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...]

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...]

i don't even. part iii.

[... continued]

monday continued:

i left gd's when it was time to get ready for the first night of passover. i walked in a semi-daze, completely high (on life, and it's been mostly sustained this whole week) and utterly distracted.

not the best time to receive a series of messages from aaa telling me she didn't *get* it, apparently she changed her mind at the slam and still wants to date. i gently chided her and put her off, hoping she got the message this time...

...

the spring rain would have been more welcome had i not been dressed well. just saying.

---the first night passover dinner was insanely tedious. if it wasn't for the fact that i won't let my family down, it was so bad that even if it wasn't the last time that our hosts will be hosting (for a while at least, they're not going to be here next year), i'd say i'd never go there again. it's not that they're not nice people, and the food was good, but it was like nobody cared enough to participate in the seder AND they went through every single page of the damned haggadah anyway. it's okay if it's one or the other, but both?!

and the company. oh gods, the company. not only did i want to be spending my evening with gd, but i was surrounded by people i have absolutely nothing in common with and who amongst themselves couldn't keep a conversation going for more than a minute unless it was about sports, and that conversation lasted about five minutes and was entirely composed of random facts and completely unfounded speculations being thrown across the table.

damn.

DAMN.

and yang, who i usually can at least have some kind of entertaining interactions with even if they're negatively entertaining, was being even more of a yanghole than usual so i didn't want to talk to him at all.

...

for some reason, in my head i can summarize the experience with "we had to keep our shoes on at the table". the only positive thing about the seder being so bad is that it was the primary cause for certainty that i wasn't simply hallucinating those 24 hours.

---gd was amused that i was considerate enough to carefully floss and brush extra-well before heading over to her place as i'd eaten something for dessert that she's so allergic to that micro-contact would send her into anaphylactic shock. pulse and her had both warned me about this; i had this horrifying vision of having to call 911 in the middle of the night...

i ran into vector as i walked into the metro, and it sounds like he and i are going to be able to get to work on our collaboration in a couple of weeks - so that's cool.

---yesterday:

i came home in that same state as after a long night of hard partying, happy but in an altered state of mind caused by a combination of excess happiness and sleep deprivation.

and i thought that when i got home i'd post, and call people back, and otherwise be productive. boy, was i wrong!
i received a phone call from a recruiter i'd never heard of with a contract that urgently needs to be filled and that, quite frankly, is PRECISELY what i'd consider my ideal re-entry into aerospace! what terrifying serendipity! what freakishly good fortune!

i cited aota and my last commander as references, and was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call from aota a short while later informing me that she'd provided me an AMAZING reference and inviting me over for coffee. what?! how awesome is that?!

...

that was when the universe decided to give me a kick in the backside. literally. i was on my way up the stairs at aota's metro station when my nerve pinched again. sciatica, apparently. it began by bothering me every few steps, and would proceed to get progressively worse as the day worn on...

...

i spent hours at aota's chatting with her and her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend until i realized that i was really hungry and that i needed to get going anyway. i was entering the metro when the morning's recruiter called, hoping to catch me in time for a quick face-to-face introduction, and after i decided not to put myself in a position where i might be late for dinner i realized that i'd dodged a bullet because i wasn't exactly dressed for success. rule: don't meet potential employers or recruiters wearing street clothes.

on the metro: a bag isn't a person, and doesn't require its own seat on a packed train. but the dude didn't need to give up BOTH seats in order to let me have one.


by the time i returned home my lower back was in agony every few steps. so much for grateful positive vibes, huh?

the second night's seder was suuuuuch an improvement! both uncle hate and yang disagreed, but that was purely on grounds of them being assholes. we skipped bits that weren't imperative, everyone was friendly and positive and joined in, and even the elderly italians across from me were very sweet and we had fun chats about the most arbitrary things.

also, it was far quicker than the previous night's. and the food was good.

---by the time the seder was done my sciatica was constant and extremely painful, i was limping and wobbling occasionally, struggling to sit or stand. i called gd when i got home and discovered that she suffers from it too, not only did she have advice for me but she talked me through finding appropriate meds. they helped a little, even if i woke up with cotton wool between my ears...

[continued...]

t minus one day

the temperature in the apartment kept dropping last night, so much so that for the first time this winter i've actually needed my duvet. fortunately that was enough to sleep decently. mostly. at least the problem seems to be sorted out now... i can't believe it took them two days to take care of it.

i don't know what drove me to look at the featured apps page on itunes: pre-exam distraction-seeking when i already have tons of other distractions available? i downloaded stack rabbit, mini ninjas and another case solved. the first is a bit crap, the second is pretty and fun but the last is stupidly addictive - no, make that cleverly addictive! it's balanced perfectly so that the in-game purchases are enticing but if you want to keep it free it's not an issue. it's based on tile-matching, but it's so much more than that; the hints aren't enough to get the hang of the tools and tricks, but the more i've played the more i realize what i'm supposed to be enjoying. and it's great :)

...

dreams:
1. in a synagogue, realizing after quite a while that i hadn't put my "kippah" on. someone was making a noise and a crazy red-headed cousin of mine almost got physical with the offender trying to "keep the peace".
2. i entered a gym, the cheaper, shittier one with a dodgy locker room that reminded me of pub toilets that i suspect had been derived from another dream. i didn't feel like working out.
3. on a mission to break in to a nuclear facility. there were written instructions i couldn't carry and which i had difficulty memorizing; i was extremely hesitant to enter through a safety window (?), but a helpful japanese girl demonstrated how to get past the airlock system which involved getting naked. i was still uncomfortable.
4. standing in front of a mirror examining a visible upper tooth when it cracked. i slid it off an ugly rotten core that remained, and was quite upset.

i had trancentral five loaded up and listened to it while reading this morning. it's like a time machine: while it played i was nineteen years old and enjoying a sunny post-party afternoon with protoplasm at the apartment i lived in before emigrating from south africa. "was", not "thought about being" or "remembered being".

horseman's two hour chat this afternoon was smoother than yesterday's. we ended it with a couple of rounds of tekken, after which i continued reading before heading to dinner at godmother's. dinner was really nice (uncle hate's away), i watched a bit of gladiator with yang until it was time to leave. yang gave me a ride to vfmp's where we watched another episode of house of cards. a pretty good one.

when i left it was -13 and pretty darned cold. as in, it felt cold, i guess i've gotten used to being indoors... on the news earlier they were saying that this has been the coldest winter in twenty years. it doesn't seem *that* much worse than the last, though, which was apparently one of the mildest in years...

...

my thighs and hips are hurting from last night's training.

my junk food habit is expensive. i just did the math in my head. not good.

---pulse's friend has officially referred me for a couple of jobs i'd like. *holds thumbs*

scrapper has invited me to join a small group doing collaborative world-building via email. so far, fun!

full moon valentine

friday:

finding electric universe on grooveshark had me bouncing around my living room while doing french lessons, which must have been a treat for any neighbour who happened to look in the direction of my apartment. i did the valentine's day shopping i had to, picking up a single red rose as well and hoping that it wouldn't be damaged by the cold that was really hurting my fingers.

boxing:

one of the girls who'd told me i need to bring chocolate was ecstatic that i had, the other didn't show up. i almost gave her bar to another one, but then that girl turned out to be entirely undeserving. i was upset by the whole incident for quite a while after class :(

as for the class itself, my arms were still strained from the night before and the guy i was partnered with made me work really, really hard. i wasn't ungrateful, mind, but it was really tough! i'm rather pleased with my slipping, though.

i quickly showered and headed to resonance in the hope of finding a table for two. i arrived before pulse did to find that they had a band playing. there were three wind instruments and they were so bad and so loud it was unbelievable! valentine's dinner torture? i don't think so. i mean, these guys were aggressively bad, intentionally discordant, and they'd only just begun... fortunately i made this discovery in time (and i mean, we're talking seconds here) to get outside and hop on the bus pulse was arriving on. we tried all the indian restaurants near jean talon and parc but they were all closed or closing, and took a chance on p.m..

perfect! we enjoyed a wonderful dinner, it was delicious and i may have overeaten a little. on a different note, we were both quite conscious of the full moon :)

