Sensory Deprivation Float

This is what I imagined the experience would be, but it turned out to be a lot less claustrophobic and peaceful.  Newport Float floats you in a tub in a closet so you have about 7' of space to bounce pinball toe-to-head in and if you panic, you can stand all the way up without bumping your head.

I came across float therapy reading Tools of Titans.   Ferriss lists something like surviving three 90-minute floats as prerequisite before dosing with psychotropics.  Zoinks.  I was more interested in this as a way to jump start a mindfulness/meditation habit.  The past week, I've been trying to get in 20 minutes of sitting quietly/day using the super basic secular instructions Leo outlines here (Ironically, Leo does 35 minutes of BS'ing about a "no bullshit" approach.  The core points are covered from 13:30 - 19:00, so watch that section and take 20 mins to apply it before deciding if you want to watch the video in its entirety).  Coming off the half ironman, I was also somewhat persuaded on soaking in epsom salt helping absorb magnesium and addressing muscle soreness and other helpful effects, even though there isn't scientific evidence to validate your body is doing any sort of absorption.  Anyhow, my 20 min meditation practice went OK for the first 5 days, then the wheels fell off the bus on the weekend where I was coughing, congested, and so full of self-pity I didn't even bother to build a "To-doodle" (a sort of coloring book inspired daily task list I'm prototyping and may blog about more in the future).  So I decided to reboot with a novel and more challenging mindfulness adventure on what would be day 8... Plus Newport Float was running a deal on $35 morning/late night floats and this was the first available opening.

It turned out to be pretty relaxing.  Not unlike the weightlessness of scuba diving where you can become hyper aware of your breathing, your heart beat, even your stomach growling.  I liked being forcibly locked away from the buzzes of my phone for a designated amount of time.  I liked that the FAQ suggested you could use the time to meditate, sleep, or think creatively.  Since my mind likes to chew on creating and reflecting on curiosity-inspired lists (i.e. 10 things in the world I believe are scarce and how might someone conclude the opposite, they're abundant).  I think I cribbed this anxiety-management habit from Scott Adams' book, but don't quote me on that.  The main point is that this "creative thinking" is antithetical to traditional meditation "note the thought, but don't get drawn up in its story, let it pass like a cloud" approach.

/Tangents about reflections I had in the tank...

So my first line of thinking was on this floating facility's business model and the feasibility of copying it.  I was impressed that Ron the proprietor immediately answered an email I sent about floating with a head cold late last night and wondered how much of his customer service he personally handles and how much he can outsource.  I didn't like the prospect of being chronically "on call."  I did like the prospect of minor customer interaction, set a timer, do my own thing for an hour and a half and right when I'd be at a good point to take a mental break, I wake the customers up and pocket $35-$60 each for their service of keeping me focused on whatever desk project I wanted to focus on.  Suppose in broad strokes, he profits an average of $35/2 hours (90 min sessions with 30 mins of pre-post showering) and he does 40 hours of that a week, over a year each tank might make him $35K in a year with 4 weeks of holiday.  He has 4 tanks, but I get that his cost structure ($50K for ozone cleaning system alone) probably means his margin is a bit tighter.  Right, satisfied that a diversified SteamStead in a gentrified area might benefit from having a deco chamber or two, I move on.

Another line of thinking was marveling at how much ego I had attached to making it the full 90 minutes on this, my first session, despite my head cold.  How I wanted some hypothetical audience to marvel that when benchmarked against other newbies, few of them make it for that long.  All sorts of strategies I had in order to hang in there for that long (counting breaths/heart beats to approximate minutes, evaluating  the pruneyness of my fingers), even if doing so turned out to be torture for hungry-full-bladdered-me whose needs I was ostensibly giving my unwavering attention to by doing this exercise.  It's weird how competitive we can get and the tension that can create.

The main theme my creative thinking kept circling back to ended up being on concluding that we reap what we sew.  I had started by asking myself what the nature of ADHD was, if it was increasing, how that might be adaptive in the grand scheme of evolutionary pressures we face.  I came out of the reverie concluding that if we are preferentially breeding plants/livestock to mature earlier, to be burlier (fat or muscle), to look prettier on the shelf, why are we surprised about the hormonal/obesity/vanity issues within our own species?  Why are we surprised about the disregard we have for our elders?  It is challenging to figure out how long a commercial hen's hypothetical natural life could be, let alone throw a birthday party for them when they get there, why would the arc of a human lifespan be that different.   If we look for cheap, commodities from afar it seems inconsistent to resent our employers from sourcing employees globally, warehousing them similarly, and swapping them out when they reach their planned obsolescence.

