located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

rollercoaster (sleepless)

 i feel like i survived the whirlwind that was today. i've been talking to lawyers since thursday, talking through plans that seem saner or more mind-bogglingly mad depending on the number i times i talk through them, each strategy making less sense than the one before and each path at the mercy of organizations and factors out of our control.

i didn't sleep much last night. i spent a good chunk of it pacing up and down, exhausted, working through conversations i was praying i would be able to have in the morning and dreading the continued silence from the people we thought were on our side. or listening to strangers sharing their stories in series' of voice messages, gleaning little bits and pieces of experience that may actually help us.

this morning i shakily got up, my stomache churning and my heart* thumping in my throat, and called someone who i thought was avoiding me.

no answer.

i subsequently tried calling her second-in-command.

no answer.

and then, suddenly, a call back from the first with a sense of compassion. she appears to have heard me, explained to me why nothing's happening as fast as we need (primarily because everyone's come down with covid, funny how south africans discovered the new strain and got blacklisted but we all seem to be relatively functional), and has agreed to plead our case to the decision-makers. my anxiety's far from gone, but it is dramatically lessened.

* which reminds me, i've lost a fair amount of weight over the past months and i've hit 85kg consistently for the first time in many years. i think my skin's responded at a slant because my AURYN (sonnet 19) seems a bit skew and it didn't before.

after that, a half hour chat with an israeli cousin who's disgusted by what's happening and trying to lend a hand. after that, a chat with the second-in-command, who seems very sympathetic.

in summary: the court process will almost certainly take a lot longer than we can afford - two people have reported stories taking eight and nine months, even - and our quality of life with all the stress and uncertainty is already quite low and will only be lower if we're forced to stay here or go to montreal. we need them to make an exception for us, to let us get there and take care of the details once we arrive. the irony is that nobody disputes whether mr smear should be living in israel, only whether his right to do so is by birth or as an immigrant, and them preventing us for moving because they're not sure makes no sense whatsoever.

my mom came over for a bit, and after we discussed the container quotes we've received we've all agreed that it makes far more sense to send all our belongings to an auction house and buy new things there - it'll certainly be cheaper, and it'll also be less headache.

i spent a good chunk of the day shuffling paperwork, trying to sort out some of my documents, and i took mr smear down to the pool for a break which was fun until i realized that he had been developing a real cough so i rushed him back upstairs...

i don't know what happened, but i was buggered. probably exhaustion from the stress and not sleeping, possibly virus-related? who knows, these days. not only did i feel weak and dizzy, but my phone kept pinging... i finally got up around the time my mom came over for dinner (including an unfortunate and unpleasant outburst by gd about my godmother, triggered by our johannesburg cousin's sister doing something ugly), made another call to a lawyer, had a brief text chat with vfmp and made a call to horseman, got dragged off for dinner. then horseman and i resumed our chat and an hour or so later we said goodbye full of inspirations: i do believe he's invented his own branch of the sciences, a "psychematics", if you will. an exciting idea that thoughts might operate according to mathematical principles.

...

yesterday:

"zoomagogue", trying to shabbat and failing with all the stress

our rabbi friend coming over to swim, pool time before it got too windy

chat with a johannesburg cousin (and the awkwardness of getting help from her and her husband when my own brother's visiting cape town and hasn't even bothered to say hi)

tron + abe's exoddus + tron legacy, mr smear loving all of it along with us

a good sync with vfmp (with some uncomfortable talk about the kid we've both tried to help)

the work week:

my work week was thoroughly disrupted by all the things, even though i managed to be relatively productive my manager did express concern that i'm making it difficult for him to plan availability and productivity and that if this keeps up we may have to take steps. that does not spark joy at all.

friday in particular was effectively a lost cause, i spent most of it on phone calls and emailing and generally freaking out. we had dinner at my mom's with cousins and nephew, it was a jolly fun evening and towards the end everyone learned some things about everyone else's relationship/histories with psychedelics which was pretty hilarious.

...

*breathe*

*remember to breathe*

actually alive - summary and part i

the shortest summary: the week before this last one was plagued by enormously powerful screw-ups caused by good intentions. it might have been fueled by my not feeling well, which lasted until this week, and it brought about deep despair and intense emotional distress and anguish for gd and myself. we did learn a lot through it, we're in an amazing place right now.

[there's a very cool reason for the sudden rekindling of interest in jewish history, philosophy and rituals]

work's mostly excellent, though i'm a little concerned that big junior's becoming more defensive. i'm super-excited about the art / poetry projects that are moving along right now, and things have heated up with the slam team's preparation because we only have a month left before we head off to victoria.

huh.

---tuesday 26th:

• general feeling of well-being before bed, perhaps brought on by my having fed the blogging-ocd demons
  
• good sleep
  
• fighting about not taking advice when asking for it, eventually resolving it
  
• introducing gd to shane koyczan
  
• good progress at work
  
• shirtbreak [what was i on about?]
  
• javascript binding trauma - seriously, binding in java is unnecessarily complicated
  
• too much halva
  

...

satisfaction at the end of the day, marred by a pinching nerve as i walk out to the gym? after almost fifteen minutes with a jump rope i rushed to the bathroom, and wobbled out sweat and woozy. i tried to continue training but after a couple of rounds i was a disaster and i showered and went home. i'd continue to feel awful for the next few days.

i slowly did the quickest shopping i could on my way, caught a bug with my eye while thinking that if i'm not in cape town then it simply becomes far from fair.

good dinner marred only by our fighting over music and raising children.

---wednesday 27th:

slow morning, stretching, mango shake, figuring out how to watch music videos (from youtube, mainly) on the ipad (vevo and youplayer apps), and ordering a bluetooth keyboard for it. more of the pinching nerve. that prompted the purchase of dr kelly starrett - becoming a supple leopard. i picked it up on ibooks, intending to put it on the ipad but forgetting that the ipad's registered to a gd's account.

fortunately, i'd discover later that apple allows us to share purchases if our devices are registered to the same computer. a lot of unhelpful forum posts and bullshit later, but my usual complaint that apple keeps its shiny shit obfuscated (like how to use a mac's touchpad properly) isn't that surprising.

thought for the morning: those who play the loudest music usually have the worst taste.

i made it just in time for the bus to the beach club, read my new book most of the way. the beach club wasn't much to look at and the music was particularly shitty; having to keep out of the sun because i'm currently undergoing laser hair reduction kinda ruined the company event for me. at least the main speech was quick (and interesting. and i learned that i'll be out of the country for the next two events), there were vegan braai* options even though they were terribly marked - and the salad had egg yolk in it :(

* they brought in a team of south africans to handle the barbeque.

i learned an important lesson about the people i work with: a lot of them won't wear the company apparel because it has the word "geek" on it (demonstrating that they're true nerds), but think that wearing apparel advertising the products they work on is cool. let me tell you something: women wearing porn site t-shirts? sexy, not very classy, but sexy. guys wearing those shirts? creepy. and it doesn't matter what you look like. you don't look like a producer, you look like a (literal) wanker.

at least most of my team are rum drinkers.

the sumo suit competition was cut short when a man passed out in the suit and landed badly. eventually an ambulance came to pick him up. the ordeal was pretty surreal. he seems to be okay now, whoever he is.

i found a bench in the shade and took a nap for a while, i got up with a sore back, dazed and needing to pee. on my way to the washrooms i was intercepted by one of the security team. who knew my name and had been informed that i trained at tristar. we had a really good chat about jiu-jitsu for about five minutes and he threw me some tokens for free drinks.

afterwards, i picked up a drink and realized that my team had all disappeared. i did some exploring and found a dancefloor playing decent music, and hung around there until the bus arrived.

there's not much like a long ride on a bus with shitty suspension when you need to pee (for the second time).

...

buying tickets when tired and with alcohol in your system? #@$!. i'd been thinking "oh, i'm not training tonight" and forgetting that i wasn't going to be training anyway. getting gd excited for a night out and having to cancel on her because we had a team meeting? that's fucked up. that was the beginning of three days of overwhelming misery, during which i learned that there'd been some things bubbling under the surface that needed some serious addressing.

stupid levels of guilt and can't-think-straight, a better talk after gd got off work. the refund policy for the tickets was ambiguous and confusing at best, and i almost gave up on trying for it.

team meeting: important strategies and team planning and freaking out about the fact that the first slam of the season was almost upon us.

back home: relationship therapy, essentially.