[whiskey sleepover]

---saturday:

i woke up in the morning happily unrested and in a fog of stupid. an hour's nap before going snowboarding didn't really help much, either, but spending the hours on the buses there and back slipping in and out of consciousness made enough of a difference.

the p.m. leftovers sorted me out three times during the day, that was very cool. even cold. i'm so lazy :P

i *just* made the bus to saint sauveur in time, which was intense! skittles made my walk from the village to the mountain that much more pleasurable, the weather wasn't beautiful but it was beautifully comfortable, and i was delighted when i arrived to discover that my choc / rum / coffee blend was perfect :)

i didn't stay on the slopes for very long, only a couple of hours, but the runs i did were so crazy and exhilarating that i felt dangerously high on adrenaline. by "dangerously", i mean that i was certain that i'd do something stupid, so when i saw that the lift clock said 6.05 i made a differently crazy decision to take the 6.40 bus back. i managed to change and pack up very quickly, and made the walk with a few minutes to spare to be entertained by a guy in his forties sitting in his car listening to classic epic house tracks.

my gods - a large proportion of the exceedingly groovy people i went clubbing with when i started out are now approaching or are in their forties... holy crap!

i got home, had a hot bath which i sorely needed and napped for another hour before jump-starting with the remains of my thermos. it had been a crazy weekend, and i was off to complete a hat trick with a psytrance party!


---sunday:

yang was there, aside from a dodgy introduction to someone that made us both sound stupid (instead of just him) - and reminded me very much of his father - we chatted amiably a few times and it was pleasant seeing him. i got about four or five hours of partying in before the cops showed up to shut us down... of those, there was one hour during which i thought that i was finally out of gas for the day because i could barely lift my legs. then the next dj came on and made it clear that it was the music that had been sucking, because we were all re-energized and out of control until the end!

i had so much fun! i so needed that! the only downer of the evening was my own thoughts about pulse, wondering if i was doing the "pushing" in the relationship and if i should back off a bit. i'd like to think that we're above those simple forces, but unfortunately that's not how these things work :(

the night buses to get home were actually quite convenient, though i let myself get distracted by skittles and an odd humming sound that the bus was making that could have been lifted from one of the tracks i'd heard earlier and i missed my stop. fortunately, i registered where i was before i'd gone too far, and i shambled back home against bitterly cold wind to a quick hot shower before falling into bed.

i slept well for about four hours, then it was on / off for a few more. i was finally woken by a women calling to find out if i was going snowboarding today - she called too late to catch the bus herself, and was disappointed that she hadn't known that i was going last week or yesterday. umm... when she hadn't gotten in touch before, and i'd given her my number before the end of last year? anyway, she sounds particularly unintelligent so i very patiently explained her options. maybe she'll join us next time we rent a car, but i don't really want to spend hours alone with her on a bus.

...

i have spent my day posting, doing a couple of french practice sessions, chatting, and eating healthy junk food while listening to music. i've been thinking about having lunch for over an hour now and just realized that i'm leaving for dinner soon, so so much for that idea.
in summary, i think it's safe to sat that this weekend has been totally awesome, and that i have enjoyed my finest valentine's day ever!

life is good ^_^

red flags

i was running for the metro yesterday evening when i got caught with a red light as i passed my card. "oh, no!" i said, as i watched the train pull in. i hurried to the counter, agitated, and slammed my card on the reader. the assistant - obviously having read my expression - tersely responded to my request to let me through. as i began removing my earbuds i realized that she had told me that my card was empty. because february. dammit!

dinner at godmother's was very nice, her friend brought an israeli relative who's here to learn english and who was only too happy for a linguistic break. i had a date planned at la casa del popolo but the girl hadn't responded to my confirmation message, however considering that it was the site's messaging i figured it possible that she hadn't seen it and i didn't want to stand her up; fortunately, my new israeli friend was interested in going out for a drink so i took him to the same place just in case. we had a good time and as we have a surprising amount in common talked non-stop until the last metro took us past his station.
just before we left the pub i received a message from my date (who'd apparently been feeling under the weather) apologizing for not being in touch sooner... i gave her the benefit of the doubt and told her we can do thursday instead, either way i'd had a fun night.

my ankle was feeling just fine for the first time since the accident, at least until someone in the pub managed to trip over it :(

...

oh, and whatever yang's problem was is a complete mystery to me. he was friendly enough last night. whatever.

---today:

the weather was gorgeous today,very cold but sunny and bright. i did some supplement shopping at walmart*, sorted out my rent and settled in for lunch. skipping through rocky ii highlights to jog my memory while eating. i spent some time remembering that i'm a tekken addict and playing online. beating faceless strangers is awesome, being smashed by faceless strangers is not so awesome.

* i don't know what skittles have to do with the chinese new year, but i took three packets anyway.

i studied a bit of french, and went off to the weekly conversation. i spent most of it talking to an iranian in a similar situation, and when i learned that he's planning on returning to serve in the iranian military in the future i was glad about him not understanding my answer when i told him where i'd worked before :S

anyway, i feel a definite improvement. i'll register for the exam tomorrow.

...

i got some tekken in before boxing. our coach is in full abuse mode but i don't care - i've decided to let my fists do the talking. unfortunately, i wasn't on top form because my arms were buggered from the jump rope at the beginning of the class, but i still worked hard and did fairly well and the rather large dude i was paired with seemed impressed during conditioning both by how much punishment i dished out and by how much i took in return.
hitting that man felt like hitting a hard bag, dude be crazy.

...

it's been an evening of cute comedy, downton abbey shocks and horrors, and tekken.

---thought for the day: "i'm over the moon! so over it."

return to the poutine routine - part ii

[... continued]

i wanted to meet up with tpj at the sherlock holmes museum pub, but i'd forgotten that it wasn't on baker street. whoops! so instead we ended up at the beehive drinking stout that wasn't particularly good. it was nice to see him and we had plenty to talk about; it was almost too late when i left for the heathrow.

*and* i didn't know which terminal i needed to be in. i guessed 5 correctly, though, and i made it through security just in time. security was a breeze again! i don't know why they get such a bad rap.

there was a long delay on the ground, but as long as i was on my last flight i really didn't care. after watching world war z, i finally got around to seeing elysium! what a fun film, thoroughly entertaining... but i cannot fathom how anybody who's not south african could possibly enjoy it. i *would* have enjoyed it on the big screen, but i certainly wouldn't have felt it worth the price. maybe i'll watch it again when it comes out on netflix.

i got in a little sleep and some epic dreaming, breezed through the airport and came out on the other side of immigration feeling so ridiculously relieved! godmother had yang pick me up, which was really nice, and i returned to a clean apartment for a much-needed shower; i did some emergency shopping, gobbled down a frozen meal and was so jet-lag exhausted dropped out of consciousness in a heartbeat.

---there's something queer about yang: he was telling me about an upcoming party that he'd previously sent me an invitation to. an open-to-the-public party in a nightclub downtown. the next day i mentioned that i might want to join him and he informed me that he hadn't actually extended an invitation, "not to sound offensive". wtf?!?!

