So very, very hungry.
If you’ve read previous posts you know how I go on ad nauseum about the evils of P-90X and how I’m always getting up early and jumping around like an idiot in a vain attempt to be physically fit. I apologize, but that ain’t changing anytime soon. The jumping around part, that is- I’ll try to find other stuff to write about.
There’s on simple reason why I’m still writing about busting my ass with a 90-day program almost three years after first starting it; I loves me some food.
I like to think that I’m not neurotic about it; I don’t binge and purge or starve myself (ha! If you know me and my lack of willpower you know what a joke that is) or live on McDonald’s and Ben & Jerry’s. I just tend to… forget about the healthy stuff when I’m hungry, or within proximity of junk food, or you know, awake. And damn, I love beer.
So, I decided to make a serious change; no more meat. I’m still eating eggs and drinking milk, but no more steak, chicken, fish, turkey, nothing. Maybe that way, I won’t have to P-90X until I die.
So yeah, I’d kick a bunny for a cheeseburger. Or failing that, I’ll seriously consider eating the bunny.
I got this from last week’s issue of The Stranger:
I failed the geek test: Isn’t She-Hulk Hulk’s Cousin?
First of all, what kind of spell-check lets through the word “Peterbprough”?
Anyways. The story:
Around June 23rd or so we arrived in Peterborough and had a great first day visiting with my mom and step-dad Dave. We sat on the patio, chatted for a long time, and I drank more beer in one day than I had between January and June, but it was hot enough that I sweated it out faster than I could drink it, and didn’t get smashed and make an ass out of myself. Not even kidding. Even better, the storm clouds on the horizon waited for the end of our evening before rolling in with a HUGE rainstorm.
After saying our good nights, my mom showed Jeff & me to our room in the basement, which was amazing. It looked like one of those places that a designer had been called in to do. The only downside is that there were twin single beds, and we had to push them together- in the middle of the night I nearly fell through the middle. It’s a very good thing that I didn’t.
Just as we were about to turn out the lights, I plugged in the travel fan and all the lights went out. I freaked because I thought I’d blown every fuse in the house, but it turns out the storm killed everyone’s power. Mom came down to let us know, and we went to sleep listening to the storm. Very relaxing.
Aaaand then the shit hit the fan.
Mom & Dave’s place is about thirty feet from Buckhorn Lake, and the water table is amazingly high. So, Dave has always had a sump pump to keep his basement dry, and it works like a charm.
While there’s electricity to power it.
I was dead to the world, but when the power came back and our lights popped on, Jeff woke up immediately and went to turn them off. He hopped out of bed and landed in icy, ankle-deep water. If it were me, that’s when the cussing would have started, but Jeff just gave me a poke and asked me to get up and help him try to rescue stuff from the wet. Luckily the room or basement was on an angle and only half the room on an angle was underwater. Only a corner of our suitcase was soaked and our clothes were mostly okay. I nearly had a heart attack when I remembered that I’d left my iPhone on the floor on my side of the bed, but the water had only come up to within a few inches of it.
Anyway, mom was very Zen about the whole thing and so was Dave. They called a restoration company to rescue as much as they could, everything salvageable was packed away and the bedroom was torn out down to the studs.
The next night we slept in the sunroom, which was gorgeous and like camping but with sheets, and after another relaxing day we packed up and headed to Montreal.
Now, if you’re reading this you probably know me, and know I have a propensity for being a bit of an ass- if there’s a way to say something stupid or miscommunicate, I’ll find it.
We were doing the hugging goodbye thing and I said to mom “Well, I know you haven’t had a good visit with us”, meaning it sucked that she had to do all this crap with the flood while entertaining us. However, mom’s hearing sucks and she thought I’d said (after not being home for six years) “Well, you know we haven’t had a good visit,” and so she started crying.
Oy.
I straightened it out but it was a shitty way to end our first visit, and after visiting Montreal and Ottawa and coming back for another visit before flying out we made sure to make mom and Dave know how much we appreciated their hospitality and how much we loved staying with them.
Jeff was so anxious though, he kept breaking their stuff. We’re still looking for a replacement butter dish that he inadvertently spiked like a football.
Because we’re WASPS and it’s in our DNA, I wrote thank you cards to both Jeff’s parents and mine thanking them for hosting us on our trip to Ontario.
