looking back - part ii.1

alright, we're down to this week. i can handle four days in brief, right?

---sunday night? this part's a little confused:

bad boys (viking) -> starship troopers (sgt. zim) -> john dies at the end (dr. albert marconi). i guess i've gotta see that last one, i'm glad i've read the book.

gd and i had a fight about one of her pet peeves. we had another major one last night. it's amazing how worked up we can both get and yet still end up resolving things in a way that we're both happy. we're both intense but we both stay rational in spite of our emotions, and we both keep finding ourselves surprised by the results.

---monday:

waking up at 5am with a pinched nerve making my butt hurt.

taking gd to the clinic, accidentally pantsing her in the waiting room.

having coffee with godmother at atwater market, joined by gd. we all agree on the fact that us looking for another apartment before i start working is a bad idea, but that my moving in to gd's apartment is a good one. godmother was shocked when gd sat down on a bench she'd thought was higher and yelled "omg, i just swallowed my vagina!". by the time she found another way to express the sensation it was too late, and after saying goodbye we found ourselves giggling uncontrollably.

we did some shopping and while i did the dishes we discovered that we both love shpongle. awesome!

i accompanied gd to studiotec where she trained with one of her bosses and his boyfriend. there was a woman waiting for her turn who kept saying "i don't think i can handle that", looking at me and laughing as if i would obviously agree with her. i don't know what kind of support she expected, if you're too unadventurous to try something new then i have no respect for you. i wanted to ask her how long she'd been merely surviving but i bit my tongue and did my best to ignore her.

i was tired and gd's quick shopping took too long for me. suddenly it was 5pm and i'd done precious little, it was too late to pay l'artère and i went home to knock items off my task list before another team meeting.

you know when you're trying to make an online payment and you worry that at some point something's going to go wrong? well, my payment to revenu québec crashed my browser as i clicked "submit". i'd have to wait two days to make sure that it hadn't gone through before trying again...

i lost time on the couch, got up to write character sketches for mti, packed perishables to take to gd then rushed out late for the team meeting. it was a good meeting. there was an awkward moment where someone was discussing hallucinations and i was worried i was the only person who could talk about hallucinogens positively, but then the moment was broken as two of the others shared their opinions on the subject. we'll be fine.

on the way to the metro with rabbit and her boyfriend they convinced me that fisher king is a good choice.

i ate junk-food for supper, then went to bed.

---tuesday:

after a mixed bag of dreams i awoke with gd at 5am to a nightmare situation. i may have mentioned before that the working conditions of a stylist in montreal are pretty close to those of a sweatshop, and she was sick and they don't get sick leave. a lot of what she described made me angry, and we argued back and forth until eventually she agreed to call her boss and explain that she couldn't get there.

apparently, she made him feel so shitty about his no-illness policy that he didn't want to speak about it, so she got a day off and the morning was perfect* after that.

* well, it could have been better if she wasn't sick, but it was as perfect as could be aside from that.

i was slow on tuesday morning, trying to knock off more items from my list. obviously, being in a hurry to print something at the ups store *demands* being held back by old ladies who can't handle credit cards and are so useless they have to have their pin codes written on their cards.

i was shocked by how expensive printing a single black and white page was. i think the girls behind the counter were offended by my expression.

on the metro, an old, creepy guy playing games on an ipad complimented me on my bugs bunny shirt.

as i left the metro, i was feeling strong, suddenly energized and walking tall. i met with an ex-co-worker for coffee on a nice side of mont royal i'd never been before. i was shocked to learned how he'd been fired - they'd called him in for a project meeting, so he had to ride his bike through horrific weather for most of an hour, only to surprise him by letting him go. that's ugly, until tuesday he still had no idea why they fired him and i explained to him the political climate and why his actual work had nothing to do with it. i also offered to give him a reference whenever he wants, he's a professional and a pleasure to work with.

i returned to l'artère to pay the big bill, and mindlessly occupied myself with another case solved until i got home. i then tried to help my mother with her phone. i then renamed myself.

i skipped the first kickboxing class in order to get something done. i carried my microwave to gd's in my hands.
of course, the only person to offer her seat on the metro would be an older, larger woman :/
and of course it would start raining as i stepped outside. fortunately it was a only a few drops before i got home and the skies opened.

i had excess frustration to train off, and walked out of the gym after an hour feeling good about a dude stealing some of my taekwondo moves and me almost getting my left wheel kick sorted out. i wasn't feeling good about the fact that it's sweaty season again, nor that my breathing was strained again. although i suspect that that might have been caused by my starting to get sick.

how nice to be rained on when carrying groceries with a flash drive and a charger in my pockets. i'm so glad gd had left an awkward little umbrella at my apartment...

dinner: an incredible mix of steamed veggies, a regular salad and quinoa. this steaming thing is great! and cooking with blue pilots project - flight for everyone just made the whole day better.