---friday:

in the morning, pg delivered the tax-related documents i needed and i put everything together for the accountant. she also invited me to see pearl jam when they play england - that would be awesome! i wonder if it's in the realm of possibility...

i sent in my resume for a couple of jobs, and spoke to bell regarding some worrying things on my bill. they explained everything and even reversed technically legitimate charges in good faith (they may have been legitimate, but were understandably unfair), i was well impressed :)

i had been planning on going to newk'd girlfriend's community center poetry slam event, but when i realized that i'd gotten the date wrong i agreed with vfmp that jiu-jitsu and boxing followed by glitter sounded like a good plan. let me be clear - the only reason i agreed to watch a movie like that was because every time i'm shocked by his boyfriend not having seen culturally critical films his response is "well, have you seen glitter?!"

i renewed my tristar membership for six months, hoping that i wasn't being too optimistic but satisfied that the difference in cost between three months and six months isn't really significant. i returned home to snack and nap, and unintentionally bit down on an unpopped popcorn kernel: i found the offending tooth! and it's *not* the one the dentist suspected, so good on both of us for not proceeding.

i walked into the gym and into a lecture from the top muay thai instructor who wanted to make sure that i'd been careful with sparring after he'd seen what the beast did to me. my boxing coach was right there, so i flashed him a grin and asked "are you hearing this?"

jiu-jitsu was good, i seem to have gotten a handle on a lot of stuff; the rolling afterwards, though, required all-out power and my partner and i kept stalemating. after him i rolled with vfmp, but by then my arms were exhausted and so after i gave up we practiced some techniques instead.

my return to boxing: i know now that after my christmas tale the coach had excitedly told others how impressed he was with me, but from the moment i stepped into the class we were back to the verbal sparring. it's kind of sweet, kind of annoying. anyway, the class was fun and he left us with so many exercises that the entire class treated it as a group effort. i think i was the only one who failed to complete the 400 sit-ups, push-ups, burpees and squats (100 each). but that's mainly 'cause i wasn't feeling well, jet-lag-wise.

i don't know why i got home so late. i also don't know how i'd managed to score skin irritation on my chest and arm from the jiu-jitsu when i'd been wearing long sleeves; i think i might need to wear a regular training top underneath my long-sleeves. i "hurriedly" showered and went to vfmp's; i write that in quotation marks because my body refused to operate any faster than slow-motion. it was like all of my muscles had turned to jelly, but i was feeling great so i wasn't complaining :)

i *did* need two beers to watch glitter. it wasn't nearly as bad as crossroads, and as far as motivation goes i now have currency with which to purchase vfmp's boyfriend's film-time for movies like the fifth element :)

forgetting that it was friday night, i arrived at the metro at a time that would have been fine on a saturday night... fortunately it wasn't too cold, the twenty minutes waiting for the bus could've been worse.

---saturday:

i slept in, enjoying a slow and mindless morning. i went with godmother for coffee at the mall, after which she had stuff to do and took so long i worried i'd been forgotten and abandoned... she appeared just in time for me to be able to consume a quick lunch and head out for the slopes. i had a bit of a headache, but i really didn't want to miss such a perfect day - i was totally right! the weather was absolutely stunning and the snow conditions were excellent ^_^

...

that awkward moment when, after cringing and asking him to please be a bit more gentle with my board, the bus driver upbraids me for how i've been transporting it and explains why and what to do in the future. turns out he's a snowboarder. win!

(apparently the flat gets preferential care to the edges on bouncy metal surfaces. who knew?)

...

as i got off the bus an old woman with a heavy bag slipped on the ice, and slowly and awkwardly fell, softly (hopefully softly enough) hitting her head on a wall. i quickly dropped my board and helped her up, i hope she was okay...

on my walk to the mountain i couldn't stop thinking that the small voice that thought i should take the day easy is a dickhead - i would have missed the most perfect weather! we had bright sun and soft blues, it was relatively warm, very picturesque and absolutely lovely. i made good use of my couple of hours and my switching is getting quite decent ^_^

---i returned from the final slope feeling so incredibly fortunate and grateful! i was almost sure that nothing was broken, but my right leg was really hurting after the worst wipe-out i've ever had. "the ones that hurt are the ones you don't see coming" appears to apply to snowboarding as well as boxing. that one could easily have hospitalized me: on the final section on my way down there were two people that i decided to go around, but what i didn't see until it was far too late was that they were standing in front of deep moguls made of solid ice. i couldn't slow down in time, and i bounced - probably three or four times - and when i finally came to a stop and had figured out which way was down, i realized that i could easily have snapped my neck. i didn't even notice until i locked up my board that my foot had completely pulled out the binding (explaining why my ankle's screwed), and until later that i'd suffered minor injuries to all my limbs, my lower back and my jaw.

no matter how fortunate i felt, the walk to the bus was an eternal half hour of grimacing and grunting in pain. i spent the twenty minutes waiting for the bus trying to keep things mobile and stretching, worrying about all the bones clicking that i'm sure aren't meant to click. the hour or so on the bus was all about stretching and flexing, and the walk through the stations and then home was agonizing. the intense relief of climbing into a hot bath was unbelievable, and i'm very glad i remembered to ice things for a while before limping into bed.

[continued...]

ushering in 2014 - the festival

[... continued]

getting to rezonance wasn't difficult at all, which was only a concern because the last time i went we got lost and ended up in a township. my cute little fiat rental wasn't happy at all with the farm roads, though, and i had to drive extremely slowly... good thing i hadn't forgotten my cds so i could at least sing along and enjoy the ride :)

i walked in carrying my tent and blanket expecting to run into my cousins immediately, but after a short mission i returned to the car to leave them behind and go hunting with my hands free. a good reason for not being able to find them? they weren't there! i thought we'd be doing the full family vibe but only two cousins were there at all, one leaving before the other arrived.

walking in past the third dance floor i heard a bit of george daniel, i'm almost sorry i didn't stay for more, he was amazing!

i found yang on the main dancefloor, we talked for a minute and then springer walked past. it was so cool to see her! she dragged me off to meet her mom and her fiancé, and a couple of minutes later i returned to where i'd met her and yang had already left, not to be seen again. in the minute or two that we had seen each other he'd managed to annoy me by boasting about the quantity of drugs he'd taken in a way that assured me that he'd done nothing at all and didn't realize that that was okay.
okay, then!
the next day one of my new friends would make a comment about how she can't understand how anyone could be stupid enough to leave before the last day, and i kept thinking of yang doing just that...

springer introduced me to her campsite and i set my tent up with them. the wind came up just as i began and subsided soon after i was done. of course :P

i finished just in time to catch the goldfish performance - brilliant! - and then we hit the dam for a swim. i sat on the bank because my boxers weren't appropriate for swimming :(

i was disappointed to find that there were precisely two options for vegan food at the festival, but fortunately the indian food was a very good option indeed. what was super weird was that the stuff they warned me was really hot and spicy wasn't a problem but what wasn't supposed to be spicy burned me :S

the night session didn't impress me too much, the dark psy and full-on were mixed and a lot of the music was loud and crazy but boring: no groove, no clean beats, boring. the few tracks that were good were really good, though, but not enough to keep me out there. i must have gone to bed around 11pm, which in retrospect was a sodding good idea :)

speaking of good ideas - my hippie feet! i've been given some grief about them, most notably by my mother who thinks that i should go for a pedicure, because they'd make a khoisan proud. they're rough and tough and made for stomping, even if they're not the sexiest feet around. i was very glad for them when i discovered an exposed piece of metal on the dance floor in the dark, not by walking on it but by stomping my foot down on it with full force. it hurt, and for a minute i was worried that i'd punctured my sole, but there was no damage done and everything was fine.
in fact, the worst thing to come out of the festival was a splinter in my left foot, i'm not sure if it's still there or not :P

i slept on the ground with a blanket and some clothing piled to make a pillow, and aside from waking up throughout the night to reconnect the tent cover which had been blown off by the wind i actually slept quite well. i woke up feeling rested and, surprisingly, with my body feeling aligned. nice!

i walked down to the dam for a wake-up swim, the water was lovely but drying off was extremely chilly, then headed to get some coffee. as i stood waiting for my order an old couple - and by old i mean somewhere in the range of 50s to 70s, it's hard to tell - stood next to me and were deliberating over their own order. when my coffee was presented to me the gentleman looked over and asked, quizzically, "green coffee?"
his wife (presumably) turned to me and made a calming motion with her hands. "it's the mushrooms," she said. "if you find liquid mushrooms, you really shouldn't take more than one or two drops."
i walked off with the silliest smile on my face!

the music from the second stage was waaaaaay better suited to mornings than that on the main one, so i took my coffee there. talisman was playing, he's a groovy old dude with amazing progressive and there must have been about ten or fifteen of us in total enjoying a perfect session!