---thursday 28th:

in spite of the emotional discomfort, it was a good start to the day minus the back issues. there was slam team weirdness. i purchased bill hicks - arizona bay on itunes having been inspired when introducing gd to tool - aenima. i can't believe i've never heard that material before! it's really funny.

not a bad morning, and i managed to get my movie tickets refunded. i needed to go to the bank during lunch: the highway had a gas station smell, and somebody in the line at the bank had awful body odour.

after completing a big project and saying telling him i'll explain what i did, big junior responded with "i'm not stupid, i can read code".

...

kc gave birth! i found that very exciting news, i'm extremely pleased for her :)

i was also pleased to hear that gd's no longer working at her gym any more, it was hurting her and she can afford to pay for classes now. that was the good news: the upsetting news was that we'd both completely forgotten about godmother's summer party and my reminder only caught me two hours before it started. i was feeling stressed and dark still from the day before and now i was feeling like every #$@!ing day there was something else. i just wanted a little bit of a routine and to get some training in and spent time with gd.

[to be continued...]

the rush - part iv

[... continued]
i tried to rest, introducing myself to siri and being rather impressed. i uploaded to soundcloud for the first time, then rushed off to meet vfmp and his boyfriend for the monkland street festival. we had a nice walk but i couldn't avoid the sun even with my sunscreen, my big floppy hat and my jumping from shade to shade. it was waaaay too hot.

vfmp and i headed to shaïka for good wraps and to trade bad father stories; we talked about blood donations and i think he's provided me more than enough fuel for a poetic rant. i then took a long trip to meet with someone before her performance in an attempt to sort out a connection, we shared ten minutes together that were totally off-topic and for a reason i'd rather not go into i ended up returning home without staying for so much as a minute. that was totally unprofessional and uncool of me.

i went back home, feeling remarkably shitty about what had happened, and waited for gd to come home to discuss it with her. i was expecting the worst, but while things definitely weren't great they were far better than i'd hoped for and i'm extremely grateful for that.

we enjoyed a peaceful evening, punctuated by an attempt to do something cool for the als ice bucket challenge which resulted in an amusing fail video instead.

just before heading to see the teenage mutant ninja turtles reboot gd started hurting and then my nerve started pinching, so we arrived at the theatre in less than the best of circumstances. the movie was fun, really fun, aside from a bit of shaky-cam-itis and a couple of weird plot decisions. i have to say that the credits, both opening and closing, were awesome and a lot of the shots were just incredible!
ignoring about half an hour of gd's back giving her trouble we had a really good time.

---yesterday:

going to bed at 2.30am after learning about smashwords' greatness: they really are fantastic! they are without a doubt the future of publishing ^_^

...

i woke up to some poetic inspiration, and i'm ridiculously pleased with myself about what came out of it. gd gave me a lesson in humility along with a painful french lesson, after which we enjoyed a blissfully relaxed sunday morning. we arrived at midi 6 famished, and their soy latte to go with my "herbivore" was precisely what i needed ^_^

i finally figured out how to get a naked domain to redirect - that really should be simpler - and we finished watching cheatin' before i hurried out to godmother's for coffee. it was a gorgeous afternoon, the raspberries were delicious and the fact that fudgee-o double stuf cookies are vegan just made a fantastic day even better. also, yang's finally taken a step in the right direction regarding his education, so that's a thing.

i took my slightly pinched nerve and tender jaw (discovered earlier) to my apartment to pick up a set of keys, two folding chairs and the mezuzot off my doors. i need to put them up here, and i need to acquire another one.

i needed the nap that i took when i got home, but i woke up to go shopping feeling like i was still dreaming and had overdone the sun and not napped nearly enough. microwave dinner, posting, and transforming into a being of pure discomfort were the order of the evening... i guess my day couldn't have been too good :P

gd was watching fringe: we need to hunt down whoever's responsible for mastering these shows and slap some sense into them. you shouldn't have to keep turning the volume up to hear speech and down to prevent hearing loss during action sequences.

---today:

i woke from long dream sequences to a morning of k's choice and more posting. i rushed out, soooo tired and still trying to avoid excess coffee. i made it until 11.15, at which point big junior showed up to delegate a documentation task. fortunately, that's the kind of thing i'm really comfortable doing with my brain off so i completed that quickly enough and returned to my grand plans.

i may have sweated a little when i realized that i was reorganizing the team's wiki docs without authorization :P

my junk food mission to the supermarket next door was successful - they have israeli vegan munchies! nice one :)

the shitty part of the day was my wasting other people's time with non-problems - i had the dumb, i thought my virtual machine's hard drive was taking up 80gb and we spent far too long trying to resize a disk that was actually only 20gb :$

i left feeling incredibly tired and slow. the experience with the laser hair clinic was surprisingly pleasant; the technician was cool, she totally got my intentions, the pain wasn't as bad* and the terrible smell of burning hair didn't last as long.

* it apparently eases the less hair you have

on my way home, i found that siri doesn't work without an internet connection. that's just silly. siri. silly. siri.

i spent the evening almost resting, watching safety not guaranteed with gd and then the first part of the battlestar galactica mini-series when she went to bed. omg, i can't believe it's still so incredibly good, and just how much more powerful it is when you know what's coming!

...

this last post brought to you by a thoroughly irresponsible disregard for my need to sleep. but my chapbook has a nice cover now (thanks, pixlr!) and i'm fairly certain i'm gonna crash in a couple of minutes.

drained - part i

örmagörd. i can't believe it's sunday after 6pm as i begin writing this, and i haven't had a chance to breathe the entire week nor the entire weekend. i've been super tired and busy and i really, really need a rest. to be clear, the weekend's chores are far from over :(

---sunday:

after saturday night's blogging, 1.30am to bed, followed by a good sleep. more blogging and chores - including trying and failing to take a good photo of me for the slam team's fundraising efforts. on our way to midi 6 for breakfast i remembered to take pieces of chalk, and i took *just* enough to cross out "A LIE" from
BEAUTY IS
A LIEand replace it with
BEAUTY IS
SUBJECTIVE
BLINDNESS
IS A CHOICE"
i felt much better after that.

midi 6 was great, and our second attempt to take a photo of me was a fantastic success!

my beard was all scratchy and called for an emergency shave. airplane sent me some work he's done recently and it's EPIC comic work! more blogging and chores, then suddenly not feeling good at all.

gd and i don't agree on the current ebola situation, and i'm siding with these people. the ad preceding the video was for dr pepper, though, with the doctor moving through a hospital treating patients with soda. that's messed up.

my mother surprised me by calling using facetime - it must've been about 3am her time, and she was testing it out. apparently she's more of an "early" adopter than i am :P

we watched some being human, i felt a bit better, the weekend ended.

---monday:

as opposed to a photo of me from the end of last year that garnered a lot of likes, the approval for my new profile picture has actually been flattering :)

i got up early, did a ton of dishes and buggered about with google play music and somehow left late in spite of my best intentions. i tweaked my latest poems, which i'm *really* pleased with, arrived at work and spent the morning focused.

arguing with my building manager: that awkward feeling when you're talking to someone who obviously didn't think about what they just said, it was incredibly stupid and you don't want to sound condescending because you need them to do you a favour :/

i booked a hotel room for gd and i for the cfsw! very cool, we got a king-sized bed for the same price as a regular discounted room :D

work: there's little more worrying than when shit SHOULDN'T work and it does. i began a big refactor, and i wrote down "constants fudging" but i don't remember why.

i rushed out in a hurry to meet gd and get to godmother's for dinner, which was absolutely delicious (in particular the veggie burgers). yang was there and we were all cool for the first time in a while. we went on a yeh! mission afterwards, then returned home to construct shelving that gd bought for our bathroom.

it's unbelievable how much difference it makes not having all sorts of shit around the sink.

