healing

1. jiu-jitsu partnered with a man slightly shorter than me and about twice my weight. i couldn't get my legs around him and my leg was hurting so much i had to pause to breathe through my teeth a few times.

2. kickboxing totally loosened my up and by the time i got to working on the bags i was ready to kick the shit out of it. i think i might have relieved myself of a little of the work pressure that built up this week, i walked away totally satisfied and ready for more.

3. wall stretching: the tall, strong dude i was partnered with was working harder than i was, to the point where someone else noticed and laughed because it was clear that i was using him to stretch myself instead of being stretched. and he was shaking more than i was :P

4. during a break i asked a question and got a really helpful answer. plus a solid shot to the liver for my troubles.
"that's so you remember".
scrapper's influence on me: stumbling, not falling, and wheezing "thank you sir, may i have another!".

---the day began with a double "you done good" from the cfo and aota: the way i dealt with botswana was appreciated by everyone. i also had a little chat with my team and made it clear that they're to report to me both professionally and personally.

the network will be down at least until wednesday, so i took ceh out to l'artere to eat and use their wifi. firstly, their vegan take on shepherd's pie (sweet potato and lentils) was delicious and too much for me. secondly, ceh's attitude towards documentation and project constraints doesn't fit with mine and it's going to take work to bring him to a compromise. at least i think he realizes now that i'm not simply being anal about everything.

while he was playing with a remote server i was being told by k-twang how bad my blog design is. so i took his advice and modified my template accordingly, i hope it's a better experience for everyone.

the cto arrived and we had a number of different talks throughout the day. they were all positive and i think he'd forgotten how organized i am since he's started interfacing with megaman. one of our talks was quite exciting, especially as i had his attention long enough to pitch an idea i had ages ago that developed into something even more awesome as i was speaking. we may not see eye to eye on everything, but there's a shared vision for where our tech should go that makes me feel like all the annoying and frustrating things that have happened over the past couple of months were totally worth it.

the rest of my day was broken into small fires and management. overall things are going smoothly and i'm happy with how this week's ending. also, amazed at how quickly it's gone by and how much i feel has happened!

on my way out i realized i could control my limp at the cost of each step hurting (which is subconsciously where the limp came from). the last thing i wanted was to stop using my muscles correctly.

---right, it's 11pm and i've had much less sleep this week than i've wanted. i've also got a big stack of things that need doing, including making dinner.

training and protections

shit, it's past bedtime and i needed to go to bed hours ago but i had two reports to write and they took forever.

---i had to train someone outside the company this afternoon and i woke up this morning with no idea what i'd be teaching him because the cto had ignored me yesterday. at 8.30am, pre-coffee and before leaving for the office i managed to catch him and we spent the next two hours going over everything. it wasn't bad, but it was tiring.

---i was on my way out when i realized that i'd made a grievous error: on monday, the drying machine was bust and it completely slipped my mind that the pile of underwear i dumped on a chair (i'm a bachelor!) was wet. this morning i finally got around to sorting and folding and it was still wet and quite smelly. not cool at all :(

so i was already stressing about how complicated dealing with that was going to be (i've been informed that it's not normal to have time limits on laundry nor to have to pay for each cycle) when i hurriedly took my shoes out the freezer (see previous post). as amusing as it was to remove two shoe-shaped blocks of ice, they were obviously still going to be waterlogged when i got home. i stuffed them with newspaper and chucked them on the patio.

[oh, shit! it's summer and i have a patio. i totally forgot.]

---my office day began with bad multitasking - there's nothing like having everything going wrong all around you and everyone clamoring for your attention when you need to focus on creating a lesson plan. and our network issues were at least as bad as they've been the past few days, which was frustrating for all of us.

the training session actually went a lot smoother than anticipated, and it inspired a little chat with the cfo afterwards. he was surprised to hear me evangelize (apparently he wasn't aware of our software's potential) and asked me to put together a memo, which i've just done. it includes marketing suggestions and it's been hinted that this might be good for me, whatever that means.

