An Atypical Life

spent some time calming my ex down last night. It was good. We’re able to be friends and it was nice.

Except she got me fucking sick :( oh well :) Hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning.

I just need — some horizontal mambo action :P

thanks and your roommate for making that an incredibly fun drag queen show and dance night! Now if all of the people there weren’t already taken :( And thanks for the $2.25 to get back home…you guys are “da bomb” and I shall return the favor as soon as I am employed again.

Found out I can get my temp Canadian pilot’s license easily enough, so I’m gonna do that before the leaves change so I can take friends for leaf peeping. weeeee!!

Rock climbed again this morning, more 5.6 and 5.7 climbs that assaulted my forearms, then some yummy bloody marys and greasy food. I’m exhausted, and am turning in for a while…

I got to go sailing today for the first time, in a 24′ boat. I discovered quite a few similarities with flying, the most important of which is hysteresis, or the tendency for there to be lag in the controls. You might notice you’re drifting a bit too far to the left (port), correct with the tiller, and overcorrect because you’re too impatient for the boat (or plane) to respond. So you set up these little oscillations in the boat (or plane) where you go back and forth until you finally converge on the right heading (or altitude, or what have you.) I wonder if creating a little hysteresis trainer in Java on a webpage or something might help teach people how to control systems that have hysteresis built in…something with sound and color feedback, perhaps?

But it was great fun. Thank you Gavin and Kim!

Tonight, perhaps tangoes with ? Then climbing again tomorrow morning! :)

What an impersonal interview I just had. I trek down to this place in the rain, am escorted to a room, told I’m taking a 1-hour Java test, but on PAPER because the computer is broken (what a way to instill confidence!) I then proceed to fill out about 10 pages of multiple choice and short-answer questions in an hour, then turn in the exam.

That’s it. Barely a “Hi, how are you.” No resume review. No meeting with anyone but someone from HR, who I’m sure was just doing her job. I guess this is what happens when you have a job market like today’s.

Oh, and they won’t get back to me for 1-2 weeks. Wow.

Anyway, see this for a sort of party invite…

So these new friends of mine (Hi Mike and Tyla!) encouraged me to go out today and try indoor wall climbing. It was a blast. After a false start or two (my newbie partner didn’t show, so I had to wait around for a while to do my lesson) I got harnessed up, re-learned belaying, and got going. It was totally fun and easy.

My big achievement: A 60 foot climb, at difficulty “5.7″ (this means semi-large footholds, and enough of them, but still pretty damn challenging), on my first night out. This stuff is a blast, and really gives a great sense of accomplishment. Besides, it gets your mind off of anything but survival. Totally awesome!

Tomorrow, interview #1. Wish me luck! It’s a pretty poor job with poor pay, but it’d be a job.

This is hilarious:

Yes, that text says “Supplied with removable butt plug and contoured cork ring for hood.”

Just search google’s catalog for the words “butt plug.” Can you believe this is from a catalog called “Mud Hole” ? :D

Some of my friends have entirely too much time on their hands. (No, I didn’t find this myself!)

“I’d feel a lot better about the [U.S.] President’s handling of this global nuclear brinksmanship if he could actually pronounce the word nuclear.”

–The Onion

So on Saturday night in Boston, I went to the infamous Mary Chung’s on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge’s Central Square. It’s more of a tradition than because of the food quality (though I used to love the velvet chicken and the pan-fried raviolis). But there is one dish there that I like so much that I decided I’d drop my vegetarian mantle for it — after not having eaten real meat in almost 18 months, and even then only sporadically.

It’s Mary Chung’s Famous “Swan La Shau Chow.” 4 pork wontons covered in the spiciest of soy sauce-based broths, poured over a bed of sprouts to help you eat every last bit of that delicious sauce. It’s more filling than you realize, and it’s an absolute delight from the instant your throat starts to burn with firey goodness. But that wonderful feeling was soon to be replaced with the most intense of pain.

The reason I became a vegetarian isn’t because I am religiously or ethically opposed to eating meat. It’s not even because I don’t like the taste. It’s because I literally don’t seem to be able to digest it correctly anymore. I grew up on steak, pork chops, pot roasts, baked chicken and the like, but now, even a small quantity of meat binds my intestine up tighter than a Roman Catholic’s arsehole. Everything starts to back up. The last time I checked it, pork and chicken would back me up for about 2-3 days, while red meat would insert a proverbial cork in my bottom for a full week.

So this time, I gingerly ate 3 1/2 of the 4 pork dumplings in the Swan, enjoyed the feeling in my tummy, and…waited. And things started backing up, as expected. I became the Roach Motel of humans: four large meals checked in, but none checked out. I gained 3 – 4 kilos or so. And got into a lot of discomfort.

This morning, I awoke to some severe, sharp pain in my … anus. (sorry this isn’t going to be pretty!) With some, ahem, great difficulty, I finally managed to poop out what only could have been the remains of 3 1/2 pork dumplings. And it was excruciatingly difficult, as if I was giving birth.

I think I learned my lesson. No more meat. I just can’t handle it. Not even for Mary Chung’s.

Started with watching, oddly, Miyazaki’s Spirited Away at Kendall Square Cinema, before I had to take care of some very personal and, frankly, very troubling and difficult business. It was odd to be watching a Japanese film, in English, in Boston … and then totally unprepared for the INCREDIBLE sense of nostalgia when I saw the countryside, the telephone poles, the concrete. I hated these things, still do, yet why does seeing them animated on a big screen move me to tears? I guess I feel unrooted, started to “belong” to a place once again just as I rip myself out of it… -_-

Started with and at John Harvard’s Brew House and got pleasantly sloshed on a great cask-conditioned stout. They had to leave before Mary’s :( Met with , , and ate WAY too much Mary Chung’s. broke his arm which makes life hard, now I have to go and see him in Chelmsford! But it’s not his fault…. Also meeting up with Deb, an OLD friend I met here in Boston and who now lives in NYC, who couldn’t make dinner last night but stayed extra long in Boston JUST to hand with me. She’s a sweetie, I gotta get her hooked up with a LJ! :)

Now off to Sound Bites for brunch, maybe some more fun with bellebet and rogueactor, then off back to Toronto! What a whirlwind weekend, but SO GOOD for my soul.

Boston area people: Mary Chung’s (Central Square, right on Mass. Ave in Cambridge, across from the McDonalds. Central Square stop on the Red Line), Saturday (tomorrow!), 7PM. Come one, come all. I also have all day Sunday free, except for a potential early morning bikeride with if I can manage it. Be there or be hungry.

From Tober:

<tober> Get off the train at Central Square, go outside, walk along mass ave “outbound” (toward Harvard, not toward Kendall) a few blocks, Mary Chung’s is on the right side of Mass Ave near Burger King.