Weekend of temple

Spent pretty much the entire weekend at the temple... Friday about 7pm-10pm, sat 9:30am-10pm, sun 9am-8pm. It was "all souls festival", one of the three three-day festivals we do each year. But it seemed beefed up this year, not sure why, maybe just got some more specific directions from somewhere, and there was a 'special guest'. Saturday was crazy, I estimate I spent a total of about 7 hours kneeling upright. Never spent that much time on my knees in one day in my life! At some points I felt like collapsing down to sit on my heels or sit cross-legged, actually a little speech from arnold passed through my head, something along the lines of "I know you're tired, but there are 19 other paddlers who are also tired, they're not giving up and they're counting on you to not give up either." Obviously not quite the same situation, but it's still motivational. And if my 'seat partner' had 'given up' I probably would have too.

Had to miss the weekend's dragonboat practices though, I had an almost perfect record of only missing one practice (Canada day) so far. Oh well. (Also, with the regular season almost over, looks like I won't get to do my "11 practices in one week" crazy idea)

Anyways, I forgot to mention in previous posts that I'm heading down east for a week sept 1-10. The temple is having a supermega grand opening of the quiet cultivation centre in orangeville, there will be members there from across the country and the world, as well as a bunch of monks from Yuen Yuen, Chi Wo Tan, and Fung Ying Seen Koon in Hong Kong. Should be pretty neat. But still maybe not worth the expense just for that. So I decided to head down a few days early and visit with friends in Toronto and Waterloo (would visit Travis in Hamilton, but not much time and he's coming to calgary right after that). Should be lots of fun. And was actually easy to get time off work... leaving for the first week of a new job doesn't sound that good, but thanks to 'field averaging plan' it's not vacation or absence or anything.