---tuesday:

light rls during the night and too much internet time were followed by a garbage and dishes morning.

on my way into the building i ran into a friend of newk'd's who's just started working for my company.

the morning was filled with javascript closure binding issues - completely mental - and was *really* bad timing for me to install a version of our software that has a major bug in it that made testing my changes a nightmare.

it's amazing to me that when i walk out looking for privacy and quiet in order to be interviewed for a future job, i'm blasted by trucks, bells, horns and wind. the thing about the interview is that it's a personal connection that i tapped back in february and it took until now to score the phone call; i felt obligated to hear these guys out. and it's a really, really interesting opportunity, so i explained that i'm committed for the next while and that i'll be in touch when i'm ready.

it's nice to have options!

airplane suggested that i listen to the make comics podcast, and the first episode i downloaded basically told me not to work with the kind of people that i've been working with :S

the afternoon was spent dealing with closure binding and ogg vorbis oddities, and once i was done i *needed* kickboxing. the class was a killer, primarily because i was working through breathing difficulties (allergy season?), it was humid and i was dizzy and i ended up hurting my hand because my new gloves aren't good for pads and bags. so i need to sell those, now, and buy bag gloves. i'm not happy with that at all :(

badger and i continued our argument over israel / gaza, and the jolly moroccan joined in. it took a while for me to realize that he wasn't referring to israel's actions as criminal, rather it's existence. so that was the end of arguing with him. as far as i'm concerned, even though a lasting peace in the middle east is impossible, we can still ease the palestinian suffering. and i believe that israel's the only player that can do that, and that it should.

badger and i went on a loblaws mission, i was harassed by spiders (one in the car climbing down to my lap, and a couple on the way home). i'm not a fan of spiders.

[continued...]

on the job - part ii

[... continued]

today:

my sleep was perfect and desperately needed, with crazy dreams i can't recall. i got up slowly, twice, spoke to my mother and rushed out for a meeting with the throw poetry collective. i arrived just on time and the meeting was interesting and motivating; also, résonance's chili on rice with its sour cream made of cashews and their latté with home-made almond / coconut milk made for a great lunch.

after two hours of that i visited godmother for coffee. on my way home vfmp and his boyfriend cancelled their plans to go see shakespeare in the park; i understood, seeing as the weather was a bit iffy, but wanted to go anyway. later, when gd and i were getting ready to go it started raining and then suddenly it didn't seem like such a good idea after all :P

saturdays are supposed to be gaming days for me, but i got in about ten or fifteen minutes of ffix before gd returned home. they weren't very good minutes, either :/
i then invested a bit of my soul responding to my unfunny south african comedian ex-friend... it's not a regular duty calls, this is a case of an otherwise intelligent jew with an audience who's clueless about what's going on and is spreading lies that cause anti-semitism. the world is really sucking right now.

my short nap didn't cure my exhaustion, but it made the rest of the evening manageable.

...

we watched the rest of safe, which is an intensely fun film, and finally put stickers on the magnets gd bought so we have a useful tool for keeping track of what we need to do when we get home or before we leave. now that i've posted, it's 3.30am and it's just started raining and we're going to bed.

fantasy holiday

yesterday:

on the way to godmother's, i asked about "ö". turns out we've been saying "örmagörd" a lot. dinner at godmother's was mostly nice, although uncle hate was being a right bastard and turned the salmon catching fire into an excuse to shame godmother's cooking - which is really good.

after dinner we walked to yeh!, and their raspberry / mango sorbet mix was AMAZING.

more disturbing than the vomit on the escalator at the metro station was gd reporting it and seeing the guy working the booth zip up his trousers as he stood up to respond.

...

i purchased final fantasy ix on psn last night, it's my first purchase and it seemed like a worthy one because i thought gd would like it. i started downloading it when it was already late, and it took longer than anticipated so my eyes were shutting long before i got to bed. i finally cleared the dishes and started reading dresden codak. it's stunning, but too many external references and i lose curiosity and just kinda buzz over whatever i miss...

---today:

so gd is not a gamer. i learned this this morning. turns out a combination of my wishful thinking and cognitive dissonance got in the way... after we'd established that, i received an email from my office informing me that i'll be starting work on monday, so that gives me a week of real holiday! obviously, i sat right down on the couch and fired up final fantasy again, this time with myself at the helm.

there's a lot less control than viii and not being able to save in a hurry is frustrating, but it's otherwise beautiful and cute and i'm looking forward to more. also, $10? worth it.

...

why is it not summer? what the hell is going on? it's been raining and miserable and chilly and it's mid-JULY already!

...

gd and i went to meet vfmp in the village, and we stopped at folies en vrac for wraps. their za'atar laffa was too hard, and their falafel too dry, but overall it was a tasty, solid lunch. we then sat down with vfmp for coffee, before deciding that it was too cold with the aircon. so we went outside, where the temperature had dropped and the wind had come up, so gd made her way home and we walked to sophie sucrée for damned good vegan cupcakes and tea.

[meta misunderstandings make for disturbing the peace]

vfmp and i had a long talk about political media bias, the arab-israeli conflict and what's going on over there right now, conservatives versus liberals and crowdsourced government. then i came home and [a weirdly upsetting and relieving discussion] and now shit's all good and i'm ready to relax.

just as soon as we get back from braving the cold to go shopping.

a productive weekend

yesterday:

a visit to godmother for coffee yesterday had mixed moments of pleasant and unpleasant. godmother made me feel incredibly uncomfortable over the fact that i hadn't done the preparation my future boss had asked me to, and it was only later when i went over my posts from the month of june that i felt vindicated. it was an intense month, was june, and the next couple of weeks are already looking considerably more relaxed.

overall, i'm relaxing a little bit about the permit application. it's been about a month, so i should hear back in approximately two weeks or so. there's no reason i shouldn't get my permit, and there's no reason to think my point of contact's been dishonest. that doesn't mean that i'm not suspicious - i'm not unfamiliar with blatant unprofessionalism - but my hands are tied and there's not much point to stressing. now that i've gone over all the material i'm armed and ready to make a friendly call to my future manager and then spend the next couple of weeks playing around with what i've learned and trying to make things as comfortable as i can.

otherwise, it was a pleasant and sunny afternoon on the porch. i got home to hear that gd had spoken to her friend about a job that could really turn things around for her, so that's exciting news, and i spent the remainder of the afternoon and a fair amount of the evening poring over documentation and tutorials for web servers, accelerators and messaging services.

it was late when i finally asked gd what options there were for dinner, and she obliged with one hell of a meal; in retrospect, i can't believe she went as far as she did with it and it came out amazing. we ate half of it while watching the beginning of jack reacher, then we both crashed pretty hard.

today:

i woke up, did a whole lot of dishes and returned to bed. then we got up for coffee and breakfast, i played some tekken (some good, some bad, mostly taunting or screaming at online players who couldn't hear me) before kgb and his fiancée arrived. gd gave him a great haircut while us significant others talked about immigration policies, then the three of us left gd to another haircut and went out for (another) coffee next to the market.

gd joined me on a mission to the park for yoga, and i'm extremely pleased to report that she enjoyed it and it seems to have done her good. the instructor also prefers sundays, so i guess that's a thing now, and we stopped for ice-cream (sorbet for me) on our way home. we were supposed to be joining friends of gd's for a barbeque but she was feeling the yoga, so instead we rested a bit, made a great pseudo-barbeque lunch and finished watching the movie - jack reacher's a lot of fun, and that's all it needed to be.

the days keep flying by - i'm a bit freaked out that it's 10pm already. i'm planning for a peaceful night to prepare for tomorrow. it's looking like it's going to be a big day.

summer filing

yesterday:

i forgot to mention my knee hurting me before training, feeling better after warming up and then hurting again later... but it seems okay now.

i handled the most meaningful part of the move last night: my laptop. now i'm 100% moved in and the stuff that's left is stuff i can live without.

---have i ever mentioned here that i'm freaked out by nail files? since i was a child, the mere sight or sound of them - no, the mere *thought* of them freaks me out and makes me shudder uncontrollably, much like nails on a chalkboard for normal people. gd and i have been joking for a while about obtaining chloroform so that she can knock me out and take care of it, but i cut my nails last night so i had a couple of sharp edges to deal with and we didn't have any on hand.

i put in my headphones, blasted dark trance (rev, to be precise) and squeezed my eyes shut while she filed my nails, trying to keep calm and not be there as much as possible. every scrape i felt was a battle between my body's need to spaz out and my ego's to keep control.

we got through it, but just the thought of the experience now while writing this all down is making me convulse. ugh!