Let me be clear- we had an amazing time in Goderich, Ottawa and Peterbprough. However, it says something about our vacation to Ontario when my Mom includes in her return letter the phrase “sorry about the flood”.
That story is coming up next.
I stopped playing video games on a serious basis (ie: hours at a time) a year or two ago when I did the math and figured I’d spent a solid month playing GTA: San Andreas. That being said though, since I got my iPhone I’ve been slipping a little.
I’m embarrassed to say though, I’m friggin’ terrible at playing video games. That’s annoying, being interested in something you have zero aptitude for. What’s worse though is that Jeff is a freakin rock star at gaming, which he has zero interest in.
Since we met, whenever I got to part of a game that I was stuck at, say Lara Croft couldn’t swing onto the alligator or Guybrush Threepwood couldn’t open the vault, I would try for an hour with ever increasing levels of frustration and blood pressure. Then I’d come to my senses and shamefacedly hand over the controller to Jeff, who usually had never played the game before.
I’d explain the concept, he’d look at the controls, peer at the screen, and press a few buttons. Then, a “tada!” sound would come from the tv, he’d hand back the controller and go back to building a website or programming a mainframe or whatever else he does on his laptop.
So yeah, you can understand why I’m pretty much done with anything that involves extra lives or combo moves. I can still beat Jeff at some things, though. I just need some time to figure out what those things might be.
I was walking down Granville Street after work this afternoon on my way to pick Jeff up at his office when I came across this:
The guys behind Fringe were downtown shooting a scene that looked like a follow-up to last season’s finale. I didn’t see Pacey, but that fourth pic is either the female lead, whose name I can’t remember (I lie, it’s Anna Torv) but I call her Serious-Blonde-Lady-Who-Needs-Product-Desperately or at least it’s her stunt-double. Either way, she seems very nice.
If you don’t love a tiny chubby marmot eating a biscuit, you have no soul.
Jeff and I, despite having been together for going on six years, are still in love. Obnoxiously so. Our friends have even made a point of bringing it to our attention. Still, we persist. Like most couples, we have our shorthand, inside jokes, and games.
Like punchbuggies.
If you’re between the ages of 1 and 100, you know the game- give a shot in the arm to your buddy when you see a VW Bug. No big. Jeff and I though- we’re Olympic level punchbuggers.
I have just now decided that we need a new name for that.
Anyhow… So, we have extra rules. Double-hits if the Bug is close but nobody’s noticed it. Double-hits if it’s a classic. Also double-hits if I had a bad day or if Jeff said something snarky.
So, we have the game. Yesterday, I was walking Jeff and Rum home from their office and spotted a lime-green Bug zooming down Helmcken Street, and gave Jeff the customary “punchbuggy green, no punchbacks” and gave him a shot in the arm. He turned around too late to see the Bug.
Jeff politely inquired to my about whether there really was a green Bug. I politely confirmed my previous smack was correct and offered to kick him in the butt for doubting my honesty.
“Besides,” I continued, “when have you ever known me to fudge a punchbuggy?”
Jeff stopped and looked at me for a minute, with that old familiar look that says “there’s something truly filthy within arm’s reach of that phrase, I just can’t find it.”
I nodded. “Yep. Fudge a punchbuggy. We gotta find something really rude to apply this to.”
Suggestions? Maybe, “lie to you? I’d sooner fudge a punchbuggy.” How about “I’m so hungry I could fudge a punchbuggy.” My favourite so far is “I was so drunk I think I fudged a punchbuggy. Now I have to go to the free clinic and get tested.”
The English language is just poetic, no?
BTW, we also have a game where we kick each other in the ass every time we see a Porsche. Not even kidding.
We’re just wrecked.
Back on Saturday night, hustled over to North Vancouver and scooped up the dog (who is still pissed at us for dumping him in doggie prison, it seems) and still haven’t really gotten our feet under us again.
No real stories to tell regarding our odyssey to Ontario and Quebec- too much happened far too quickly. I’m sure there will be something shortly, but right now I still have a whole bunch of crap to police up.
I will say though: I’m so pissed that my plants look better after two weeks under Kelli’s care than when under mine. Fuckers!
