warm chills

i woke up this morning to a flood of positivity!

the first were messages from pulse, tuesday's date after whom i cancelled all the others i'd had lined up for the week. we've had multiple conversations going on at any time since before we even met and in person it was actually a psychological effort to not try to cover everything possible in the short time that we were physically together. we have plans for a romantic valentine's day date and i'm strangely comfortable with the fact that i've already been introduced to friends and been invited to ottawa with them.

airplane and i talked a lot when i was in cape town about a project he wants to do that he'd like me to write for. the project will only really begin in a few months but for a couple of weeks now i've had an idea rolling around that i shared with him yesterday morning. he was so inspired that this morning he shared a first draft image concept and it's so good it gave me chills! he was my first pick for illustrator and he puts the ones i've worked with so far to shame... the thing is that the underlying premise is very similar to the one i'm already working on (it's inspired by shakespeare), even if the mechanics are completely different; i'm praying that once his work is out he'll be convinced to invest time in mine. either way, this one is going to be a lot of fun!

...

i received a call back from the french class friend, they've received my resume but the permit wait time might be a problem. have i mentioned before that the bureaucracy here is not helping resolve the skills shortage? aota actually contacted me earlier to tell me i'm wrong, but i called the number she gave me and there's an automated message that specifically states what i thought :/

...

i'm still doing the running-nose-man a bit, but i'm definitely much better than i was this last week. it was a rough week!

---the poetry on sunday inspired me to scribble the quebec immigration song and my first throw poetry collective lie as i entered the metro. after minimum tweaking i'm already quite satisfied with the results :)

while going through those i decided that a poem i wrote a few months ago is also ready to be posted. it's been a good week for poetry :)

---monday:

vfmp made a great dinner, gave some of my poetry pretty constructive criticism (his english minor totally qualifies him) amd we played a couple of great games of fluxx before his boyfriend got home and we resumed watching house of cards. it's still fantastic, but watching the downward spiral of one of the characters is utterly unnerving and disturbing. the only downer of the evening was enjoying an amazing smoothie that vfmp's boyfriend made and dripping a purple drop near the top of my white hoodie :(

---tuesday:

my running-nose-man was already not as severe as before but still tough. i focused on french all day with nine inch nails in the background, and for the first time became certain that the caretaker - who i wrote a nice enough reference for - was fired, and lied to me to get the reference. so much for describing him as honest! though it's what i believed when i wrote it, if anyone does contact me about him now i'm not sure what i'll say.

---the date: i was not at all confident about this one, a combination of her style of questioning that seemed overly exuberant and her profile pictures that were attractive but left room for doubt. well, one look at her in real life and the latter worry fell away, and about two minutes with her and it became evident that i can drop "overly" from the former - she's just full of positive energy! and it's balanced by a sharp and highly-educated mind. it was really awkward being introduced to close family friends even before we'd got drinks in our hands, but i guess that's what happens when you agree to go to a performance where the singer's practically family! it was fancy ghetto, and while i barely understood what they were singing the music was excellent and the overall experience was pretty powerful! and pulse can do simultaneous translation, which is bloody impressive.

the performance was shorter than anyone expected, so we spent a while afterwards talking and we all like each other so that was cool. we then went looking for a good place for dinner / drinks, ending up at l'artère but deciding it wasn't quite right (it was empty, and their options weren't enticing) and moving along to the first bar we found. it was a real dive, but it didn't matter as we sat chatting and nursing whiskeys while the clock hands jealously kept spinning until it was time to head home.

i've gotten used to ending dates disappointed, and to be facing a beautiful girl saying the words i was thinking was actually a bit of a shock. in spite of the fact that my nose and chest weren't 100% - i must have been discrete enough in keeping that under control, i guess :P

---wednesday:

i focused on french all day, watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the habs and doing a lot of duolingo.

i went to the gym for boxing, but the coach abandoned us so after warming up and shadowboxing for a while i hit the punching bags and did a lot of good work. there's a fifteen year old kid who's been training with us for a few weeks and he's full of shit, he talks a lot and has very little work ethic. what's funny is that everyone in the gym takes turns babysitting him, and last night a few of us were entertaining ourselves for a while as we forced him to do proper push-ups and sit-ups and i introduced him to full pull-ups.
"you mean to tell me you can't do one single pull up, pyle?"

my shins were tender when i was done kicking the bags, but then i haven't actually used them in a while...

i got through most of downtown abbey's special: behind the drama before realizing that i was bored, so i switched to her. thank you, spike jonze, thank you! it's a great movie, and it reminded me of ruby sparks in a lot of ways.

i spent some time going through a list of songs pulse had compiled for me on grooveshark - i'd forgotten about grooveshark - and put together a modern-day mix-tape in response which appears to have been well-received :)

and then the day was over.

---linkage:

kenichi ebina: i'm pretty sure i've never seen this before. it's amazing! so this is what dancing to dubstep should be like...

52 amusing activist pick-up lines

facebook fraud: i think it's time somebody created a proper alternative to facebook. one that doesn't manipulate how we view each others' posts!

dallas sportscaster's response to michael sam coming out as gay: well said, sir, well said.