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Showing posts with label manga-thé. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manga-thé. Show all posts

Monday, April 21, 2014

long weekend goodness

we've been together for just about a week now, and already trying to imagine not being with gd seems impossible. this relationship is at a level that wouldn't seem reasonable if i were watching it in a movie. there've been so many weird little things that make it seem like the universe just wants us to be together, and it's kinda hard to ignore them even as skeptical me rolls his eyes.

just before he shrugs, smiles and silently approves. because it's awesome and fun and good and feels right ^_^

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thursday:

i was so tired that i fell asleep watching guy steele on growing a programming language, which is unbelievably clever meta-poetry that you only start to *get* once he's built it up a bit. he's doing what?? using what?? anyway, it's awesome and deserves some of your time if you're a software developer. or into poetry.

i felt awful when i woke up, suffering that ugly feeling when you're forcibly dragged from a state of unconsciousness that your body desperately requires that you be in. gd came over with her kickboxing gear as we'd been planning on heading to tristar together, but she was also exhausted so instead we spent the night introducing her to firefly and enjoying pitaya, rum, liquorice and chocolate after ascertaining that she digs my salads.

that made for a good night.

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friday:

i woke up with bon jovi - bad medicine stuck in my head after another sleepless night. i was so busy getting ready for the day that i forgot breakfast. what?!

...

the good friday crowd at the clinic wasn't too bad. i didn't have to wait for too long, but it was a bit uncomfortable being sent into a doctor's office only to have to wait for another five or ten minutes. the doctor seemed embarrassed when she realized that i literally only needed a minute of her time after i'd waited for so long.

while waiting i received a message from aaa, and i had time to finally put together a response (in french) that totally covered everything while not being offensive. she definitely *gets* it now, and i seem to have managed to rescue her ego: after she told me it was a bit of a blow, i explained that gd and me being more compatible doesn't have anything to do with her not being wonderful. did that really help? i can't tell, but that's the story i'm telling myself and i'm sticking to it.

i walked out of the clinic just in time to make it to my "poetry date" at cagibi with rabbit. the girl serving me at cagibi was very cool, and she even allowed me to keep a tab - i felt very special :)
their vegan treats were as good as they said they were.

rabbit and i spent the next hour or two talking productively, figuring out a collaborative project we want to do, and critiquing each other's works just like i'm used to from the wondering workshop. we really clicked, had a great time and will definitely be doing that again soon ^_^

newk'd and i had a bit of a misunderstanding, so instead of him meeting me at the designated time at the designated place, i headed to his area and we sat down for ndg bagels. the vegetarian options left much to be desired, and i ended up having to put vegetables on my vegetables on my bagel with a side order of salad. it was a lot, it wasn't bad but it's good that the whole thing was more about talking than eating. i'm excited for him that he's heading off to toronto next week to compete in game production!

i returned home, napped for an hour and went to the gym. boxing had been cancelled so i worked on the bags for an hour. it was mostly good, but i was feeling tired and had to take frequent rests. ugh :(

afterwards i went to gd's, we ordered indian and watched more firefly. she wanted to continue when we finished the train job but i simply couldn't keep my eyes open any more...

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yesterday:

i slept much better than the night before but i still woke up sleepy. i thought i'd get some stuff done when i got home but instead napped for another hour, falling into that deep, black slumber that my brain so desperately needed. i woke up feeling much better but having snoozed so much that i didn't have time to draw cash or make / get coffee, so i pulled an energy drink from the fridge, hunted down a couple of bills and hurried to luna yoga.

i arrived *just* in time, and i'm now paid up for all-access for a month. i found myself positioned at the front of the class, which kinda sucked because the only person i could watch for cues didn't seem to have much of a clue either and the instructions came so fast they were hard to follow sometimes. the lesson was great, though. the instructor reinforced my sense of "living right" and basically had me grinning non-stop as i meditated on the previous week.

the only problem with the class, really, was that my arms felt soooooo weak. otherwise, everything was great and i was very satisfied.

i wanted to invite pulse out for lunch, but i didn't have my wallet with me. she was hungry and in a hurry to eat, but i got her to agree to meet me at vendôme station after she did some quick shopping. in order to make our rendezvous i postponed showering, but when i arrived i got a message informing me that she was being held up and would need another twenty minutes. i totally could've showered :/

instead, i waited in the beautiful sunshine and worked on the slam. i'm really pleased with it now, after minor updates suggested by rabbit and making some major strides in its performance. i can't wait for next month!

pulse and i took out excellent indian food and discussed the details of the previous week. i was a bit surprised to hear her complain that this isn't the first time she's successfully set up someone she's dated with someone else... i didn't need to remind her that she let me go, but something that she let slip was quite flattering and i told her how pleased i am that we're still friends. i kinda wish there was some way to help her find the right guy for her, but that's not how this stuff works...

i visited chez geeks and struggled to find an appropriate board game for vfmp's birthday gift. then i realized i could get him a gift card for them - ideal! while browsing i came across mr. card game. the guy at the store hated it so much he recommended i never try it. this guy thinks it's amazing.

huh.