---it was the end of the day and i was in a hurry to get out in time for muay thai. i went past all the desks to make sure that everyone was on track and was horrified to find one of my developers on the verge of tears because botswana and our graphic lead had convinced him that he had to pull a surprise all-nighter because they'd switched the design after the project's due date. remember i mentioned his relationship with the developers?

i - was - pissed. as he's an executive, i was relatively careful with my tone but from his reaction i think he might have sensed potential violence. i have made it clear to everyone involved that nobody is to talk to developers without consulting me, and then i made it clear to the developer in question that he was to go home at his regular time and not a moment later for these assholes.

i'm going to have to have a little chat with the team in the morning, apparently our "chain of command" is not clear and i have been remiss in my duties if they don't feel they should come to me the instant anything causes them distress of any kind.

---aota relieved me of an enormous amount of stress by not only giving me a ride home but by offering to handle my problem laundry as well. thanks to her i made it to muay thai just in time.

i only barely survived muay thai today, limping away with my first injury in a long time and the knowledge that my assessment of my defensive skills was entirely correct: there's not much difference between gloves up or down, i just know how to put my nose and chin right into everything.

the injury is the deep tissue on my inner thigh, which was kicked hard and repeatedly by a fellow taekwondo graduate. i'm now sporting a rather sensitive limp, which i hope will be better in time for tomorrow's kickboxing.

afterwards i headed to aota's for a great "family" dinner with her, her daughter, newk'd and her daughter's friend from the other day. it was really nice and a wonderful end to a rough day.

i got home, found my unfrozen shoes to be dry but smelly and stuffed them back in the freezer.

...

after reports and an internet, i'm definitely, definitely ready to sleep.

weird things to put in the freezer

the shoes i wore last night didn't dry properly and got a bit funky. here's hoping internet wisdom and not trolling.

royal highness

so... this morning began lazy and happy. still glowing from yesterday's experience. the weather was as fine as i felt.

it's a timing thing: i was working on scripting my sketches when metro sat down beside me again. apparently we both have favourite seats :)

speaking of which, office seating politics made shunting people around complicated. in the evening i'd have a long chat with our cfo about our environment and he liked what he heard and has promised to explore options that suit our team.

i have to train someone tomorrow in something i'm not familiar with - the cto was supposed to teach me today but i couldn't get hold of him in spite of my having made an appointment. huh?!

my plan for the day was to explore implementing something in node.js, but managing the team took precedence. there was a lot of it going on...

---i left work in time to shop before training, originally planning on jiu-jitsu and beginner's kickboxing but then switching to advanced kickboxing on the off chance i'd see gg. she wasn't there, but i'm so glad i changed my mind!

there's a fifty year old woman who trains with us who, just like the old guy, is a tank. firstly, i was fortunate to have her holding pads for me on the circuit because she wasn't afraid to tell me exactly what i was doing wrong at every step. and boy, was she right! i could the difference every time i got what she was saying, and it felt good.

i got to do impact / conditioning with her. i started, and her explanations of how i'm supposed to be handling my body were the first i've received. she was hurting me by the end, but i actually felt like i knew what i was doing and once the striking stopped i felt surprisingly good. a little more compact, in a sense :P

then it was her turn. not only did it feel like i was hitting a wall, but it wasn't hard enough for her so she taught me precisely how to angle my gloves and repeatedly corrected my strikes until i started getting through. the weird bit was feeling proud and ashamed simultaneously every time i landed a solid shot...

... shit, that's one tough lady.

