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Sunday, April 07, 2013

obsessive?

this weekend has been dedicated to studying mma, as i signed up for the paradise warrior retreat. i'm very glad that i only signed up as a spectator: i was right, i really am too much of a beginner to get my money's worth. these guys are truly amazing, though, and yesterday i left feeling totally saturated. i can barely remember what i witnessed, but i know it's in here somewhere. i'm going to need to find a training partner!

last night godmother asked me if this is an obsession, and i wasn't sure how to respond to that. if you're going to train, you've got to do it properly (imo). i've thought about it a lot this week, and i've arrived at the conclusion that i don't really want to fight, but i do want to be good enough that my trainers would be disappointed in me for not fighting.

then again, my competition record is 3-1, and maybe it would be nice to update that with some real fighting. i dunno.

---
thursday:

i've had trouble a few times with shoes hurting me, and the last time it happened i began to suspect that it might be the foot and not the shoe. on thursday this was confirmed: something "tweaked" my left big toe and walking became intensely painful :(

thursday was a day of long meetings. i joined the interns and a couple of our real developers (how nice am i?) at our favourite indian restaurant, and was weirded out by the fact that if i didn't start a conversation everyone would just eat in silence. this was verified no less than three times.

i left early to have some time to prepare for training, and i'm glad i did because my stomache failed me before i hit the gym. nerves? i dunno. and then i arrived and i needed to pee from the moment we hit the mats. at least it didn't interfere with the training :P

two issues for the evening: i couldn't remove my helix, no matter how hard i tried, and i simply don't get how to wrap up my hands. after the mma session i discovered that during it my jaw had been damaged, but that would be the least of my problems: in the kickboxing lesson i discovered that my taekwondo kicking is not practical. i've been taught to kick with the lower half of my shins, and aside from it being less effective it also got my legs pretty badly damaged. i'm pleased to report that massaging massive bruises *does* help; i did that for an hour or two in front of the telly when i got home.

kitsch story: i partnered up with a cute girl in our kickboxing class to work on combinations; she was grateful for my input - some of which was telling her to focus on my punches and not on my eyes :P
when she spotted me in the parking lot she smiled and waved enthusiastically, and that combined with the rest of the training experience (and adrenaline) to put me in a fantastic mood :)

---
friday:

my sore jaw kept me in discomfort the whole morning, but our main development server was down and so we had a really slow day. the it guy, who we couldn't get hold of the whole day, called me up yesterday to explain what had happened: he was in the middle of server maintenance on thursday night and went out to get something to eat, was treated to a random police check and arrested on grounds that he had some outstanding fine from 2002. they confiscated his phone and refused to let him make any phone calls, and after a day realized that he'd been telling the truth about being in the clear and let him go.

that's one heck of a story! i wonder if it's true.

aota and i were planning an office happy hour but i had to head to cadillac to pick up a $10 phone for use as an intercom. i'd found it on craigslist, it was cheap and in my head buying it would be a form a recycling. not included in the listed price was rush hour in the metro. that's sweaty, squishy business :(

i met up with aota and newk'd joined us, and in the next couple of hours we polished off a large bottle of ron abuelo while talking non-stop. it was fun!

---
saturday:

the only problem with the evening was ending it. i got home knowing that i needed to drink lots of water and consume protein, and i put on how i met your mother to accompany that. passing out on the couch with the projector running, waking up around 3am, swaying to the bathroom to brush my teeth and then flopping down on the bed to proceed with the most horrible night. my body was sore, i could *feel* the rum in my chest and i just couldn't sleep.

i think i was still drunk when i got out of bed. my day began early, with a cold walk to the dry cleaner followed by a cold shuffle to the gym. i had karnivool's "where's your god?" on repeat in my mind throughout the morning.

chris weidman is awesome. even his warm-up was mind-blowing! i think that watching everyone drilling was more helpful than the drilling itself; i was constantly holding myself back from running in to random people to point out what they were doing wrong. it's *hard* to get your body to do that shit, and the second there're more than two or three steps your brain / body synchronization goes all wonky.

i watched some more the ultimate fighter during the lunch break, then returned to the gym. i was exhausted! after twenty minutes of trying and failing to keep myself focused (as a spectator!), i took a walk to pick up a giant cup of coffee and that got me through the rest of the afternoon. rory macdonald and cung le are both really intimidating, just watching them demonstrate moves is hardcore.

afterwards i went to godmother for dinner; dinner was really nice, but my uncle? he's so offensive, it's really hard not to take his shit personally. he won't allow yang and i to argue about anything, and we argue a lot, and because i know stuff about lots of different things (the man is pre-technology and internet and is totally not academic) he's convinced that i talk shit non-stop. for me, not talking shit ever is a point of pride and his trashing me really gets under my skin.

what brought that out was me telling a horror story from 11th grade:
my favourite teacher, my favourite class, and our relationship had become such that i was pretty much free to run my mouth because she was happy with most of my input. one day she had a cold sore and a couple of students at the front of the class asked about it. i heard something vague about cold sores from where i was sitting at the back, and had recently (within the previous few days) read about cold sores and piped up with what i thought was an amusing quote:
"did you know that genital herpes can be transmitted via oral sex?"
the teacher's face changed colour, and she angrily screamed the following at me:
"you go tell my four year-old son that i got this cold sore by giving his daddy a blowjob!"
well, that was awkward. all of us sat in shocked silence, i felt absolutely terrible and she never spoke to me again.

yang gave me a ride home and we had a rational and interesting conversation outside while he had a cigarette. i sense maturation :)

i watched a few more episodes of the ultimate fighter and then went to bed. i finally slept well!

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