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thought for the day: "where / how do blind beggars relieve themselves?"
it's bad enough to handle toilets being blind, but blind and homeless? oh, man.

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it was hard to stay conscious on the metro home, and on the metro to gd's, and the nodding off then was as close to siesta as i was going to get. we went to yuan for dinner to celebrate vfmp's birthday, our first social outing as a couple. after that we returned to manga-thé, again because getting into randalph's wasn't happening.

dinner was really good, though anything sushi sucked and there were no drinks AT ALL on the all-you-can-eat menu. it was bizarre coming to grips with the facts that almost all the items om the menu were vegan, and the fake meat items were mostly really good. the mint tofu was odd. just sayin'.
we played forbidden island again, had a wildly entertaining time of it, and called it a night once we'd won.

it was a good night. and i'm really glad that vfmp and co and gd all get along so well! :D

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today:

we were both exhausted by the time we eventually fell asleep, but woke up feeling properly rested. on a sunday morning when we could sleep in. YES!!!

we tried to have breakfast at a local spot but it was closed for easter. on the way we discovered that we both love it rubs the lotion on its skin. so that was the earworm for the morning :)

gd barters her services as a stylist, and a couple of guys came over for haircuts in the late morning. the first was a friend who i've now adopted as one of mine, we've got a crazy amount in common in addition to the fact that he's looking for people to play arkham horror expansions with. we talked for ages about all sorts of things, and he might be a good work contact as well!

the second was one of the guys who runs her gym, he was pleasant enough but gave me an odd look of appraisal when he heard i train at tristar. i don't know what that meant.

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while the first guy got his hair cut, i noticed a piece of art on the wall that's strikingly similar to f (including the textual overlay, although the theme's a little different).

"hey - who painted this?"
"i did."

jaw on the floor.

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we returned to midi 6, had way too much food and talked non-stop. i'm fascinated by how different we are on some things and how similar on others. sometimes it's quite jarring to switch from one to the other, but there's mutual respect even when we disagree and it's effortless. we argue with the same intensity and the same intention, and that's not only rare but it's extremely gratifying!

i went to godmother's for tea and a long chat. suddenly it was 5pm and i *had* to come home, because aside from posting this and tending to my apartment i'm on dinner duty so that my salad ingredients don't go to waste :P

Monday, March 31, 2014

the laziness continued

oh, wow. it's sunday night. like, the hours have just been whizzing by since friday - i've been really motivated, but only by all the wrong things!

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friday:

i played about an hour of fallout and invested some time in figuring out what the bank advertisement in the metro was trying to say with its image of a child playing on a console and the single word "tripper" scrawled above his head. that was how i found the québécois / french dictionary entry. useful!

i did some reading while running laundry, then suddenly the afternoon was over and i'd just been half-asleep all day. i went out to meet vfmp and his brother and discovered that the snow had turned to rain. i was not impressed. the metro seemed warmer than it's been in a while, so that was uncomfortable too...

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the guys were laughing at me for my attitude towards violence in games. i can't do better than refer you all to penny arcade and tell you to look at their issues with jack thompson. i think this recent post on the subject sums things up nicely.
the discussion was about child-killing. it bothers me that i can play a game that will let me murder people, innocent or not, as long as they're not children. let's assume that we agree that killing people in general is wrong, and that without me going into a lengthy diatribe we also agree that killing in games is okay if it's context-appropriate and the game is suitably rated for mature audiences. in this case, what kind of message is a game that says "go ahead, kill everyone, but pull the trigger on a kid and nothing's gonna happen" sending? considering the fact that that sort of programming is incongruous with any believable reality, any player attempting to kill a child is certainly going to notice... and he's going to pay attention... and he's going to think about it.
it is my view that the only logical conclusion is that if killing adults isn't censored then it must be okay to do so in real life. you're welcome to argue this with me in the comments below, but do us all a favour and think carefully before you start typing. thanks so much.

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vfmp was being weird about dinner and mustwin was cooking; the two of them started fighting and in addition to making me feel awkward for a while it took me right back to my own experiences with problematic flatmates. gods, i'm so, so glad that i'm living alone. seriously. i can't deal with other people's shit.

at least the unpleasantness came to an end, and we all went to randolph pub ludique to celebrate a friend of theirs' birthday over alcohol and boardgames. it would take more than an hour to get a table, so we went looking for somewhere to sit in the meanwhile and we stumbled into manga-thé next door. what an awesome little tea shop! it's an impressive manga library and they have some games too, though you have to order tea if you want to play. oh, no! good tea!
we played forbidden island*, which is a fantastic game that's as simple to get into as it is entertaining to play. it's also relatively cheap, so i'm now trying to decide between the physical game and the ios app. the latter has a lot of advantages...

