chicken

 yesterday was intense.

i made it just in time for the yoga class, which was tough but fluid. the instructor asked me for my favorite bird, catching me off guard, and after taking some time to give it some thought i responded with "chicken". hilarity ensued. towards the end, he demonstrated a movement (balancing on hands with knees tucked into the backs of arms) and i just couldn't figure it out; at one point i was convinced that i just had the wrong body shape. when he eventually found a way to explain it to me and i got it right, i was surprised by how little strain it was on my spine and was treated to applause by my coworkers :P

the morning could be best described as a series of surprise events - it took me more than half an hour before i was able to sneak off for a quick shower between meetings.

during the meeting before my big presentation, i kept trying and failing to build an image that was being delivered to me, and eventually tried restarting docker, only to see an update pending. it looks like docker may have finally fixed whatever they broke a couple of versions ago.

from there i rushed into my presentation. i joked about it being prophetic that i'd inserted a quote slide at the beginning that said "everything is broken", because between microsoft's rug-pull with vscode extensions and our mitigations for docker's bugs made an absolute mess of everything. in spite of that, though, we got through an hour and ten minutes and there seemed to be a lot of interest, surprise and appreciation 🤷

lipgirl's lunch idea worked out really well. "i helped" (i just squeezed lemon juice), but she and another coworker put together a huge plate of really good salad; it wasn't just a good idea for us, but it looks like we might have some more people joining in on this.

soon after lunch, i headed to the warehouse to help our tech support staff on their first installation. while there, i received a call from someone i once served with who's interviewing with us, and by the time we were done i think he was convinced that joining us is a pretty good idea. i also ended up on a diatribe with my coworkers, describing some of my tokyo takeaways.

it was around 4pm when we collectively realized that we had three deployments scheduled for the next morning and they had no idea how to do them. i should mention that on a day full of pressure, our new star devops was nowhere to be found - he was preoccupied with the farewell from his previous employer. after scrambling to make space on the desks, and beginning to get the installations going (the tech support kid hadn't yet learned not to skip steps, so we had a restart at one point), we then began the process of preparing the deployments and preparing his machine to perform them.

it - took - six - hours.

there was lots of complaining, lots of joking around, and a ridiculous incident where we detected a leak in the warehouse that almost took out some of our expensive and sensitive equipment. i could have just done everything myself and bailed early, but i'm no longer the only person who can do this stuff, we learned a lot, and the celebratory vibe before we shut everything down was very real.

i came home super late, did a mind-dump with my wife and mom, and then entered into a very difficult, tiring, but ultimately rewarding fight/discussion with gd.

today:

i eventually fell into bed around 2am, with a sore back and a mind all over the place. and then something happened shortly after i fell asleep that woke me up, and i don't know if i managed to get back to sleep after that.

it's been a relaxed morning so far, i'm about to go pick up a package on the way to work and hopefully it'll be a good day.

backwards

yesterday:

i got the vscode copilot to help me with i18n. it saved me a huge amount of effort, but got stuck on the translation json formatting...

we had a good parental guidance session.

on the way to the office i picked up the asterix omnibus and another of the french originals ^_^

we interviewed a devops who's currently stuck in thailand, and ended with such a great feeling that it put yesterday's interview in stark contrast and i've submitted my concerns to the boss.

lipgirl planned to do a build-your-own-salad thing, but the supplier said the food would only arrive between 3 and 6pm. a couple of us left for sumsum, everyone else ordered lunch, and by the time we returned the salad stuff had arrived :P

my boss tried and failed to help us set up workshop equipment, and later on, just as my team and i had decided to call it a day, one of our aussie madmen arrived and dragged us into a couple of hours of installations with beers. and boogie sabbath, which (aside from iron man) is becoming a thing for me.

apparently mr smear was a lot more compliant about homework yesterday than the day before.

i finally prepared my presentation after putting mr smear to bed.

i went to bed shortly after an unpleasant argument with a coworker about meeting scheduling...

today so far:

i didn't sleep very well, and i'm very nervous about my neck, especially as i want to join the yoga class this morning. i woke up to a quote for the dell repair and a failed attempt to do something with my health insurance that's led me to realize that i need to have a serious talk with my broker.

while brushing my teeth this morning i realized that the israeli mantra/prayer for resilience is "it'll be okay", and that my mother uses it just fine in south africa but has trouble applying it here.

her aliyah officer (or whatever) sent her an email denying that she'd demanded the documentation she'd demanded.

gotta go.

namaste

i went to bed late, but i got up way earlier than i wanted to. the day started off well, i spent the pre-school morning coaching mr smear through some last minute exam prep - he did really well! - and then rushed through an online grocery shopping so i could leave on time to get to our yoga class.

no buses for a while, i ended up arriving *just* in time.

it was a good class, not easy, with some highly amusing moments. i didn't hurt myself.

we got a good company breakfast and i showered before settling in to work; getting in and out of the shower wasn't amazing, but the shower itself is worth it!

it was a pretty successful day. but the most successful part wasn't me: i asked mr smear how his day went and i could hear how pleased he was with himself, because he's pretty confident he aced the test. i am too, but i'm more excited about him not only getting a handle on the math, but feeling good about it too ^_^

i left early to meet gd and mr smear at the pain clinic for her nerve block, but we arrived there to discover that we hadn't sorted out authorization and it costs thousands of shekels, so we rebooked, did some shopping and went home.

i got mr smear to work on cubase for a while, but to be fair a lot of the actual work was done by me. *we* put together a pretty cool beat, and i hope he learned as much as he claims he did :P

then he read a couple of pages of hebrew harry potter - well - we had an early dinner and a pleasant evening. i spent a couple of hours ironing out issues with the language project, where user registration and authentication is now good enough to move on to the interesting stuff.

it's late again. hopefully i'll sleep.

yom ha'aztmaut 2025: everything is on fire

the devastating eco-terrorism fires set yesterday seem to be relatively under control, so we can at least open the windows and go outside for yom ha'atzmaut.

this is a tough one.

a beautiful prayer has been written for it: a prayer for yom hazikaron and yom haatzmaut 5785-2025

saturday:

mostly resting, with mr smear finally feeling better. watching big, which has aged surprisingly well. an afternoon walk which turned sour, but managing to rescue it by the skin of my teeth (and a mix of forcefulness and letting some shit slide).

explaining to mr smear that there are four types of authority (power, knowledge, leadership, and dependency).