---neither of us had much energy last night, we watched a bit of tom papa: live in new york city. i don't agree with everything he says, but a lot of it is spot on and the man's pretty damned funny. freakishly clownish, i gotta say, but funny.

---today:

okay, there's some serious summer action going on in montréal right now. perfect swimming pool weather!

...

i woke up at 5am from an epic dream, the tail end of which saw me and some others trying to climb over a hill that had been covered in velvelt.

i went back to sleep, straight into another long series of weird dreams; this one ended with a scene wherein i found myself in a bath, someone in the room freaked out and angered a hive of bees, one of whom stung me and the rest of whom chased me covered in a towel or a shirt or something across fields, and when they finally gave up i entered a bar in toronto where a reunion of ex-south african schoolmates of mine was taking place.

my third round also included amazing dreams and deep sleep, but i don't recall anything specific.

i've just returned from lunch with godmother, and am continuing the digital cleanup i began earlier before gd and i head to my apartment to move smaller items with kgb.

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...]

on the offensive - part iv

[... continued]

i became quite agitated and aggressive during the hour or two of tech support, and some of that was caused by our mutual frustration, some of it by the universe not conforming to my expectations. that's been happening quite a lot over the past few days, all of my aspie qualities have turned me into a bit of a ticking time bomb. the sensation is that of something crawling under my skin, setting coils of wire around my heart and tightening.

i'm very, very lucky that gd loves me and can somehow empathize.

---
more discomfort followed, as i rushed off to meet gd at her gym having not had a chance to do desperately-needed laundry, not having drawn cash for the cleaning lady and having received a suspicious email about background checks. visible allergens filled the air: how wonderful :/

i called godmother, and was surprised to discover that she's started a new job without mentioning it to me. how very odd.

after picking gd up, we walked towards the place we'd be looking at and she decided that it's a terrible area. i've got no problem with that, and i told her to cancel the viewing but the landlord was apparently quite insistent (i could only hear gd's polite side of the conversation) and suddenly he'd pulled up next to us and we were clambering in to go see the apartment anyway. after extricating ourselves, we walked back arguing and not-arguing at the same time, which was strange and uncomfortable and pleasant all at the same time.

when we got to gd's place, i opened the background check email and it said that the company i've signed with is using their services and that i need to complete a short survey. gd needed to shower, and so i figured that it was a good time to spend the fifteen minutes the survey was supposed to take. apparently it wasn't, mainly because the survey demanded that i complete a long form with a whole bunch of details about my education that i don't have on hand - nor would anyone, really - and suddenly gd was ready to go and impatient to eat while i was trapped filling out something i had to do for work and unsure that i would be able to stop and resume later.

this turned into our first proper fight, which was terrible and awkward but - and this is a big "but" - we were both listening to each other and after a fair amount of shouting we found ourselves on the same page and calmed down, talked out the couple of points we hadn't covered and went shopping. shopping was quick and painless, i made dinner with gd teaching me about steaming vegetables, i lectured her about eating crap food post-training (the fried chicken didn't agree with her anyway, which helped convince her to eat with me) and the result was us both enjoying a delicious, healthy tofu / mushroom / brussel sprout / spring onion / cucumber salad that was dressed just right.

i managed to rescue the survey and completed it, and at the end of the process was informed that this was for my consent to be checked. in other words, the company hadn't even begun the check. cheeky bastards! that's at least two weeks completely wasted, and if i wasn't so desperate for work i'd tell them precisely how i feel about their hr department's lack of professionalism. fortunately, i've heard from ex-employees and their development division shouldn't be as frustrating. even if it is, it's a big company so i won't feel like i have everyone's futures riding on my performance - the lack of that stress means i'll put up with a lot of shit, as long as they let me do my job i'll be happy there.

after all that i found myself struggling to organize a meeting with all the illustrators and vector was having trouble accessing the materials i'd sent him... i really, really needed a hug and was very, very grateful to get one.

...

over the past few days my heels have cracked extremely badly, and they were hurting me more than ever last night. gd actually wanted me to see a podiatrist and if i hadn't been so tired i would have soaked my feet before bed.

---today:

it's a good thing i waited until morning, because while running the bath one of the taps broke. i sat soaking my heels in half an inch of water while gd and i laughed at how ridiculous the situation was, and after scrubbing with an emery board kind of thing and applying cream my feet already felt better. wearing shoes has helped, too. we left the apartment in a great mood, giggling the whole way to the metro about the most random things, and split up there.

i've spent the day doing errands, and now that i've covered all the posting and my apartment's been cleaned i'm heading off to see another apartment with gd. please, please, please could somebody sublet my apartment!

where gender wars end frisbeer begins part ii

[... continued]

gd took me to midi 6 for breakfast, and i showed her how to use a swype keyboard. speaking of which... i've been considering how apple's playing political and thinking of switching to android. it would be easier if there weren't so many good reasons not to do so.

camino espresso is insanely, decadently delicious. seriously, i couldn't control myself.

after an indescribably good siesta, gd and i rushed off for more frisbeer (and watermelon, and perfectly ripe mangoes) with vfmp's brother and his girlfriend. after another beautiful afternoon, only darkened by my being hit in the thumb with another group's stray frisbee that continued to hurt for hours afterwards, we headed to godmother's for a wonderful dinner.

everything was pleasant except for a really stupid statement on uncle hate's part that i - even more stupidly - automatically responded to with a statement of fact. he simply repeated his initial dumb statement, godmother and i simultaneously repeated my statement, and this remained circular until i got a kick in the shin under the table from gd which stopped me just as uncle hate was finishing with "i don't even care" and i was repeating "and neither do i".

*facepalm*

then yang arrived and talked shit to us for a while. gd pointed out that i'm constantly poking him. i explained that that's because i can't deal with the dumb.

we stopped at my place for me to shower and pick up some stuff, then returned to hers. we ate way too much ice cream because so delicious' creamy vanilla is practically impossible to put down, while watching dear mr. watterson. it's not such a good documentary but if you're a fan of the comic - like everyone is, apparently - it certainly does bring some added value. it made me want to buy a collection, as opposed to reading it relatively daily from a feed that makes it feel like the series is still going and messes with my head every time i read something i'm sure i've seen before.

...

oh, rls. not so bad, but certainly annoying.

[continued...]

between the vulcans and dr who - part one

what i really need is one of those special grips to make all my muscles relax. and perhaps realign my spine? kthxbye.

---sunday:

the first news of the day was that wp is engaged, which doesn't evoke much in me simply because i've never met his fiancée; but i'm happy for him nonetheless.

it was a gorgeous, sunny morning and we went out to atwater market, which was fun until the wind came up. i couldn't find anything to eat there, though, even the sandwich place with a vegan employee couldn't produce anything that didn't have meat or cheese on it...

i was rather hungry by the time we got to midi 6, so much so that their off-menu vegan option that's usually too much for me was precisely the right amount. gd's ex rolled up (she was getting her hair cut) and we hit it off famously, but after lots of talking i needed a nap so that's what i did while gd did her thing. her ex is an anime freak, and her cut was modelled off a character she likes. i can't say i'm a huge fan of the style, but gd certainly captured the look!

one way to get gold in dragon coins is to watch ads, and i watched one for tales of honor. i haven't played enough yet to form a solid opinion, but the fact that it's such a huge game that can be played on a mobile is pretty damned impressive. and the concept is very battlestar galactica, which is just up my alley.

i almost, to use protoplasm's expression, saw my own arsehole as i helped gd take out the trash. i misjudged a concrete step and came scarily close to twisting my ankle. i'm very, very grateful to all the gods that that didn't happen.

we hit the supermarket and shopped until i almost dropped, then returned to my place to treat my suddenly bloated belly with beans. we watched an episode of canadian dragon's den, which was kinda interesting, then took a walk to the shell select to pick up something we'd forgotten earlier.

it was a fine walk and talk until i said something on our way back that was grossly misunderstood (granted, i knew as i was saying it that it wasn't the right way to say it) and that turned into a pretty major and decidedly unpleasant argument. once the main issue was resolved we then had to discuss how aggressive i'd been during the argument, so i got to feel like shit twice.

eventually we resolved everything, although finally closing the story would have to wait until the next morning. and then everything was awesome again.