[continued...]

big news, little news and attitudes

okay, the most important item first: my butt HURTS. gd dragged me along to studiotec, where she goes as a part of her back treatments; their atwater facility's comfortable and inviting, the guys were all very cool. i don't know if my levels were really good or if the instructor always says that to first-timers, but i was fascinated to feel the differences between my muscles groups (and my lack of symmetry).

i was amused that i was able to power through push-ups (i could have kept on going), and by how difficult certain basic exercises became as electricity pulsed through my arms and chest and back and legs. overall, the experience was satisfying, but while i was feeling pumped up when i walked out i found that later, after an hour of jiu-jitsu with a guy a full weight-category larger than me, i just didn't feel up to rolling or finishing with a kickboxing class.

and i slept like a baby last night, so there's that too :)

---news news

driverless car licenses are going to be a thing soon. it's sad that they're going to be so strict about it, but it's a definite first-step in the right direction!

we're going to have to keep on waiting and praying for patent reform. the situation is abysmal! and almost as frustrating for me, personally, is the fact that nobody's even talking about international copyright reform and the outrageous prices of digital books.

in good security news, microsoft won a small victory against the fbi. in really bad security news, it looks like snowden might be collaborating with the russians. it might just be a smear tactic, but if it is for real then i have to say that the americans brought this on themselves. they didn't need to treat him like a hero, but they certainly shouldn't have treated him like a traitor.

---personal news

how the hell is it friday already???

wednesday:

i slept well, and woke up to some game time. tales of honor has a bit of a learning curve, i made some progress but found myself stuck with something that i'm going to have to research online before i continue.

i resumed reading jean webster - daddy-long-legs, which i *still* hadn't finished. every time i returned to it after many months i'd have to start again; it's not very long. it is, however, beautiful. i finished it yesterday afternoon and immensely enjoyed every minute of the reading experience! ^_^

wednesday's weather was simply wonderful! it was cool in the shade, warm in the sun, the birds were singing and a fresh breeze was pleasantly gentle.
my biggest concern was how to go about taking advantage of such superb weather as best i could!

there's been a story going around about dirk diggler's dad, and i got a chance to talk to him and clear everything up. i then spoke to my mother, who's traded in her written-off car and was able to cover the cost of its replacement, so that's all good.

...

i napped, which would have been great had i not held my neck awkwardly, and woke up to rls. ???!!?
and my heel, which had cracked again, was hurting me badly. it's only just beginning to relax now...

...

i read some more, then went to starbucks thinking to get some work done on my comics. my netbook's having issues with wireless, refusing to connect to my phone's hot spot, and i ended up not being very productive. it also didn't help that a gushy couple was sitting next to me at the study table, being offensively "couple"y in arabic. that's not a pretty combination.

i was almost at my front door when i heard someone struggling to learn to play a trumpet or something. i'm so glad it's one building over!

boxing class was good, i skipped sparring and went to gd's. on the way i spoke to my toronto cousin, and i worry that i might have offended him when i ended the call... probably not, but i'm always nervous when people suddenly shut down.

gd made delicious tofu spring rolls, and she made a LOT of them. i'm not sure how comfortable i am with the process, though, because i watched and heard her burning her fingers on each one...

there was too much food, once we'd gotten through about half the batch and simply couldn't continue we focused on the pervert's guide to ideology. what a treat! then gd decided to give community another chance, and now she's in :)

---yesterday:

i was deeply bothered by rls again. and bad sinuses... AGAIN. this time i'm blowing blood out my nose, i don't know what they hell the deal is. i used a spray last night, which helped during the night but i woke up uncomfortable again. i really, really, really want to be breathing normally again. i'm sick of this!

gd began her day with a fight over the phone with a bureaucrat, she's been fined by the city for something her neighbours did and pulse - her legal counsel, that's their introduction - warned her that fighting it would only make it worse and that she should just pay up. i decided to take care of it myself, partially because she doesn't have the cash and partially because hey, if it wasn't for those fines we'd never have met!

it bothers me tremendously that she works so hard and barely makes ends meet. her work conditions are worrying (she rarely gets a lunch break and sometimes can't go to the loo for hours), and i understand that they're actually pretty good for her industry... it makes me feel privileged to be in software...

i needed to wait for gd for a while, and i sat down in java u. i was once again unable to get my netbook online, so i continued reading. we picked up lunch, then had another small coffee and talked about crossover fan-fiction until our studiotec appointment.

