i woke up multiple times during the night, and overall was just feeling uncomfortable. i spent an inordinate amount of time on facebook (and youtube) following the two events of the day: the mandela memorial, and the israeli media taking up arms against gary yourofsky.
1.
a) the behaviour of the crowd was shameful. while the focus on mandela brings zuma's failings into sharp relief, there is a time and a place for everything and the memorial was neither of those.
b) obama's speech was amazing.
c) the sign-language interpreter debacle: it takes either immense cajones or unfathomable stupidity to do something like that. wow.
my sister informs me that "wackhead" interviewed him. i'd love to hear how that went!
2.
gary yourofsky is a complete nutter, he's an asshole and he's full of shit. it's always bothered me that he's invited to speak in universities and other such institutions. having said that, though, a lot of what he has to say is entirely valid and his comparison of the meat, dairy and poultry industries to the holocaust is sadly quite appropriate and there's no need for him to apologize to the jewish people. the "animal holocaust" is even worse if you think about it, simply because the animals are being bred and it's not just a couple of generations being wiped out as a "once off". the animals are born into suffering and suffer their entire lives. killing animals for food is not wrong, but the suffering most definitely is.
the media's attempts to discredit him are absolutely pathetic, puerile and shameful.
i returned to the repair shop at jarry with my ski jacket to get the zip repaired, was quoted $12 and happily left it with them. i used the mission to determine whether it's faster to switch lines twice or to simply stay on the orange; overall, the latter is more efficient but the former is less crowded. so now i know.
tuesday was a day of laundry, naps, family, and french. then i went to the gym for kickboxing. i was still feeling sore from the weekend, and holding the thai pads for badger meant that my bruised forearm got cracked non-stop for about twenty minutes. however! in spite of that, when it was my turn to throw, our instructor was amazed by how much i've improved after a couple of drill sessions with her and was so enthusiastic he made us all work until our arms failed.
i can't tell you how pleased and proud i am; and a little scared now because i can't slide back :)
at the beginning of the lesson i was talking about my snowboard hurts - there were four of us in the class, one a much older dude. "snowboarding, eh?" he said and pulled his shirt over his shoulder. he has a giant protrusion near his clavicle caused by tearing a ligament in a snowboarding accident many years ago. i took one look at that and decided that a little stiffness didn't really man anything :P
the boxing instructor overheard me talking to badger on our way out the gym... "always excuses, huh? always excuses."
i explained to him that this time it just hurts, that won't stop me from sparring :P
i hurriedly showered and rushed to la panthère verte, but was disappointed to find them closed! so i walked as quickly as i safely could to aux vivres, which was going strong: they even made me the cutest little icepack so i could tend to my bruises while i ate! the service was excellent, the food was delicious, it was all good. horseman joined me, we went from there to the open mic night. on the way we decided that we totally agree on his friend's lyrics... i'm not sure if i'm interested in putting my work on the disc he's working on. and he doesn't appreciate criticism.
the evening was fun and the guinness went down well, but too soon it was last call for the metro time and so we left.
it was not the best of nights. kinda like the night before. i then started the day trying to convert the list of books i'm trying to sell through pg into a format that could be copy / pasted into facebook. between openoffice and facebook the issues were bad enough, everything took forever and eventually, when i was *almost* done, windows surprise restarted for some upgrades leaving me screaming and cursing helplessly at the screen. even though my recent saves were corrupted when my system finally came back online, i'd already done everything enough times that i got the job sorted out fairly soon afterwards.
of course, nobody seems to be interested now that i've finally put the list up :(
...
i returned to the repair shop on jarry to hear that they hadn't fixed the zip because their repair would likely fail within a few days - i really do appreciate their honesty! i was instructed to try a dry-cleaner, and later my local would give me a reasonable quote so that's done. unfortunately my jacket won't be ready until tuesday, and i kinda need one if i want to hit the slopes...
the speakers on mont royal were playing some seriously creepy sounds. i wondered if they hadn't mixed up the tapes and played carols on halloween or something.
i made up for the previous night's miss by eating lunch at la panthère verte, which wasn't bad but wasn't particularly exciting either. after taking my jacket to the dry cleaner i went to sit in the starbucks for an hour and worked on my comic script. i got some fun stuff done, then headed to the gym.
more and more i'm finding the muay thai classes too heavy on the cardio and too light on the technique. it's good to be in a class that forces me to workout properly, but i kind feel like it's carrying too much weight... for example, we literally just ran around in circles for about twenty five minutes yesterday. ugh.
in both classes, i really tried not to get hit in the head too much. unfortunately, that was an integral part of both of them yesterday; during boxing, one kid was jabbing as hard as he would have if we'd been wearing headgear, and i was so pissed off afterwards that i sat stewing until i was sweating. i want to be good for friday's sparring, dammit! and hitting that hard wasn't the point of the exercise :@
during impact i was being hit pretty hard, and inexplicably relaxed just as my partner landed a liver shot - not cool, brain, not cool at all :(
afterwards i sat stretching my very hurt arm (i'd hit the punching bag hard and at a bad angle) and talking to the guy who'd hit me too hard and the iron-haired women who trains everything (she was chaining muay thai, mma sparring and two boxing classes, that's pretty hardcore). one of the guy's parents is israeli, and after questioning my veganism and my isaraeli experience he blurted: "you're very interesting!"
okay, then. i said.
the woman is a mystery to me: i can't tell how old she is (apparently she's my age, but that's from somebody else) and while she's cute and i think she likes me but i'm not sure if i'm interested...
when the pain in my arm got so bad that i was worried i might faint, i packed up and went home. i had a hot bath and hit the supermarket, then found myself staring at my hands while making dinner when i realized that i was almost enjoying myself. that doesn't happen ever. i ate slowly, but enjoyed it a lot more than usual (when i can't eat after training). after dinner i went to bed.
...
redbull's the art of flight documentary is nice until the avalanche sequence, from that point on it's just sensory overload. i can't tell if liked it.
i woke up with a sore throat, which feels fine now, after a decent night's sleep. except for the dream i woke up from, which involved my father forcing me to participate in some horrible occult ritual. i don't know if i thwarted his plans on purpose or by incompetence.
...
linguistic revelation of the day: "aktuali" in hebrew comes from french or german, not english!
not the same thing at all, now i have to strike that word off my list of "israeli-isms" that bother me.
...
i ran into the crazy-flexible girl from the gym on the metro and we talked until i had to get off. she has a really interesting history as the child of a brazilian diplomat, and her career plan was so wise that it took me by surprise to hear it coming from one so young. i'm well impressed :)
cafe depot was out of coffee again, this is ridiculous. i managed to make the alternative last longer this time, though, so that's good - the conversation was good, ended too quickly, and i had chinese for lunch before returning home to do laundry, rest and post. now? now some relaxation and more french before training.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.