---yesterday:

i slept well but had crazy, epic dreams that i totally forgot about when i got up. i'd have random flashes from them during the day but nothing i could grasp...

i still wasn't feeling 100%, but i was definitely better. the first note of the day was exciting: solar FREAKIN' roadways is an excellent video put together by a fellow supporter of the cause. you should watch it, if you haven't seen it, and then consider putting a little bit of your money into a shinier version of the future we're facing.

gd and i enjoyed a slow, chilled start to the day and then went down to godmother's, stopping at the florist on the way. the florist was so happy to see me with someone and so grateful for the little assistance gd gave him with a french customer that when we returned to pick up a plant she really liked he gave it to her for one dollar.

and that was after uncle hate indicated his approval, so we were on fire! the only awkward thing was that i have this habit of putting my hands together and bowing when i'm grateful, and i felt pretty foolish when i unthinkingly did that to an asian dude. but whatever.

rabbit and horseman had given me some pretty good ideas for a summer poetry slam series, and i figured out a way to make it marketable and charitable at the same time - i was quite pleased when everyone i spoke to agreed that it's a good plan.

godmother told me about a new place across the road from her that's recently opened, and we went to take a look. chimera: it's a game store / coffee shop, they have a great selection, great prices and a vegan-friendly menu. we'll be doing that, then :)

something from lunch was stuck between my teeth and aggravating me, and gd just happened to have floss in her bag. so i took it out and used it while we waited for the metro. that was a bit weird. but not as weird as the guy i saw once clipping his nails on the train.

i spoke to my mom when we got to gd's place; her car died and it's a decidedly inconvenient time for that. i mean, it's always an inconvenient time but this one is particularly uncomfortable :(
[at least the news from today seems relatively upbeat.]

i missioned to a park to sit and chill with newk'd and his girlfriend. we had a great time, but there was an incident when we parted that made me feel strange. i don't remember what inspired me to do it, and i think it was appreciated, but it nevertheless makes me uncomfortable that i always feel the urge to read poetry at people in inappropriate (to my mind) settings.

gd and i went on another interminable shopping mission, then returned to her place where she cooked up a storm while i absorbed myself in another case solved. the non-mission puzzles that you use to pay for real cases run out too quickly.

i introduced gd to how i met your mother and community: she seems to prefer the former. i find it most entertaining to watch these series again knowing what's coming.

[continued...]

big moments - part i

okay, i need to focus. i think. it's been a strange and surprising few days.

---friday:

there's nothing like being late AND forgetting tissues when you're all snot-nosed :(
dinner at p.m. was very decent.

---saturday:

i slept much better than the night before, there were a couple of minutes of rls worry but then it was fine.

we woke up really early, and while getting ready i got pornkings - amour in my head. i came home, slept a bit more and then tuned in to bioshock. i got through a little bit of it, so far i'm enjoying myself.

---so jerry said "don't do it". of course i'm going to do it.

dragon coins is super-addictive, except for the bit where it takes over a minute to get past the splash screen and each screen change costs another 15-30s. the lack of offline play is discouraging and the friend system is disquietingly weird. but aside from all that - it's a wonderful game!

---horseman had invited me to his community centre's talent show, and i managed to get there only half an hour late. unfortunately for me, it was pitch black in the auditorium and i had to stand at the back for about ten minutes before my eyes adjusted enough to find a seat.

i was taken by surprise by quite a few of the kids - they're really talented, and it was exciting to see them getting a chance on the stage.

lesson learned: no tissues in back pockets. my back pocket was more hole than pocket and i looked like i was trailing toilet paper or something :$

horseman and a friend of his walked and talked with me for a while; it was nice and sunny but awfully windy. i headed to gd's to meet a friend of hers who'd come for a haircut: he was really awkward around me, apparently he was intimidated. i don't know what that's about.

we left for my place, and the weather suddenly went from annoying to ugly. gd was very unhappy, in the way that most montrealers get very unhappy about the end of winter. just like with everyone else here, my opinions on the weather aren't too welcome but she calmed down soon enough. i've written a poem about it but i'm withholding it until i feel it's more complete.

it was too late for takeout by the time we got home so we both had frozen meals and sat down in front of the rest of amadeus. it's a wonderful movie, even if thoroughly historically inaccurate.

we put on tekken, enjoying some indescribably perfect moments, then went to bed.

---sunday:

it was a great, slow morning to a gorgeous, warm, sunny day. combot training was too rough for gd, but regular vs battles with her are fine. we were about to leave when i heard that my mother was having a very un-mother's-day moment, her car having broken down on a highway far enough outside of cape town... i was concerned, but relieved to hear that there were people on the case. i went to godmother's for coffee and to wait for news from my mother.

i learned that yin has finally found a job in vancouver - working in a liquor store. this was a perfect piece of news to hear before explaining to my aunt and uncle hate that i've just been employed by a company that builds infrastructure for the porn industry. uncle hate enjoyed that bit of news far more than i'd anticipated.

the good news was that my mother made it home safe and sound, chased by rather unfortunate news that there's some family drama going on in south africa with my late uncle's legacy. we all know that it's bullshit, but it would be nice if that bullshit sorted itself out.

i had to run to meet gd at the metro - she'd been having some family drama of her own, her mother's developing dementia and managed to really upset her children who'd made every effort to be nice to her for mother's day. i had to wait longer than expected and let dragon coins keep me company.

the quick stop at my place took longer than planned, and we arrived at gd's with an hour to cut my hair and shower before rushing off to the slam finals.

[continued...]

pains in the neck, on and off

where are my days going? a quick summary of the weekend:

1. muay thai sparring on friday evening was amazing, but it killed me, in particular my neck was completely buggered by the end and it's only kind-of okay now.

2. it looks like the permit information i got all excited about was incorrect. i've spent many hours trying to wrap my head around everything and it looks like i might well need to get a second job offer because these guys might not be ready to wait that long.

3. vfmp's boyfriend has done me an enormous favour by going through my tax return with me, and instead of me owing the government more than $3000, THEY owe ME a few!

4. my uncle who was on life-support has passed away. i'm more relieved for him than anything else.

5. i've met gd's big brother and introduced gd to godmother.

6. i've made it through to the poetry slam finals.

---my toronto cousin called while i tried to go over my previous post, and i spent most of the conversation hoping that my voice was hushed enough. by the time we were done my netbook had frozen so i published without my usual typo-check and had to fix it up a bit later.

muay thai: i almost sparred with my piercings in. that would have hurt a lot. the second guy i worked with, one of the jewish crew, slipped a punch through my admittedly not-so-wonderful defense and hit me hard enough that i had to tell him to tone it down. he obliged, the rest was cool, and i was very glad that i'd leaned into the shot and not away from it. my third sparring partner was one of the taekwondo guys and while overall he got the best of me, i held my own a fair amount of the time and it was fun. the third guy was the one who trained us on monday, and he was so gentle with me i had to force him to up the level. as i said to him when the round was over: "i know kindness when i see it".
finally, i went up against the fridge. power-wise there was only one point where he hurt me (a solid kick to the back of my thigh) but about halfway through i was totally gassed and i could barely lift my arms. smelling blood, he rained punches down on me until i literally had no choice but to walk away.
"hey!" yelled the coach, "you finish what you started!"
i walked right back in there and continued to receive a (gentle) thumping until the end of the round, at which point i crumpled into a heap on the floor, exhausted. and with a very sore neck. i don't know when that began.

gd and i met at p.m. for a delicious dinner, then joined vfmp and his brother for his brother's birthday. cards against humanity. a different version than the one i'd played before, and not quite as funny. but good, nonetheless.