sunday:

a really good night's sleep

waking up to surprise renovations downstairs while trying to get stuff done, including lots of time on the phone learning that my debit card issuer can't cancel our debit cards

successfully getting our freelancer to deploy, then discovering that my son had informed his therapist and mother that he was suicidal. a long, serious but mostly positive talk with him and gd at schnitt's

homework help: after some fighting, establishing that he'd done the book report properly, making a lego pizza slice

spending the evening mindlessly doing minesweeper quests until way later than i should have

monday:

a very positive morning after a short but relatively good night's sleep. surprisingly good yoga start. surprise water outage, but at least an apology / acknowledgement from the apartment owner that he should have warned us beforehand

a reunion lunch with my previous teammates, no vegan options but a manager who took the feedback well

rushing to get the car and pick up gd and mr smear, surprise trucks blocking the pick up point after mr smear misunderstood that "meet us here" meant "meet us here now", parking too early, gd getting an answer about her toes (her toenail seems to be disconnected from the matrix, and might be infected)

fucking up the installation, a panicked hour or two with my lead on the line trying to help him (through his panic) to do stuff he doesn't want to do while simultaneously trying to get anydesk to work so i could rescue the machine i'd auto-deleted from our vpn

leaving the office around 9pm, getting on a bus with a suspicious package and getting off at the next stop because the driver didn't care. the next bus driver doing me a favor by dropping me off where he shouldn't have

getting myself cleaned up and then diving right back into work. making some progress but grinding until 3am before giving up

tuesday:

3.5 hours sleep, good quality sleep but waking up feeling broken

crazy day of non-stop support and phone ringing, exhaustion, napping before a sezchuan lunch, everything still broken but eventually somewhat successful (our test site, at least), the simpsons and pushing bedtime back a half hour (possibly a bad idea)

our whole family at the door putting shoes on to rush to the shelter before realizing that the siren was for yom hazikaron

an early-ish night

wednesday:

a proper good night's sleep

starting the day with a massive wake-up fight (see previous comment about possibly bad idea)

a clinic mission after dropping mr smear off at school

visiting the bank on the way to work: "you could have just sent me a message". getting the cards cancelled pretty quickly.

my son the asshole ("secretly" erasing the board every day, then threatening the kid who told him not to - the kid whose mother he insulted, and whose artwork he tore up, and who he hit with a rock - then calling gd in tears to say he was being bullied by the whole class, then kicking "the usual" bully, then telling the teacher she's an idiot that's being manipulated, then finally apologizing)

jesus fucking christ.

over the course of the day i managed to defuse the situation with my lead by agreeing to walk back a change he was unhappy about, and we're going to have to find a different way to approach it. and i expect that we'll know soon enough if that was what broke the deployments...

ordering lunch was a mess, wolt took the wrong payment method and the two agents i spoke to were completely useless. but the lunch itself was absolutely delicious (yellow curry), and i should only have eaten half of it.

the rest of the workday was smooth, cursor's "assistance" was a mixed bag (90% of the code was ai-generated, but it was also 90% wrong and needed a lot of iterating). i learned a lot about kubernetes, though :P

on the way home i needed to mask up because of the ash

a long "family meeting" that was very intense. parenting is hard.

a quiet start to yom haatzmaut playing minesweeper and slay the spire and thinking a lot about everything.

today so far:

mostly quiet, but now heading out with mr smear. we had a fight about heading out - as usual - but this time i warned him that we won't tolerate this shit any more. if he doesn't change this behavior, i'm going to start deleting his game accounts, like roblox and minecraft. i'm done.

chag sameach.

sweaty in sheep's clothing

örmagörd.

it's soooooo hot. and we only have one fan, it's in the bedroom. i'm standing here with the window and door open to the night air and i'm sweating bullets.

after a great weekend, i went into work today and found myself very comfortable indeed. it's a great environment, the conditions are excellent and my team members? very smart, and very chilled. and even if they weren't i would be making the best of it, but i hope my first impression lasts. the funny thing is that one of the reasons i'm so at home is because it's just like the army: a big company with more bureaucracy than employees. very dilbert, without a very NOT-pointy-haired boss. very i-can-handle-this-shit.

---friday:

i performed my duties while gd watched half of american: the bill hicks story. we sat down to eat, all excited about watching the amazing spiderman 2 on crackle, but it was just the trailer. it should have said TRAILER, then. bastards!

so we watched bad boys instead, learning the ads by heart as they each repeat three or four times every twenty minutes.

---saturday:

waking up was tough, and "ghetto shaving" without water wasn't actually as bad as i thought it'd be. the craigslist guy delayed my exit because he woke up too late to meet at our appointed time and i had shit to do. after making me wait for ages the day before, he should have been too embarrassed to screw that up :/

i made my appointment just on time, the consultation was brief and not particularly enlightening. my neck was too tanned to get started with the treatment, though, so i made an appointment for three weeks' time and i'm supposed to be exceedingly careful about staying out of the sun. i've had more exposure with less protection in the two days since than in a long time, which is kinda embarrassing...

i picked up a coffee bodum to replace gd's nail-you-in-the-hand one, met the craigslist dude for a smooth handover and slumped on the couch for more ffix. that damned grotto is mean! but after a few attempts (and, i'm ashamed to admit, a quick glance at a walkthrough) i got through to the boss and he's waiting for me for next time.

i left home late to meet vfmp and his boyfriend, and arrived with about three minutes to spare - talk about cutting it close. half an hour later we were in the suburbs (west island), enjoying a beautiful afternoon with badger and co in the swimming pool, stuffing ourselves on a great vegan barbeque and then losing myself in the jacuzzi. i've got to get us a hot tub. i felt like i'd returned to the womb, i don't remember when last i relaxed so perfectly! high on a hot tub, i was.

badger's dogs (boxers) are wonderful, one of her friends broke the ice by farting loudly as she joined us poolside (she's pregnant), and all around everyone was nice and interesting. the music was good too, it turns out that badger's into good trance :)

i was disappointed when gd called to say she couldn't make it, but not surprised. her timing was excellent, though, because the guys were just leaving so we all went together. gd and i had an evening of bad boys and massages. not quite as good as a jacuzzi, but certainly nothing to complain about.

---yesterday:

there was a scary freak-out at 1am caused by a leg cramp, followed by deep dreaming and stunningly restful sleep. newk'd and his girlfriend came over for haircuts and i taught them both the basics of tekken, and it was gratifying to see them both get it and to see her beat him in a close round :D

we left for yoga in the park, and our exit was plagued by not-a-comedy of errors. our spirits and tensions bobbed up and down until we got to the park, where we met up with horseman and gd's best friend and did some really hard yoga that had at least two of us feeling all bubbly and good afterwards!

i tried really hard to avoid the sun but even my oversized hat couldn't protect me; we made our way to see great friends of gd's who i hadn't met yet and our first stop was a new vegan place that had just closed for the afternoon. fortunately they have a car, so we drove over to aux vivres which is always full of win.

the couple is fascinating, he's a writer and she's a producer / director / artist, and he's also slowly becoming a well-respected self-taught physicist. we all talked for hours, my brain was really flexing and being stretched and it was so nice to feel like it was mutual!

after they left, gd made delicious noodles, we watched about half of men in black 3 and then quickly passed out.