---i came home to find i've been headhunted by another BIG company with a very interesting offer. how exciting and flattering! after thinking about it for a bit, though, it doesn't seem to be in my interests. aside from being in love with montreal and its people, this is not only the best place for me to immigrate to in terms of process but it's also the home of a lot of good aerospace; american aerospace cannot employ foreigners so even though spacex, bigelow and virgin have job opportunities that i'm perfectly suited for i wouldn't be able to work there...

i've spent my whole night talking on the phone with my mum or chatting on messenger and facebook. shit! i have stuff to do! and i almost didn't finish my dinner again :(

---two completely unrelated thoughts:

1. an ex-coworker has been ignoring me whenever he comes in to freelance, and i was informed that the reason for this is that he believes that my reaction to cam2 was borne of racism (as opposed to my complete intolerance of incompetence). i find this hurtful, and i'd try to take it up with him if i hadn't been warned not to. there's not much one can do to undo that kind of sentiment, though.

as my mom rightly said, though, it would be racist to have kept him on simply because of the colour of his skin.

2. i really, really, really have to learn french! it's ridiculous and irresponsible that i've been so unmotivated.

happiness is a cool thunderstorm

wanna know how i know i want to live in montreal?

i arrived at piknic where the sun was shining, there was a cool breeze to counter the otherwise hot and humid day, the music was groovy and all the beautiful people (seriously, how are there so many??) were enjoying a perfect monday afternoon.

and then it started to cloud over. really fast. and suddenly there were drops of rain. MORE people came onto the dance floor! the more rain, the more excitement, shirts came off (one guy undressed to a mankini, it was hilarious) and the tempo increased with the bass. the crowd went nuts when it began to pour and when a rough wind came up there was a stream of defiant whoops until it backed off again, and there were crazy happy smiles all around when the lightning began.

we continued like that until, a long while later, the sun came out for a gorgeous sunset.

yes. that's how i know :)

---i've been out of food for two days, and the laundry was piling up. all the regular stores were closed today to celebrate saint jean-baptiste / quebec day, so i wasn't sure what to do. i headed to jean talon market, bought two boxes of clif builder bars (ordering vegan creatine along the way, that's an important supplement too) and had lunch with nocence, who's taking the language oppression thing really hard and is now seriously considering leaving quebec. i find it amusing that montreal takes enough pride in little italy to erect very pretty stonework and signs all over the place but doesn't appreciate them actually speaking italian.

i had a very leafy lunch because little italy doesn't do vegan, and it wasn't bad. then i returned home to struggle with laundry. at first i had to wait for ages to use the machine, and when i finally got my turn and my laundry was ready for the dryer i discovered that some old bat had been hoarding wet clothes and had taken it over. and today, there was only one dryer.

i guess it was a good excuse to rest and read a little.

as soon as that was done, i shaved and showered (i would've needed to shower anyway, it was so humid!) and headed to the piknic. priority one: find the girl from last night. failed in that, i think i saw her at one point but if it was her then she was making a point of not being anywhere near me. priority two: have a good time. that wasn't very hard ^_^

the only spoke in my wheel of ecstasy* was when some jerk stood right next to me and loudly shared with his friend just how much of a jerk he is over the music. as if that wasn't bad enough, he then made a really antisemitic remark and while a part of me wanted to respond another part kept saying "there's a time and a place". so i went somewhere else, and later when i saw him with his arm around some girl i felt very sorry for her.

* funny, some guy came up to ask me if i had any.

no change of plans

dissonance: my original plan was to come home after piknic electronik, and that's what i did, but i'm now unhappy that i did because i believe that i *should* have been going out with the beautiful girl i met on the dance floor - i guess i shouldn't have waited to get her number. now i'll have to wait until i see her there again.

i can't tell you how flattering it was to be chatted up in broken english on the most quebecois day of the year :D

---i dreamed properly during the night, and woke up feeling good and lazy. enough to go back and sleep some more. it was awesome.

saga is beautiful.

i headed out to horseman's and we spent a couple of hours playing with his very cool sound toys tweaking music and samples while discussing possible upgrades to my singing style. i have to mention that he has an adorable young alsation who's insanely friendly and fun to play with :)

i went downtown to feed myself - i was so hungry that i couldn't think straight - and then headed out to the piknic. the dance floor i preferred last time was far too adventurous for my tastes today, and so i kept to the main floor and thoroughly enjoyed an amazing retro house set. shit, one of the dj's even played a sneaker pimps track! it was an excellent party all around. even before i met that girl...

