At February 10, 2008 protests in New York City, Washington D.C., London, Edinburgh and Seattle, protesters played the song through boomboxes and shouted the phrase "Never gonna let you down!", in what The Guardian called "a live rick-rolling of the Church of Scientology". In response to a website created by Scientologists showing an anti-Anonymous video, Project Chanology participants created a website with a similar domain name with a video displaying the music video to "Never Gonna Give You Up".