---today:

no snooze for you! gd was having none of it. i crawled out of bed, did the dishes and made breakfast, then climbed into an argument of gd's because a "friend" of hers kept attacking her for having a different view of what's happening in the middle east. i'd post here what i wrote but i've already said that i'm done for now, though it's a relief that instead of fueling the fire what i wrote managed to get her to back off.

...

dressing like a grown-up sucks, but i'm very fond of gd's drawing for the day which is of me dressed up as a capital letter.

[revenge exit difficulty]

i left a little later than i'd planned, and was horrified to see 18 minutes till the next metro written on the display! fortunately they'd gotten it wrong and just before i gave up and rushed off to find a cab the next one entered the station. i could NOT be late for my first day.

inside the metro and out, i was sweaty in my sheep's clothing. in spite of that, i felt good and confident with the orientation. i would spend the rest of the day setting up my dev station and learning the ropes. one of those ropes was finding lunch, and after a couple of failed searches i ended up walking all the way to my old supermarket. we have no freezers, so i'll have to pick up a frozen meal every day and the walk takes a good chunk of my lunch hour...

it's a nice excuse to walk outside, but there was a lot of sun and i was unprotected :(
and for some reason my liver was hurting me. i suspect dehydration. at least once i got back i learned where the coffee and purified water are located.

i returned sweaty after my walk and then proceeded to nuke my lunch; when i opened it and the steam hit my face things got even worse! once i got back upstairs, i made a point of going around my team and inspecting them for dress code. tomorrow, i'm going in wearing shorts and a t-shirt :)

i walked out feeling like i'd have to be a complete asshole to be fired. i mean, i'm competent and professional, they're easy-going people and i only have to do my job. which looks interesting and challenging enough.

...

i stopped by walmart to finally pick up sunscreen, tried and failed to find a good sports bag and saw a sign that said $7 for badminton sets. gd wants to play, so i thought "how convenient!", picked up a set and went to pay. i was not pleasantly surprised when the bill came to $10 more than i was expecting, and after waiting for a manager for ages and then dragging him back to the source of the trouble we discovered that some asshole had thrown a completely different (much higher quality) badminton set in the wrong rack.

jolly good :/

...

i came home, went for a good run and sat down to a feast gd had prepared. neither of us had the energy to watch much, having to fold laundry and make the bed was a bit of a buzz-kill and i really shouldn't be drinking beers in the middle of the week. i had shit to do.

but at least i've written this, right?

a productive weekend

yesterday:

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

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

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

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

today:

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

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

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

psychoses and psychopathies

it's a beautiful sunday morning, which we've begun by watching cartoons. trigun, to be precise ^_^

---friday:

friday was a bit chilly.

in the late afternoon i headed to the starbucks across from gd's work to invest some time in my comics. it's a beautiful starbucks, but their power sockets are all impossible to plug in to. wtf? i had just enough juice to last me until a woman carted in her incessantly hacking little germ factory. she was apparently entirely oblivious to the fact that others were there, and after glaring hatefully at her for some time i packed up, held my breath and stalked past her and her poor kid to go wait at gd's work.

we went to p.m. for dinner; it was good, but not amazing. i don't think we were really in the right mood. we came home, and i put on elon gold - chosen and taken; gd enjoyed it, i enjoyed it for the second time. and then we were tired and went to bed. there's been a lot of that lately.

---yesterday:

i slept well, did another huge load of dishes* and got frustrated with my iphone because it keeps pressuring me to update apps and then freezes halfway.

* they really seem to pile up with us. it's pretty much my only responsibility, though, so it's all good.

i had to stop off at my place on my way to yoga. i was quite tired and chugged down a mug of coffee. the park was great although there was a bit of a wind, a friend of my instructor joined us and the class was challenging but manageable. we were sitting and talking afterwards about our permit situations - they're both lebanese, and none of us wants to return to the middle east and we all have the exact same reasons...

my backpack - the one that served me on my post-army round-the-world and for the past year has been re-purposed as a sports bag - had acquired a severe gym smell and had been banned from entering gd's apartment. i felt awkward about stuffing it into a communal washing machine, stood around for a minute to make sure it wasn't damaging anything, and pulled it out twenty minutes later smelling really nice. so that was my household lesson for the day.

---i spent the afternoon struggling with the laptop gd's brother gave her... not only is it a not-so-functional copy of windows xp, but it can't connect to any networks, it can't boot off usb, i cant install ubuntu using wubi and it can't read the original windows cd i inserted into the drive. to fix the second issue the only way to upgrade the bios is to install software that will download the appropriate files once they've been detected, so without internet access there's nothing i can do.

this is ridiculous.

---i started watching great crimes and trials, the first two episodes about scary psychotic women, then when gd came home we enjoyed a double feature of blue jasmine and we need to talk about kevin, both deeply disturbing movies.

it was not a good time for me to be saying something that i really shouldn't have; i don't know what came over me but i shared something that was utterly inappropriate and brought about the darkest moment in our relationship that left us both feeling upset and insecure. for no reason, and with absolutely no added value, save to teach me a lesson about how dumb i can be.

we got over it, but i'm still feeling like an asshole.

---other than a serious bout of rls, it was a pleasant evening and a good night's rest. and a long discussion wherein gd and i improved the way we talk about the nature of reality.

on the offensive - part i

i'm finally sitting down to blog, after three rather full days wherein i've been operating mostly on autopilot. today's been a day for getting stuff done, and i'm planning on finishing this and then heading off to boxing.