when the stage shut down i returned to the tent where my neighbours were just waking up. i convinced them to join me in some rum, but i accidentally pulled out the southern comfort instead. should've labelled the bottles! i brushed my teeth, then returned to the main stage to hunt down tgtbt and her boyfriend. i knew where they were supposed to be but i couldn't find them! eventually i almost walked over them and laughed at them for thinking i'd see them if they were sitting down :P
tgtbt and i talked for a while and it was really cool to get some catch-up time :)

i picked up the bottle of southern comfort, put my boardies on beneath my shorts and hit the dance floor for some quality crazy time. it was getting hotter, too hot for spirits without ice - one of the guys i gave a sip to actually threw up - and eventually i gave up and returned the bottle to the tent. i'd developed heartburn myself, half a bottle of the stuff is apparently not a particularly healthy breakfast.

the vegan place made me a strawberry, banana and apple smoothie that was good, but had precisely one strawberry in it. i found that strange. when i went back for lunch and couldn't decide on quantity, i was called an emasculating name by a very pretty girl and told to take more. i told her i was fully confident in my masculinity and did not succumb to her taunting, and i'm glad because it actually would have been too much for me :P

the afternoon was absolutely wonderful. broken toy were excellent and gandalf finished the day with an amazing set, whoever was in between was good most of the time. there was a lot of mud to splash about in and everyone was having a jolly good time - though there were a few groups of people who weren't quite playing with the rest of us - and the only difficulty was trying to keep in the shade and not get too burned. i'm rather proud of myself for managing to limit the damage so well, big props to my mum for giving me a fantastically silly cowboy (cowgirl?) hat which helped a lot :D

i ran into one of my niece's new husband's sisters on the dancefloor, confirming my original suspicions of her being a bit of a hippie too ;)

my new friends (met through springer) were so much fun to party with and only to happy to share goodies, after the festival was officially over we all spent some time at the dam before heading back to the tents. the wind came up while everyone was striking camp and died down just as soon as the site was clear. of course :P

i stayed with them until i felt ready to drive safely back to cape town, and then a little longer because they'd arranged dinner, and the hours together were spent most joyfully.

after a beautiful, spiritual day and a half on the farm, i got in my car and drove back super-cautiously because cute cars and farm roads don't mix. days have passed, and i'm still feeling wonderful - may the new year bring us all light and love and continue in the vein in which it began!

ending 2013 - part ii

[... continued]

sunday:

after a long while talking to sq i put myself to bed, enjoying deepest slumber. and crazy dreams of high adventure and war. i don't know if "enjoying" is the right word for the latter.

i woke up to a discussion with my mom that saw me entering rant mode; she questioned something in a way that irritated me and after getting defensive i looked it up and found that she was right. so that was an entirely unnecessary negative start to the day - fortunately it didn't continue in similar vein.

yang and i had some gift shopping we needed to do, so i picked him up from town and we headed to what used to be the sunday flea market. it's now the saddest little collection of uninteresting junk, we walked through utterly disappointed. fortunately, yang made a call and we learned about the gardens flea market so we headed there. still not amazing, but certainly closer to what we were looking for. i did see a few things i liked, and i found some cool t-shirts for myself, but i'm going to check out greenmarket square before making any final decisions.

we returned to godmother's best friend's house to relax by the pool with yin and yang and our cousins from london, and soon i received a call from airplane so i drove over to his place to spend a couple of hours with him and his girlfriend and a couple of ciders. it was really cool chilling with them, enjoying the view and the summer evening breeze on their balcony :)

i returned home wondering at how comfortable i am driving in cape town. i made a quick stop at home to get ready, then protoplasm rocked up to pick me up just as my mother returned home. we chatted for a short while, my mother telling us about some wedding drama*, and then went to town for visit.

* the groom was causing shit with the wedding because he wanted to put up a divider on the dance floor in order to pander to my niece's biological father's wishes. her biological father has never been there for her nor added much value and most of us don't like him; we were all horrified and angered by his interference.

---monday:

protoplasm and i went to fiction. fiction... is fiction! little has changed, though the music on sunday night only got really good towards the end. we spent most of the night drinking and enjoying the company of strangers, we had lots of laughs and a jolly good time. a notable moment was buying a round of rum; six rum shots and a beer for R120, which was a pleasure, but not as much of a pleasure as describing the importance of pirates in hamlet and having one of the girls joining me in the punchline: "everything... is better with pirates!"

after a good last dance protoplasm and i walked to the old shell select - it's tradition - where i picked up simba salt and vinegar to complete the nostalgia trip before returning home. i then chatted with sq for a couple of hours of sunrise and finally went to bed.

i dreamed crazy dreams until about 1pm and was woken up to go for a massage my mother had booked for me. usually i pass out at some point, but this time i was totally engaged in conversation the whole time. it intrigues me that over the years we've developed a rapport in spite of the fact that i only see the guy every few years.

afterwards, my mother and i did some quick shopping for the festival and i went to cape quarter to meet with sagirl. we ended up at cafe manhattan for a few drinks, the weather was perfect and after montreal's meeting being overtaken by shared nostalgia and introductions to her friend it was nice to discuss more current affairs! amusingly, we're sharing strikingly similar dating stories, though she's not able to physically meet the guy...

sq and i chatted one last time prior to new year's and then i took my mother out to postacino for dinner. my mother has a great relationship with the owner and it's always nice to arrive at the restaurant and be greeted so warmly :)
it's the first time i've eaten there as a vegan, and they don't have too many menu options available but were only too happy to do any of their pizzas without cheese. their "postacino" pizza without cheese was ridiculously delicious! so much so that in spite of my certainty that i'd need to box half of it there were barely any crumbs left.

i watched ronda rousey vs miesha tate, which is one of the most intense fights i've ever seen! not only in the attitudes of the combatants, but it actually freaked me out every time tate tried to take rousey down. like, holy shit!

i spent some time blogging and fighting mosquitoes before going to bed.

---tuesday:

i didn't get nearly enough sleep. my mother was the one who overslept, though. on the morning of the wedding which made for an interesting morning.

the strangest thing? the dreams that i woke up from, long dreams, were boring. i've never experienced that sensation in a dream before.

ending 2013 - part i

it's now 2014: happy new year! i'm a bit behind on posting, and for an exceptionally good reason - this new year's saw me off the grid, it was insane and magical and a description of it, however vaguely rendered, is deserving of its own post. so as i sit here on this beautiful afternoon, a little too tired and sunburned sore (don't worry, i managed to be responsible and it's minor... and in odd places...) to be out enjoying the sun i'm going to catch up on the run-up to new year's. so without further ado, i present the tail end of 2013!

---after the travelling covered by my previous post, my internal rhythms were totally buggered and so i experienced no jet lag whatsoever! in fact, it startles me that i've been running so well on so little sleep - i've been feeling better than ever over the past week and i've managed not to enter any sort of sleep cycle. my body operates better when it doesn't know what's happening, it appears :)

the only contact i've had with french since i've landed has been demonstrating to french speakers here that i'm not ready to communicate. i desperately need to rectify this.

---friday:

dis-chem is an awesome store with extremely helpful and knowledgeable employees. within no time we had vegan protein powder, creatine and vitamins b12 and d, and all for less than protein powder costs back in canada :)

visiting my aunt:

1. the local single kiss on the cheek versus the montreal double? leads to awkwardness.

2. uncle puberty and biggles were on a roll, things got ridiculously funny and that was very welcoming :)

we returned home, i hurriedly dressed nicely for dinner and we were off.

dinner:

1. there were a lot of people, half of whom i hadn't met before and had trouble keeping track of. that's been a theme, actually, over the past week. what's terrible is that i've had trouble recalling people i met years ago when they remember me. awkward. and then trouble keeping track of people's names when i've spent hours on end with them. super awkward.

2. nobody told anyone that i'm vegan. whoops! good thing there was another vegan!

3. it was great seeing the people i care about! not on that list is my ex-brother-in-law. i'm very glad he didn't make more of an effort to talk to me. his sisters are nice enough, though, and i was pleased when my opinions on israel (which they asked for) were accepted without offense.