...

nutritionally, today was a complete and utter failure. i haven't had time to go shopping and i've barely eaten. quite irresponsible.

trips and driving

well! it's been a busy day.

1. it was time to renew my gym membership, so i went for six months. it's a lot of cash, even if it's cheap at the price and huge value for money. while i was there i had a chat with the guy on duty, and he convinced me that i don't need to be as concerned about ringworm as i have been. i've got some closure, now, and i'll just try to find some long-sleeved sports shirts.

2. it rained all day, and everywhere between here and ottawa. it was a warm day, though, and my short walk through the rain this morning was with a smile on my face :)

3. i met the girl that aota wanted to fix me up with, and she's cute and interesting. but we're both infatuated with other people at the moment, so we can park that :P

4. my biggest issue with driving aota's daughter (hrh) to ottawa was with navigation. my phone's gps is almost useless and i was very lucky to guess my way around. the second issue was figuring out the controls of the mini. the interface is mostly pretty good, but it's not intuitive at all. and what's the deal with the hidden usb port?

4.1 that reminds that i finally figured out clicking and dragging on my macbook today. it's actually really clever, only it's exactly not what you'd expect coming from a pc and i've never seen it explained anywhere. but no matter how many cool features there may be, overall the experience with a mac just isn't up to scratch.

5. the drive there with hrh was a lot of fun! it turns out we both like each other's work (my words and her music), so we might get together sometime and try to make something of it.

6. the day was planned badly, and i didn't have any time to eat in ottawa so i just dropped hrh off and turned right around. there was a lot of cursing in the car until i found my way back to the highway.

7. the ride back was cool, i was accompanied by great trance (mostly rev - amusia) and some french audio lessons (i learned a couple of things).

7.1 over the past couple of years i've become worried about driving alone because sitting badly makes me feel dizzy. after today i believe that it's psychosomatic. i did feel a little funny a couple of times, but then it went away as i wasn't stressing.

8. as much as i love montreal... the signage just isn't very good. the good time i made on the trans-canadian was cancelled by my having to skirt the city to get to godmother's. from there to aota's i'd have an impossible time of reading street names (not only aren't they lit, but they're positioned really awkwardly).

9. my uncle hates me. and i'm not particularly fond of him either. actually, i think it's fair to say that i think almost as highly of him as he does of me... tonight i made a comment about che guevara being a rebel without a cause (apparently i should eat my words, but that's neither here nor there), and he exploded in a fit of "totalwaste is so stupid! he's brainless! he always talks such shit! i don't want him in my house! if you want to see him, take him out for dinner or something!"

godmother had words with him, but i wasn't listening. godmother, yang and i talked for a while about poetry (godmother was quite surprised to discover that i'm not so uncreative, and a little distressed by the bleakness of my tone) and then i left to return aota's car and meet yang at my place to watch superbad. he picked it. i rate it "don't like" but aside from a few horrifying and super-unrealistic awkward moments it wasn't a terrible experience. that's not a compliment, although i did laugh a couple of times.

10. it's not 3.15, and i've had a long chat with my mum, and i'm feeling energized even though i know i need to get into bed. perhaps it's the supermoon.

gender insensitive

okay, i'm upset by the internet getting angry with mike krahulik over his transgender insensitivity.

i'm not transgender, so i'll never really understand it but i can most certainly accept it. especially after a long and enlightening lecture about gender biology where i learned just how weird male / females definitions can be. regardless, most people are not informed, and that's not because they're bad, or narrow-minded. it's because our species-wide awareness of these issues is new enough that it goes directly against what everyone's been taught since forever.

it is in our nature to fight conflicting ideas, and being antagonized doesn't assist the process.

not that i don't identify with the defensive nature of any minority that feels threatened! but it's counter-productive. and here we see a flame war on twitter that had a net negative effect for both sides. mike eventually started coming around, and that demonstrates that he's not simply a jerk. you can't demonize people who don't know about *your* minority, there are plenty of minorities you don't know or care about and that's just fine because life's too short to invest only in everyone else.

mike and jerry are the faces of the penny arcade empire, and they got that way because they're human beings, not corporate representations. *that* is why we adore them. because they're honest even when they're at their worst. judge them! but discuss things with them, instead of jumping to conclusions and putting them on the defensive.