---friday:

friday began with a big, important nap after which i spent some time clearing my virtual desk by reading articles i'd had sitting in open tabs for days, weeks and possibly even months. i achieved an important comic script milestone at the starbucks, which i'm really excited about! i'm also excited about the fact that i found an excuse to mention comic illustration to vector and *he* was really excited by the prospect, so we're going to meet soon and see if he likes what i'm planning.

i did some quick shopping and returned through a breathtaking sunset, hurriedly made dinner and tidied up my apartment, successfully finishing just before bnw and her husband arrived. soon after we'd be joined by vfmp and his boyfriend, and we decided to play zombies!!!. what a great game! although it could have been better, i suspect that a couple of the guys were offended a bit by both incompatible playing styles and the tone of my voice when i get into explaining mode.

there's nothing more upsetting than hearing the words "stop yelling" when i haven't raised my voice. i felt like dave in the opening scene of anger management.

at least everyone appeared to find my ocd behaviour amusing.

other uncomfortable moments: not having any food nor any take-out menus for bnw and her husband, who'd arrived hungry. not hearing gd's phone call and making her wait outside after a long day at work. discovering that humm!'s roasted pine nut hummus has cheese in the listed ingredients. that's not mentioned anywhere else, as if it's perfectly normal to put cheese in hummus. it's a brand for which potential allergens like gluten are usually boldly labelled, so that's just weird and offensive. and to make that all worse, i accidentally picked up so delicious' neapolitan, which has strawberry in it and gd's allergic to strawberries.

F#$%.

*and* vfmp's boyfriend's on a highly restrictive diet. i don't get these people, they're always on weird diets instead of just working out and eating well. and they're vegans, they should know better.

---saturday:

we finished what i hoped was an enjoyable game for everyone, and gd and i must have gone to bed around 3am. at 6am she needed to be up to get ready for work and i was so tired that i was incapable of so much as raising my head for another hour or two. i felt bloated after the previous night's junk-food orgy, and barely had time to down a breakfast shake and go meet my yoga instructor in outremont park.

the buses were a bit off schedule but it was a delightfully beautiful morning so there was no place for stress. i walked past groups doing tai chi and yoga, and we set up in a quiet corner and did a really good hour ourselves. the exercises i did were relatively light but very focused on my neck, and i left the park feeling wonderful.

i had a simple plan for the day: purchase a gift card for bnw's husband's birthday, work on my comics and then go to the birthday barbeque. getting the gift card was simple enough, though as i paid for it two things happened. the first was the card reader informing me that i need to pay up on my visa, which freaked me out and i had to call the visa helpline and have them reassure me that everything's in order. the second was me realizing that i was getting bnw's husband a far bigger gift than i'd given her, but i made that work because it's for a game shop and she'll be enjoying the gift too.

starbucks on st denis: i tried to plug my netbook in but the sockets were all messed up. all of them. when i complained to the girl behind the counter she responded with "yes, we know".

*awkward pause*
"you know?"
"yes."

...

i was walking away, aggravated, when she called after me that they're moving in three weeks. and??

after doing some more work on my script, i went to bnw's. on the way i read this month's wired article on the oculus rift. awesome, i can't wait to see how things roll out!

it was a warm, sunny day with a cool breeze and puffy clouds making interesting shapes as they crossed the sky, and i arrived at their apartment about five minutes after the designated time. i pressed the button, to which i got no response. i then pressed it again, and again got no response. i called bnw, and got through to her voicemail, then called her husband, and got through to his voicemail. by this point i had become quite irritated; it's bad enough when people invite you for a certain time when they mean an hour or two later, but it's even worse when there's no way to know that that's what's happening. about five or ten minutes later, while i was thinking of saying "screw this" and returning to gd, bnw called back and informed me that they'd been at the supermarket and were on their way back.

what - the - hell??? that's really rude.

in spite of the offence, the afternoon was very pleasant. i ate way too much, drank a fair amount and talked a lot with some surprisingly receptive friends of the birthday boy. overall, it was a great day and the only thing that brought me down was leaving with a rather severe belly-ache.

[continued...]

between the vulcans and dr who - part two

[... continued]

today:

i started my day with dragon coins, and hit their freemium wall. considering the rather crap experience that surrounds such an awesome game, i'm NOT willing to pay to play, and that's the only way to expand one's monster box to a reasonable size in a reasonable amount of time. sod that. i've uninstalled it, quite grateful for the excuse.

i'm sure i've got better things to waste my time with.

it was a perfect summer's morning, and for once we had an entire day of pleasantly warm sun without wind or rain. i spent the morning running laundry, contacting people about the poetry slam series and responding to google's post-interview survey. i'm decidedly impressed with them and their attitude towards hiring, and the only real issue i had with the process it that it takes so damned long.

the day would've been great if not for one little thing: i seem to be suffering from a pinched nerve again. it's feeling a bit better now after doing a yoga exercise that seemed to help last time and going to kickboxing, but i'll only know in the morning if i did good or made things worse :/

i walked to the starbucks to work on my comic script and arrange matters with all the illustrators, walking out with a sense of satisfaction. i then went downtown to pick up breakfast shake powder, and ended up returning with a box of clif bars and creatine powder as well even though i have enough of the latter to last me until the weekend when everything's on sale and i need to go back for more shake powder (so i have some at gd's). dammit :P

kickboxing: it was a rough class, and about halfway through i was seriously feeling my back muscles and my core. i did well regardless, and was totally worn out by the end of the class.

i walked home through a magnificent twilight with impossibly beautiful colours that i really couldn't describe if i wanted to. it was a beautiful end to a beautiful day, i made my way here to gd's and we ate another delicious dinner while watching more how i met your mother.

---i'm about ready for bed now. here's me praying for a comfortable morning...

long weekend goodness

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

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

---thursday:

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

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

that made for a good night.

---friday:

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

huh.

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

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

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

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

---today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

jaw on the floor.

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

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

i don't even. part ii.

[... continued]

---sunday:

i enjoyed a good wake-up, though it was a rainy day and i went through it to the walmart to pick up a yoga mat. pulse had been talking about the importance of colours, and i was amused to hear that if i want to focus on my upper back i should go with green. i have a thing for green, so that's no biggie. there was a single yoga mat left in stock. it was green, odourless (i'd been warned about chemical mats) and apparently eco-friendly. so that was easy! as i walked to the check-out i received a message informing me that pulse had gifted me a $25 discount on yoga supplies from some online source.

why was the world making it feel like my birthday?

there was a problem at the check-out with the card reader. i was so offended when, after a couple of failed attempts, the cashier grabbed my card and began rubbing the chip as if we were in the nineties. i *told* her it was the reader, not the card. before she could do any damage i thanked her for her efforts and found another counter. my card passed through first time and i left with an image in my head of the first cashier as a kid blowing into a nintendo cartridge.

i went supermarket shopping, forgetting to make change for the laundry, then hit the gym to train. i was specifically going to meet the guy who joined us for yoga last week because i didn't have his number and the instructor was coming in later than we'd agreed. he didn't rock up at all, and instead i worked on the punching bags. i worked really hard, really well and for a long time; so long, in fact, that i didn't leave myself the time i'd intended to return home, shower quickly and return with my new yoga mat. suddenly the instructor had arrived and i'd only had a few minutes' rest. we began the yoga class.

