Today the Bikscript and a letter arrived in the mail. The letter said, in effect, ta for the bucks, and we still need a copy of your driver's license and two passport photos. Which have doubtless arrived in L.A. by now.
 
Today's other decision: to fly or to drive? Drive.

In gymnastic terms, it was like having Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton showing me how to do somersaults. Yesterday in yoga I was commanded to stay after class, whereupon yoga champion Ida and studio owner Abbey showed me how to lock my left knee properly in the Standing Head-to-Knee Pose. Huh. I couldn't do it. HUMBLING. And less than a month to go before I leave for teacher training, too. Well, this is awkward.

The lovely and generous Bettina, one of the five Saanich students heading down to San Diego this fall, gave me a laminated copy of the Bikram dialogue, complete with stickers, in advance of the yoga school mailing me my own copy. In return I will have her to the farm to pull on goat teats. Karma is a wonderful thing.

Five-point-five years ago

In January 2005 I weighed a good 150 pounds more than I did yesterday, when I mailed my application for teacher training at the Bikram Yoga seminar in San Diego, starting September 19th. In January 2005, if you'd have told me I'd become a teacher of any kind, let alone a freaking hot yoga instructor, I would have assumed you had recently stubbed out a Pete-Tosh-worthy blunt.
 
Mind yez, I felt like I'd smoked a big cannon after leaving Canada Post and realizing that, er, another life change was on the way. A life change that had its start in the unlikeliest of circumstances, giving a stranded bicyclist a ride home. So all this is simply a result of letting karma have its way with me.
 
The instructors at Bikram Yoga Saanich have been kind and encouraging all the way, and while part of me keeps wanting to ask, "Hey, you know I'm 47, right? Like at least 20 to 25 years older than most of the instructors at this studio?" -- I know I never will.
 
Five and a half years ago I sweated torrentially just walking up a flight of stairs. Now, *on purpose,* I'm heading off to sweat torrentially for six hours a day, interspersed with lectures. Sweat was such a stigma in my younger years. Now it's marketable, by God.
 
Hence "The Sweaty Gazette," a ramble through the middle-aged beginner yogini experience.
 
Two weeks ago my back spasmed severely. This evening I broke a molar in half, lengthwise. While I doubt my chewing ability will have much involvement in teaching Bikram yoga, the spinegraine is a little worrying. However, even the younger yogis at Saanich have had the odd ache and twinge.
 
So here goes flappy-bodied me to be surrounded by titanium-bellied students. Stay tuned.