I had the Walking Meditation class, at Seattle Yoga Arts, on my calendar for over a month. Then I planned on skipping it, because this was the weekend my family was helping my mother move. It was no big deal - after all, I wasn't quite sure what walking meditation is. It was just something that sounded interesting. Then we learned that we were mistaken - the move is next weekend. So I went to the class, and Phillip discovered that the move is this weekend. There was some miscommunication, obviously.

The class was fun and educational. It was taught by Meg, who I had never met before. Walking meditation, I learned, is from the Theravada school of Buddhism, from southeast Asia. Apparently, it's centered more on scripture, and less on ceremony, than the Tibetan Buddhism that most Americans know.

Walking meditation is about mindfulness. It's about giving full attention to the present activity - in this case, walking. It was a two hour class, and about a half hour was spent walking very, very slowly back and fourth along the length of two yoga mats. We did four-part walking, although Meg told us that walking meditation can be divided into many more parts. Lift. Swing. Drop. Shift. The rest of the class was filled with theory, yoga, sitting meditation, and meditation on our backs.

It's fun walking into a class with little idea of what to expect. It's even more fun when the class turns out to be enjoyable. In recent memory, that happened with yoga. In distant memory, that happened with symbolic logic.

Lisa was sick this evening, so class was taught by a student named Beth. Beth is in training to be a substitute instructor at Seattle Yoga Arts.

Beth did a fine job. Her style was a bit faster, with more of a flow, than Lisa's. At first, as we flowed from asana to asana to asana, I was a bit scared that my stamina wouldn't last for an hour and a half. But I kept up. Beth did an excellent job of talking us through the transitions. "On your next inhale, slowly bring your left foot foward, pressing your knee to your chest as your leg moves..." It was very easy to follow.

Every time I hold the Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II) pose, I can't help thinking of the excellent video for Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill."

Yesterday, I saw what may be the worst movie I've ever seen.

Phillip and I were given free passes to the advance screening of a movie called Boogeyman at the Oaktree Cinemas. It was supposed to be a scary movie, but it was done in the "sudden loud noise" school of scary. Someone opens a door - SCREEE! (Nothing there). Someone looks over her shoulder - WHUM! (Nothing there).

There were scenes that made the audience laugh out loud, but I'm still not sure if the comedy was intentional or not. The hero is too squemish to remove the dead crow embedded in the windshield, so he turns on the windshield wipers, which doesn't work well at all. The uncle gets tightly wrapped in multiple layers of plastic - obviously suffocating. The hero grabs him by the shoulders and asks, "Are you all right?"

Toward the middle of the movie, though, I actually began to think I was watching a good story told badly. The movie seemed to be leading me toward one of two outcomes - and I kept trying to figure out which one. The sequences of images cut so fast you can't see what's going on made me wonder: "Is there really something going on or is the hero imagining it all?" I kept wondering what the twist ending might be. But then the movie just... ended. I involuntarily let out a "Huh?" when the end credits appeared. All those too-fast sequences, it turned out, were just another attempt to make the not-scary scary.

The sudden ending and the multitude of questions never answered made me wonder if I had watched something unfinished. But the movie officially opens today, so it was just an amazingly bad movie.

I think that Phillip came up with the solution to my self-service dilemma. It really is an issue of convenience.

An ATM is a huge improvement in customer convenience. It's there when the bank is closed. It's there in places where there isn't a bank. Even when the bank is open, and you need cash, an ATM is a whole lot easier than cashing a check.

The self-checkout at the grocery store, on the other hand, may save a few minutes, but it really doesn't save anything else except overhead costs for the store owner. Someone still has to scan and bag the groceries - it's just that the customer has to do it, instead of the employee, and the store owner can lay off six or eight employees for every set of self-checkout stands.

(I suppose the bank had to lay off employees when ATMs came into existence, but I can't imagine it being at the same ratio as the grocery store.)

As for self-service gas stations, it may have been an issue once, but there just aren't many full-service pumps around here anymore. (I don't live in Oregon, where full-service gasoline is the law.) I don't see much difference in scanning my card at the pump or bringing it into the store for the counter employee to scan. The person behind the counter is still going to be there either way.

Yeah, Phillip had it figured out.

I may be hypocritical in my attitude toward self-service (i.e. job-destroying) devices. Or maybe I have yet to understand my own philosophy. Or maybe some devices have become paradigms.

I refuse to use the self-checkout machines at the grocery store.

I use the self-checkout scanners at the library only when I'm not offered a choice of a live employee.

I was disgusted by a news story I saw about a new invention that put an entire drug store into one robotic vending machine. Yet I typically buy snacks from a vending machine.

I pay for gasoline at the automated gas pump, and I pump my own gas.

And I think ATMs are wonderful inventions. I like the idea of being able to get cash, postage stamps, and a bus pass from an ATM.

What brought all this up was an advertisement I heard on the radio this morning. I can now buy minutes for my pre-paid cellular phone at US Bank ATMs. I saw that as a good thing.

Where is the logic in all this?

While I was digging through some computer files this morning, I ran across a text file I named "One Hundred Years Of Characters." The last time I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, I made a list of the 73 named characters in the novel. (I lumped the 17 Aurelianos into one character, since that's how they're usually written about, and made a sub-list of the five who are named.) I didn't know what I was going to do with the list when I made it. I still don't know what to do with it.