my arms and legs were kinda tired after all the work on the bags. that made the exercises particularly difficult, but i pushed through and was as satisfied as i was sore by the end.

i had a short time between yoga and horseman visiting, really just enough to shower and eat and maybe rest a bit. instead of the latter, when i got home i found a message from aaa waiting for me. oh, i thought. we're going to have the talk.

i called her up and was surprised when instead of the talk, she was inviting herself to the slam! oh, shit. i couldn't think of an inoffensive way to end things in that context, so i remained polite and unenthusiastically told her i'd see her later. i started stressing about the potential drama, already planning to take gd out for a drink after the slam to explain everything, and was discussing the situation with supertongue who's a bit of a drama expert. she told me that i *had* to call aaa back, and i'm really glad i listened!

because i took a moment to compose my thoughts, called her back and told her how i feel. i was relieved to hear her say that it wasn't just me - so i wasn't being an ass! very sweet. we agreed that dating isn't working, but that we both like each other and hanging out is cool. it was actually the nicest "we're not going to date any more" talk i've ever had and we were both laughing for half of it. that was cool, i immediately felt much better, and just then horseman arrived for a tekken session.

we played the new tag tournament, it was a lot of fun but not as competitive as usual. both our games were off but it didn't matter :)

as we left for the slam i stressed about getting dressed, and halfway there i recalled that i'd intended to shave. shave! my beard was looking a bit scraggly. and pulse's comment about presenting my poetry with respect still ran in my ears. but there was no time for that. there was just time to grab a quick bite at la pantere verte and arrive to sign up.

i'm sorry, said my buddy as he greeted us at the door: we've changed the way registration works this week... didn't you get the memo? all the slots are taken, the only thing open is the open mic.

DAMN! i was so disappointed! i signed up for the open mic and made sure he understood that if there was an opening for the slam that i wanted it instead. a slow hour would pass before he could inform me that someone had dropped out, which was an enormous relief :)

we sat down with pulse and gd, were joined by bnw and had a really good time! i was really excited when pulse gave me some insider information that the guys at the company i've been interviewing with are just as excited to have me join them - i don't know if she's exaggerating because she's being super-nice but i'll take it ^_^

we enjoyed ourselves until aaa showed up, at which point things started getting a little weird. i was sitting between everyone and the stage and pulse, gd and aaa were sitting in a row with aaa next to me; i kept thinking "past, hopefully future and present" and both myself and gd, who was being respectfully considerate, were having trouble deciding where to look at any given time.

then the evening began. i was wearing my syndicate shirt, amusingly showing "follow me until you die" to the girls because my back was to them; i was uncomfortable specifically because i couldn't keep an eye on things.

some of the open mic pieces were pathetic, one of them was a surprisingly dramatic improvement by the guy who i hated on the open mic when i judged. still not amazing, but he's at least heading in the right direction :)

...

the slam began. the first guy up was someone i quite like, though his piece left a bit to be desired. my name was announced, and i whisked my bundle of nerves up onto the stage.

1. i should've raised the height of the mic. i'm an idiot.
2. i needed more confidence. my piece deserved more confidence, and now i feel like i let it down.
3. in spite of my shaking and lack of power, i blew the first dude away, was received with heartwarming applause and the mc was so impressed he joyfully fist-bumped me as we passed each other.
4. the judges seem to like it! certainly better than last month.

everyone at my table was thrilled when i sat down, and i turned to look for the scores. as i did so i felt a pair of hands on my back - i stiffened, knowing that it was a victorious "pat on the back" from aaa and sensing that it was a lot more sensual than it should've been. that was our first physical contact after three dates and an ending, and it was totally unappreciated... especially with gd right there! after that i noticed that something was going on between gd and pulse, and a few minutes later they'd disappeared. my phone began to vibrate with messages from gd and there was far too much for me to say in such a short space - as soon as the first round was over i phoned her.

when i heard her voice i was both touched and terrified; i apologized profusely and we agreed to have coffee in the morning to talk it all over. on my way back to the table aaa passed me to say goodbye. her work was done (she didn't say that, obviously), she needed to go.

#$@!. couldn't she have left first?!

...

during the break vfmp and his boyfriend showed up to take the girls' place. much less dramatic :P

mc june went up as the feature for the night. his hop-hop's all french, but even though i could barely follow the words - never mind the poetic meaning - the man was enthralling. the performance was amazing, powerful, obviously clever, and his beatboxing partner who joined him at the end was just brilliant.

moments before the feature, i was informed that i'd made it through to the second round. score! i was thrilled ^_^

i'd prepared the quebec immigration song for the second. i'm really, really, REALLY lucky that i was called up towards the end, because after hearing the first two poems i knew that it wasn't nearly strong enough. fortunately, i still have advice memorized and i decided that it would have to do.

about a minute before my name was called i felt something in my chest harden. it was something akin to anger; a sense of purpose, and rightness. my nerves were blasted away by it and i jumped onto the stage, reset the mic's height and cleared my head.

oh - my - gods. i have never commanded an audience before, but i now know what it feels like. i stared into the darkness and emptied myself into my words, each one flying out precisely. there were laughs in the right places and finger snaps, and the response when i finished was overwhelming. what unbelievable elation and pride! what a reward for finally getting my shit together on stage!

i took fourth overall (when that was announced there were actually a couple of boos, and not from my table ^_^ ) and a couple of the established poets not only made an effort to catch me to introduce themselves but one of them was excitedly talking about us hopefully going together as a team to the nationals. i hope, i hope, i hope that i've made it into the finals next month!!!

...

it was pouring with rain when we left, bnw and i headed to the metro together and stopped halfway at a cool bar to dry off with a couple of drinks. we had a fun time telling hysterical stories and discussing the evening, and when the rain relaxed and we'd finished our drinks it was time to go home.

---from the moment we said goodnight, i couldn't stop thinking about gd. i was practicing speeches in my head and fretting about all the things that could possibly go wrong, planning apologies and explanations well into the night.

all this was wrapped in ecstasy, a very real high off the evening that was so strong it was shocking!

---monday:

sleepless before a date with destiny [i wrote that on the way there]. i picked up my laundry, it was the most beautiful, warm, misty spring morning that would turn into a hot - over 20 degrees hot - sunny day. a fantastic day for extremes, i thought, and i couldn't imagine how right i was at the time.

gd's name is the french version of a character out of greek mythology; i wasn't sure if looking up her story was a mistake or a treat, but it was definitely educational.