4. i almost didn't recognize my uncle, he's been struggling with cancer for years but it's the first time the effects have been so visible.

even though i was really tired, when i got home i checked for messages from sq and she'd sent me a way to find her online presence. this accidentally (using google to search instead of going directly to the page she's set up for work) led me to yelp reviews, and i figured that if she'd checked me out on facebook then i could do the same using yelp. lesson learned: yelp is a dangerous source for online stalking and should be avoided. the negative reviews are stacked towards the top and they can paint a pretty ugly picture - you have to be patient (fortunately, i was in spite of my exhaustion) if you want a balanced view. sq explained that yelp uses that as leverage to get small businesses to pay for better control. i think that's disgusting both because it's essentially blackmail and because that skews the reviews and is a corruption precisely of what yelp is supposed to be offering that nobody else does.

---saturday:

i slept amazingly well - surprising, right?? - and got up early to shave and go to the synagogue in honour of the wedding. as it's been years (probably about three or three and a half) since i last shaved with a razor, i posted a photo to facebook that my mum took. i was disappointed to see later that that photo received more likes than anything else i've posted in seven years on facebook! because it shows that most people do not share my taste in how i should look. i mean, i knew that already, but i didn't have actual evidence in hand :(

shaving wasn't a problem at all, but the days after i remembered one of the main reasons i don't like doing it. in-grown hairs and general skin irritation. nothing visible, but very annoying.
*sigh*
i'd laser my beard if i didn't enjoy having the potential to grow a solid beard. just in case, you know ;)

the synagogue experience was really weird. i was surprised at how many old faces and names i remember (in contrast to the rest of my week's experiences cited earlier), specifically of the choir members. it occurred to me that i sang in the choir almost exactly twenty years ago, and aside from one or two guys (like the choir master) who've since passed away half of the current members were already ancient then. also in the synagogue were a few guys there that i went to school with, too, but they're people i have even less connection to.

picking up my rental was a good excuse to leave early :P

---i'd reserved the cheapest class possible and got a little fiat for my troubles. it's a cool car, but there's something bizarre about constantly being complimented on how cute it is. it's a *car*, people, it's not even mine. i loved my opel kadett, and nobody ever said anything nice about that one :(
when i gave the agent a dirty look after discovering that the car had gp plates (gauteng province, notoriously shit drivers) he told me that everyone will think i'm from out of town and chill.

buddy, you've never driven in cape town, have you?? the hate you get when you drive with gp plates is palpable!

no matter, it's a stick shift and it's taught me something about my driving. i haven't enjoyed driving in many years, and i now understand why: firstly, because overseas everyone drives automatic and i've never liked not being in full control of the car. i like to DRIVE, man, i like to really drive. secondly, there are few places as enjoyable to drive as cape town simply because there's no grid and everything's on or around the mountains, so it's *interesting* to drive. when i drive over to camps bay side i feel like i'm on a rally course, and i drive accordingly ^_^
thirdly, i drove a lot in cape town in the two years before i left - far more than anywhere else - and knowing the layout and the local behaviour so well lends a level of confidence i don't think i'll ever have outside.

---my mother and i met up with godmother and yang at canal walk. i can get lost in canal walk because it's so big, i don't like malls or shopping in general and i couldn't find anything i liked that wasn't marked with american prices. wtf?! it's been two years since i was last here, i'm perpetually shocked that the rand has devalued so much. everything's still cheap by tourist standards, but by south african standards it's unbearable :(

anyway, my mom and i were both stressed and out-shopped by the end of the day. she doesn't like shopping either. that means we both left with nothing after all that, and we'd been in the busiest mall on the first day of post-christmas sales. ugh!

we headed off to jou ma se comedy club to celebrate shadowslight's birthday. in addition to it being a fun evening spent with nice people, they had a vegan meal on the menu that wasn't bad and the comedians were all really good. piet potgieter had us all in hysterics!

...

it's strange to find a breeze at 19 degrees chilly when i've gotten used to -15. it's all psychological, i'm telling you!

[continued...]

fighting, the cold and christmas spirit

i'm absolutely broken! i definitely need a day (or two) off training. i was feeling a bit weak on the weekend, but even if i hadn't been yesterday's experience would've taken it out of me. so utterly worth it though ^_^

---leftovers from thursday:

hah! my last post forgot lesson 5: the jiu-jitsu advantage goes to the man who farts when he's nervous. it's hard enough breathing when you're grappling and pummeling and being choked, to do all of that while actively trying not to because your opponent just let one rip before catching you between his legs? "sorry" just doesn't cut it, bro.

---friday:

on my way to meet wire i went to draw cash, and lurking in front of the atm was loud group of gangsta-wannabes. in front of them was a slow old woman taking forever. one of the guys stepped up when she eventually finished, and then suddenly there was nobody in front of the machine and the guy behind me told me it was my turn. i stepped up and was puzzled because it looked like whoever was using it had abandoned it without taking their card... i asked around, and it turned out that the idiot has simply turned around and rejoined his buddies before finishing what he was doing.

nice.

anyway, i headed down to de l'eglise. what a nice area! apparently pretty cheap, too. i met up with wire who took me to a sweet little coffee shop, we talked for a while and he explained the details of his situation - i don't envy construction workers in this town. when we separated i felt pretty good; my christmas gift was to (metaphorically) teach him to fish, not feed him. hopefully he'll be back on his feet soon.

it was -12 degrees and pleasant to walk in the sun. the metro wasn't too warm, either! i rested up with a little french practice and then went to the gym for sparring. i only had one opportunity to spar, and it went alright; the rest of the sparring was verbal, and i was sorely on the losing end. our boxing instructor's chirps were so good that at one point one of the girls literally did a spit-take while she was drinking water, and i had absolutely nothing to respond with :(

after class i taught two of the girls how to do a muay thai roundhouse. they're both very sweet - it's the girl who "stalked" me once upon a time and the iron-haired woman - and i find it interesting that they were only too happy to stay late on a friday night to work with me, but once they'd basically gotten it i headed off for gaming night. they're just not my type :P

the storm in israel was raging, as were israelis unhappy about their infrastructure and services, and i was amused because while there it was four degrees celsius, here it was the same in fahrenheit. it's funny, but every year i've been there i've complained about the lack of winter infrastructure and this is the first year that my voice isn't there and everyone's angry.

i read my new poem to vfmp and his boyfriend, it got constructive criticism from vfmp and his boyfriend praised it even before realizing it was mine :D

vfmp's experimental vegan spanakopita was excellent, and our game of thunderstone was going well but we began it too late and so i had to drop my hand in order to catch the bus :(
at least my timing for public transport was great. the depths of winter have come early!

---saturday:

waking up to a dream of being in the air force and needing to pee but the unisex latrines were rows of undivided long-drops were all in various states of "ewww" and there was nowhere to stand. the captain in charge of them refused to do anything about it and in real life i'm grateful for it :P
the weirdest bit about the latrines was the sense of deja-vu, i'm sure i've dreamed about them before.

i slept really late, at some point getting up to close the outer window which i hadn't realized was still open. that was a complicated procedure and ended with me shouting a triumphant "fuck YOU!" at it when i finally slammed it down.

yang has this annoying habit of using facebook messaging for messages that a reasonable person would send by sms. so i assumed he'd installed the facebook messenger app as his primary means of communication, which a) inspired me to install it myself and b) led me to use it to ask him if he had a spare ski jacket for me. he responded in the affirmative, with a warning that i should've used sms for something so serious.

huh.

it was a slow day, and really began when i tried out my post-root canal mouth on a salad. the tooth in question finally seems okay, but the tooth above it seems to have a bad filling... sod it. i'll just keep eating on the right side until i can find a good dentist. instead of all the crazy games i have installed, i burned some time playing the fourth installment of on the rain-slick precipice of darkness, then dragged myself to the french meetup.

it was still a little awkward and uncomfortable, but not nearly as bad as the first time! one woman spoke like she was in a speed competition, and by the end i could understand bits of what she was saying! to make things complicated there were two asians who spoke to me with accents so tough that it took at least three tries each sentence...

from there i went to godmother's to pick up yang's unused ski jacket. awesome ski jacket! i stayed for tea and her incredible pea soup, then went to newk'd's birthday party. picking up beers and coke at the dep was complicated, carrying them along with the jacket and my rather thick volume of bone comics was not only heavy and awkward enough to hurt my arms but after the short bus ride i had a lot of walking to do along desolate roads and that was kinda demoralizing. getting there successfully and without frostbite and cracking open the beers was such a relief!

it's pretty rare that disparate groups of friends get along very well, but the apartment was crowded with people who were all interesting and fun. it would have been a great party even if nobody had pulled out cards against humanity; between the cards and the beers i kept getting the giggles, and at one point it was so bad that i couldn't even read out loud :)

newk'd offered me a blue candy pacifier; apparently there were only five and it was only later that i'd understand how "special" the offer was...

