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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

fighting, the cold and christmas spirit

i'm absolutely broken! i definitely need a day (or two) off training. i was feeling a bit weak on the weekend, but even if i hadn't been yesterday's experience would've taken it out of me. so utterly worth it though ^_^

---
leftovers from thursday:

hah! my last post forgot lesson 5: the jiu-jitsu advantage goes to the man who farts when he's nervous. it's hard enough breathing when you're grappling and pummeling and being choked, to do all of that while actively trying not to because your opponent just let one rip before catching you between his legs? "sorry" just doesn't cut it, bro.

---
friday:

on my way to meet wire i went to draw cash, and lurking in front of the atm was loud group of gangsta-wannabes. in front of them was a slow old woman taking forever. one of the guys stepped up when she eventually finished, and then suddenly there was nobody in front of the machine and the guy behind me told me it was my turn. i stepped up and was puzzled because it looked like whoever was using it had abandoned it without taking their card... i asked around, and it turned out that the idiot has simply turned around and rejoined his buddies before finishing what he was doing.

nice.

anyway, i headed down to de l'eglise. what a nice area! apparently pretty cheap, too. i met up with wire who took me to a sweet little coffee shop, we talked for a while and he explained the details of his situation - i don't envy construction workers in this town. when we separated i felt pretty good; my christmas gift was to (metaphorically) teach him to fish, not feed him. hopefully he'll be back on his feet soon.

it was -12 degrees and pleasant to walk in the sun. the metro wasn't too warm, either! i rested up with a little french practice and then went to the gym for sparring. i only had one opportunity to spar, and it went alright; the rest of the sparring was verbal, and i was sorely on the losing end. our boxing instructor's chirps were so good that at one point one of the girls literally did a spit-take while she was drinking water, and i had absolutely nothing to respond with :(

after class i taught two of the girls how to do a muay thai roundhouse. they're both very sweet - it's the girl who "stalked" me once upon a time and the iron-haired woman - and i find it interesting that they were only too happy to stay late on a friday night to work with me, but once they'd basically gotten it i headed off for gaming night. they're just not my type :P

the storm in israel was raging, as were israelis unhappy about their infrastructure and services, and i was amused because while there it was four degrees celsius, here it was the same in fahrenheit. it's funny, but every year i've been there i've complained about the lack of winter infrastructure and this is the first year that my voice isn't there and everyone's angry.

i read my new poem to vfmp and his boyfriend, it got constructive criticism from vfmp and his boyfriend praised it even before realizing it was mine :D

vfmp's experimental vegan spanakopita was excellent, and our game of thunderstone was going well but we began it too late and so i had to drop my hand in order to catch the bus :(
at least my timing for public transport was great. the depths of winter have come early!

---
saturday:

waking up to a dream of being in the air force and needing to pee but the unisex latrines were rows of undivided long-drops were all in various states of "ewww" and there was nowhere to stand. the captain in charge of them refused to do anything about it and in real life i'm grateful for it :P
the weirdest bit about the latrines was the sense of deja-vu, i'm sure i've dreamed about them before.

i slept really late, at some point getting up to close the outer window which i hadn't realized was still open. that was a complicated procedure and ended with me shouting a triumphant "fuck YOU!" at it when i finally slammed it down.

yang has this annoying habit of using facebook messaging for messages that a reasonable person would send by sms. so i assumed he'd installed the facebook messenger app as his primary means of communication, which a) inspired me to install it myself and b) led me to use it to ask him if he had a spare ski jacket for me. he responded in the affirmative, with a warning that i should've used sms for something so serious.

huh.

it was a slow day, and really began when i tried out my post-root canal mouth on a salad. the tooth in question finally seems okay, but the tooth above it seems to have a bad filling... sod it. i'll just keep eating on the right side until i can find a good dentist. instead of all the crazy games i have installed, i burned some time playing the fourth installment of on the rain-slick precipice of darkness, then dragged myself to the french meetup.

it was still a little awkward and uncomfortable, but not nearly as bad as the first time! one woman spoke like she was in a speed competition, and by the end i could understand bits of what she was saying! to make things complicated there were two asians who spoke to me with accents so tough that it took at least three tries each sentence...