...

we met at her metro station, and walked and talked for a while until we found a good place to eat. a sweet, cozy diner-type deal, there wasn't anything vegan on the menu but the waiter managed to sort out a huge, delicious off-the-menu special anyway. the coffee was good and we were having a lot of fun, though a lot of our discussion was decidedly inappropriate and the waiter wasn't embarrassed to chime in every now and again because he could hear everything we were saying. i would've been offended but the attitude was totally good :)

we took a semi-romantic walk down to atwater market and around the area, then to her apartment. we talked for ages there too, culminating in a first kiss that,

quite frankly,

i will never forget.

[continued...]

i don't even. part i.

i'm actually high right now. actually, properly high on life to such a degree that this morning i found myself wondering - on a couple of occasions - if perhaps i'm dying and this last weekend has been a final hallucination in which i imagine what heaven is like.

...

i suddenly recalled the couple of unpleasant things that prove that this all has to be real, and that drew me out from my reality-anxiety reverie in a fit of giggles.

---friday:

firstly, i have to mention an amazing piece of software that's really exciting: it's called firechat, and in a nutshell it allows android / iphone users to create ad-hoc networks when there's no connectivity. the first, most basic use i could think of was to chat with people on the metro; it's an environment with lots of people avoiding all forms of contact, and i think the ability to communicate with people in the same location and situation anonymously could have really interesting potential.

...

i wasn't going to be able to make boxing in the evening, so i went early to work on the bags. i did some good work, but then i became frustrated as my shins got tender and i managed to hurt my ankle (slightly) on a side-kick to the wrong bag (like kicking a wall, that one). at least i finished feeling looser, and while resting on the pull-up bar i realized that after all this time i'm actually able to hold it with my feet flat on the floor - stretch success!

i went to the tattoo parlor opening that pulse had invited me to. it wasn't too difficult to find, i'm not familiar with the area but it was a beautiful evening and on the way the view of the city was stunningly dystopic. i arrived... on time, and pulse was going to be fifteen minutes late. hesitant to enter alone, not knowing anyone and being pretty bad with strangers, i looked in at the window and decided that i was rather under-dressed. this was no regular tattoo parlor! shit, they'd turned the main area into a gallery and the tattoo artist's paintings were on display, there was a table with wine and cocktail-y stuff and my first impression was that it was packed with pretension.

i opened the door and a beautiful woman jumped forward to welcome me, i automatically assumed that i was talking to one of the proprietors and politely introduced myself before attempting to enter the throng. a small room, packed with people, it was a throng. and everyone was standing and talking in such a way that it was practically impossible to squeeze through to see what was further inside, i was even uncomfortable approaching the table with the refreshments.

i sneaked between the lines-of-sight of the snap-happy photographers while i inspected the artwork: the pieces were all fantastic, the artist has a really cool style and some of the work was really gripping. so there was that.

just as i was staring at a particularly intriguing canvas, i felt a tap on my shoulder and whirled around to find pulse standing beside me. what a relief! she introduced me to her friend, and then re-introduced me to gd, the girl who'd greeted me earlier. the curtain was drawn back, the crowd regained a level of reality and we all proceeded to enjoy the evening together.

there was something special about gd and she basically told me what it was* when she eventually caught me alone; she left with us which gave us an opportunity to chat on the way to the metro. it was immediately obvious that we were going to be friends and we swapped details as we agreed to meet up sometime.

* no, not sharing.

i got home to a message from her that ended in a chat in which we discussed the fact that we were both attracted to each other and the fact that aaa and i were a potential thing. she was happy to respect that and still come see me perform on sunday, and everything was cool. very cool. that is to say, our chat excited me in a way that i haven't been excited in a very long time.

---saturday:

i slept better, but that wasn't difficult to achieve. i read an article on sensory deprivation that sounded suspiciously like using technology to achieve the goals of a yoga exercise pulse had been describing the night before, then went to old montreal to join her for yoga.

if one of the aims of yoga is to relax, then i was halfway there just by walking through old montreal on such an incredible, sunny morning! gods, that area is gorgeous.

the yoga class: pulse had been going about how amazing her instructor is, and while at first i was a little skeptical i really warmed to him over the course of the class. some of the things he says are a bit preachy, but considering some of the conversations i overheard from the other members of the class it was probably quite necessary. speaking of which, the class was completely full and we had to play a form of yoga mat tetris in order to squeeze everyone in...

... the class was awesome, extremely challenging, mentally stimulating and shamefully sweaty for someone using pulse's spare mat (of course i cleaned it afterwards, but still).

pulse and i had a great time visiting atwater market, the highlight being my finding a large tub of marmite. hooray! on the metro, pulse made a comment about using the poetry slam as an opportunity to vet aaa. i thought that was pretty amusing.

after a good lunch, i went to a java u to meet aaa for coffee before going to hear the university of montreal's orchestra. i was trying and failing to speedily learn the slam in the hope that it'd be ready for the following evening. yeah. not so much.

the date: coffee was nice. we travelled to the university, which is pretty impressive, and found our seats. i wasn't sure how i'd feel about a classical performance, but here goes: the first piece was composed by a man in the audience, it was interesting. the second piece appeared to be showcasing a very talented dude with a flute, it was pretty cool. then there was an intermission, and then the main piece.

dimitri chostakovitch, symphony no. 11. ho-ly crap. there were parts of it where i felt like i was in class trying desperately not to fall asleep, and parts filled with heady, powerful stuff. i guess i could say it was equal parts thrilling and somniferous. i couldn't believe how long it was, my mind was reeling trying to fathom how everyone, from the conductor to the guys on the bells, were keeping it together. when i described the experience to my mother i told her that it felt like i was watching the soundtrack to a movie, and felt quite validated (and cultured :P) when she read back a review that basically said the same thing!
the experience was also similar to some of the more advanced psy-trance pieces where the dj brings in recurring themes in different contexts. it was mind-numbing, intoxicating stuff. i was left speechless and a little shocked by the time it was over.

now for the other side of the experience. the entire time, i found myself comparing between how i felt spending time with aaa and how i felt spending time with gd. i'd spent mere minutes talking with gd, and there aaa and i were on our third date with no spark apparent and not even an indication of a desire for physical contact. i felt like a real heel, thinking like this and comparing between the two, and i continually wondered if i was unfairly letting gd influence the way the date was going.

the word for the evening was "dispassionate". i wasn't interested in continuing the date and i gallantly waited with aaa for her metro, during which time a very strong nothing happened. i hopped on my metro thinking that that felt like a "no".

marmite, then bed. i had a big day to prepare for.