---sunday:

i walked to the metro with a loud (possibly drunk / high) girl from b.c. who was enjoying the blizzard as much as i was - what fun! unfortunately for her, her last metro had just passed when we arrived and so she went to find a bus while i took my last one home. i had to be up early to go snowboarding...

... i got home, ate a little, and after that and a couple of hours and brushing my teeth twice my mouth was *still* blue all over. aaahhhhhhh... i see what he did there :P

...

the sleep i enjoyed can only be described as "lovely". i got up at 7.30 to start getting ready but icarus sent me a message to say he was unable to free his car from the snow. when i woke up again later it was still snowing like crazy! i decided that mother nature has brought the deep winter forward just for me so that i can make up for three weeks at the beach :)
so i hurriedly packed (this time without blowing a fuse), which involved cleaning out the thermos i'd brilliantly left in my bag the weekend before (ugh!) and figuring out how to adjust for the difference in the borrowed ski jacket's pocket configuration.

i was out the door before realizing that i'd left my ski mask behind - *that* would have been a disaster!

over two hours on the bus, most of which were spent listening to the girl in front of me's conversation*, staring out the window**, sleeping, continuing with paul park - celestis, and playing with online dating and facebook. those last two taught me a couple of things:

1) this amazing video about a homeless dog being rescued makes me very happy indeed with the donation that supertongue asks everyone to make on her behalf for christmas. now that i've given and seen what it's about, i'm urging you to do the same! you can do that here. or, you know, donate to the red cross or whatever. it's all good :)

2) i can handle dating a girl with a missing eye (that's piratey!), but a girl with a prominent mole? heck, no. i've never understood how, in this day and age, people don't just get those damned things cut out.

* alright, so maybe it's impolite to listen to others' conversations but she was talking loudly and it was only after a while that i could be sure that she was using a hands-free and not invisible bluetooth. i was trying to get a handle on her french, she had a throaty voice and a heavy quebecois accent and after a while i decided that i find the combination very sexy indeed.

** i was staring out the window at all the mostly buried cars (whose owners care enough to put up a fight) and the mounds of snow where i was certain others were properly buried... and suddenly i registered that there were groups (plural!) of cross-country skiers treating the roads and pavements like rollerbladers in summer! wire tells me he saw a few in his area too. montreal, i love you ^_^

last night was all about the moguls - the runs were insane! totally electrifying, but fracking EXHAUSTING. everyone i spoke to agreed with me, and there were plenty of non-verbal agreements too. the funniest expression of that was my final descent; just before the last steep, mogul-covered hill we all sat in a long line, just catching our breaths and stretching for the tough seconds to come :)

i was very, very glad that my assessment of last week's rum / coffee / cacao mix was right, once i added actual sugar it was amazing :)

i couldn't get the following out of my head all evening: "riddle: what's sexier than a woman on a snowboard?"
i got chatting to some guy on the lift, and i asked him just before we got off. he didn't even hesitate, and we parted ways with nods and raised fists. the next time i got on the lift i was alone with a ridiculously cute girl on a snowboard, and started chatting with her. turns out she's from montreal and was going to take a taxi back to saint jerome and then a bus, which is a bit crazy, so i told her about my initiative and explained to her how to find the meetup group. an hour later as i sat in the locker room getting ready to leave, she walked in with some guy and i signed to her.

she looked at me funny, and i too-slowly realized that she couldn't recognize me without my ski mask so i was just being super weird. i clarified by asking her if she didn't want to write down the details, and she came over and took one of my cards.
"that's beautiful!"
"thanks! it's one of my own."
"are you a photographer?"
"nope."
i asked if she and the guy she'd walked in with were together, to which she answered in the affirmative. disappointed, i gave two thumbs up and invited them both to join me next time.

i felt like i walked back to the village in slow motion, though i had time for fries and to figure out how to pour water from the iced tea tap at mcdonald's. i left with a minute to spare and fast-waddled / jogged with my board on my back and ice beneath my feet, only the bus was about twenty minutes late so that was entirely unnecessary. it was a long, cold twenty minutes followed by a long, sleepy bus ride.

regardless, i was very sore and tired and very happy.

i had to finish the giant bag of sour skittles because the bag broke and i couldn't put them back in my pocket. first world problems.

i got home, overcompensated for dehydration, slowly got ready for bed and then treated myself to tiger balm; the base of my spine, my upper back, my elbow and my knee were all on fire as i finally put myself to bed.

---monday:

i woke up battling the infinite snooze, each time to a different dream. my apartment looks like a bomb hit it, i should probably see to that. i went out to drink coffee, work on my comics and shop, on the way passing a classic, almost life-sized snowman that looked like it was plucked out of calvin and hobbes or something. it was so cold and there was so much glare that i couldn't get a decent photo :(

wind chill made today -29 degrees. all i know is that without my ski mask my face kept freezing. the funny looks were just a bonus :P

i made good progress on the comics (character r&d) and carrying the shopping home showed me that i need some rest before returning to the gym. the cashier at the supermarket was awful: she went on this rant about how so many people, co-workers and customers, are mean to her and she just has to smile and take it. i was really uncomfortable for its entirety and i wasn't given much opportunity to extract myself :(

...

in canada, you hurry home so that the groceries don't all freeze on the way.

...

there's nothing like stepping inside with groceries that need to be refrigerated to find that you really need to pee and your bootlaces are knotted.

...

i went to the eye institute for my final checkup and they tell me that my eyes are good, if a little dry. they were as surprised as i was to see that my right eye's doing well; i'm now 100% convinced that doing only the left eye was the right choice.

i found myself desperately hungry after the tests, so desperate in fact that thai express became an option. i was disappointed that the food was exactly as expected. i came home to rest, started posting this and then rushed downtown to join wire and a couple of others from the gym as we'd been invited to the montreal premiere an advanced screening of grudge match.
bottom line: it's SUPER meta, it's a fun film that does an excellent job of picking rocky and raging bull apart and stitching them together with humour ranging from slapstick to highbrow. i totally approve this message :)

[an argument over the phone that i can't actually talk about here. not right now, at least.]

wire sat with me as i made a harvey's veggie burger disappear, and then joined me for a beer while we talked about sports, politics and religion (including the history of al-aqsa, so i was surprised to read this when i got home). he suggested that my lack of appetite after training might be caused by eating badly-timed protein bars, so i'm going to skip those for a few days and see if that makes a difference.

---linkage!

opposing the american studies association's boycott

oklahoma opens the door to the satanists: the lawmakers sidelined the first amendment, and this is what they're going to get for their trouble. this or a hanuman temple. i'm backing the satanists 'cause i think it's more appropriate, and i ask you to back them too!

and speaking of crowd-funding, mars one is looking to fund their research on indiegogo. check it out here!

airport security: now that we know just how much of a waste of time it is, can't we just drop the charades already and go back to playing "spot the dodgy fucker" instead? it's less invasive and more honest.

superhero cartoon execs worry me. but: screw the networks. indie, indie, indie. producers need to get out of industrialized televised entertainment, 'cause slowly but surely we all are.

snowed

and the weekend in summary: after obsessing a little over the girl from friday (pmvn), i eventually realized (maybe i'm somehow wrong?) that she's not interested in a second date. which is a bummer, but it was nice to be excited for a change. i wisely rested on saturday, and on sunday had an absolutely killer day on the slopes! almost literally. it was fun :)

it's been a good start to the week, and i'm just beginning to *really* get excited about my south african holiday coming up - just about two more weeks!