---about the dickwolves thing: it was a really funny comic and did not in any way imply that rape is okay, and most certainly not that the guys are "rape apologists". anyone upset by this comic on those grounds is simply too stupid to "get" that [JOKE EXPLANATION WARNING] what's being ridiculed is the gaming paradigm in which your character doesn't have to care about the plight of NPC's no matter how horrible their situation is. it's saying that rape is bad, and that it's weird that these games are telling you that you don't have to care about all the victims.

which is realistic, i guess. IRL you can't save everyone.

quick friday

today began with me feeling really good. it was sunny, i was relaxed... right until i realized that i was running late. it really is quicker for me to get to work on rollerblades (by about ten minutes, approximately) and so i made the call, strapped in and headed out. only i was about ten blocks away when i realized that i'd forgotten to bring another shirt; i'd actually taken one out and left it behind anyway.

after yesterday's warning newk'd about tardiness, i arrived fifteen minutes late and had to borrow a t-shirt from him :P
[to be fair, he's been consistently late by an hour]
megaman was not impressed that aota and i hadn't informed him (oops :$).

yesterday we'd put newk'd on a critical project that i'd been forced to give up (time constraints) and another developer had failed abysmally at: compiling code using 90s borland software. it took him the whole day, but his efforts were met with resounding success and we finally have a chance to take back control of all of our code! exciting times.

i spent a fair amount of the day dealing with seating arrangements. seating arrangements have a political component, apparently, and i'm not very good at that.

happy hour was a riot, and someone reminded me of a joke or two that not only had everyone in hysterics, but saw newk'd one-upping in such a big way that i was almost in tears! also, i have successfully used wikipedia to prove my point to our interns that liquorice means "black liquorice" and that "red liquorice" isn't liquorice at all:

"red liquorice, which is extruded in a way to resemble liquorice strings, but made with strawberry, cherry, raspberry, or cinnamon flavourings as the main flavourings rather than liquorice. ... while the common name for this candy has now become "red liquorice", or often simply "liquorice", it does not taste of liquorice."
- wikipedia

i tried to leave at 6pm for 7pm boxing, but somehow ended up strapping on my blades at 6.30 and pushing like a madman to get home on time. between the exertion and the alcohol in my system, i was not in the best of states for training but aside from a few mental blocks here and there i actually did quite well! and i definitely enjoyed it.

finishing a good week of training with boxing would only have been better if i hadn't had that beer beforehand. just as i was packing up and thinking "there's no better start to the weekend", i stepped outside into the most magnificent sunset, montreal in all its glory ^_^

now gearing up for a long drive to ottawa* to get myself comfortable before my quebec driver's exam. i guess it's as good a time as any to use those french audio lessons...

* aota's daughter needs a ride to visit her boyfriend

---and in canadian news, two albertans have died in the flooding and the language police in quebec have taken up fighting spoons. these are stories competing for top spot on ctv. i'm not sure what that's telling me.

i do know that after a long argument with a quebec native who's scared that his culture and language will be eroded, i'm convinced that the solution to the problem isn't laws enforcing language usage. that's counter-productive. i believe that everyone in quebec should have to send their kids to french schools. they can and will learn english at home anyway...

---an 80's geeky childhood can now be yours! there's a crazy sale on at gog.com. i had about twenty tabs open and had to decide just how much i was willing to spend on games that i don't have time to play... but must play anyway...