[continued...]

sprung spring

what a ridiculously magnificent day! i've spent most of it inside, preparing for my exciting job interview tomorrow, but every step i've taken outdoors has been magically spring. i should probably go out for another coffee just for an excuse to be outside again... he writes, sipping from the cup of tea he just made...

---friday:

so i went out on friday night to meet a woman i'd been planning a date with since before i met aaa, already assuming that it'd just be a pleasant evening. the metro was overloaded, apparently due to line issues, and i walked out of the vendôme station into the pouring rain. there was a long line for the bus so i decided to walk instead, which seemed like a mighty good idea when i arrived at sherbrooke to discover that most of the road was missing. which would kinda explain the traffic.

i enjoyed walking in the rain; it wasn't too cold... i was about halfway there when i received an sms from aaa which was pleasantly positive! good timing :P

i walked into honey martin and was met with a heavy bar smell, thick air and drunkenly loud, friendly voices from cozily crowded tables and benches. it was welcome respite from being drenched! my date arrived five minutes later, both of us quite pleased that i'd managed to secure a couple of seats.

it was a really nice evening! if it wasn't for aaa, i would definitely invite her out for a second date. we'd just started on the second round of guinness when she dropped a bomb: "i don't understand the whole dating scene. i only ever go out on first or second dates..."
oh, man. and here i was setting her up for another of those?! what a shitty move! and we'd had (and then continued to have, in spite of my guilty conscience) such a good time connecting on so many different topics, including raising children - this is relevant because she's got a five year-old daughter. oh, i knew that before, in case you were worried. i'm cool with that.

she gave me a ride to the metro station and i said goodbye in the nicest non-committal way i could, grateful that she didn't push me into saying anything final. i walked off wondering if there's a delaying tactic i could use to see if aaa and i work out first? is that totally uncool? it feels uncool. but that's society for you, you're not allowed to like more than one girl at a time... and aaa was pretty clear before we met that she's not interested in open relationships.

...

aaaaaaanyway, there was a terrible, funny moment when the bartender came to our table to take orders, which she hadn't done before. i'd received changed from the first round and given her half, but my coin pouch was in my wet jacket so i kept the remaining coins in my hand or on the table. this girl didn't hesitate, she glanced at the table and just lifted them! i wasn't going to argue with her because that's definitely not alright, but she totally forced a double tip. i was not impressed.

...

it was really, really cold on friday night. maybe it was the moisture, because the temperature wasn't low at all.

---yesterday:

i slept great, though i woke up with my back still uncomfortable. i rewrote my resume according to what one of the recruiters had told me - though i think she's an idiot so the rewrite may be a mistake - and that entailed trawling through my blog to line up dates. which led to me labelling a bunch of unlabelled posts, which is always engrossing.

...

on my way to yoga the woman from h&r called. she's managed to reduce the rate from $300 to $160. ummm.... no. thanks, but no thanks.

...

i had ten or fifteen minutes to warm up before my instructor arrived, so i wrapped up and worked on one of the bags for a while. i wear one of my pairs of '99 mr. price specials for yoga, and didn't think it'd be a problem for kicking (i wore them when i started taekwondo in 2001)... so i wasn't impressed when they split down the front. at least it wasn't so bad, but i hate the fact that my favourite clothes are falling apart. anyway, i went to do pull-ups and was surprised to find myself holding my body almost horizontally and doing them with ease, right until the last two which surprised me by throwing my back out completely.

bad, bad timing. DAMN.

anyway, the yoga wasn't bad and my frustrating back didn't get in the way too much. one of the guys from boxing joined us and was just as impressed with the instructor as i am :)

i tried taking a hot bath when i got home but that did nothing for me. i made pasta (using the medium-firm tofu and runny sweet-and-chilli sauce) and it came out a bit rough, and finally spoke to my toronto cousin who i've been playing telephone tag with for about two weeks now. aaa and i chatted a bit and she's still sending mixed signals. it's a thing, i think.

i spent an hour or so sewing my pants while watching house which has just become available on netflix. nice! i ate a lot of junk food. yesterday and today. i'm not entirely proud of that.

i found a digitized copy of my discrete math book and loaded it onto my kindle, reading it on the metro and in starbucks* just before entering résonance for the mile end poets' festival event for the evening**.

* a woman was describing some dramatic event to her friend so loudly that it felt as if the drama were happening right there. not very nice.

** i've missed all the other events, which is a shame.

i arrived five minutes late, they were just beginning the sound check. after enough time spent waiting for events to begin in montreal, i have reached the conclusion that montreal and israel operate on similar ideas of time and truth about time. it's unprofessional.
anyway, the sound check was actually pleasant to listen to, as opposed to the horrors i'd associated with the place.

first, my criticism regarding the restaurant. it's hipster vegan. i wish that didn't mean anything, but the table i sat down at was filthy and had the previously seated's half-eaten meal on it. i was there for about two hours, and the waiter only cleared that shit about ten minutes before i left. when i ordered a cider during the intermission, i was asked where i was sitting and i pointed my table out. i returned to my seat and resumed reading my kindle; the waiter, when he arrived, softly asked the people at the table next to me if they'd ordered anything. i only registered that something was going on after he'd walked away, so i had to run after him to get my drink. i almost felt bad for asking "would'a been nice if he'd asked everyone, huh?" so loudly, but didn't because the whole hipster-apathetic thing doesn't do it for me and, after a cue from the main poet, i began to suspect that the dude's glasses weren't prescription. just sayin'.

okay, first up: jason. is it this jason? i'm not sure. but the dude is essentially a one-man band playing deep, dark sounds that i would've been even more excited by had they not been so darned LOUD. because they're discordant, in an impressively touching way. reminiscent of godspeed you black emperor.

second: karen fennel. she's funny, and has some extremely clever ideas, but i didn't like her actual performance. at all.

third: ian keteku. holy crap, what i've found on him online doesn't do him any justice. clever, beautiful poetry presented by a guy with a good sense of humour who knows how to flip to dark and serious on a dime. i see why he's famous on the slam circuit.

finally: emma frank and her band. really not my taste in music, though it was obviously great for what it was. at some point i just couldn't take any more, though, so i upped and left. i got home to an email from aaa, and i responded. then i responded again to clarify. then i realized that i'd just sent a mixed signal of my own. i hope she got the right meaning.

