Tonight we dined at Sabor in Milwaukee to celebrate Shifu Ferreria’s upcoming wedding.  The meal  — an authentic Brazilian churrasca served by a steady parade of gauchos — was fantastic.  This is the kind of meal that one needs to save for, in terms of appetite and cash…but that’s OK, because I don’t think I’ll need to eat again for another 12 hours or so.  I don’t think I’ve managed to eat so much on any prior occasion, including Thanksgiving.

The new PT rehab program, designed to heal my hamstrings, is quite a workout in its own right. Consisting of mostly balance and agility exercises, it’s an unfamiliar approach, but I’m willing to try it for a few weeks. With any luck, it will work better than what I’ve been doing: stretching after kung fu workouts and weight lifting sessions, without any progress in flexibility for months.

Herds of girls overtook the north sidewalks of Langdon Street as I drove home this evening. I don’t know if they’re current sorority members or prospectives hoping to make the cut, but damn, there sure were a lot of them walking toward the Union. It was quite a spectacle…wranglers on horseback with 10-gallon hats and bullwhips wouldn’t have seemed out of place.  Maybe I’m just bitter because they wouldn’t let me into I Felta Thi.  Something about my legs being too hairy.  And being a guy.

I finally got back home after the first read-through tonight. I’ve been cast as Lancelot du Lac in the Baraboo Theatre Guild’s fall production of Camelot.  The show will be challenging, to be sure, but a few familiar faces have made it easier already, including Melissa (Schellenberger) John as Guenevere and Scott Kindschi as Merlyn.  It’s going to be great to work with the Langs again as well.
The trip home on the interstate took about 20 minutes longer than usual due to a 2- or 3-mile section of highway being reduced to a single lane so that the hundreds of concrete barriers can be picked from the median by enormous claws and placed on flatbeds to be hauled away.  Better to do it late at night, I suppose, but it still backed up traffic for miles.

The air is changing, and so am I.

It was a peaceful walk to work today. The downtown streets were sparse with people this morning, possibly due to the taking of four-day weekends for Labor Day. Moving from the dan tien and focusing on abdominal breathing is taking some getting used to, but it’s a great meditation for my new “commute” that I much prefer to the old.

My pulse was racing after climbing 8 floors of stairs, but I expect that it will get much easier over time.  It feels a hell of a lot more productive than riding the elevator every morning.