First Snowfall

Worky Worky, Dancy Dancy

Crazy week - tons of teaching.  I'm so personally invested in this career endeavor that I spend hours of unpaid time researching and preparing lessons and plans for my clients...  It's fun to be a little bit stressed out, and it's great to never be bored, but I'm oscillating at all times between a buzz of excitement to full-blown anxiety.  I think it's burning a lot of energy.  My first observations are next week and I'm terrified, but my mentor called me today and we talked for an hour about standards and the goals of observation, and I feel much better.

My headset is my friend.

In about 40 minutes, I'm taking the metro to Studio 2720 to have my first full-blown standard lesson with R and his coach, who is apparently a national champion.  I'm nervous because I am sure to be awkward, but determined because it's the only way to get better.  R picked me up on Wednesday evening and took me from the Berri-UQAM metro station to Conseil des Arts, where we had an entire ballroom all to ourselves for one hour.  It was gorgeous - sparkling lighting, a black baby grand Yamaha in the corner, soaring windows overlooking Rue Sherbrooke at twilight - and all for 9.50 an hour.  We split the negligible cost.

We worked on silver chacha for the majority of our hour, and then we did some foxtrot.  He isn't sure about the follower's choreography for his gold routine, so we really need this lesson tonight.  I suspect I need desperate help with my frame, but R says it feels solid.  Gold?  Really?  I discovered that R used to be a high-placing (top three) gold dancer in all dances before his partner stopped dancing.  It's really intimidating, but he insists, insists on this partnership because he's having a lot of fun.  Apparently, his ex-partner was quite a snob.

A little bit of ballroom background for the uninitiated.  There are two schools of dancesport; American and International.  I dance International exclusively, but American is very popular and tends to be a lot more gaudy, in my opinion, while International is more...  Finessed?  Difficult?

So!  In the International school, there are two categories of dances; Latin and Standard. Latin includes chacha/rumba, samba, jive and paso doble.  Standard includes waltz, foxtrot, tango, quickstep and Viennese waltz.  Somebody who dances all of them is called a Ten Dancer.  I can only dance nine of them - I've never learned paso.

And, for all of these dances, there are 7 amateur (meaning non-professional) levels, in increasing skill - newcomer, bronze, silver, gold, novice, pre-champ and champ.  Novice and above dancers are much less constrained than dancers in the levels below them, who have to adhere to a strict syllabus of figures or risk being disqualified.  There are also Junior, Youth and Senior divisions to keep kids and old people competing within their age groups.

So, I am pretty much silver.  R is gold, and better than me.  Sigh.

Snow is forecasted for tomorrow.  If it truly snows (meteorologists up here tend to disagree widely and nobody actually knows what will happen), I will take pictures.

Tuesday Morning Update

Yesterday was my first busy work day (apart from orientation) since I resigned from my old position in August.  Clients would request me 30 minutes in advance, which isn't much warning and doesn't give me much prep time.  Caspian is sick with a relentless cold, so we didn't go to French class for the first time - me opting instead to go grocery shopping.  There were Americans in line fumbling with the wrong currency and swiping their credit cards backwards, etc.  I love PayPass.  There's a little computer chip embedded flush within my credit card and I just have to hold it over a little pad to pay, kind of like the Opus card for the metro.

Pic:  Sick Caspian with fuzzy friend.

R, my dance partner, called me yesterday a few times, trying to reserve practice space for us at Conseil des Arts and schedule a joint lesson with Mireille.  I can tell that he's excited about me.  Maybe he sees potential in me, maybe he sees a similar motivation, or maybe he just likes me, but he seems thrilled and says so.  It's nice.

Today is shaping up to be moderately busy, too.

Stupid Facebook! Nyah nyah!

In my pajamas wearing footies and...  Standard shoes.  Doing heel turns across the kitchen floor.  And now in Latin shoes, doing spiral turns.

I'm going to avoid Facebook until all of the comp insanity passes and I can more easily overcome my jealousy and shame [at not being a better dancer].  Stupid Facebook.  Inciting within me feelings that I'd rather not experience, reminding me of people I'd rather forget.  I'm here now, in a completely different place, and I'm establishing my position.  I love/hate Facebook and often wish that I were strong enough to scrap my account and tend to my real relationships.  And these are going to be real ones and I'm going to be my real self, not some shoddy, overblown iteration.

Let's all be nervous and awkward and lovely and real together.

You know, sometimes it's less selfish to be more selfish.  More selfish, as in focusing on oneself here and now and upon the people one interacts with on a daily basis, and those one truly loves.