/End tangents

Leaving the facility and strolling to a coffee joint a couple blocks away (7 leaves-- they make a sweet delicately authentic mint thing they call Sereno which I liked more than my Kean Grasshopper go-to), things seemed a lot more bright vibrant.  Not dissimilar from that stayed up all night tired but relaxed feeling coming out of burning man adventures... which might have included psychotropics.  This was the point of view it seems like good photographers should have, to see the beauty everywhere that we miss when relentlessly caught up in trains of thought.  A guy in a wheelchair by the 7 eleven asked if I was "In Treatment," determined I was "A Normie," and warned me to "be careful in this neighborhood" and I got the jolting tutorial in what Fear felt like physically (one of my creative prompts was to better understand how basic emotions manifest physically to me in hopes of better acknowledging them rather than suppressing them and wondering why their influence pops up surprisingly in less constructive areas).  That this might not be the most gentrified of areas to loiter waiting for a ride or bike to if indisposed.

At any rate, going to a float facility is a little bit too much of a transportation hassle and cash drain for me to make a habit of, but I hope the "bootcamp" effects will persist in my own daily meditation practice and I might welcome some future visits as a less consumerist gift idea for myself or to share with others that are similarly open to the experience.

Tortillas from scratch

This wasn't the press we used, but clever!  I wonder if we could design one with a house seal on it for signature tortillas in the future, or offer to machine custom ones for other tortilla aficionados....

Inevitably, we buy tortillas (TJ's corn & wheat are our favs) and forget about the remainder languishing in the fridge until they get moldy.  Or we have all the makings for tacos except the tortillas themselves and give up and order pizza or similar tragedy.  Therefore, learning how to tortilla is an important life skill.

The hardest part about making tortillas from scratch was finding Masa Harina at Sprouts, our Anglo-focused grocer.  Since flour is pretty shelf-stable, I just ordered a bag on AMZ Prime, but kind of resent the complexity this adds to our provisioning supply chain.

/Tangent-- Incidentally, I'm very impressed with AMZ Now for groceries. Like Prime Instant Video and Sbux rewards, it is interesting to reflect on how much I ponied up for the privilege of being an early adopter of these services and how much more affordable and smooth the customer experience has become now that they're out of beta.  Groceries are now available from Sprouts within 2 hours of ordering, honoring all the in-store sales that are featured in their paper circulars, and delivered by a friendly uber/lyft/courier.  The delivery charge is about 10% of your order, which seems reasonable vs. the alternative of several laden backpack 5 mile bike trips praying the eggs don't break or our time if MacGyver/I "clocked out" to go to the store, plus the self-discipline benefits of being able to search only for organic, or skip the ice cream/beer cases that would have otherwise tempted Hungry Self to stray from The Plan.  /End tangent

Anyhow, AMZ ships Bob's Redmill Masa Harina and "Bob" seems pretty committed to curbing the unquestioning use of GMO, at least in what gets planted if they can't control pollination contaminants, so I ordered a 24 oz bag of that instead of just going to one of the 2 local latino grocers within 4 blocks of the house for Maseca.

Best tip I found was to use a freezer bag trimmed to fit the press rather than wax paper or foil.  This worked beautifully.  I didn't bother to cut 2 separate pieces, I just let the natural crease in the bag define the top half and the bottom half.  Some tortillas had an unnaturally straight edge from dough pressed flush into the crease, but that seems less messy than alternatives.  

I also just used the cast iron skillet to cook them, no oil.  I think if MacGyver were more actively involved in this step, a lot more Canola would have gone in the skillet and into our arteries, but these pucks showed no signs of getting stuck.  I kept MacG distracted on Ye Olde Stove grilling fajita veggies and reconstituting some questionable dried black fungus mushrooms I had languishing in the back of the spice drawer.