Jeff & I are headed out to Ontario shortly, to see family and possibly be carried off my mosquitos. I’ll try to post from the road, but given how JEFF FAILED HIS ROAD TEST, I’ll be doing all of the driving, and so it’ll be hit and miss at best.
In the meantime, enjoy some lolz, the internet’s answer to “I ain’t got no content of my own!”
.(Boy, he seems intense about the sprinkles.)
Hopefully I’ll get another post in before we take off. (>.<)
I was surfing through iTunes looking for photo apps when I found this beauty. I think it’s great when the mentally unbalanced can take a weekend away from their medication and get into some productive application programming.
So yeah, this one is a little weird, in a cool way. Apparently I’m kind of a published photographer. Who knew?
A while ago I got an email from a strange person telling me “good news!” Usually emails like this involve hot Russian girls wanting me (uh, thanks no) or tell me that my late, long lost Nigerian cousin left me all his money and I can have it if I confirm my identity with my credit card number. For my answer to that, please see previous “uh, thanks no”.
Just out of curiosity I opened the email when I had the time and inclination, and instead of the expected usual internet scam, I got a request from an internet site / iPhone app developer called Schmap, asking if I’d give permission for them to include a photo I’d taken and posted on Flickr in their Vancouver tourism edition.
So yeah, very cool. It’d be nice if there were money, but I can now add professional phertographer to my resumé.
I saw the date on part I here – sorry it’s taken so long to get to part II. Hopefully it’s part II like “Godfather part II” and not “Charlie’s Angels part II”.
Shut up, I liked the original. Movies that rip off old tv shows rarely go well, and I still feel bad for Drew Barrymore.
Cue voice-over: “Previously, on E.P.:”
Last we saw, my ESL student Dmitri was driving me through the middle of nowhere back to my shitty little apartment in Achinsk, Siberia after a long night of English classes for a bunch of nice enough people who in retrospect all sounded like Borat. We stop behind a van that is in turn stopped at a railway crossing and see a tied-up and hooded guy fall out of said van and get run over a lil’ bit, at which point a few guys get out of the van and start kicking around the unlucky guy on the ground.
And so I’m freaking the fuck out.
***
I’m not jumping out of the car screaming and running away or anything, but I am checking really quickly to see if Dmitri’s cell phone is where he left it attached to the dash, and if I remember the podunk-Russian-middle-of-nowhere version of 911, and also wondering A LOT why Dmitri isn’t flooring it in reverse.
We look at each other and I say slowly and clearly, “we should go now” and even point to the side of the van away from the kicking guys, but Dmitri just kind of shrugs and gets out of the car and walks towards the guys who have by now stopped kicking the tied-up guy and instead shoved him back into the van.
I of course am not on board with this, but don’t say anything. I would have right away though if I’d noticed through my adrenaline that Dmitri took the keys with him.
The van guys see Dmitri coming up and come to meet him halfway between the car and van and now that they’re square in our headlights I see they’re very big, scary looking guys – extras from Eastern Promises rather than GoldenEye.
Dmitri waves and he and the scary men chat for a bit while I look around the car for a gun or samurai sword or rocket launcher, because at this point I’m thinking that there’s better than even odds that we’re about to be murdered and chucked into the woods to be eaten by wolves. Dmitri was driving a BMW M Series and a popular Russian pastime is carjacking, even when they’re busy kidnapping someone. Plus, there really are wolves everywhere in Siberia. That’s the reason why Prokofiev didn’t write a classical music piece called “Peter And The Duck”.
After ten seconds that seem like ten minutes, Dmitri shakes hands with the scary guys and comes back to the car. He hops in, starts it up and we watch the scary guys climb back into the Aerostar and drive off. I waited for their taillights to fade out in front of us as they pulled away before I said anything.
I was still very freaked out, so I don’t remember word for word what I said, but it was something close to “I wrote down their plate number, we can call the police and let them know what’s going on.”
However, I do remember exactly what Dmitri said, in his broken English and thick Russian accent: “Oh, is okay. They are the police.”
Ah, Russia. Home of frostbite, the $20 Big Mac, and the tax police who will do things to you that make Guantanamo look like Disneyworld.
Years later now, I’m sitting in our condo in Vancouver, watching the rain fall (even though I can’t hear it anymore) and thinking about my adventures in Russia… I don’t miss it even a little tiny bit.
