limping - part i

boy, i'm so glad that israeli's on daylight savings time before we are. now i have to stay awake until 2/2.30am in order to contact my insurance company. email is such an amazing invention; wouldn't it be nice if the major institutions and services used it?

---friday:

i'm glad i took elana gomel - a tale of three cities with me to the clinic because i had plenty of time to sit and wait at the nearby coffee shop. the book is fantastic! it's a little like david wong - john dies at the end in a sense, but what fascinates me more than anything is that in our classes with her gomel regularly expressed her dislike of poetry but her fantasy writing is notably full of it :)

my meeting with the doctor lasted all of two minutes and then i returned to prepare for my first muay thai sparring session. on the way to the gym i ran into our instructor and we talked all the way there - he's from the caribbean, he wasn't impressed with me when i shared how excited i was about winter coming :P

the nice thing about becoming a regular is that when he discovered that i don't know the clinch he told me we'll learn it in the next lesson :)

---thoughts after my first muay thai sparring session, just when i thought i'd recovered from wednesday's class:

1. it amuses me that the word "clinic" keeps popping into my head (it's joe rogan's fault) when unlike a medical one this type leaves me considerably less healthy and able when it's over. i lost the use of my right leg early on...

2. i'm not sure if the look of excitement and expectation on the scary dude's face when he invited me to a round is what's making me giggle because he looked like he thought he'd have some competition, or if i'm laughing as a response to the trauma of being properly beaten, manhandled and clinched and thrown rather roughly to the floor... repeatedly.

3. the "no whining" sign in the gym is messing with my mojo.

4. i hope my leg heals quickly because that was AWESOME.

---after training i hurriedly ate and then went to vfmp's to play thunderstone: my leg really hurt and i was properly limping. i had to stop and stretch forward every now and again just to carry on...

it was cold out but the bus was excessively heated to the point where i was sweating even though i'd removed my jacket. what is it with these people?! it's like winter is actually sauna season.

vfmp's boyfriend is a huge fan of nin - hesitation marks and had that and pretty hate machine playing in a loop the entire night. and it wasn't bad at all :)

---saturday:

i returned home happy because it's now sweater-and-jacket weather :)
i was famished pre-sleep, so i sat and read for a bit while snacking.

i don't know why i woke up early, but i'd missed tilt's message from the night before and was glad that she agreed to meet me anyway. i was dead tired but i limped over to the starbucks, got a large coffee and sat down with her. we proceeded to talk non-stop for the next two and a half hours! at the end i told her how i was feeling and she said she understood and we discussed it awkwardly for a few minutes. then we parted company and that was the end of it.

i headed to the further supermarket and was walking a little better on my foot - i'm rather impressed by how effective using ice was! for once, i not only remembered to use it while eating but i kept it on both sides of my leg for most of the gaming session as well.

---i picked up my prescription at the pharmacy on my way home, and it was pretty expensive. it was only when i got home and took a look at everything that i realized that the doctor had prescribed me a hardcore laxative and fibre supplements: wtf?! that has nothing to do with what's ailing me and i'm a vegan, i consume so much fibre that if i use either of them i'll probably shit myself to death :P

i went back this morning to return them and they told me that once something leaves the counter they cannot take it back... but as it was all sealed and neither of the items were really prescription they were kind enough to make an exception.

---i had a quick subway lunch and paid godmother a visit, then returned home for a nap because i was way too tired to do anything else. oddly enough, once i got home i wasn't so tired and aside from a very short nap i watched the usual suspects instead. i'm not sure if i've seen the whole movie before, either way i enjoyed it immensely.
otherwise it was an early night preceded by doing laundry and limping to the supermarket and back in the rain. i'd much rather it was snowing :/

...

i know it's a bit chilly outside, but why is the building's heating set to "furnace"?! i not only have to open the windows, but at one point it was so hot that i had to open the balcony door as well :S

---sunday:

i began the day with the pharmacy visit and a fair amount of reading. in the early afternoon i paid aota a visit as she was feeling despondent. she originally was so miserable that she didn't want me to come over at all but eventually she relented and within a minute of entering her apartment i had her in hysterics and smiling. as i told her, i'm like a clown psychologist :P
we talked for a while and she instructed me to a fantastic cous-cous and bean salad. it's a *lot* easier for me to prepare than quinoa.