---saturday:

i was half-asleep all the way home.

i woke up with serious neck damage, with clicking vertebrae. i spent most of saturday and sunday trying deep auto-massages. seems to have helped a bit, though gd's bed certainly wasn't doing me any favours so perhaps it's better now because we slept here last night.

i returned home, rested again and got up feeling a bit less sore, then spent four hours struggling to find details about my permit application. there's something i should've done the moment i received my initial authorization last year: i should have applied for a csq. but i didn't, and i don't have one, so the process might take longer than four weeks in which case my potential employer might lose patience. so i need to impress the guys in tomorrow's interview because i might need them as a backup... and anyway i wouldn't cry if i got a job offer from them.

i crashed while reading french harry potter - i still need to work on my french and i'm enjoying the books again. i dragged myself out of dreamland to join vfmp and his boyfriend for coffee and taxes. as i mentioned above, the difference is astounding! and we enjoyed the conversation, too. afterwards i met up with gd and we hit crudessence for dinner. gd had an allergic reaction to something just before we arrived, but fortunately it wasn't too bad and we could still enjoy the meal together. the food was delicious, although it didn't taste like its description: the blt sandwich didn't taste or feel like a blt sandwich, for example. they could have just called it something else.

their chocolate mousse was mostly excellent! i say mostly, because it didn't really work without actual flakes of chocolate and we ran out of those pretty fast. should've stirred it, i guess.

it was really cold by the time we left and gd was under-dressed. i convinced her to join us at the sports bar to watch the ufc fights, and a bit later vfmp and his boyfriend showed up. the fight night was really good; the two fights that weren't great were at least interesting to watch. and we're a fun group regardless :)

i managed to offend the taxi driver when we arrived at gd's by not taking the coin when he gave me change. whatever.

---yesterday:

we went to bed watching bill hicks - sane man. there were pieces of it i'd forgotten about and loved again.

in the morning i discovered that my uncle has passed away. in addition to the relief - the poor man had been on life-support with a feeding tube down his throat - i felt utterly disconnected. i sent condolences on facebook but felt uncomfortable making contact "in real life". we were all fairly close when i was growing up but now i'm only interested in communicating with the two kids i've never really met.

how very sad.

apple tv's youtube interface is so bad that if *i* was working at apple i'd be trying to get someone fired over it. i managed to find some good music in spite of it, though, and we were watching grace slick interviews when gd pointed out that she was born in the year of the rabbit so it might be the reason that a lot of her art centers around a white one (in addition to the obvious alice in wonderland inspiration).

i got home, barely had time to touch the nda for mti and chug breakfast before leaving to meet gd and her brother at their mother's place to help them box up. my presence turned out to be unnecessary, the only achievement of the afternoon being my being approved by her brother.
"are your intentions honourable?" he asked me.
"not even a little," i quipped.
we're on good terms, now :)

advertisements for goat simulator followed us around the metro system. as well as ads inappropriately announced over the pa. that's not smart, stm.

we went to godmother's charity vintage sale, we had a quick chat and gd found something she liked. then we did some shopping, and the rest of the evening was spent awkwardly trying to figure out how we feel about aaa and what to do about inviting her or not to the poetry slam, as she'd been the one to inform me that i'd made the finals. weird facebook fail. whatever.

i've finally been made a couple of offers on the books i'm trying to sell in israel, and while trying to price them discovered that a lot of the out-of-copyright ones are being offered for free on amazon! since when were *they* so generous?!

my mom and i chatted on skype and gd was around, so they've finally (sort of) been introduced. that's cool :)

after making dinner, i tried to get some studying done while gd watched night watch, but i was so tired that i went to bed barely getting through anything.

---today:

it was a beautiful spring morning (which has since soured), but it was tough getting up and that's probably because i'm not looking forward to dealing with my work permit application. the meeting about it was cancelled, so i'm waiting to see what'll happen with that. i've spoken to a government immigration agent and arranged a meeting with an organization that assists immigrants, and the only other thing of actual value i've done today is pick up new shin guards and unsuccessfully hunt down papers for my tax return.

...

the guy who sold me the guards? he told me to meet me at the gym at 10.30. i arrived at 10.30, and sent him a message. he told me to wait for him, he'd be there at 11am.

WTF?!?!

i was pissed, and his apology did nothing to calm me down. what incredible disrespect - i'm not dealing with him again. at least the guards are really, really good *and* exactly the right colour.

light stepping - step i

before i begin, it appears that the heartbleed crisis is mostly over. that is, let's hope that no real damage was done and change all our passwords. here's a helpful list from mashable: which services do you need to change your password for?

---wednesday:

i had some passover shopping to do so i went down to westmount where i'd heard things were available. it was perfect, perfect weather and every step and breath was enjoyed to the max! of course, an emotional overlay of karnivool - new day helped a bit :)

it was amazing until the wind came up, and then the rest of the day was just kind of nice with a sprinkling of annoying.

a homeless man in the metro reminded me that i hadn't taken any clif bars with me (i prefer to give those instead of cash), so i stopped at the health store to pick up a box of vanilla almond, then stepped into starbucks for my first coffee and some wired time. as i placed my order, the guy behind the counter asked my name to identify the cup.
"name?"
totalwaste.
"number?"
confused, i squinted suspiciously at him and then registered his grin; he was flirting with me.
"umm..." i began to stammer.
"ah! you're awake!"
"... yeah, that doesn't happen too often," i smiled and then proceeded to the next counter.

i was simultaneously amused, and flattered, and embarrassed - and i'm still laughing about it two days later!

...

i read about the midi fighter twister: 19 year-old me really wants that!

...

godmother had told me where to obtain marmite, but apparently they can't bring it in because regulations have changed. disappointed, i entered the supermarket and perused their passover wares. the experience was sucky, 'cause that's how i find most shopping experiences, and the only thing that seemed "gift-ish" were these tacky boxes of chocolates that i needed a second opinion on and was unable to obtain.

---while i was there i became offended at the stupid things that are imported from israel for passover. kosher-for-passover TEA?! tea doesn't need to be kosher for passover. it's TEA, not bread. one of the finer principles of being jewish is questioning things, and the religious have obviously missed the boat on this point. it's like they're all drinking the kosher-for-passover kool-aid.

---so i skipped across the road to the saq to pick up wine instead. when i'd found what i wanted, i stood between the check-out counters which were all unmanned. i stood there looking foolish for a short while, until the woman at the "info service" desk asked me if i needed help.

"yeah," i said, holding up the bottles, "i'd like to pay for these"
"what do you think i do here?!" she shouted derisively.
"i don't know," i admitted, "the sign says 'info service' and yours doesn't look like the other counters."

...

everything after "i don't know" was said under my breath.

---i got home and read the rest of the shadowrun online short stories, which are a lot of fun. i called up the israeli consulate and was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and the fact that they're actually open before and after the holidays. then i was tired, so i rested.

i was deliberating between joining pulse for yoga or boxing sparring, then suddenly remembered that i was supposed to go to godmother's for dinner. good thing i remembered! dinner was really nice, after which i was tired again in spite of the coffee.

i watched a few ted episodes on neuroscience (or was it neurology?) and then watched antz in french until i passed out.

---yesterday:

after a good night's rest i woke up incredibly comfortable. i didn't move for a while just so that i could enjoy the sensation as long as possible, and i'm glad i did because apparently i've somehow got myself a pinched nerve in my butt and one side has been hurting with random shooting pains since i got out of bed.

my first task of the day was to take my israeli id to the embassy to get the address updated, only i'd neglected to consider and explore my options before arriving and as i walked into the building i realized that i didn't know what to change it to. feeling silly, i turned right around and went to vasconia, where i'd been informed (by bnw, who has a vested interest in helping her friends out) i'd find good colombian coffee.

it's a great little bakery, the coffee (oma) really is good and i enjoyed a cup while continuing to read wired. that was when i discovered wickr, a messaging service i'm rather impressed by.

...

while doing laundry i occupied myself with random, then messed around with git (or is that gitted around with mess?) in an attempt to look at a project that i have developed cunning plans for...

i did a quick walmart run for creatine and tonic water. my supermarket doesn't do tonic water any more. this is not cool. i suspect that they're beginning to empty their shelves and then i'll have to start shopping a little further from home - at least the weather's going to be better for it...

although it's already sticky warm, and to be honest i'm not so fired up for the sweaty season.

i finally completed the slam, a poem i started writing a couple of days ago out of the frustration caused by my more traditional rhymes not making the cut. i'm decidedly proud of it! i'm considering attaching a low-quality recording because my ironic inflection intentions aren't reflected in the text.

[continued...]

april 1st

there's a man outside with a leafblower going up and down the parking lot and making a lot of noise. i watched him for a few moments, fascinated by the fact that there're no leaves to be seen anywhere. he must be doing a particularly good job.