*sigh*

i got some awesome stuff, though.

manic for sure

i was a long day, most of it a bit unpleasant. in addition to our network going down repeatedly (making most of us quite useless and frustrated), imperieux and i being locked out of our office for over half an hour because of a "five minute" phone call, being asked by megaman if i ever went to school (i think he was trying to be funny, but it came across shockingly condescending) and experiencing an otherwise meaningless lunch fail that had most of the development team laughing at me (not with me), i was really tired both physically and mentally and the coffee didn't help at all.

oh, yes: and aota and i had to take newk'd aside an give him an official warning for repeated tardiness. not cool.

i did have a very positive conversation with the cto, though, and it looks like work and an external interest just combined in my favour.

---i was exhausted by the time i met with metro, and so my pitch really wasn't as enthusiastic as usual. even so, she seems as professional as she is interested, she's definitely more experienced than mason, and she'll be available to get on things in about two weeks. and we totally agree on attitude towards the project! very cool. i have a good feeling about this.

kickboxing:
i did see gg between classes, and i think i made things awkward. without actually saying anything, so i guess there's a good chance that i was just being awkward all by myself. in any event the training was solid.

after showering i began my mars one application. trippy! and now that i've read through the faq i know exactly what my video needs to look like. and that if their criteria are to be believed i actually stand a good chance!

...

i suddenly found myself bouncing up and down to the music, and i've been on a crazy high since.

...

i spent the following couple of hours playing with node.js. node.js is awesome.

---i discovered today that i'm not the only one enjoying the summer but missing the snowboarding.

forehead smack

ha! i forgot two things:

1. last night i booked tickets to see SxS and flighthub's cancellation insurance seemed reasonable until i was billed for it as a per day fee instead of once-off. i called them this morning to get a refund, they were very polite and by the time i put the phone down i already had received an email confirmation and the guy had gotten it right. i was shocked!

2. the illustrator i met on the metro is happy to meet with me after work tomorrow :)

studious

wow, what a day. and it's already past my bedtime and i haven't done even a tiny bit of what i'd had planned.

being enjoyably distracted by a track from horseman didn't help :P

---day begins: sunshine through the windows and the strip search finale. the series was excellent, and while the contender i was gunning for didn't win (i'm a vasquez fan, it was a no-brainer :P) i'm really pleased to see all the good things that have come out of it! heartwarming stuff.

work:
1. rollerblading to work and spending the day in shorts and flip-flops. very cool.
2. splitting the development team into three to reduce scrum time. it was a little awkward for the first time.
3. botswana - i didn't shout "don't touch my developers!" at him but i should have. he upset one by demanding things that made no sense when he has no authority to demand anything. and he can't understand why i find him irritating.
4. the building's network has been terrible for two days now, and their (not our) it guy is not only a dumbass but he's leaving soon and doesn't care. we had to go out to l'artere for lunch just to use their wifi.
5. one of the new guys (ceh) came to me at the end of the day for a php bitch session. i could totally sympathize. he really wants to move to clojure.

blading back: to was faster than metro, back was with the wind. and a bit of inspiration from it being a beautiful afternoon. and the fact that i'd left work early and was on my way to muay thai.

muay thai was crazy, the warm-up even tougher than before and the training really good.

i spent the evening learning ruby on rails, stopping after realizing that it's most likely not as good a fit for my needs as python. dammit.

like sixteen

forget the weekend (which was really cool, i might post about it), there's just one thing on my mind right now even though i've just booked tickets to go visit SxS next month.

and that's the gentle giant (gg). seriously, i'm smitten. i was partnered up with her for most of today's lesson, and she's as sweet and pretty as she is vicious when she strikes. she makes me feel like a teenager, all awkward and unsure of how to proceed.

but proceed i really, really must.

an awaited long weekend

last night:

the pilot episode of star trek: the next generation was interesting (although the psychic character was just tedious), but what really captivated me was trying to catch riker sitting down.

i managed to get into bed early. i needed it.