from there i went to godmother's to pick up yang's unused ski jacket. awesome ski jacket! i stayed for tea and her incredible pea soup, then went to newk'd's birthday party. picking up beers and coke at the dep was complicated, carrying them along with the jacket and my rather thick volume of bone comics was not only heavy and awkward enough to hurt my arms but after the short bus ride i had a lot of walking to do along desolate roads and that was kinda demoralizing. getting there successfully and without frostbite and cracking open the beers was such a relief!

it's pretty rare that disparate groups of friends get along very well, but the apartment was crowded with people who were all interesting and fun. it would have been a great party even if nobody had pulled out cards against humanity; between the cards and the beers i kept getting the giggles, and at one point it was so bad that i couldn't even read out loud :)

newk'd offered me a blue candy pacifier; apparently there were only five and it was only later that i'd understand how "special" the offer was...

---
sunday:

i walked to the metro with a loud (possibly drunk / high) girl from b.c. who was enjoying the blizzard as much as i was - what fun! unfortunately for her, her last metro had just passed when we arrived and so she went to find a bus while i took my last one home. i had to be up early to go snowboarding...

... i got home, ate a little, and after that and a couple of hours and brushing my teeth twice my mouth was *still* blue all over. aaahhhhhhh... i see what he did there :P

...

the sleep i enjoyed can only be described as "lovely". i got up at 7.30 to start getting ready but icarus sent me a message to say he was unable to free his car from the snow. when i woke up again later it was still snowing like crazy! i decided that mother nature has brought the deep winter forward just for me so that i can make up for three weeks at the beach :)
so i hurriedly packed (this time without blowing a fuse), which involved cleaning out the thermos i'd brilliantly left in my bag the weekend before (ugh!) and figuring out how to adjust for the difference in the borrowed ski jacket's pocket configuration.

i was out the door before realizing that i'd left my ski mask behind - *that* would have been a disaster!

over two hours on the bus, most of which were spent listening to the girl in front of me's conversation*, staring out the window**, sleeping, continuing with paul park - celestis, and playing with online dating and facebook. those last two taught me a couple of things:

1) this amazing video about a homeless dog being rescued makes me very happy indeed with the donation that supertongue asks everyone to make on her behalf for christmas. now that i've given and seen what it's about, i'm urging you to do the same! you can do that here. or, you know, donate to the red cross or whatever. it's all good :)

2) i can handle dating a girl with a missing eye (that's piratey!), but a girl with a prominent mole? heck, no. i've never understood how, in this day and age, people don't just get those damned things cut out.

* alright, so maybe it's impolite to listen to others' conversations but she was talking loudly and it was only after a while that i could be sure that she was using a hands-free and not invisible bluetooth. i was trying to get a handle on her french, she had a throaty voice and a heavy quebecois accent and after a while i decided that i find the combination very sexy indeed.

** i was staring out the window at all the mostly buried cars (whose owners care enough to put up a fight) and the mounds of snow where i was certain others were properly buried... and suddenly i registered that there were groups (plural!) of cross-country skiers treating the roads and pavements like rollerbladers in summer! wire tells me he saw a few in his area too. montreal, i love you ^_^

last night was all about the moguls - the runs were insane! totally electrifying, but fracking EXHAUSTING. everyone i spoke to agreed with me, and there were plenty of non-verbal agreements too. the funniest expression of that was my final descent; just before the last steep, mogul-covered hill we all sat in a long line, just catching our breaths and stretching for the tough seconds to come :)

i was very, very glad that my assessment of last week's rum / coffee / cacao mix was right, once i added actual sugar it was amazing :)

i couldn't get the following out of my head all evening: "riddle: what's sexier than a woman on a snowboard?"
i got chatting to some guy on the lift, and i asked him just before we got off. he didn't even hesitate, and we parted ways with nods and raised fists. the next time i got on the lift i was alone with a ridiculously cute girl on a snowboard, and started chatting with her. turns out she's from montreal and was going to take a taxi back to saint jerome and then a bus, which is a bit crazy, so i told her about my initiative and explained to her how to find the meetup group. an hour later as i sat in the locker room getting ready to leave, she walked in with some guy and i signed to her.