---it's gotta be the yoga, i woke up yesterday feeling indescribably relaxed and comfortable, and "well"... i didn't want to get out of bed at all. i woke up this morning feeling the same. is this a thing? i really want it to be a thing.

i wanted to do something for april fool's, and settled on posting what i thought was ridiculously obvious: i've decided it's time for another tattoo... i'm thinking on my lower back this time. something tribal, maybe? what do you guys think?
some of the responses were in on the joke and hysterically funny, some of them were just as funny but surprised me with their seriousness - it was such fun! i got a few good laughs out of it, which i'd soon discover that i'd really need...

---the h&r "specialist" i had an appointment with is a russian with bad english. for an hour we talked at cross purposes and struggled over all the tax rules and the documentation that i'd brought. half the time she was trying to explain things to me that didn't need explaining, generating immense confusion. the entire process was tedious to say the least, but eventually we got through it.

now, the way people here have been talking about tax returns i understood that it's something that you have to do, but that by and large the tax that's automatically taken out of each salary payment is usually too much and that if one does things correctly one can expect a bit of cash back. the only disappointment i was expecting was to walk away $120 poorer (the 80 that i was quoted for the filing, and another 40 for reprinting the supporting documentation).

i felt like my chair had been pulled out from under me when she explained that i owe the canadian government $1000. i was shocked, i was unhappy, and it took the woman a while to explain this to me (albeit unsatisfactorily) - i even sent messages to aota and newk'd to verify that what she was saying made any sort of sense. before they could respond, though, the woman hit me with a bigger surprise.

i felt like the ground had opened up beneath me when she explained that in addition to owing the canadian government $1000, i owe québéc $2000. i went from shocked to traumatized, and was horrified when both aota and newk'd told me that this kind of thing is normal. then how the hell has nobody even mentioned this before?!?!

why is godmother, who's lived here for thirty years, also surprised?!

this was all bad enough, but to add insult to injury i was then informed that having h&r fill out my forms for me would actually cost $300.
"i'm so sorry," she informed me, "but it's the system, not me."

beneath the distress, anger bubbled. i will not be robbed on top of being robbed. i explained that they'd quoted me at 80, and that i wouldn't be paying more than 80. she seemed genuinely sorry, and i tried to explain that i was grateful for her services but that i would be taking my custom elsewhere. i took all my documentation and i walked. thinking about how very stupid they are for being dishonest... or at least not forthcoming with their quotes... because the poor woman just struggled through an hour of providing me the best service she could and nobody's going to see a cent for it.

*shakes head*

i kept hoping she'd call me back and yell "april fool" into the phone, tell me that it was all a shitty prank and that i should come back to finish filing and receive my return :(

---i sat in the food court forcing myself to eat and breathe and re-evaluate my position. i cooled down a bit when i realized that this puts me into my worst-case scenario of having to find a job within a month and a half before having to leave. not much consolation, but consolation nonetheless. i had a date scheduled for the afternoon and i would've cancelled otherwise. there's no point going on a date in a distressed state.

so i had my first coffee and reworked a bit of my comic script, then hurried home. i had little time between arriving home and leaving for the date, and most of it was consumed with communicating. the most important call was with my mother, who's offered a backup plan that relieves a solid layer of stress.

---the date? i thought it was really nice and that we had a good time. she was more attractive than in her photos, she's fascinating and she speaks in imperfect english with a really cute british accent (she's french but lived in england); when we said goodbye she sent me a massively mixed signal by gripping my arm in a way that could either mean she didn't want to let go OR that she's pitying me because she did. considering the fact that she hasn't responded to a message i sent her last night i'm guessing it's the latter. which is a bummer.

...

when i wanted to pay and leave there was a sudden influx of customers - one of whom shamelessly cut in front of me, which was weird, and even weirder when she apologized after she'd paid. then i was facing the girl behind the counter with a long line behind me, trying to explain in french that i wanted to pay for our coffees and "delay" a bowl of soup. there was nothing complicated about what i was saying, but she couldn't understand me and after trying twice i said it in english.
so then she got loud. "OH. YOU WANT TO PAY? FOR YOUR COFFEE? THANK YOU! AND YOU WANT TO DELAY A SOUP! THANK YOU!" she shared with the entire building.

i was so embarrassed :$

---rush hour on the metro. ugh.

for the first time in ages i went to jiu-jitsu. i really had trouble with last night's exercises and i was feeling a bit stupid. then there was an exercise where i was sure that my partner was doing it wrong. i tried to explain it to him but he showed me why i was confused, so i apologized for wasting his time and gave him some of my "turn" as compensation. then zahabi called us all in to explain that a few of us were off, and in slow-motion showed us precisely what i'd been trying to explain in the first place.

so there was that...

the dude destroyed me during rolling, i just couldn't get my shit together. i cut early to prepare for kickboxing. i was telling the jolly moroccan about my april fool's prank and my yoga instructor asked me what a "tramp stamp" is. when i told her, she was mortified because... she has one.
*facepalm*
between that and the shark thing, i'm going to need to vet everything i say in front of her before i open my mouth :P

the amount of leg kicks we had to absorb last night was ridiculous. i walked out thinking "the beatings continued and morale improved", went home and spent the next hour or so applying ice packs and watching thérèse. it's weird seeing audrey tautou playing not-amélie right after seeing amélie. i barely understood what was going on. i'm going to need to re-watch it until i do.

---i was supposed to meet with vfmp this morning but he's been unreachable. instead, i applied for a couple of jobs and wrote this. now i'm going to do some studying.

zen and martial arts before snowboarding - part ii

[... continued]

today:

the ideal sunday sleep-in! it was beautiful, i eventually got up with a slack face and huge bags under my eyes. i had coffee and chatted with SxS (who's having a seriously rough time) until i was running late for my first yoga class.

...

once upon a time nixon tried to teach me yoga and had the completely wrong approach. today corrected that, we began a program that's targeted to my leg flexibility and neck / back strengthening. it was a tough hour and she made me work hard. she warned me beforehand that i might find myself becoming emotional in a good or a bad way, and i was completely shocked to walk out of the gym feeling incredibly good and slightly euphoric!

...

i visited godmother for a chilled cup of coffee, then returned with plans to do some studying and perhaps work on my comics. i ran laundry instead, played a bit of fallout and posted this all while eating myself out of house and home. now i think i'm going to do the starbucks thing, shop, and maybe *then* be responsible. because today has been an absolutely magnificent sunday to complete a wonderful, wonderful weekend that closed a seriously exciting week.

^_^

---today's post was brought to you by interactive noise - dont kik no line. groovy tune!

ear-poppingly fast

my entire system is on holiday, which isn't particularly helpful right now but it's a result of enjoying an unbelievably good weekend. which began on friday. and will hopefully end by the time i've written this :)

---friday:

thursday night's sleep wasn't as bad as wednesday's, but it wasn't amazing either. i woke up approximately two minutes before my 5am alarm sounded, and i had to get my shit together quickly if i was going to take advantage of the amazing snowboarding conditions.

i totally got my shit together :)

i'd loaded my kindle with some really good discrete mathematics books, and used my time on the metro and the buses to pour through them when i wasn't getting a little bit of shuteye (the back half of the bus on the way there was filled with happily snoring people, it was really cozy).

what a ridiculously beautiful early morning! it was cold, but absolutely stunning.

the bus took the shorter route that i remembered from last season, which was nice but weird. [or maybe it's because i've only taken the early afternoon buses this season? hmmm...]

the entire length of my walk from the bus to the slopes i struggled to keep my earphone cables from pulling, and when i arrived i realized that i'd closed my inner jacket on top of it. d'oh!
then when i went through my gear to get ready, i discovered two other sets of spares that i'd packed for the previous times - i was wondering where my other socks and sports shirts had gone! d'oh!

some metrics that i wrote down before heading out:
up since 5, it's almost 10.
-16 celsius. 2 hour bus ride instead of the usual 3, plenty of snow and it's still all smooth (unless that's because it's icy, i remain optimistic).
enjoying my first coffee of the day, half of the two french conversations i've had so far made me out to be a complete asshat, and the other involved figuring out how to get sugar into my cup.