after the studiotec experience, we went our separate ways and i came home to finish daddy-long-legs. i did some email clearing - this is hard work! - and then headed off to jiu-jitsu.

it's been a while since i last did jiu-jitsu with someone who's an entire weight division larger than me! [i apologize in advance] i came eerily close to scoring a cauliflower ear :/
i almost laughed inappropriately: at one point he took his mouth-guard out to say something and it didn't make much difference :P

anyway, i know it's summer: most of the mat's covered in puddles. there's another thing i'm going to miss about winter...

i had my head in the clouds on my walk home: half the sky was purple and grey, half yellows and light blues. it was gorgeous!

i took my bloody sinus headache to gd's for the other half of the spring rolls and a few episodes of community. just before bed, after an otherwise perfect evening, i learned a lesson about which buttons of gd's not to push when she's tired :(

*sigh*

---friday:

i enjoyed the deepest sleep i've had in the longest time. i woke up with strained glutes (yep, still very sore) and in the mood for olive. trickle, in particular.

i missioned off to city hall to pay gd's fines, which wasn't an unpleasant experience, and then went downtown to get my french results. the good news is that i didn't get a worse score. the bad news is that i improved it so marginally that i might as well not have tried :(

shit.

i was close to popeye's and they're having a serious sale, so i stopped there. i had to wait in line outside the store for about twenty minutes! i found myself staring at shoes for most of that time. there are so many fashion victims walking around with obviously expensive, glaringly ugly footwear.

i walked out with a giant (2kg) tub of progressive's vegessential and carried it home, and have done very little with the rest of my day.

back to siesta

i'm after lunch, after laundry and after a good run with the kid on the beach. i'm more surprised at how much more fit i am than he is, as the biggest problem i have with the course i'm doing is that i'm not allowed to run.

i've learned to walk really, really fast (4km in under 26 minutes), but i'm not allowed to run.

last night's dinner was great, we all over-ate as per usual and the meringue was fantastic. the company was really good too.

on the way home i stopped by singer's for a visit, and i ended up sleeping over as i was completely bombed. one thing in particular that i dig about her apartment is that it's perfect for just zoning out while listening to music - i put on nagual sound experiment, and it just doesn't sound as good out of my (relatively) tinny speakers.

the third last quick break

and we're counting backwards, so we're typing backwards (and this is just the quick summary):

i shouldn't have eaten 300g of ben & jerry's cake batter ice-cream. i'm already paying for it with a solid headache. the kid's appropriately snarky comment came too late to stop me. in my defense, the idea was to go out for coffee but all the coffee shops are closed due to tonight being the jewish new year. i'm nicely surprised :)

i shopped for the next two days and made myself a tuna salad while browsing online - it's shocking to be back in the real world again. here's the killer:
i booked myself onto the snowboard trip today. YEAH! i don't know how i'm going to organize the payment, but it's good that my name's down :)

i got my to-do items sorted today. i made a really awesome shirt as a goodbye gift for our commander, it's pink and sporting a really funny photo of him. he's not supposed to wear it, but it's funny as hell.

dedication - after searching almost every single arbitrary store on dizengoff, bograshov, king george and sheinkin, i accidentally walked into an oddities shop containing exactly what i was searching for: strap-on pockets for my overalls. with a cute and neither-here-nor-there design so it's good for all occasions.

i bought really shite gloves for the cold week ahead, but seeing as i'm not going to wear them for more than a few nights i didn't think it was worth investing. not like last time, when i bough a really nice pair and promptly lost them.

i went by the gym, and the manager gave me an extension (not free, but outside of the context of a contract) because i've been away doing military things for the last half a year. rather nice of him.

the post-office was closed. that sucks. but the kid did bring back my copies of men in black and its sequel, and after testing the sequel i'm convinced that i don't remember anything from the entire film. good buy!

i stopped by the bank to discover that the message that they left me really wasn't important. the thing i need to prepare for november will cost me NIS 700 if i get it from the bank, and pretty much nothing if i organize it at the post-office. i'll get around to it in november, then.

wake up at 4.30am, hurriedly cleaning for an inspection that never happened, and fairly pleasant bus / train rides home. the most complicated part of the day was and is answering all the wishes for a good new year - there's a bunch i really should have sent out but i don't have the energy.

yesterday we had our peer review, and i'm really glad it's over and there's nothing more to be done about it. there's a bunch of assholes who probably screwed the rest of us over, but as usual i couldn't be arsed to be involved and i hope that my score works out to be at least relatively fair.

