Luke warm Solo Yoga where a group class seems so far far away

Not sure how many Star Wars references I have managed to cram into that blog post title...

This is the dairy entry of a hot yoga junkie:

Day 5 of stay in place : In what was yet another attempt to sweat and sweat a lot, progress was made. Ditched the crammed bathroom and restricted movements. Went back to guest room and set up the space heater to "max". It was still luke warm to say the least. Saw my friend Sid's post on the BYSJ group where he was in his bathroom but had a lot more sweat than me.. that got me thinking.. was it because he was still wearing a shirt? So I decide to wear a fleece jacket to force the sweat.

I did sweat a lot more .. but in the jacket. Finally at the end of class two drops of sweat landed on my mat... normally I have two buckets of sweat after class.. calm down I tell myself. Every deluge has to start with a few drops.. I look at those precious two drops and cry.. make that four drops..

My teachers are posting their dialogues as youtube videos. Only problem is the unreliable internet connection at prime time where things start buffering in the middle of the class. I have started recording these in the middle of the night to save them as audio files only. This way the class can go on uniterrupted.  Only problem is that there is a loud pinging noise in the middle of holding poses.. Found out that this is the outlook incoming mail notification going through the internal microphone. Matt Newman will have to recite the dialogue to an empty room at midnight for me to record this again.. Last night I actually fell asleep while this was recording.. had set an alarm just in case to wake up after 90 minutes to turn off the recording. Who knew Bikram Yoga dialogues make for good lullabies?!

Had no idea that last Sunday's class would be my last group class. Given everything we know about the virus, we would probably have quarantined ourselves a lot earlier. Good thing is all my friends seem to be doing okay and posting their own solo yoga experiences from crammed bathrooms and other spaces. 

Tomorrow will be two years since I stopped drinking water during class. That Mary Jarvis class that changed the water habbit seems ages ago. Last Sunday's yoga class seems ages ago! 

I am a social animal of the huggy type. It is not easy to isolate myself, but it is being done. Have been working on a yoga mat all week. It is surreal to be cooped up in a room all day. I see my kids for maybe 5-10 minutes a day. They are on a different time zone within the house. My MIL is still in her own room and watching TV and chatting with friends. We all go for walks one at a time twice a day around the block. The kids have shown no signs of exercising. Perpetually in their beds. I am thinking of going for a family bike ride tomorrow, weather permitting. Things are changing rapidly.. I am the designated shopper for the family. On Monday I made a Costco run at lunch break and this was the situation..

that was one person out one person in with a limit to how many folks who could be inside costco.. but we were all pretty close to each other.. would not call it social distancing... most of the stuff we needed were out of stock.. we do have a lot of cuties.. eating them on a regular basis to get more vitamin C.. which works for colds but not sure if it helps with the new virus..

There are lessons learned in self control, trying to set up the right environments and most importantly hydrating myself. At work we would all walk around between meetings, take a water break, restroom break. At home the meetings just keep coming one after the other.. you cannot just see who is at their desk to go grab the team for an impromptu meeting.. everything has to be scheduled and that means no breaks. 

The last two days, I took one hour breaks in the middle of the day to drink water and walk around the block. 

The yoga journey continues. Hope we get over the virus soon and get to be in a hot room.. something tells me that this is not going to happen anytime soon... but the community is there and everyone is working on cheering up the others. 

Yoga is a blessing, as are my fellow yogis!

The backrash

It has been some time since I posted anything. It has been a busy week, trying to recover at home, at work, trying to claw my way back to a new normal.

The doctors realized that without antibiotics, my situation was not going to improve but there was the allergic reactions to deal with. So they gave me a different antibiotic and that helped take out all other problems except the rash.

For the first time in three weeks, went to work Monday through Friday and made it ! Also did the usual daddy stuff at home without dozing off in the evenings! So it has been a good week. 

The only thing that bugs me is that my skin which was the envy of Jr. and the little one is now unrecognizable. They used to touch my shoulder or forearms and say "daddy, your skin is so smooth and shiny!" and my response used to be "hey, do you know how much I have sweat through that skin to get it so smooth and shiny? you know what to do if you want to have the same thing!"  

Right now, the front and sides are past the itch and have scabed over. The lower back and all around the belt area is still in bad shape. 