i hadn't been able to contact bnw all day but decided to risk rocking up anyway - fortunately i arrived an hour later than i'd thought we'd agreed and fifteen minutes after she and her husband had returned home. we talked briefly and then discussed the comics: the first page is looking really good and we've established that i need to handle the written script myself, meaning that i need to go out and buy a good pen and then figure out how i'm going to mix my personal handwriting with that of the character's. an important part of this project is embedding ourselves into it and this is an excellent way to do that :)

[continued...]

unemployment stasis - part ii

[... continued]

i'd been planning on sparring but i was completely broken. i had a hot bath which helped a little, had a long chat with aota in which i heard that everyone's miserable without me and that megaman is properly making a fool of himself - i'm very glad my final memo didn't include what i thought of him, because i've now heard that the ceo is describing him in precisely the terms i wanted to use. good. they know.

it's finally cold enough to wear my new under armour storm hoodie! it's beautiful and wearing it makes me feel like i'm making a statement :P
i've even had to break out my mittens. winter's coming!!!

---thursday:

i had drinks with tilt and stayed over at her place because it was really late. after a long night on an uncomfortable bed we left with my feeling pretty conflicted. this sucks, because i really like her and i don't want to mess her around. we shared a crisp, sunny montreal morning stroll to the metro: there's little more awkward than waiting on opposite sides of the tracks :P

i got home feeling absolutely exhausted, and didn't feel much better even after a nap. i finally went to subway for a surprisingly crappy sandwich then came here to starbucks to write this (i've exceeded my monthly 90gb internet limit!), ran into a guy i used to work with who seemed excited to talk to me about projects now that i'm unemployed, and am now off to a doctor's appointment that i've been putting off for about half a year.

fight night

tilt picked me up last night and we went through to le carlton centre to watch the boxing. some of the fights were a bit boring, but some were really good! the guys i went to support did okay, nothing special, and the fight of the night (in my opinion) goes to the last one in which an apparently well-known guy from tristar with huge support was beaten in a great match. i was particularly happy about the decision because the contender had won in spite of a bunch of chavs sitting behind us screaming inappropriate things at him non-stop.

a lot of my classmates were there and regarding them i think it was a mistake bringing tilt. first, the not-knowing-everyone's-names thing made introductions uncomfortable. second, everyone was scattered in groups of two or three so the fact that we ended up sitting by ourselves was fine but afterwards everyone was getting together for drinks and we were taking our date elsewhere...

[good date]

it was a very slow and lazy morning, we eventually got up around 2pm. it's taken two hours to get my day going, it looks like a busy night of hip hop and ufc fights :)

faring well

i walked in to the office yesterday to sign a release and clear out my desk. aside from megaman everyone was supportive and friendly or shocked that the company would let me go. the it guy was especially awkward, as his first reaction was "what? they fired you before *me*?!" and then he got all mopey. i only discovered about half an hour ago that they'd fired another one of the team on wednesday, and i've heard that morale is now at an all-time low... which is quite a feat.

i'm still amazed by the colombian developer, who behaved as if his legs had been taken out from under him but who, as i found out later, was the only one who'd already heard. hah! he totally fooled me :P

anyway, they let me keep my phone and they're considering giving me the laptop i was using. pretty cool.

---thursday:

i finally went on that shirt exchange mission: i could have just posted the goods back to them, but for what? to miss out on running around cote vertu looking for the right bus stop on a hot, sunny day? i wasn't in a hurry so it felt like a treasure hunt, and if i had found it quickly i might have missed out on the special mixture of smells caused by a fellow passenger eating macdonald's in a stop that reeks of pee.

it was a great service experience - less than a minute of greeting, swapping and leaving, and i was lucky to get to the bus stop with only a few minutes to spare as the line frequency was pretty low.

i stopped for lunch and coffee on my way to the office and i ended up arriving a little late... but nobody else cared either.

i came home and watched the rest of ufc 157, the first women's fight, and it was a satisfying one. then i watched a bit of the ultimate fighter while resting for training...

only a handful of us at training, so the instructor made it personal; i was short of breath (as i've been the past week) but i still worked really hard. i let out a lot more aggression doing low kicks on the heavy bag than i thought i ever had in me, and i set the bar for 100 solid kicks in 64 seconds (although the others totally blew that away at around 57 seconds average).

...

the gym's "no whining" sign is a problem for me. i like to whine while i work!

---that moment when you turn on the shower and remember you meant to shave first. it happens to me a lot.

