Virtue is a painful, painful thing

As is the aftermath of intense exercise. Inspired by the word "surly", which is what I will be tomorrow.

As she fell asleep, Sarah felt the stiffness in her joints. By the time she woke up, all she was fit for was a hot bath and breakfast in bed. Every muscle in her body hurt. She could barely move for the pain.

Of course, pampering was not on her schedule, and so Sarah winced through every step of her long day.

“Buck up. It’s your own fault, you know,” Dan commented mildly over lunch. “You pushed yourself too hard with all those reps.”

“Next week won’t hurt as bad this way,” she answered. “This is the pain of virtue.”

My first silks lesson in San Francisco was today. The teacher knew Shayna! Which was how she greeted me -- "You trained with Shayna?" "Yeah." "She's awesome." "Definitely."

The class is fairly small, six or seven of us in total, all young women. And it's intense enough that I don't think I'll be able to move my arms tomorrow so much, which is awesome. And everyone is very, very, very friendly, which is also awesome. Then again, one of the things I like about "circus people" is that they're welcoming and friendly to newcomers in a way other intense athletes I have interacted with don't seem to be.

The transit situation, of course, is as bad as I thought it would be if not worse. But... but it was so much fun, and the silks hanging over my bed have even more meaning to me now, and my arms will be a delightful reminder tomorrow that as I go to start my new life as a Stanford Genetics Graduate Student (TM), something has already started for me. Just like meeting up with Amy yesterday made me feel like I already had half of a community at Stanford.

But, I have a resolution, to do a small amount of conditioning and a relatively larger amount of stretching each day, so as to be more flexible. I was stronger than most of the other people in my class, and had better endurance, but my flexibility is for shit and I would still really like to be able to go for the whole hour and a half without feeling completely dead afterward.

Also, on the train, I saw advertisements for Spring Awakening, which is now showing in San Francisco. Which is super cool. But tickets are hideously, hideously expensive. Which is less than cool. And I think I want to replace my camera more than I want to see Spring Awakening, as much as seeing "Totally Fucked" performed by really good singers on stage would be, well, totally awesome. I tried to see if they have rush tickets for somewhat less hideously expensive prices, but they had no information on such things, which I take to be a bad sign.