---saturday:

it was a relaxed day spent indoors doing chores. i finally plugged in my leap controller, played around with it for a bit and then installed visual studio so that i can play with the sdk. the guy who was excited about me sent a mail asking if i had any examples of my work to share - i don't, but now i could tell him that i was working on something that i *might* be able to show him when it's done :P

yang picked me up in the evening and we went out to pj's for birthday beers. overall, the evening was fun! but some of it was annoying, because, well, yang can be a bit of a dick. at one point, though, i was trying to advise him on a stupid situation he's gotten himself into and it took so long to explain to him how ridiculous it is that i had a smile on my face when i finally drove the point home: that offended him, and then *i* felt like an asshole. the difference being that i apologized and was pleased afterwards that he actually seems to have gotten the message.

---sunday:

i got home and into bed much later than expected, and i was certainly not going to wake up four hours later even if it was for a perfect day snowboarding. i removed the duvet from the slip, which made for a far more comfortable night's sleep, and having been off the penicillin for a day my rash had cleared up considerably. i slept beautifully, took my time, dealt with some important emails (like apartment sale surprises and deciding on what dpi to produce the comics with)... then realized i was running out of time and hurriedly finished getting ready.

only i accidentally overloaded the microwave / kettle / toaster circuit using all three simultaneously (which i NEVER do), fortunately my lunch was edible but i had to boil the water and toast the bread in different corners of the apartment...

big mistake: my thermos was filled with a solid blend of coffee, cacao and rum. unfortunately, i forgot to add unfermented sugar as well... the word "grog" came to mind. it made me say AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR :)

[ooh! update as i type this, i just got a message from pmvn that suggests that i was wrong. we'll see.]

the bus ride just seems so much longer than before. it's now taking two hours instead of an hour and a half, but that half hour is crazy long! when i arrived, i met the argentinian accountant in the amusingly twee sweater who i'd spoken to before and having satisfied himself that i'm not crazy (good lord, how wrong could he be?!) and that i won't load my thermos with rum when i'm driving he agreed that we should rent a car together whenever we want to hit the snow.

the weather was PERFECT. it was a gorgeous day, and i arrived just towards the end of it. the slopes were half ice and half snow:

1) on the black diamond i kept riding that meant (literally) breakneck speeds and a few rather exciting (scary) near-death experiences after clipping. that happened a couple of times before i decided that my poor body had had enough and that i shouldn't simply hit it with the flat of my board. the last rides (only slightly more controlled, no accidents) were still a heck of a rush.

2) on the red i rode just more than half the time, i focused on practicing switching. until the last couple of runs that meant a lot of crashes, and overall it meant very sore thighs (from trying every few seconds). by the end, though, i was totally confident on both sides; even though i know i've got a long way to go until i have the power to really jump and switch (as opposed to small hops or sliding), i've definitely made progress ^_^

a testament to my productivity: i'm properly battered and bruised all over. "if you are not fall, you are not make snowboard" never felt truer!

if an adrenaline habit is wrong i don't wanna be right.

i arrived at the bus fifteen minutes early so i ran in to mcdonald's for fries. fries! how long should it take to get fries? i don't know what the hell the girl was doing, but it was everything but. it must've taken more than five minutes to get my order, leaving me with less than five minutes to eat them before heading out. i arrived back at the stop with half a bag left, racing against mother nature to eat them before -10 degrees turned them from "pleasantly warm" to "ugh".

the ride back was long, but comfortable. i was dehydrated on arrival, though, but fortunately that wasn't a difficult problem to solve.

...

the new bag is AWESOME! unfortunately, until i got used to it i kept banging the board into things which kinda sucked. but by the end of the day, it had made life so much easier! definitely the perfect gift ^_^

...

on getting home:

1) dentist fail: i still can't eat on left side of my mouth. the more i think of my experiences of the last few weeks the angrier i get with him and his incompetence. i definitely won't be going back.

2) after a hot bath that actually hurt, i had to open a window and lie down next to it. in israel it gets so hot that you lie down next to the air conditioner even though you know it's not healthy. just for a few minutes, before you get really cold, and hopefully the perfect counter-sensation doesn't put you to sleep before then.
in canada, the building heating's so hot that you do exactly the same thing but in the opposite direction instead.

3) i was too sore and too tired for anything. anything! it was all i could do to brush my teeth and get back to bed.

---monday:

i woke up after just more than ten hours' sleep, incredibly good sleep that i've desperately needed for a while! i woke up to the perfect snowstorm, too, and the combination left a silly grin on my face for hours :)

quote of the day: "i'm a woman and i know that when the power goes out i should check the fusebox," chided the caretaker's wife. yes, thank you, if i could only find the damned fusebox i would've known to do that too :/

french conversations: we both feel that an hour is too short, so we're going to lengthen our meetings. funny, later on vfmp would call me to suggest the same thing about our wednesday morning workouts.

cafe depot was out of soya again, and i expressed my bitter disappointment. the nice girl behind the counter offered an alternative, an espresso with non-dairy chocolate and non-dairy whipped cream. "that sounds good! but does the whipped cream have egg in it?"
three of us poured over the ingredients, and i agreed to the swap. the result was delicious. delicious! too delicious, i finished it in a few short minutes and had nothing to nurse for the rest of the hour #firstworldproblems

i went home, thought about resting, realized i didn't have time if i wanted to buy flowers for godmother. so i headed down and made it just in time; the woman working there took forever, i just kind of glazed over and stared as she performed the arrangement ritual. it came out great...

dinner was really nice, though there were a couple of moments when uncle hate antagonized me or vice versa. mostly it was good, though.

---right, i've now posted all of this, my eye's are feeling fuzzy and i'm ready to crash. my computer battery's irritating me, but i've just bought marilyn manson - lest we forget and between the music and everything i've written here i'm feeling like life's quite alright.

[edit: oh! and i updated she was standing on the sidewalk under a spotlight in the disconnected darkness , i've been working on memorizing it and the modifications were due.]

news blast part i

it's been a good week, and so busy that i'm now trying to post this as quickly as possible before heading off to the gym and then entertaining. this is a particularly difficult task because i've just gotten up from a long and desperately needed nap and i'm still groggy. [failed, had to wait until after training, dinner and board game]

---tuesday:

i tried the mustache thing for movember before showering and going to bed, and decided that i simply cannot leave the house looking like a used car salesman. i decided that i'll have to find another way of spreading awareness. i was thinking of just stopping random strangers and asking "excuse me, sir, when last did you have a professional insert a finger up your bum?" but considering the fact that i'm spending most of the rest of the month either in the village or in a fighting gym it doesn't seem like the wisest of plans.

since tuesday my toilet's been busted, and i have to manually control the tank refill every time i flush if i don't want my bathroom to flood. this is properly annoying and the caretaker is dragging his feet as usual :@

...

real winter has begun! we're expecting another spike on the weekend, but other than that we've been exclusively sub-zero and it's awesome :)

note to self: the problem with good gloves is that if your hands are cold before you put them on they'll stay cold even in your pockets.

...

class: wow, i have zero patience for people who don't make an effort. it's so obvious that the weakest link isn't making any effort outside of the class and she's doing a fantastic job of wasting our time.

on a completely different note, i'm finding myself (almost) addicted to the tiger balm i'm using for my neck. rubbing it on my nose to shield me from the stench of smelly girl takes me back to the days of deeply inhaling it on ecstasy, even though in that context it was much more pleasurable.

...

the homeless one-armed man at guy-concordia set his begging cup on the slope of the escalator, removed his prosthetic to use as a barrier and was playing skeeball with a large collection of pennies. this would have been funnier if he didn't scream curses every time he missed because the constant stream of people on either side kept freaking out.

on the way out of the station some activist noticed me looking at his posters (it wasn't clear what he was on about) and when i continued walking he shouted "okay, just stick with the opinions you've been fed by the media". when i called him out for being pretentious and condescending without knowing anything about my opinions he told me "you don't have to take it the wrong way".

"is there a right way?!"