... i contemplated buying hunter x hunter translated into french; they have the entire collection and the story's complete! but i haven't read the last five or six books, and at $15 a pop i'm thinking that maybe i should just go and sit there, drink tea and read their copy instead.

* now known to our little group as "get the treasure before you drown with honour"

soon after we finished a game (winning!) we were informed that our table was ready. we were all so excited about playing co-op games (because mustwin is vicious about winning and we wanted the birthday boy to not be on the losing side) i'd been talking up arkham horror. it's a great game, but damn that was a bad call :(
it's way too complicated to play without at least one expert, by the time we were kicked out for closing we'd managed a single round and most of the guys were not impressed. we'd had a fun evening overall, but it would've been even better if we'd picked something else. mega fail, all on me.

we all went back to vfmp's place where the brothers put on street fighter vs tetris. i think we were all too tired for that, i got a ride home and practically fell into bed.

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yesterday:

i played feed-catchup in the morning, the results of which are linked at the end of this post. i chased that by playing some ftl: faster than light. i thought i was in control, but i wasn't. in fact, i've been obsessed by this game the entire weekend and i've devoted hours to it. the thing is, it's not about winning, but learning how to win. and once the soundtrack's stuck in my head...

weird french moment: reading a sign that says "désespoir" and thinking that despair being "from hope" makes sense, because you can't despair if you didn't have hope first. i took the metro to bnw's and when i wasn't napping i was thinking of an interesting twist on p2p protocols that i'm going to explore further this week.

bnw and i went over the comics for a while, and her husband suddenly interjected with a bit of pragmatism that had us arguing heatedly for a while. he had some interesting and valid things to say, i think by the end he understood where i'm coming from; i'm not sure how bnw feels but i do know that i'm not willing to hold the project for any one person who can't or won't put in the hours. i'd love for her to be the primary illustrator, but if she's going to work slowly then i'm going to find other people. i need this thing to happen.

we watched the wind journeys, which is a wonderful film! it's slow, but not boring, the music is the central theme and is very strange and interesting in its own right, the cinematography (or photography or whatever) is astounding.
even so, towards the end i was as sleepy as if i'd been in a lecture during the officer's course, massaging my temples until they hurt in a vain effort to keep my eyes open. to make things worse, i was suffering from rls - my feet were in pain and there wasn't a damn thing i could do about it.

the movie ended just before the last metro - i ran all the way (fortunately, that's not far) and hurried down to the platform only to find that i still had five minutes to go. oh, well.

when i got home, i brushed my teeth and went to bed. it was during the former action that i discovered which tooth cracked a couple of weeks ago. it wasn't the one that was hurting, it was the one that was subjected to the root canal treatment. it's broken in an ugly way and i really don't know if i should be doing something about it now or waiting until i have medical insurance again.

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today:

i got up early and played ftl until it was time for my yoga instruction. this morning's snowstorm was crazy and i was kinda sorry i wouldn't be going snowboarding...

the room we worked in last week was occupied but we were allowed in to the hot yoga room - it's obviously a perfect space for yoga, and we were amused when we realized that even with the doors open and the systems off it was still really warm in there. i recorded most of the lesson (my phone ran out of space after fifty minutes) so that i can do some of the exercises at home during the week and it was a really good class - tough, interesting, and i felt sooooo relaxed afterwards that i walked in to the main area of the gym and turned around and walked right back out because i didn't want anything to tense up and ruin the perfect comfort i was experiencing.

i wasn't as giddily euphoric as last time, but i still felt terrific.

after showering and eating lunch i shamefully got sunk into ftl, i'm not kidding when i describe it as addictive and it only gets more so the better you become.

i was on my way out to the supermarket when i realized that i hadn't closed the door properly when i returned home. ugh! everything seems to be in place, but i'm really embarrassed to have done something so... well, i guess that tells you how relaxed i was after yoga :P

i thought i was going to get serious after i got back but the night's been filled with this, online dating and random shit. it's now late, so i'm going to get into bed and start tomorrow on the right foot.

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linkage!

and just like that, an oft-mocked industry of people finds reprieve. through a teenage font-messiah.

well done, universe, well done.

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rule no. 1: don't be an (_*_).

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jim breuer on heavy metal for children

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a friend of mine has written a post titled "inertia" in which he explains that he's finally on the same page as me regarding consumerism and career motivation :)

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i hope that this crazy shit is what facebook's planning on doing with the rift it just bought

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oh, man - i thought i was gonna skip to the important bits of maysoon zayid's ted talk, but she caught me in the first few seconds. amazing!