the cure

my method for dealing with a headache? a shot of coffee and muay thai. i still have the headache, but i certainly feel better about it :) [except for the sore leg... that just keeps getting worse. always a slightly different part of it, too. this time it's the shin bone itself.]

as one of the guys said, even historical warriors were more civilized than we are - they didn't train to fight every day. did they? hmmm. too lazy to google it.

---tuesday:

my *niece* is thirty! omg. in my head she's still a kid and up to no good :P

early morning exercise: the baudry station escalators are a magnificent engineering showcase that demonstrates how something that's supposed to make your life easier can actually be hard on the body. they're flat instead of steps and the angle ensures that you're either standing putting pressure on your ankles or walking up / downhill. that's if they're operational, but they've been off for two days now.

after a good french lesson i realized that i wouldn't have enough time to get to the afternoon jiu-jitsu class. instead i ate lunch and watched some ufc fights. i took the opportunity to get my glove repaired.

---based on a yelp recommendation, i stepped inside and handed them my torn boxing glove.
"is this a rush job?"
"that depends on what's possible"
"i can have it ready by thursday evening..."
"oh... when can i bring it that it'll remain with you for the shortest time possible?"
"it's going to take the same amount of time whenever you bring it."
"oh."

my face fell.

"how long can you be without it?"
"i use it every day."
"alright - come back in an hour and a half. is that good?"

that's brilliant!!! they did a great job and it cost me all of $10 ^_^

---the area around jarry station is quite lame. i took a long (and picturesque) walk to find a coffee shop and eventually gave up and sat down in a diner. it wasn't a bad experience, though the bottomless coffee would have been nicer if i'd been given an option to not refill and the plate of average fries less than two hours before kickboxing was NOT a good idea. i tasted those fries for most of the class :(

i thought that meeting one of my fellow students on the metro to trade notes wasn't too crazy considering the time constraint, but i'm glad she declined as the idea was totally stupid during rush hour. there wasn't much space to sit, stand or even breath.

i rushed into walmart on the way home to pick up a small speaker for my laptop; i was fast, but the minutes sped by faster than i figured and i ended up a bit late. no matter.

---my boxing and kickboxing instructors have spent the past six months telling me that i need to relax. they're totally right. as i'm eligible for one of the last custom tristar shirts even to be ordered i was considering putting a nickname on it and i thought that "tension" was a good mix of "cool" and self-deprecating in-joke. when the instructor told me once again to relax i told him what i was thinking, and he laughed and came up with a better one: "the stiff".

the guy ordering the shirt laughed, but suggested i stick with just my name :P

...

the beast went to train in vegas for a while and had just returned so we spent a satisfying hour and a half really pushing each other.

afterwards the guy who usually demoralizes me while sparring - he did that again, i feel like i've taken a couple of steps backward - and i were asked to stay behind for the beginners' class to help out by training them to check kicks. it was a lot of fun (and good for us, too) but i took a lot of hard knees to my feet and shins and i only realized afterwards that i'd been a giant doofus. i should have worked low kicks only because they're beginners.

*sigh*

---it didn't help that i forgot to apply frozen peas. my mood when going to bed wasn't improved by my need for a humidifier and the fact that mine's only kind of working.

---wednesday:

in lieu of icing my leg last night when i had time, i did so in the morning for about half an hour while playing tekken. which turned out to be not-so-smart because "just one more fight" went on ten minutes too long. it's hard to turn off when you're winning in survival mode.

my heart jumped when i checked the weather and saw that sunday it might snow. please snow!!!

the baudry escalator fast-walk left me breathless. i walked in to the class breathing heavily; the girl who i thought was responsible for the yeast infection smell wasn't in and it was worse than ever... but now i think i know who it is for sure. is there a tactful way to let a girl know that she needs to take care of that? i mean, more obvious than covering my face as much as possible and keeping my nose in my coffee mug?

my french for the day: "j'ai raison avoir peur de parler en francais". after basic greetings the shopkeeper asked "c'est tout?" and i thought "i can handle this!". i responded in the affirmative and what followed was a barrage of french that left me lost. turned out she'd noted that i was purchasing the same item as the day before and wanted to let me know there was a special on clif builder bars.

the girl i was going to trade notes with? turns out she's an illustrator. and she's obsessed with mythology. hah! we'll meet on friday and see if she's willing to do some of the intro material :)

---i'm struggling with the idea of relocating. i'm learning french so that i don't have to and i think that in the short term it's smarter and easier to be in montreal, but everyone's continuing to make a big noise about the political situation with such a racist party in charge and every time i get an offer from outside the province it pushes me a little even though the industry i'm looking to get into long term is here.

---newk'd sent me some info and we now have tickets for poetry slam finals on the weekend. awesome!

the cleaning lady was here and i went out for lunch, but i was too tired even for starbucks so i returned to crash on the couch. we ended up having a long chat before she finished up and left and then i passed out for a while. i met with a rep for bestia fighting gear at the gym but the shorts she brought me to try didn't have slits (the muay thai instructor told me i could have just cut them myself - for forty bucks?! yeah, right.), and i was kind of relying on them for training so i had to impulse buy another pair. fortunately the gym had a sale on under armour which were decent and considerably cheaper...

class was great even if i did get hurt, wire and i partnered up and the drills took on an element of conditioning. it's always nice to get advice you know is good.

i wasn't up for another class so i did some weights instead, then called it a night. i used ufc - bad blood as an excuse to ice my leg for a long time, and now that i've written this i reckon it's a great time to do my homework assignment and get into bed.

---either my standards are dropping or everyone on facebook is posting really insightful and interesting things. i think i lost an hour. one of the better time losses was watching a friend of mine performing on "the voice". he's been sending links to the videos for ages but they weren't accessible outside of israel until now. i won't say which friend because i assigned him one of the more embarrassing nicknames ;)

on that list is a cover of a britney spears song; it's a good performance but as i told him, there's an issue i have with that. it's the principle of the thing!