MacGyver is typically a flour tortilla devotee, but I think these corn ones won him over.  He said he doesn't like the preservative taste of the store bought corns and his aversion was more to preservatives than corn.

If I were repeating this recipe, which I probably will, I would experiment with more than the 1/2 teaspoon of salt and supplementing even more lime juice in conjunction with water to make these more piquant.  The TJs flour + corn combo also seems to use baking powder and honey, so maybe incorporating those will make the home version even more addictive.

Total yield off 2 cups of masa=12 tortillas (8 tortillas + 1 testilla + 2 accidentes I dropped on the floor and fed to dogs + 1 leftover that fed the chickens).  At that rate, a bag of Bob's makes 23-34 tortillas.  These would run  $0.08 to $0.35/tortilla depending on whether you bought flour in bulk from AMZ and whether you count my 25% waste rate as part of the yield or not).  This still compares favorably to the $0.31-$0.43/tortilla of the premade ones from La Tortilla Factory we would have chosen otherwise (not factoring in that we waste a decent amount of these due to fridge neglect).  In broad strokes, I would say handmade tortillas cost 58% of what store bought ones would, saving you about $0.16/tortilla)... If I'm more cynical, I would say my hourly tortilla making wage is $0.85, but I spent a lot of that loitering and talking to MacG which I might actually pay to have the privilege of doing at say a bar or restaurant, so :-P .  Plus it seems like Bob's cardboard box and wrappers for flour bags would be less net waste and more compostable than the plastic baggies for each 8 count of LTF's we would have to dispose of otherwise.  If maseca bags are paper, they'd be the smallest carbon footprint, but I worry about the GMO issue.

Leer un libro en español....

Goodreads Review-- 

This is the first book I read in Spanish... Now I have a surfeit of vocabulary words for "shrugged," "smiled," "raised an eyebrow," "sighed." It will be interesting to see how this gets rendered as a movie because a lot of the scenes seem contrived. 


Este es el primer libro que leo en español ... Ahora tengo un exceso de palabras de vocabulario para "encogió los hombros", "sonrió", "levantó una ceja", "suspiró". Será interesante ver cómo se hace renderizado como una película porque muchas de las escenas parecen artificiales.

**

The rationale for this project intrigued my physical therapist, so if you are in the same camp-- 

#1 I live in the barrio and generally believe that being able to communicate with a variety of people makes the world a better, friendlier, safer place.  This goes back to formative lessons learned in: The Butter Battle... I wonder if Seuss' work is available in Spanish?  Anyway, this better-ability-to-relate-to-a-variety-of-people, is one of the main drivers for having a bucket list in the first place.  Now I have all this exposure to stuff I wouldn't ordinarily do, thereby meeting people I wouldn't ordinarily meet and/or quickly stumbling upon sort of shared interest when I meet strangers rendering them less strange.  Specific to wanting to be bilingual, on a police ridealong, the night ended with investigating an homicide.  Lots of bystanders wanted to help the police find the shooter who was still at large but could describe what they had seen only in Spanish.  

#2 The prospect of live interaction with Spanish speakers and possibly paying for their time (i.e. Verbling) is a little bit too much of a jump into the deep end for me.  That said, I didn't want to make up Spanish sentences myself because I want to start soaking up common parlance-- connotations, common phrases and euphemisms, etc.  I tried to read 100 years of solitude but that was so fantastical I wasn't sure I trusted my translation after a couple pages-- really?  the gypsy sold him a sextant?  I opted for something that I thought would be a limited and contemporary vocabulary page turner that I could basically get for free using paperback swap credits.  Oscuros, the spanish translation for "Fallen," a YA book in the Twilight genre seemed to fit the bill. 

Typing stuff into google translate was tedious in some ways but the bomb in important ways, in that you could get a nice Espanol-bot lady to read back what you had typed, you could even try speaking a few words and see if the algorithm recognized what you were saying as an actual Spanish word.  Lots of free feedback!  Plus I learned random stuff like the phrase the book translator used for "swallow" in Spanish is pretty ugly, literally translates back to "drink saliva" and ironically a mustache is a "bigote." 

Paint the House

The sabbatical also seemed like a good time to tackle the long standing bucket list item of painting the house.  I saw a team painting an historic house in Tustin on my weekly coffee constitutional and figured it was a good omen.  