---i was still huffing a little when i headed downtown. tilt took me to brewtopia - the music was really good but i wasn't really paying attention. it was a very cool night and we left a lot later than planned... it was raining, and that made for a rather romantic end to the evening ^_^

---friday:

oh, wow. my first day officially unemployed and it was raining when i woke up. well, if the universe wants me to sleep in, who am i to refuse?

i got my laundry done this morning, and i felt stupidly happy about it being unrushed - what a pleasure! i spent some time checking out french courses before finally deciding on one (i registered online, i hope the form worked properly) and while i was doing that chatted to a few people, including my niece who's unhappy living in london :(

---"it's warm in the metro"
i, like everyone i know, can't stand the excessive heat in there. it shouldn't be "warm", it should be "not cold"! that's not the same thing at all.

from heated metro to an unseasonably warm day and into a hot vietnamese / thai restaurant called la saigonaise, thinking that the food had better be good cause it felt like i was in thailand with no air conditioning. fortunately they had a decent vegetarian platter.

on my return to the clinic i was suddenly struck by a more severe shortness of breath than i've been suffering; as i waited for the doctor to see me i half dozed (and snored a few times, ugh) and felt miserable. the doctor checked me out, decided that i don't need to worry about my nose ("just a lesion," she says) and she prescribed me asthma meds and an x-ray if they don't help.

---aside from posting this and getting in a dentist's appointment before my medical insurance runs out, i've had a nothing afternoon. i guess i should pick up the meds and rest a bit before going out to watch the fights tonight. a part of me believes i should get the meds and use them for an awesome training session :P

---americans and their rights - it occurs to me that any american arrested or harassed by police or government officials has every right to call those entities unamerican and unpatriotic. it's like the americans have suddenly fallen into the hands of a terrorist dictatorship... and they don't have the tools to do anything about it.

slowdown

the psychological space i'm in is a little warped by the fact that i'm no longer employed. on tuesday i went in to the office and was greeted by silence - the cfo (who is formally hr as well) didn't interpret the cto's email as firing me and megaman certainly wasn't looking forward to chatting. after sitting with the cfo and aota for a bit we established the chain of events and i explained my take on everything - everything - and i was told to take the day off and wait to be contacted in the morning.

i finished up something that cheshire cat lady needed help with and left, on my way out passing darn and his crew - it looks like the new hire is just as much a plant as the rest of them. that probably requires a bit of explanation, but sod it.

i woke up late yesterday morning and pleasurably relaxed about it, but spent the day not doing anything as the hours flitted by and i wasn't called in. in the late afternoon i finally received an email telling me to come in this morning, but then later received an update saying 3pm.

the good news from the rumour-mill is that they're not going to be dicks about this - apparently everyone (except megaman) would like us to end our relationship on good terms.

---tuesday:

the tone of my morning changed considerably when i received a response to my midnight memo informing me that my position is appreciated and that so is my professionalism under the circumstances. that was quite uplifting coming from someone who'd just sent me an "i have nothing left to say" mail. i'm very glad i removed the parts of the memo in which i described megaman as incompetent and lacking integrity.

on the metro home i was with two of the guys who're supposed to fight tomorrow night, but unfortunately one of them scored a concussion sparring so he's out... what a bummer :(

it took me tuesday and wednesday to get my netbook running ubuntu into a usable state, with a little help from nystire and advice from overclocker. nystire took the opportunity to inform me that the big air force project that the two of us worked on together has been solely attributed to captain incompetent and our names dropped entirely, along with that of the systems engineer we collaborated with. to add injury to insult, captain incompetent will be getting a significant salary increase because of this.

not impressed.

i finished watching indie game: the movie and i have to say that it's not only entertaining but a bit inspirational as well. i think it does a good job of contrasting the attitudes of its subjects.

after a round of planning follow-up dates and a couple of phone calls, i figure it's time to come up with a nickname for the girl i'm seeing - is that premature? i hope not. turns out all the obvious ones were pigeonholing, so i arrived at "tilt" which is part secretive acronym and part how she makes me feel :P

---speaking of phone calls: i'm very glad that my mother's self-aware enough to recognize when she's overdoing the concerned mother thing :)

it's funny, but everyone seems concerned for me - which is very nice, don't get me wrong - and meanwhile i'm feeling pretty good about a horrible situation finally being resolved. and about having some me-time!!! gods how i need this. i've even been making time for duolingo.

