I mentioned a while ago how it felt like I'd been living in some pretty big times. Since then, subjective time has been torn out of the shoulder socket of habit and things have been in a bit of a mess. A good mess, but a mess nevertheless. There's nothing for it but to recount what's happened.
Buckets of fun were had over Christmas. I spent the Eve and the Day with
Ian and Rowan, two friends from church who shared a wonderfully
family-like Christmas with me. Ro even made a stocking with my name on
it. I lost every single board game I played, but there was nice port. I
also got a chance to have a video call with most of my Tasmanian family.
Funny to think that was the first time I saw my parents in over a year.
After that, I returned home and played video games for a week solid,
while Joliette and practically everyone else were away. *Enslaved* is
very good, and *Batman: Arkham Asylum* is even better, but you probably
knew that already.
Square-eye fun ended, the new year rolled around and I packed my bags
and went to Dallas for three weeks. Now, there are many fine people who
live in Dallas, many of whom have been kind to me. But it's a hole.
Granted, I spent most of the time in a hotel in conference rooms without
natural sunlight talking about some of the more arcane aspects of
distributed open source software development, but even so, it's not one
of my top ten favourite cities. In each of *those* cities, you do not
need a car to cross the street.
The first week in Dallas was spent doing the [single geekiest
thing](http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG) that has ever been done in that
city. Our old group from Tassie was re-formed, along with special guest
James Whelan. My monk kicked arse.
Eventually, after both play and work were done, I left Dallas (yay!) and
went home to London. Jetlag has thrown the time out of joint in a
different way, although if I had more discipline I would recover faster.
Returning to kickboxing after six weeks out of practice is an exercise
in humility, as was watching some of the clips from my grading session.
J & I went to see Hamlet on Wednesday. It's my first time watching it on
stage, and the first performance J has ever seen. I was very pleased. I
had forgotten just how good it is. The production emphasised the
constant surveillance of the Danish court, Kinnear played the Dane as a
hyper-sensitive introvert who shields himself with wit, and
[Calder](http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/59912/company-members/david-calder.html) did
an excellent Polonius.
Driving goes well. After warming up a bit I seemed to be as good as I
was six weeks ago. Apparently, I've just got to master maneuvres,
roundabouts and the motorway before I'm ready for my test.
Also, did my first ever yoga class yesterday. I was expecting it to be
challenging because I'm not very flexible. It turned out to be
challenging because I'm not very strong. I'm surprised that the male
yoga practitioners I know don't look substantially beefier, to be
honest. Also, I hadn't expected to break a sweat. Nice that there wasn't
much of a "spiritual" element to that, as there are certain teachings
that I cannot submit to nor appear to submit to.
That's it, I think. Hope all is going well with you.