Peace and quiet meet wizard rock

Omm
Early this morning I was asleep and dreaming. I lived in a huge house and was throwing a party. Everyone was there except Margaret, and I kept waiting and waiting for her. I was even getting worried, and then finally she showed up. I gave her a hug and cried, “Margaret! Now that you are here the party can begin!” I took her around the house to introduce herself to everyone else: “This is Jennifer,” etc, except each time I introduced a new person, the person looked like Margaret.

A cold inquisitive nose and a very whiskery muzzle (Lyapa) on my face woke me up, and I suddenly remembered that it was Saturday morning and I had promised Margaret I would call her if I was free to do yoga this morning! No wonder I kept dreaming so persistently about Margaret. I’d been looking forward to our yoga date all week, and my subconscious knew I’d forgotten to call her and was telling me to wake up and get on it. Alas, this was the one morning Erik and I decided to not set our alarms so we could sleep in, and it was already nine-thirty. I called Margaret as soon as I was awake enough to talk, and luck was with me! she was running late and was planning to go to the eleven o’clock yoga class instead of her usual nine-thirty.

So we had our yoga date after all, at the tiny, cozy studio at Karuna Yoga in Los Feliz. It was my first time doing Kundalini yoga, but it turned out to be just what I needed. In Berkeley, when I was most fit, I loved my rigorous Ashtanga practice at Inner Heat. But as I’ve become increasingly sedentary, my body is no longer comfortable with very demanding yoga practices, so today’s Kundalini class was perfect. Not everything we did was easy — my Pilates sessions are making me quite strong, so easy isn’t really what I need — but we didn’t hold any poses for a long time, and we didn’t tire my wrists with endless sun salutations. Instead, we spent a lot of time in meditation, chanting (which I have to admit I still don’t really get, though it sounds nice) and also dancing (“meditative” improvisational dancing, not like club dancing!), which I loved. My UCLA dance classes have knocked me out of any insecurities I used to have about improvising my own dances in public, so I got a right little groove on and really enjoyed myself. It was a very comfortable and joyful class. I want to see Margaret more often, and I also want to go back to Karuna Yoga… which I will, since I paid for four more classes!

Voldemort can’t stop the rock
After yoga, and a delicious lunch from Tropicalia, Erik and I drove downtown to hear a free concert at Central Library: awesome wizard rock with Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys! Here are those Slytherins wearing their school ties and singing one of their songs:

They have a great new song that got a lot of laughs, about the hotness of Tom Felton (who plays Draco Malfoy in the movies).

Unfortunately my camera battery died before I could get any photos of Harry and the Potters, but let me tell you, those two guys know how to put on a show. They had the audience going crazy.

I enjoyed the concert and the bands’ energy, but we couldn’t quite stand to stay until the end. Any loud rock, even Potter-themed rock, played in a huge echo-y rotunda to the screams of at least a hundred excited teenage girls is just too much for an over-twenty to handle. I’m very impressed that the library hosted the bands at all; you could hear the beats and the fangirls’ screaming reverberating throughout the entire library… and if you’ve never been to this library, it’s huge; the sound really carried to every corner, even down long hallways and through closed doors. All the teenagerness made me feel really old. It’s kind of sad to think that this was never my scene when I was the right age for it, and now that I’m not too shy or too poor or too well-chaperoned to go to these things, I’m too old. Then again, it still doesn’t feel like my scene when I go to age-appropriate versions of this concert, so I guess it’s just me. Oh well.

Before we fled to peace and quiet, though, I managed to fight the crowd of fangirls and moms clutching checkbooks to snag a t-shirt. Behold (click for a closer look):

Does it not rock?

Awesome people of the day: Margaret, for inviting me to yoga, and Daniel, for the heads-up about the concert!

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]