One of my favourite teachers used to say that if your belly was unhappy, you were unhappy. I submit that this, while true, is incomplete: unhappy feet will also result in an unhappy human. Maybe this is why we spend so much time setting our foundations in asana class.

Dark purple is 150 cm or over.

As we approach a FULL DAY’s worth of snow here in Vancouver, some appalling and extraordinary accumulation, I am pleased to report that I have some proper snow boots. I weary of seeing women mincing around in impossible footwear, plummetting down the brick sidewalk of Helmcken, incurring snowy bottoms on their way to Glowbal or wherever, and while I never was one for really impossible shoes [although my brown velvet Fluevog platform mules are still kicking around somewhere], I am happiest when my feet are happy.

It was the Great Teva Revolution of ‘08 that did it for me. M was always on me to get Tevas, but an adolescence of dudes in hairbraids and rainsticks had turned me off the aesthetics of Tevas in a big way. Of course, M is invariably right when it comes to practicalities and my Tevas have proven to be the finest footwear for my grubby and DIY lifestyle. They’re totally worth the constant mockery my friends subject me to.

I may go so far as to claim, on this solstice night, that this is the Best Christmas Evar™©®. Driving across the US of A last year was good fun, and time spent with family is always great, but this year I feel like I’m doing what I should be doing with my life. My metier if you like. Which makes pretty much every experience better. And almost all of the Conditions have been met:

- a fridge full of pickles and cheese

Me on 7th, trundling along

- giant haul from Superstore: tin of mixed cookies, cashews, truffles [various], Ferrero Rocher, olives, wooden case of clementines

- tiny fake Christmas tree resurrected for the 6th year running, redone with tiny disco balls from Yaletown dollar store

- ficus tree draped in Canadian Tire twinkling fairy lights [analog, none of that LED bushwa]

- fingers incredibly calloused from testing outdoor mini icicle lights and conjuring up one full thread from 3 formerly dead threads, only to have M short them all out trying to put some of the old-timey outdoor lights at one end

- Velcro has tried to eat as many tiny tinsel stars as he can find and has to be forcefully discouraged from same to prevent TinselButt

- Canada Post is actually COMING UP THE STAIRS TO THE APARTMENT [!! it's like a doctor doing house calls] to deliver various packages, about every second day now, and some of them are genuine surprises i.e. I have no idea what they are.

I’ve tried to have these hardcore yogic Christmasses where I just eat steamed greens and order San Pellegrino everywhere I go and get up early and sneer at the rampant consumerism. It’s entirely unsatisfying. I vow henceforth to go as whole-hog as I can into this season that I love, in the hopes that each subsequent year will be a candidate for Best Christmas Evar™©®.

UPDATE: Just snowshoed [new boots were excellent @ snowshoeing] across the park to M’s brother’s where we had a dram of Glenlivet out of his ceremonial little Celtic fancy-Scotch-dram-drinking two-handled silver cup and made a snow R2-D2 on the lawn.

What was really great about this is that none of us needed help visualizing R2D2, or any of his structural details. NERDS.

We wanted to make a robot but the snow’s not really packing snow so much as that pearly sugar-cookie snow, so the only feasible robot was R2-D2. We made a big pile of snow, henceforth to be known as a “snobelisk”, and rendered him from there. He has a beer bottle eye, an antenna, and a full array of maintenance panels and similar. We also tried to push some poor dude in a Honda Civic w/front wheel drive and all-season tires out of the back alleyway; he had to go to work, and by some mysterious juju managed to wend his way up the steep incline from the underground parking lot, but couldn’t get down the alley. I think he’s still there. God speed, Honda Civic Guy and R2…God speed.

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