ambience

after posting yesterday, my day only really began 2.30, which was lunchtime. so it began with lunch. i visited the bank and confirmed that the money they locked up last year for my first visa has been released (very cool), and then i went downtown to pick up gifts for godmother's birthday.

the crazy wind and the metro's butterfly doors conspired to make strangers interact in funny ways. it was damned-near impossible to open them, or to hold them open for those behind you...

there was a little bit of confusion with the gift cards i was looking at because it wasn't clear that the different colours were simply different colours. picking up a bottle of wine was easy enough. watching someone try and fail to pick up wine and run off without paying was painful to watch.

---some of the french words i've been working on lend a decidedly feminist bent to the language:
control: masculine.
discussion: feminine.
problem: masculine.
solution: feminine.
victory: feminine.

at least "fault" is feminine. but "lie" looks like "men - song" - c'mon!

...

during the warmup for kickboxing some guys were talking in french, and were pleasantly surprised that i was not only following along, but able to participate! that was a serious confidence booster ^_^

---kickboxing: i worked with a guy about a foot taller than me, and holding heavy focus pads up for him was killing my arms. after five rounds of that, i was pretty much done and about halfway through my sets i could barely keep my gloves in front of my head; and the guy was making me slip and protect constantly, for which i'm grateful but it made it much harder. i fought through the exhaustion, and even though it wasn't my best performance i'm quite proud of the work i put in.
i'm not happy about my ankle, though. it's still tender :(

vfmp showed me some jiu-jitsu techniques afterwards and we both used the sit-up machine before calling it a night: that machine is brutal!

instead of eating at home or out, i headed over to vfmp's and we watched another episode of house of cards. i really hated episode six, primarily because i now think less of the protagonist. that's not what drew me to the series, and i'm disappointed.

after the episode we had twenty minutes to kill before my bus so vfmp put on street fighter vs tetris. what a frustrating game! i took me so long just to get the basic idea... at least i won a couple of rounds, but i was *not* satisfied.

...

pulse and i haven't been on a second date yet but we've been communicating non-stop as if we're together, so i was flip-flopping about texting her a goodnight message because i was thinking about her but i don't want to be too forward. i was quite relieved to receive an unrelated email late enough that i could use it as an excuse :P

...

i left in the middle of a gorgeous snowstorm, and it's been snowing on and off since. i get the feeling i'm not going to be snowboarding this weekend, though, which would be disappointing if it wasn't for good reasons.

---i slept a lot, and have been focused on french and emailing. at some point i need to do some valentine's day shopping: special chocolate for the date, but also something for the girls in the gym. even if they are joking about me bringing them gifts, i can't not play along!