Assorted

Notes from the weekend, going backwards.

Accounting. I tallied up the shiatsu books for the year, thanks to the handy-dandy excel spreadsheets my honey made. Some observations:

• 44% of this year's expenses went to office rent; 35% to advertising/business coaching.
  
• I brought in about $1800.
• I spent about twice that.
• The first year of running my practice was less expensive than attending shiatsu school.

Couches II. My parents brought us their couches. They recently acquired new ones. These couches are smaller than the couches we had, but still plenty long, thus making our condo seem much larger, and the ceilings appear higher, while still providing ample comfy seating. My parents also treated us to an early dinner at the Indian restaurant, and to a generous early Xmas gift cheque. You see, my dad is currently earning a retirement pension and working full-time as a contractor; he's now earning a good--a double--income for a public school administrator. The cheque made my mouth drop to the floor, and G did a triple-take. We were staggered. I was deeply glad I had bread to give them.

Couches I. Saturday evening, we hauled our couches downstairs for the neighbor's unfurnished living room. They're a super-sweet mom and her darling little daughter, newly arrived from Spain. They like our cats, and they have a tan-and-white guinea pig named Pigita. The little girl was eager to introduce me to her pet. Then, returning upstairs, I read on the floor and G watched TV in our chair.

Tree. We bought a sweet little Xmas tree for only $15. It's a lovely douglas fir from Canada. It seems like a happy tree. The cats were enthralled. I also ordered many holiday gifts from Amazon.

The brain tumor and a class I had no business teaching. The founder/director of my shiatsu school has a brain tumor. Well, had a brain tumor; it was removed last weekend. We're all dismayed and saddened, and worried, too, both for her and for the future of the school. She's been sick with a mysterious illness for some time. A month or so ago, one astute student voiced her hunch that it was cancer; nothing else would keep this lady from her school. After the Saturday morning practice session I supervise, I lead the students through healing visualizations for her. It made us feel better, at least. A koan: how much is prayer and visualization for the receiver, and how much for the giver?
Then I substituted for Meridian Review, the one class I was planning to take again. I'm a trifle rusty on the material. No one else was available to fill in for the teacher, an acupuncturist who was down with a cold. I suppose that some teacher is better than none, so I pulled out all the point location charts I could find and went to town. I don't think I did any harm (although I did call BL-67 "Kunlun Mountains," when we all know that's BL-60). In the end, all I really had to know was slightly more than the Level 2 students, so I straightened them out on the location of LI-15 and called it a day.

Bread. Friday night I whipped up two loaves of fabulous white bread, one for us and one for my parents. If you didn't think that ordinary white bread could be fabulous, you've never met the King Arthur Flour Baking Companion.