...

my new fillings were all wrong, so i had a painful lunch while waiting for the dentist to return and then climbed back into the chair feeling as if monday night's visit hadn't ended. he did a lot of filing but now that two days have passed i think i'm going to have to go back again. :(

...

i sat at cafe depot drinking coffee and reading bone (it's a great way to get comfortable reading!) and was joined a while later by the guy from saturday. it's official: trading private english lessons for private french lessons is a jolly good deal!

there was a man sitting next to us who i overheard saying that he'd come for the poetry last week. i unfortunately didn't get an opportunity for a random discussion with him...

... speaking of which, after the slam finals on the weekend i've been inspired to write again, and i've spent a fair amount of time working on a couple of the ideas i've had since. hopefully i'll be ready to share soon [vfmp just reviewed one and it made him laugh, it can't be all bad].

...

i had dinner with godmother. the evening was pleasant but yang was behaving really badly and i felt progressively less comfortable. there's something very wrong with that kid, he makes a great case for setting boundaries for one's children.

...

over the course of the day i learned a very important lesson about not eating while wearing my new sweater: i'm not materialistic at all, but i've become really attached to it and it's so bright and loud it needs to be kept totally clean. when i got home i rushed to scrub the front with dishwashing liquid (my answer to everything) and chuck it in the washing machine so that it'd be done before they locked the laundry room. success! it came out all shiny :)

...

facebook: a flood of meh to counter the intriguingly insightful and interesting week before, but i'm still spending a stupid amount of time reading my feed. i really need to quit that.

[continued...]

unemployment stasis - part i

it's amazing how having all the time in the world makes not one iota of a difference in the quantity of things i manage to accomplish. well... maybe that's not exactly fair, but i'm resting a lot more than i feel i should be.

---saturday:

i headed out to the starbucks to do some work on the comics, then met up with horseman for some tekken. a producer friend of his met us at the metro and we headed down to saint laurent together. the guy from the gym i was going to watch the fights with (wire) was late so in the meanwhile the three of us found a quiet street to freestyle in. this producer guy liked what he heard but i have reservations regarding his own prowess... i mean, if i'm going to collaborate with someone i would prefer that person to be into really making things happen and i don't have much concrete evidence of that to go on. either way, nice guy and fun to chat with.

the ufc fights were bloody (literally) amazing. really crazy stuff! we were joined by vfmp and his boyfriend - after a stray comment wire had made at the gym i was a little concerned that he was homophobic, but not only was he cool with the guys but he found all of vfmp's boyfriends outrageous fight commentary as funny as we did (let's just say he's not a fan of cauliflower ears). so i chilled.

---sunday:

i got home late knowing that i needed to eat, but instead of pulling out something with nutritional content i grabbed a collection of junk food and watched a full episode of the ultimate fighter. in spite of planning to meet wire early at the gym for a sparring session. after that it was impossible to wake up for 9.30, but i did manage to get there at 10 - wire didn't pitch, so i got in a power hour with the punching bags and chatted with my kickboxing instructor who agreed that i need to focus more on sparring than on classes. i got home to watch more of the ultimate fighter and take a proper nap.

horseman came over again, we played crazy tekken that was actually overload for me - things just got serious :P
we then spent over two hours freestyling in the kitchen; horseman figures i'm already good and i feel like i need a lot of work if i'm going to say things that aren't nonsense. after he left i had fifteen minutes to do a rushed shopping run and then watched most of the rest of the ultimate fighter.

---monday:

i finally completed season 14 of the ultimate fighter: that shit is addictive, and the season finale (both parts) had incredibly exciting fights!

i mixed pre-training coffee with comics, then went to work out. they were working on the octagon so only a couple of the punching bags were available, but i took the opportunity to make some sparring appointments :)

after training i headed off to godmother's for dinner. it was a pleasant evening, with yang being particularly silly. some of his behaviour was annoying and some amusing, by the end of the evening some had even rubbed off on me...

---tuesday:

i got up early to meet up with someone at tristar to practice for the jiu-jitsu exam. we spent about an hour on the mats and i made a lot of progress! i finally felt ready, in particular having nailed an annoying part of the omoplata technique. i then worked on the bags for a bit, and shared an awkward moment with gsp as we tried to occupy the same space at the same time...

... i have to say that tristar might actually make a morning person out of me, what a great way to wake up!

i didn't have a lot of time before my dental appointment but i hurried through to the jean-talon market to pick up clif builder bars anyway. they don't do the big boxes anymore, and i actually had to ask for help to find them at all. why is it that it's harder to find clif products in canada than in the states when they're made here?!

the dentist experience was a pleasure, the examination showed that my teeth are okay except for my grinding them and that fixes to my fillings are optional but advisable. fortunately the cleaning didn't have any ensuing eating restrictions, i didn't realize just how hungry i was until i polished off a giant meal at my favourite chinese place.

i had a pre-exam rest and arrived at the gym feeling totally confident. i breezed through everything until hitting the omoplata... and failed it precisely on the point i'd been so excited about that morning. failing the exam didn't bother me nearly as much as failing it because of that. that upset me.

what followed was kind of a private lesson for a new guy in which i did almost as much teaching as the instructor. after that i sparred with one of the professional kickboxers who taught me a lot of lessons, one harsh tag at a time. at one point i thought he'd hit me hard enough to knock me out but he explained that it's just the surprise factor. the most important lesson, the one that's going to take me longer than i'd like to learn, is how critical it is not to look at your opponent's face or limbs in a fight. focus on the chest. focus on the chest. the following sparring session i had with the guy who'd demoralized me a while ago went pretty well, and reinforced that last point.

we had to stop because something was being filmed live and it's really difficult to train in silence...

...

i saw a shooting star on the way home. it might very well be the first one i've ever seen.

...

i had a great smoothie and then a great dinner, i played around with caloriecount and it really is good. apparently i'm doing well on my diet, minus excessive iron intake. this could be a very bad thing, i guess i'll need to test for it.

the reason i started watching american psycho was because i remembered enjoying it but didn't want to rate it on netflix without being sure. i don't know why i watched until the end, i'd give it a meh+.

halfway through wednesday i would realize that while watching the movie i *should* have been packing ice onto my nose and my arms. i was totally battered and bruised.

---wednesday:

i woke up repeatedly to get the laundry done, and was caught just before the last alarm by a friend from the gym who's got a contact in one of the big aerospace companies to tell me that they'd like to see my resume. nice! after sorting that out, i headed to the french school (a private residence in the heart of the village). beaudry metro has the craziest escalators as they're flat like in an airport only they're moving uphill. this makes the simple act of standing on it feel like exercise and provides a very interesting ambience. it was a chilly tuque and gloves afternoon and i'd arrived early, so i stopped for a quick cup of coffee first, on the way coming across an amazing piece of street art on wolfe relating somehow to amnesia that you're supposed to explore physically.

the school is run from this guy's apartment, and after a brief chat he convinced me that this is a good investment. it's kind of a cross between standard teaching and immersion.

i went to la panthère verte for lunch and was impressed by both the quality of the food and that of the overall experience. i couldn't not laugh: when i asked the girl at the counter how things work she told me, rather matter-of-fact, "first you're going to taste the falafel, and then you're going to order a falafel sandwich because it's the best falafel in the city". i was feeling pretty sceptical between her statement and that piece of falafel, but then that melted away and i did as she prescribed, adding a bowl of delicious leek and potato soup. i thoroughly enjoyed my meal, was pleased to have all the recycling / compost stuff explained to me when i was done and i returned to the metro fascinated by how relaxed mont royal was.

i was so tired i slept on the metro, almost missing my stop. i got home to find that the cleaning lady had locked me out and she obviously couldn't hear me, which made me super grateful for the comfortable couch in our building's lobby. after a short rest i headed to the starbucks for a bit. by the time i returned she'd left, so i had a pre-training nap and then went to my first muay-thai class in ages.

omg - muay thai with tristar's olivier is like a punishment for all the times i've ever slacked off during training since i did judo as a kid.

snowboarders: you know that first run of the season, when your whole body's hurting and there's no way you can go out for drinks afterwards but you do anyway? it's like that...

i misunderstood one of the exercises and took a lot of damage on my forearms, and i was actually gassed out by the tail end of the class which was embarrassing. i could barely raise my arms, let alone my knees :$

[continued...]