Before-- also before the drought completely killed boxwood and magnolia

Four weeks of 6 day weeks of prep and paint work, a sizable chunk of change, and we're pretty much done.  

MacGyver and I are still adjusting to it.  The house went from being creepy farm house that happened to have a dense city grow up in its orange groves while it was collecting ghosts and cobwebs to it to being a more urbane SFO painted lady wannabe.  

Part of the insecurity might be because my art training ended abruptly in middle school.  I think there is also a bit of remorse that we don't have the excuse of "the house is a fixer upper" to use to explain our rather lax house and grounds keeping practices.  A lot of it is a perplexing reaction to a few critical remarks from people we care about that somehow wipe out the avalanche of compliments and kudos coming from others, now discounted as "just being polite."  At any rate, there is no HOA and it will need to be repainted again in a decade or so, so we have plenty of time to upgrade our gardens, learn about color palettes and find other reasons to estrange ourselves from relatives before our next rodeo.  

After-- Dunn Edwards Passionate Plum and Cobalt.  Metallic gold source unknown.

Pinterest inspiration... eeeh nailed it?

Half Ironman

Completed Santa Rosa 70.3 this Saturday 5/13.  Felt like most of the weekend was actually spent shotgun in the truck with a motion sick fur kid on lap.

Coach suggests post race report to be even more ready for the next event (IM AZ in Nov)

Swim: 0:53:03
T1: 0:15:20
Bike: 3:50:57
T2: 0:06:45
Run: 2:23:02
Total: 7:29:07

Prerace--

• Rehab strength session 2 days before was cutting it pretty close.  Epsom and rolling seemed to help, but that was right under the wire.
• Didn't swim it day before because would rather not deal with a wet-wet suit the morning of and still think that was the right call for this race.
• Should have recorded observations when driving the whole bike course more seriously with more thorough notes-- there was dodgy pavement and big rollers later on in the course that I was aware of but they still surprised me
• Good pre-race eating decisions (no booze, tomato soup, pork sliders, sushi, ravioli, etc.).  
• Caffeinate before the race or go off of it entirely and time withdrawal symptoms for recovery week (this is budget friendly but logistically tricky if you're using starbucks as an office between workouts while on sabbatical)

Swim--

• For rolling starts at races with 3K people, eat gel painfully late, like well after elite women have left.
• I went 18% further than I had to because agoraphobia.  Coveathlons over the summer should be good practice.

Transition 1--

• This was mostly frittered away walking up a BIG hill from boat launch.
• Oversized booties were a drag to swim in, but saved me from the traditional surgical removal of gravel.
• Heat mitigation hacks be damned.  Just wriggled into a dry tri-top, sleeves, jersey, vaseline lubed socks, running shoes.  wasn't cold on 40 degree descent.  

Bike--

• Visualize the yard sale of debris people will be dropping over the first 5 miles
• Bring something to blow your nose on
• Chocolate covered espresso beans and peanut M&Ms aren't going to work on hotter races
• Skipped aid stations because I didn't like the queue for biffs.  Probably won't be able to do that on full unless I'm on liquid fuel and it is incredibly dialed in and compact.
• Second computer, not just for battery life but watch kept pausing when it bumped up against aero bottle.  

Transition 2--

• Abusing a biff as main priority
• Didn't bother with any elaborate gear since I was already in shoes, run course was shady and the bag I had hung on the bar instead of dropping on the ground was now entangled with my neighbor's bag and covered with bike chain grease.  Just grabbed a bib and hat and went.  

Run-- 

• Felt like a cakewalk.  Stuck with 1:30 run - :30 walk with alerts on the :30, but eventually got sick of pacing with the same people and I didn't feel like I was suffering as much as they looked and I had a better feel for availability of aid stations.  Plus there were stretches that felt like single track because people were doubling back and I didn't want to jam up traffic by walking.  
• SCAR rehab strength work held through mile 12.  Worst pain was pressure from tracker over front of ankle.  Maybe I'll loosen that after the swim next time.  
• Spearmint Clif bloks taste like dentist, mocha gu tastes bad even when you are deep in caffeine withdrawal.  This is the drawback of Aid station roulette. 

Belle's remaining bucket list pinned here.