More info here:
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-a ... ate-artist
January is almost over and I'm happy to report that I'm still doing well with my resolutions. I have played footbag 4 times in the past 4 weeks, I've been slightly better on sleep and diet than last year, and of course the dry streak is still going strong. My shreds this past month haven't been very impressive for various reasons (equipment, subpar spaces, my general conditioning, etc.) but what's important is that I'm doing them. It doesn't matter if I hit any new tricks, any good links, anything "video worthy"... what matters is that I'm making the time and effort to get exercise. I have been filming, though I'm not even sure its worth exporting the video since it's all poorly lit indoor footage of me out of shape.
Here's an old video instead:
A lot of people reached out to see if I was affected by the Government shutdown, which I appreciate. Weirdly enough my particular agency was funded through a separate bill, so I wasn't affected. I do know of 2 other footbaggers in DC though who had to stay home the whole time. They'll be getting paid for the time they missed, but it would be glib and shortsighted to claim they got a paid vacation out of it. I'm sure for the 35 days they weren't drawing a paycheck (and especially the first couple weeks when it wasn't guaranteed they'd get retroactive pay) the uncertainty of income must not have been fun to deal with.
About 3 years ago we rescued an 80 pound golden retriever. I should have just thrown out all my black clothes right then, because Barkley is a shedder. We love the crap out of him though. I am still constantly amazed though to find his fur everywhere.
Those are basically perfect; just the right level of difficulty and concepts for where I'm at as I get back into shape. While both are easy to hit a single time (especially lining them up so the links flow through my strong side), I think there'd be a lot of value for me to try and hit them starting from all 4 starting points, or just generally see how many contacts of each drill I could do. I'm guessing that number would be humblingly low... especially for the gyro one. I think that'd expose my weak spins, but hopefully also motivate me to get them stronger.
In exciting news, I ordered a pair of Ivan bags! The last pair I ordered from him was when I was training for Worlds in Portland nearly 2 years ago. I'm hoping that having some nice new bags helps me play better. Training with my current crappy bags may be better for me in the long run, but I've definitely had some frustrations with the bags setting weird and also blending into the colors of the floor.