---as i had plenty of tuesday left, i went to the gym early. aside from half an hour resting during which i discovered that due to metric / imperial system confusion i've actually been consuming about half of the protein i need (0.8g per POUND. why would they mix systems like that?!), i trained hard for about five hours and i'm still very tender two days later. okay, maybe doing solid boxing while still tender exacerbated things.

regardless, my jiu-jitsu is much improved after i worked with that super-flexible girl again, it's so much harder to submit her that once you "get" it submitting normal people is a cinch. kickboxing was decent, but my chest has been feeling tight for the last week and i'm not sure i'm getting enough oxygen... resting or training...

i watched marc maron - thinky pain over a delicious salad (seriously, how am i doing this?!) and it's difficult to call what he does an act. some of it's hysterical, but most of it is touchingly honest and i was less amused than empathetic.

---yesterday:

tender shins and tender muscles. in particular my upper / middle back muscles - i really need to focus on those.

i watched a fair amount of ufc while upgrading my netbook, including the silva / weidman fight which was disappointing even though it had been spoiled already.

there's nothing like the struggle of heavy shopping to make you feel like your boxing class was a success. we did conditioning at the end, and i was working with a guy who's pretty solid. after a few seconds i heard the instructor yell at me: "what is that? i wanna see a proper liver shot!"

so i obliged. and my poor partner crumpled :D
i didn't feel too bad, though, because i was up next.

another excellent salad and some more ufc, then vfmp came over for some tekken; he won the final battle, at least... i'm not sure how to encourage him without seeming condescending.

---i may have teared up a little at this wedding proposal. in case you're wondering why i'm sharing.

the gselevator guide to being a man (thanks, airplane) is pretty solid. and fun to read.

thanks for thanksgiving

the weather was miserable, which was a great excuse to stay in and learn some french. in the afternoon i made a mistake and watched horgasm - not a good idea to watch someone having such awesome fun on a snowboard before the season's begun...

i sent the email to the cto requesting a meeting to discuss his apparent disappointment with me, and was shocked by his almost immediate response letting me know i'm being fired. putting aside the fact that this is the first time i've ever actually been fired, because i was expecting it, i had expected there to be a conversation and i had to change tack to cope with that lack.

i headed off to a second date with tilt (the girl from wednesday), and we went to see gravity. firstly, the movie: damn! it's super-intense. i wasn't sure if it was going to be worth seeing on the big screen, but i'm very glad i did. and the 3d was subtle and very well handled. secondly, it was a great date. as in, i think it's safe to say we're dating.

i came home to disconnect my accounts from my work pc and remove all my personal data, and am now attempting to return my netbook to relevance while watching indie game: the movie. it's exciting!

and i've just verified that the mortgage bank stuff is all handled. awesome!

out

how about that? i went on a date with a diaspora-jewish girl and the world didn't end! it was actually really nice, in spite of the transit system getting me there awkwardly early, and i think there might be a follow-up.

---before going to sleep i read something about how focus is what elevates the successful, and that the more you practice the more natural focusing becomes. the example exercise was focusing on breathing and not letting anything distract you. the penny dropped and i finally realized what the whole meditation thing is about.

---i woke up at 1.30am to call the mortgage bank, did that and returned to bed. i slept really well, then woke up to an email telling me that the bank had done something really stupid and my accounts couldn't be closed. i spent half an angry hour on the phone with a guy who was insistent that this was not the bank's fault or responsibility and there was nothing they could do to help me sort out the mess. now i have to call again in an hour in the hope that we'll figure out a way to fix this :(

so that's the list of things i hate today: bank leumi. avast! is still up on the board from yesterday, i haven't forgiven them for all the gremlins-in-my-pc shit.

---my day can be satisfactorily defined by the words "back strain". my muscles were really tender and only stopped hurting in the early evening.

megaman moment of the day: "you're setting us up to fail," i told him after a surprise delivery requirement on a completely unrealistic time frame. why do i keep saying exactly what i'm thinking?? he sort of backpedaled, though, so it worked out okay.

it's supposed to be autumn and we're experiencing strangely warm weather. which is nice, but kinda sucks when you're geared up for "sweater weather". it's easier to deal with cold and very cold than warm, cold and undecided. the office snow talk didn't help because we're all getting excited for what's going to begin at least a month from now...

...

jslint is a surprisingly helpful tool. i've read a couple of articles trashing it, but in my opinion it definitely has a place amongst our tools.

---thought for the moment: "whatever your medium, whatever your tools, your art is the you that should be good enough to stick around forever". i have to watch in bits and pieces 'cause it's so very long, but chasejarvis is very interesting.