as i finished writing that i got milk inc - inside of me [hah! i've never seen or heard the full version before now] stuck in my head and that set the tone for the next few hours. which were awesome, my ankle handled switching just fine, the conditions were great and i really enjoyed myself.
the running nose i was sporting wasn't out of the ordinary, so that was good too.

when i returned to the cafeteria for lunch i was pleasantly surprised to find vegan friendly pasta options! their pasta stand is new, not overpriced and delicious, so my packed peanut butter sandwich (i'd consumed the hummus one as second breakfast) could be relegated to evening snack :)

---once upon a time i had a calculus exam on the sunday morning after infected mushroom and yahel were playing the ostrich farm near eilat (my first trance party in israel, i don't think i've told the story here and i probably should), so i took my books and kinda studied during the after-party on the beach.
on friday i was refreshing discrete maths on the slopes in preparation for a job interview. feels about right, like fifteen years have passed and nothing's changed!

except this time i think i might pass :P

---so the conditions before lunch were excellent, but they were nothing compared to those after lunch! a snowstorm hit, and the rest of the afternoon was absolutely perfect ^_^

except for my shitty ankle giving me trouble, but fortunately it was mostly okay and didn't interfere with what i was doing.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SWITCHING
not exactly like a pro, but good enough to catch a little air with confidence. launching over a steep drop at high speed is an insane rush, and landing opposite makes it even crazier! so that was this season's goal - next season i'll be attempting properly stupid things in the snow park!

i do hope friday wasn't the end of this one, though. i want more...

---it was strange to be leaving for the bus while the sun was still up. it was a gorgeous, golden sunset, i picked up tea from mcdonald's and brilliantly burned my lips due to my impatience...

the discrete i went through on the bus back was a bit of a headache but i discovered that i do recall some fascinating shit from my first degree. i also napped a bit, which i desperately needed...

i got home, found two envelopes that looked like my french results, showered, scarfed down a frozen dinner and left to meet fp for a second date. for the first time this season i wore my iron fist sweater, which on the way there was too warm and on the way out not warm enough :P

we met at brutopia, which was far too loud so we walked to kafein. a bit of a dodgy dive but the electro was excellent and we had a great time.

---saturday:

we slept at her place, and it was early afternoon when i eventually went home. my sinuses had been griefing me on / off and my legs - omg, my legs were *so* sore after the snowboarding and i hadn't thought to stretch afterwards :(

the first thing i did was check my french results... nope, those are tax forms. dammit!
i caught up on comics for a bit, then decided i was too exhausted to think and tried to nap. but i wasn't tired enough to nap. i needed to go shopping before the fights so i took my netbook to starbucks on the way. i churned out a couple of exciting panels (it's weird how much effort can go into a single panel script for a translation work), quickly ate at subway when i realized i wouldn't have time to make dinner myself, shopped, chugged a protein shake (i don't dig subway's veggie patties) and then went to the sports bar.

across from me on the metro was a father holding an instruction manual trying to show his kid how to transform his optimus prime toy. i couldn't stop smiling, i wanted to take a photo but it didn't seem appropriate.

i arrived about forty minutes late and i was *still* the first there! there was general hockey madness going on, i missed most of the prelims and that included alex garcia who i really wanted to see. vfmp and his boyfriend (they seem to be good, so that's cool) joined me just after ufc 171 was underway.

overall, it was a really exciting night!

*** UFC 171 SPOILER ALERT ***
diego "the dream" sanchez was really entertaining! apparently he was suffering from food poisoning, i'm not sure if that explains his french stewart face as he entered the ring but the reason we were laughing was his pre-fight trash talk, the only thing missing was finger-snapping and when he was announced we all heard "the queen" instead of "the dream".
hendricks vs robbed lawler (you see what i did there?) was so exciting that i actually found myself yelling at the screen. that was some crazy, crazy shit!
*** END UFC 171 SPOILER ***

---sunday:

i enjoyed a decent night's sleep, i was supposed to get up early to join godmother for breakfast but it took me an hour of snoozing before i was able to drag myself out of bed. and then i missed the metro, and the bus... delaying everyone's breakfast and scoring myself a ten minute walk in the beautiful but icily cold and windy morning air.

breakfast was great, but ended on an awkward note because godmother was shocked that i'd even think of contacting the recruiter for my shitty interview to tell her that they could learn a thing or two from the company i'm currently interviewing for. by the time i got home i was ready to send her a message informing her that she was right, that is a bad idea.

i spoke to pg, who found your first snow hysterical and accepted my poetic license (the cookie thing never really happened). so that was cool :)

i entered a debugging nightmare, which wasted a lot of my afternoon. i think it's time to familiarize myself with eclipse's debugging tools as opposed to abusing the console.

i was contacted by a most intriguing girl from the dating site, who's so much so that i'd like to meet her regardless of romantic intentions. fp's now all up in my head-space but this girl seems like she could either blow me away or become a good friend. that's a weird thing to think based on a profile, a message and a phone conversation, but there you go...

i'd been thinking of fp with reservations, but a lot of those reservations melted away when she came over last night for dinner, invader zim and firefly.

---today:

it's 3.20pm, i've done nothing but post for the past couple of hours. i really need to grind now.

quick burn monday

i tried to wake up early this morning. i guess i succeeded, but it required a snooze or two. i was so comfortable! not even sleepy, just... comfortable.

that turned to discomfort as soon as i got up, my throat's screwed again. this sucks. and my stomache wasn't too impressed with me either. i felt a bit woozy most of the morning.

when i walked past my calendar i was horrified to discover that i'd written down my mother's surgery date correctly but remembered it wrong! i remembered tuesday, by the time i sent her a message she was already prepped and didn't know what day it was. either, my aunt gently chided :$

i played with java and algorithms until the cleaning lady called me to tell me she'd be bringing a few french movies to vendôme metro for me, so i headed down there to meet her. she told me she'd been the victim of a rather sophisticated phishing attack this weekend, and while she's dealt with the credit card fraud her computer's still compromised. i told her what to do and i've offered to help her re-install her system on the weekend... at least she appears to have learned her lesson :/

i returned, ran laundry and continued practicing, then went to the language meetup. gods, the more i spoke the more difficult it became and i ended up feeling utterly useless. ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

---i picked up some flowers and took them to godmother's, where we had a really nice dinner. delicious, and uncle hate was mostly being pleasant. my aunt in cape town kept trying to call me on skype when only my phone was logged in (i don't allow calls on 3g, and it only alerts me when i get messages), so godmother explained all the details and it sounds like my mom's all clear (crossing fingers anyway). i'll get to speak to her tomorrow, at least.

the one thing that bothered us both is that my mother didn't tell us anything earlier. my mother's always saying how silly it is not to discuss things when one needs support, and suddenly she's guilty of the same behaviour? but then godmother said that yin had told her that she'd probably behave the same way, and i guess that's true of me too to a degree.

---during the afternoon i'd been speaking to pulse, and after dinner i went over to her place for a cup of tea. what i understood from the bus driver's rapid-fire french was that if i want to know when to get off i should keep my eyes peeled. thanks, buddy.

the half hour i spent with pulse was nice, but i feel friend-zoned. that's not a big deal, but i found myself a little too self-conscious while we talked.

the snowstorm i walked out into was unbelievable. mesmerizing, i was listening to tool and watching the flakes spin like little disco balls in the street's light in swirls like a screensaver that could have been an underwater scene or a space one. i had to keep forcing my attention back to the street so that i wouldn't miss my bus.

it was chilly in the metro. i've never noticed the giant vents above the tracks that stream air from an area visible through giant glass panes - tonight that air was cold and we all had to stay covered up.

i've done some more reviewing of my friend's book because i was reading on the metro. there's nothing more frustrating than a fantastically good set of ideas executed with less than fantastic commitment. some of the issues are so ridiculous that it just seems like he got lazy, as if he knew what he wanted to say and got bored trying to share it coherently. i wonder if i'll ever be invited to critique him again after this...

---at godmother's, we watched a bit of the news.

the situation in ukraine is really sad.

the malaysia jet is still missing, but it's not the first to disappear mysteriously. what the hell? shouldn't we be doing something to fix this?

snowden's still on the run for protecting the americans from themselves but speaking to sxsw? cool, but sad too.

ah-ha! a positive drug story. colorado reaping the benefits of legalization