she looked at me funny, and i too-slowly realized that she couldn't recognize me without my ski mask so i was just being super weird. i clarified by asking her if she didn't want to write down the details, and she came over and took one of my cards.
"that's beautiful!"
"thanks! it's one of my own."
"are you a photographer?"
"nope."
i asked if she and the guy she'd walked in with were together, to which she answered in the affirmative. disappointed, i gave two thumbs up and invited them both to join me next time.

i felt like i walked back to the village in slow motion, though i had time for fries and to figure out how to pour water from the iced tea tap at mcdonald's. i left with a minute to spare and fast-waddled / jogged with my board on my back and ice beneath my feet, only the bus was about twenty minutes late so that was entirely unnecessary. it was a long, cold twenty minutes followed by a long, sleepy bus ride.

regardless, i was very sore and tired and very happy.

i had to finish the giant bag of sour skittles because the bag broke and i couldn't put them back in my pocket. first world problems.

i got home, overcompensated for dehydration, slowly got ready for bed and then treated myself to tiger balm; the base of my spine, my upper back, my elbow and my knee were all on fire as i finally put myself to bed.

---
monday:

i woke up battling the infinite snooze, each time to a different dream. my apartment looks like a bomb hit it, i should probably see to that. i went out to drink coffee, work on my comics and shop, on the way passing a classic, almost life-sized snowman that looked like it was plucked out of calvin and hobbes or something. it was so cold and there was so much glare that i couldn't get a decent photo :(

wind chill made today -29 degrees. all i know is that without my ski mask my face kept freezing. the funny looks were just a bonus :P

i made good progress on the comics (character r&d) and carrying the shopping home showed me that i need some rest before returning to the gym. the cashier at the supermarket was awful: she went on this rant about how so many people, co-workers and customers, are mean to her and she just has to smile and take it. i was really uncomfortable for its entirety and i wasn't given much opportunity to extract myself :(

...

in canada, you hurry home so that the groceries don't all freeze on the way.

...

there's nothing like stepping inside with groceries that need to be refrigerated to find that you really need to pee and your bootlaces are knotted.

...

i went to the eye institute for my final checkup and they tell me that my eyes are good, if a little dry. they were as surprised as i was to see that my right eye's doing well; i'm now 100% convinced that doing only the left eye was the right choice.

i found myself desperately hungry after the tests, so desperate in fact that thai express became an option. i was disappointed that the food was exactly as expected. i came home to rest, started posting this and then rushed downtown to join wire and a couple of others from the gym as we'd been invited to the montreal premiere an advanced screening of grudge match.
bottom line: it's SUPER meta, it's a fun film that does an excellent job of picking rocky and raging bull apart and stitching them together with humour ranging from slapstick to highbrow. i totally approve this message :)

[an argument over the phone that i can't actually talk about here. not right now, at least.]

wire sat with me as i made a harvey's veggie burger disappear, and then joined me for a beer while we talked about sports, politics and religion (including the history of al-aqsa, so i was surprised to read this when i got home). he suggested that my lack of appetite after training might be caused by eating badly-timed protein bars, so i'm going to skip those for a few days and see if that makes a difference.

---
linkage!

opposing the american studies association's boycott

oklahoma opens the door to the satanists: the lawmakers sidelined the first amendment, and this is what they're going to get for their trouble. this or a hanuman temple. i'm backing the satanists 'cause i think it's more appropriate, and i ask you to back them too!

and speaking of crowd-funding, mars one is looking to fund their research on indiegogo. check it out here!

airport security: now that we know just how much of a waste of time it is, can't we just drop the charades already and go back to playing "spot the dodgy fucker" instead? it's less invasive and more honest.

superhero cartoon execs worry me. but: screw the networks. indie, indie, indie. producers need to get out of industrialized televised entertainment, 'cause slowly but surely we all are.

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