Apparently rubbing your hand over this area feels like petting a lizard or a baby crocodile.  The doctors tell me that this might take another MONTH to get over. I am just praying that it stops itching. Croc skin, no problem. I don't see crocs itching and scratching themselves all day long.

On the bright side, I went to BYSJ and asked my teacher "do you think people will object if I come to yoga class looking like this?" and the response was "It is so sweet of you to check. Folks come here with all kinds of tattoos.. think of this as a tattoo and just come and do your best. worse case just sit down in the room for 90 minutes"

Planning to start from scratch, again, tomorrow.

"It's never too late, it's never too bad and you're never too old or too sick to start from scratch once again."

What bugs me is that after being so fresh and healthy and doing a 60 day challenge and feeling like a well oiled piece of machinery, a few sick folks on a plane and a few small micro organisms can reduce me to this and I have to start from scratch.

Take a deep breath in, deep breath out.. repeat a few times.. 

Now time to move on.

A new look

The last 8 days have been very interesting. First a bug that this body has never encountered so far that knocked me out the early part of last week and taught me dehydration was much more of a risk than a respiratory infection. So be thankful for H2O and drink it every chance you get!

Then an attempt to recover from the bug and act normal again only to realize that this one takes a lot of rest, sleep, water... and all for a long time planned flying visit to St. Louis, Missouri to visit my sister and her family.

We made it to St. Louis and back and really enjoyed it. Must have upset many St. Louis natives when I walked out of the airport wearing a scarf, a monkey cap and a jacket.

We had one great day for outdoor sight seeing and we covered the zoo, the Arch and the local Hindu temple. Then we spent one rainy day indoors in "The Magic House" aka the St. Louis children museum where the kids had a blast and the adults didn't have to do much except watch them smile and laugh the entire day. It was great to finally spend a few days with my sister and her family at their habitat! Think of it as the Chimps visiting Jane Goodall at her house..

Made it back today, to take a photograph with Daddy's new look.

Early last week, the doctor said my eyes were dehydrated and an eye exam was required. Turns out that I was in need of glasses for some time. The eye exam person just looked at me like "so, when exactly were you planning on getting your eyes checked?" when I told him my last eye exam to check for prescription was more than 10 years ago.

The glasses were waiting for me this evening and when I walked into the kids room wearing the glasses, the little one goes

"daddy, you don't look like a daddy anymore. You look more like a thatha (grandpa)"

and Jr. tells her "That is not a nice compliment, you know! you shouldn't say that to daddy".

Well, my five year old still has her innocence and the 8 year old already knows how not to offend my sensibilities!

They both told me they love my new look after they got used to it for a few hours...

Told them that maybe it is time to update the profile photo for the blog and they posed for me, knowing that smiling for my camera is one thing that will always make me happy.

Well, the reason for me having to be made happy?!

They are baaaaaack! We were gone for four days and the fish had to be fed a little extra and we came home to a tank full of ...

Tomorrow evening will be spent in cleaning them up, again!

Now that the respiratory thingy is gone and I am able to drive without getting headaches, should be able to visit blogger more often.

Until then....

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Cricinfo and a Virus that looks like an anti virus program (Cryp_FakeAV-11)

My friend checked the India New Zealand score on my laptop last weekend using Cricinfo.com. While he was at it, we suddenly got a message that said that the computer was threatenend and it went on to launch an internet explorer window and made it looked like the computer was being scanned and before you know it, multiple viruses were found in various system folders.

It also had the Windows firewall shield logo (Kid you not!) but the shield was split into four parts and each part had a Microsoft Windows color.

Turns out it was a virus called Cryp_FakeAV-11 . These guys know how to do subliminal messaging! You see the shield shape, the windows colors, the legit looking virus scan, combined with your own Antivirus message (that is telling you that this thing itself is a virus) and you can be overwhelmed... Which window do you close? Which Ok or Cancel do you press? would you wipe out your hard drive with one wrong click?

Worse, why is Cricinfo supporting these guys?

The funny thing was that my MIL got the same warning and she clicked okay in an effort to "protect" the desktop and that installed this virus shield looking virus on our desktop! Took us some time to clean up.

Beware! Go let your six year old little ones and sixty year old seniors know the risk of clicking okay!

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