---it was a good morning, sunny and with me feeling considerably less stiff and sore. as i sat down on the metro, i noticed that the girl next to me was sketching. after furtively glancing at her page and ascertaining that i liked her work, i thought about asking her if she'd be interested in working with me. i believe that bothering strangers in a closed space isn't cool, so i didn't, but then i thought about how these are the kinds of opportunities that might turn out to be really good, and then i thought "no, you can't do that" and then "really? are you really going to do this?"
by that stage we'd passed three stations, and i was running out of time. "sod it," i thought, and i popped out my headphones and said "excuse me" in my most casual voice.

my gods, she literally jumped out of her seat with a frightened squeal! i hit a 10.0 on my awkward-o-meter, and quickly apologized for scaring her. i then asked if she's currently working on a project, and she told me she's working part-time on a video game for one of the big companies. i asked if she'd be interested in working on comics, she asked me if i had a card, i babbled about arranging a meeting and she told me she'd send me her portfolio. nice!

we then proceeded to ignore each other for the rest of the ride, except to say goodbye with smiles. i'm so proud of myself for taking the chance :)

---i got in to a bit of a nightmare. the first part was what appeared to be a ddos attack on one of our servers. the second part... have i mentioned hating mysteries? two of our servers, one local and one remotely hosted, both completely disconnected, began to exhibit the same really strange behaviour. when we finally established what the foundation of that behaviour was and were even more mystified, everything went back to normal. wtf?

the rest of my day was spent managing, with one incident of my having to take a developer aside and instill in him a real fear of not using the tools we have to keep our codebase sane. i felt bad for him, but when we got up he thanked me and assured me that we were playing the same game. the others are beginning to work in a more disciplined manner, which makes me feel successful. on a similar note, i had a lot of dealings with imperieux today and things between us are fine, so i'm glad and fortunate that yesterday's unpleasantness didn't stick.

megaman told me that he had no issues with the holidays i've been planning, but that he finds it really weird that i'm so pedantic about logging my hours that i know precisely how many over or under i am. on the one hand, it would be easier to do as he says and just log eight hours a day regardless, but on the other... i feel like my knowledge gives me a certain amount of leverage when asking for a day off here and there and it's good that my information ocd is served :)

kickboxing tonight was good, but my arms still felt heavy and my punches mostly sucked. i worked really hard, though, and i definitely had fun!

it's now past bedtime for those of us who have to be up super early to get on a bus, and i've still got to pack. but it doesn't really matter. i can sleep on the bus :D

loonies for toonies

dumbest moment of the day: getting to the washing machines and discovering that the only one i had correct change for was in use, being watched by a couple of girls. they told me i'd have to use the other one, and so i quickly went all the way to the supermarket to get change... and realized on my way back that it hadn't occurred to me to ask if the girls could swap coins and save me the trouble.

*sigh*

it did score me a nice walk, though, as gorgeous skies are peeping through the clouds that are still dripping like a partially closed faucet.

unclogging

i woke early enough and with enough presence of mind to call the caretaker about my sink being clogged up for the past couple of weeks (i spoke to him about it at least a week ago).
"i'll be right up!" he said.
"great!" i said, surprised, and promptly realized that i really needed to pee. i didn't want to risk him arriving while i was relieving myself, so i decided to wait it out - of course he only arrived fifteen minutes later.

---once again i got on the same train as the intern who's difficult to talk to, only this time i made the mistake of not walking right past him :(

the big, unhappy deal of the day: being called out for shouting at imperieux about negligence. he defended me - "we're just talking" - which is how i'd felt until i was called out. then i felt bad and he looked like he was going to cry (i'm beginning to suspect that he just always has watery eyes) and that made me totally awkward around him for the rest of the day. as well as feeling like shit :(

cheshire cat lady, after all the time we've spent with her defining the process that covers her work and implementing it, has decided it's not good. she's a technical writer. for some reason i expected her to be less clueless than a regular user.

we had another hour-long demo today, this one was pre-lunch and post-too-many-fries. so i heated up my lunch and took it in with me; i wasn't actually hungry, and it didn't taste very good... the lesson learned is that i should stay away from lunchtime fries.

the new guy refuses to skype, so i tried to connect with him via irc. i haven't used irc in long years, and i totally failed :$

...