yesterday morning we ran an orientation exercise in a small town, which was a lot of fun. the weekend was relaxed, and i got a lot of work done - i was meant to give a lecture yesterday that never materialized, so now i've got some time to practice. i still have to write that book report, so that's my plan for the next two days at home.

last week we ran simulations [like we did before], and i got put into two really uncomfortable ones. the first one was kind of alright, but not good, and the second one was so frustrating that in the middle of it i slammed my hand down on the table just to shut my fellow participants up, and broke my pen. my staring at the table and muttering "dammit, i broke my pen" wasted the effect that i'd managed to achieve.

oh, and volleyball over the weekend was a great success - i got picked for the sport's day team because i took a bunch of misfit beginners and explained the game to them, techniques last. by explaining strategy first and suffering a few learning losses, i got them to a point where nobody could get us off the court... including one of the commanders, who's quite impressed ^_^

there's a bunch of other things that happened during the last two weeks, but kc's coming to pick me up for the family dinner so i'll have to continue another time.

happy jewish new year!

as james brown said...

on the way to the meimad we stopped for ice-cream. the whole experience sucked, from the place being badly arranged, to the quality of the custom (in-your-face arsim all over the place), to the lack of texture and flavour of the ice-cream itself. i won't be going back there.

the party was great. the only thing i regret is not hitting on a really cute girl, and the reason i never do is because i never have anything to say (and if i do, it'll be misheard or misunderstood).

after five hours of rocking the kid and i gingerly walked to benedict's, for (no way!) eggs benedict. it was a good meal, but did cause us to wonder about poaching eggs.

this morning was stunning, we got home and both went to bed immediately after showering. and i still managed to wake up early :S [okay, around 11am, but that's still only five hours' sleep]

i sat online until about 2.30pm, and convinced the kid to get up so that we could clean. we did it fairly quickly, and then walked to the gym. i had a really good session, and once we were done we came home to change and went for a run.

now post shower, dinner's almost ready and we have some important television to watch and ice-cream to pursue. it's been a hard weekend ;)

useful inventions: a stove design being awarded for helping the environment and emerging nations
freakin' BEAUTIFUL: controversial tilt-rotor craft

post-holiday trauma

i began yesterday by staying in bed three hours longer than i needed to. just because i could.
i watched casino royale, which wasn't totally awful.
the kid went for a run and i bladed alongside to carry the water and egg him on.
the three of us had a double lunch.
the kid and i went out for ice-cream. the girl at the gelateria is adorable!

i suddenly realized that now that i have all this free time, and summer's coming and i'm going to be able to enjoy it properly for the first time in many years, i have time to think about stupid crap and prepare for an early mid-life crisis! yay!

all the cafeneto girls were on duty yesterday, and i found one who could help me out with advice regarding clothing and accessories. i've decided to get myself sorted out with an actual clothing style :D [and yes, it's me, it'll be an odd assortment of goth / geek / hippie]

our landlord came over for the rent, and i wrote out my first cheque. odd!

spot and i went by the atm, and i discovered that the army seems to have sorted my salary out. seems to have, i'll have to check it out further, but it makes this month a lot easier :)

last night i was preparing to write about having found "a warm puppy", but that thought was smashed by the frustration of having my net connection going down in the worst way. we only just got it sorted out, and that's after discovering that one of my apps managed to change my damn settings :S

fight club led me to believe that insomnia can be caused by dissatisfaction. i guess on a subconscious level i don't know how to cope with my life being good, and this restlessness is driving me demented!

today things on base got back to normal, and i'm totally happy with where i am. and i managed to cause a flurry of mass emails through my old section with one well-timed phone call ^_^ [the kid would kill me if he knew how self-satisfied i am about it]

i wore ankle-weights the entire day, but as i wasn't really very mobile i didn't pay much attention to it. i went shopping when i got back to tel aviv, and bought myself a proper keychain (although i'm shocked as to how much it cost), and then went home to change into running gear.

including the weights. for the first twenty minutes or so i wasn't certain that i was going to make it, but then i got comfortable and carried on for another ten. i stopped to stretch, then turned around and my return home including a full sprint for about four hundred metres, and i didn't slow down to walking until i was a few metres from home... i'm TOTALLY proud of myself!

my legs are TOTALLY killing me!

i stretched, showered, met up with spot and had falafel for supper, we sat over coffee, and now that i've satisfied my addiction and calmed down a bit i'm going to take a look at installing ubuntu.

go figure, huh?

predictions from the british ministry of defense: para-NOI-a
george lucas EAT YOUR HEART OUT! serenity named best sci-fi movie