---today:

i slept well, woke up slowly, then got up and found my back still hurting. over breakfast i was listening to french radio and i really feel like my listening's improving...

i went out for coffee and shopping, the stunning sunny morning was sweater weather and i really, really wish that i could dress precisely like that all year round! everything felt right with the world ^_^

...

the guy ahead of me at starbucks had forgotten something on the counter and jumped across me to get it. i immediately stepped to the left, right onto the toe of the idiot behind me. why - would - you - stand - so - close - to - me???
oh, she's arabic. that's why. middle-easterners, i'm trying to escape that shit. please let me go.

i don't know if she was trying to be cute by repeatedly complaining after i repeatedly apologized.

...

today's been off and on as far as focus is concerned, i hope i'm going to be ready for tomorrow!

i've been sitting at a table for the past couple of weeks when using my computer and i've decided that that might be why my back's unhappy. so i returned to my standing desk a couple of hours ago and it seems to be helping a little.

oh, and fp called to tell me that this evening wouldn't be good for a quick visit, and asked if i wanted to meet during the week. so i bit the bullet and told her "not really". she's clearly unhappy that i'm not interested in giving her another shot, but as flattered as i am by that i'm looking for something with a bit more spark.

over the phone or in person, that doesn't feel very good.

right, coffee and studying. and then an early night.

---oh, and israelis lighting up in a news studio as a sign of protest. good show, guys. good show!

april 1st

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*shakes head*

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

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

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

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

...

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

i was so embarrassed :$

---rush hour on the metro. ugh.

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

so there was that...

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

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

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

errands

the weather is stunning! clear skies, warm sun, only a slight breeze and still cool. if this could be the whole spring, with summer only *just* warm enough to leave sweaters at home i'd be really stoked ^_^
as it is, i've just opened all my windows for the first time since i got back from south africa. very, very nice!

why are there so many *things* that need to be done? i had to remember to dump the recycling, go to the bank, walmart and the pharmacy* and then on to the further supermarket to sort out rent and purchase items the closer supermarket doesn't stock. as good as it was to have an excuse for a good walk in the fresh air, i've got shit i need to focus on!

* though i found out later that the further supermarket stocks dental floss too, so that was unnecessary.

at least i used my time well when stopping for coffee on the way. today's topic is encryption. considering the level of my math i usually find the details distasteful and they're kinda important...

---oh, and while clearing my email this morning, i found neil gaiman on scaring children. brilliant as usual.

and an article on facebook and vr. and one on yoga and relaxation that seems sensible.

the laziness continued

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

---friday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

---today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

---linkage!

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

well done, universe, well done.

...

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

...

jim breuer on heavy metal for children

...

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

...

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

...

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

what would jesus do?

it's gonna be weird writing this while i'm feeling so incredibly lonely that i don't actually feeling like sharing with anyone... i'm writing in my journal and exposing it to the world at large. rational behaviour?

---i shaved before i left, which meant a quick shower (i always manage to get little hairs on me, that's one disadvantage of using beard trimmers over blades) during which i wondered about this article on immersion improving cognizance that i read last night: aside from archimedes' discovery, apparently women do their best thinking in the bath. so it kinda makes sense...

it was so cozy on the metro, and i was so relaxed. as if i haven't stopped being relaxed since sunday's yoga lesson, like something really did get aligned properly and an emotional artery unblocked.

it's really cold tonight. absolutely freezing, primarily attributed to a mean wind that's been slapping everyone around since the late afternoon. pulse told me the place was on sherbrooke, google told me rachel. i decided to walk from mont royal station past rachel and on to sherbrooke. first, that's a much longer walk than i'd expected. second, google's definitely wrong. third, i couldn't find it on sherbrooke, either. we were supposed to meet at 8.15pm; i called at 8.20, and then at 8.30 and both times heard it ring until i got through to her answering machine.

how would you feel?
i sent a message with my frozen fingers briefly explaining what i'd been through and ending "... i'm going home. bon appetit!"

i pressed "send" and then realized that that could be construed as majorly passive-aggressive. then i thought about it some more, and figured that it would be appropriate nonetheless. i mean, what the hell? you invite me out to dinner, to a place which apparently isn't so easy to find, without specific directions and without making yourself available?

i feel like i've been made a fool of. whether by pulse or by the universe in general, i don't know. but i'm decidedly upset by this. i feel like shit; for this i skipped boxing? am i the asshole?

i didn't feel like stressing over dinner so i headed to la panthère verte at guy-concordia to sit and somberly eat a falafel. the traditional techina dripping out the bottom of the pita seemed to be mocking me.

i've returned home and i'm feeling sad. i've felt like this before, for sure, but right now i'm feeling it pretty keenly. i have friends and family here but i don't feel like it. i love it here and i've been extremely fortunate and all but i guess tonight's incident has sparked off some latent homesickness, and by home i mean cape town.

...

the only positive in all this was the violinist i walked past. there're a lot of homeless about tonight, but this dude was sitting on a corner in the freezing cold playing beautifully, and i tossed him a doubloon for his troubles and was glad to have been there to do so.

---while writing this i was listening to the radio, with a francophone interviewing an anglophone speaking in french with an atrocious accent. gods, i don't ever want to sound like that :S

required reading

what an odd day! and it's not over yet, but my boxing time has been cancelled so i may as well share what's on my mind right now...

1. pulse invited me to dinner with her friend who put my resume forward. she then informed me that "her friend" will be coming too, saying that she didn't want me to be surprised. does that mean that she meant "boyfriend"? i'm not sure how i feel about that, but whatever. it looks like a nice place to eat and it's a good excuse to meet someone who i hope will soon be a co-worker.

2. my yoga instructor noticed that i don't distribute pressure on my feet correctly, and suggested that i try using toe separators. so i went to the pharmacy to buy some, but being an uninterestingly straight male i didn't even know what to look for. the woman who helped me was shocked and amused that my girlfriend or wife would send me out on such an errand, and i didn't feel the need to correct her :P

3. i went to the ups store to print out and photocopy all the documentation i'll need to take to the guys who'll handle my tax returns for me. doing the math, if i don't get back more than $120 none of this will have been worth my while.

4. i was next to starbucks so i sat down with a large coffee to work on my comics. while i was learning that there's a rather lengthy book in middle english that i'm going to need to read from cover to cover before continuing*, something made me look at my phone and register, too late, that my netbook's clock was an hour behind. curses!

* i just realized that there's an important character who'll need to be defined well, even if he'll only appear in two panels of the first issue

so i missed boxing, i don't even have time to go and wail on the bags for a bit before going out. not the end of the world, but still...

... in completely different news, i haven't spoken to fp in more than a day and even then it was a couple of basic sms updates over a span of about three days. i get the feeling that whatever we had or didn't have has petered out...