gods, i've been exhausted all day. i'm glad this is my training "day off". i desperately need this long weekend coming up!

red riding hood

almost forgot! i watched red riding hood this evening. it's a lot of fun, and a great retelling.

complimentary

well, well, well. two good things happened today.

the first being a response from mason apologizing and explaining the issues. he doesn't want to stop, so i explained my attitude and invited him to meet with me either tomorrow or on the weekend to figure out how we'll proceed. interesting that i just received a link in the mail to an illustrator's description of his work that ties in with what's happening.

the second being a rather nice compliment from megaman. after explaining to him what i'd designed (and had an intern set up after a few tries) i could almost see the lightbulb flash. "that's sick shit," he said. i didn't expect those words to pop out, but they made me feel much better than anything "managerial" would have ^_^

on a similar note, i've been in montreal almost nine months already, and i'm beginning to receive solicitations from headhunters that are getting closer and closer to where i want to be :)

---after wearing myself out with interviews and spending half an hour managing from home, i headed out to the clinic. it was pouring with rain - it would pour with rain the entire day - so i hopped on a bus that took its time. facing a dumpy, garishly-dressed middle-aged woman who picked her nose constantly. i tried looking anywhere else, but try as i might out of the corner of my eye i kept catching her rolling whatever she found into little balls and dropping them on the floor.

the medical building is really badly signed, and when i finally found the offices i was seeking i was certain i was in the wrong place. inexplicably, the heating was on much higher than the rest of the building (and it wasn't cold outside!), and i had to wait two turns before i could ask where i'd gotten to. i made an appointment to see the dermatologist... in mid-july. crud. i guess i'll have to see a regular physician first if my paranoia doesn't go away or i discover that i really do have a problem.

---the longest part of the workday involved me actually falling asleep during an online demo because the guy presenting to us was marginally less interesting and engaging than watching paint peel. he droned on and on, and was so bad that his partner was riveting by comparison even though she was monotonous too.

i was concerned about all the "containerizing" that was going on. that sounds violent to me.

---i got home just in time to get ready for training. kickboxing was... tough. tough because i have so many technique issues that i need to correct, and tough because my left wrist is a bit buggered from a while back and every time i land a good shot it really hurts me, and tough because after yesterday's training my body wasn't responding well to the best of my intentions.

one of the amazonians (the one i accidentally violated) was quite friendly towards me this evening. after class she felt faint, and i was glad to have some experience to draw on so that i could be helpful...

---i must be a hypochondriac: those health issues i didn't want to talk about seem to be winding down, and the inexplicable tiredness seems to have gone away as soon as i started eating better, so now i'm stuck with ringworm fears? makes sense.

early interviews

holy crap. i can't believe i dragged myself out of bed - perfect sleep in the rain - and straight into two hours of interviewing coops on the phone. i am exhausted!

at least i can take the opportunity to head to the clinic and make an appointment. perhaps getting some real coffee on the way.

social sonnets

inspired by the social network, i went to bed envisioning a conspiracy theory involving mason running off with my ideas to pen the comic without me - possibly instigated by moonlighter. [dammit! why did i tell him his name?]

i hope i'm just being ridiculous, but either way i've just found myself losing sleep over it and that's not how successful projects begin.

my email:
Hi mason, I hope you're well.

It is with deepest regret that I send you this email. Your unwillingness to communicate with me after I have entrusted you with my discovery and my documents is both hurtful and not at all in the spirit of collaboration.

I cannot understand why you are doing this but this is something so important to me that I'm losing sleep over it. This is not how I envisioned embarking on such a wonderful, world-shaking and potentially lucrative project, and although I really like you and I love your illustration I cannot see how this could possibly work.

If you are interested in pursuing, at the very least you could discuss with me whatever concerns you may have. As I said before, the first part of the project is to figure out a process for collaboration.

If you are not interested, I would greatly appreciate it if you'd let me know. I sincerely hope that that's not the case.

Yours faithfully,

totalwaste

ugh. now to try and sleep.