DANCEDANCEDANCE!

So I just had one of the best dance experiences in a while and I wanted to crow about it to somebody other than Caspian.

I met my potential partner, R, at Studio 2720 at 2 PM - I took the metro for years and years and then walked 15 more minutes in the chilly but beautiful Quebec fall weather.  I arrived hot and sweaty and nervous, shook hands with my tryout partner and we began our lesson with Pierre, who is funny and easygoing.  It was an interesting lesson, as R is very French Canadian and his English is not perfect - but still 10x better than my French!  Pierre kept switching languages to explain finer points of technique to us.

We spent about 35 minutes on silver chacha:  It went awesomely; R is a great dancer and very self-confident.  I learned my first few silver figures, which I had piddled around with previously - I got a real taste of them today.  We did spiral turns, timed steps, cuban breaks and split cuban breaks, and we pretty much had our little routine down by the end of the 35 minutes - each of us having trouble with different things, which was reassuring to me; our Latin levels were similar, although his technique was maybe a little bit better than mine.  I was glad he was a little bit confuzzled.  :)

Then we changed shoes and worked on foxtrot, which is not nearly as familiar to me as tango and waltz - but I was about 200% better than I thought, because my leaders (R and Pierre) were both great.  I can follow competently in all standard dances with a good lead and my timing is good.  However, my heel turns are faked at best and abominable at worst.  Pierre was totally laughing at my attempts!  Ah well, as long as I could do something during that beat and step off on the correct foot at the right time, I was fine.  My frame wasn't even all that bad.

R and I were both excited about each other, regardless of our different levels of experience, and have decided to continue a regular partnership until whenever.  He has a contact downtown and can get private studio space with music for us for $10 an hour, which is much better for me than traveling an hour north.  He also drove me to the Berri-UQAM metro station, which cut like 20 minutes from my trip home.  We scheduled a lesson for next Friday and will likely meet to practice before then.  Splitting the cost of lessons is so much more reasonable!

EXCITEMENT AND HAPPY!

Goodbye, Grumpy

Kiska sleeping in the dim bedroom this afternoon.

I'm feeling pretty content right now.  I was Grumpy McCrankybutt yesterday, but a good nights' sleep, plenty of exercise and some positive work experiences have lifted my spirits.  My client today was a nice, tired young man from France who had a long week; I enjoyed teaching him.  He's a motivated student and eager to speak.

My entire day was slow and lovely - a bit stressed in the morning and full of work, but still lovely.  It was cold and clear outside with a very strong wind (23 mph sustained), but cozy inside and punctuated by strains of the gorgeous soundtrack of Howl's Moving Castle.  Go rent it, you'll love it.  The music is pretty potent escapism; think steampunk Victorian without all the uptightness.  I have decided that endless days of bliss and relaxation do not amount to a happy life.  The giddiness I feel after surmounting a challenge is so much better than uninterrupted idleness.

Il Pleut

Looking down our street today, in the rain.

It is a cold, dark, rainy day.  I can always gauge how heavy it's raining by the pace of one particular drop that falls from the eaves and strikes the wooden box that houses our dryer vent.  It sounds like a little drum in the back of the house, and it's definitely at an allegro-ish tempo right now.

Jesper jumps up onto my desk and stands beguilingly on my schedule.  His tail is fluffy and waving shyly and he stands there, a puffy, 14 lb. lump of happy kitty.  He leans into my hand as I'm petting him and squints his little eyes.  He makes me so cheerful.

The wheels of cars on the street outside make swooshing sounds as they swill through puddles.  The staccato raindrop taps out its morose little march as I sip coffee in the silence.  I hear purring in the distance.  The French verb to purr is ronfler.  It also means to snore.

Our autumn garden, just outside our front door.

Caspian won't be home until maybe 10 or 11 tonight because of plans with friends, which means I have an entire rainy day to myself.  Nobody has had time to book lessons with me since my schedule opened only yesterday, and I doubt anybody will add lessons today...  Although it's possible, since clients can book lessons up to 30 minutes before they begin.  Which means I have to be close to my computer at all times to make sure I'm not requested.  I haven't been able to find bakers' flour or bread flour at any nearby supermarkets or specialty grocery stores (it has a high gluten content compared to all-purpose and pastry flours, and rises spectacularly), which is disappointing.  We had to buy our first non-homemade loaves of bread last night.  I think I will visit a bakery and ask where to buy bakers' flour.

Gah.

I have a little office in the sitting room of our apartment, containing my desk, desk chair, a bookshelf with all of my favorite books in it, my Japanese and French textbooks and a letter file.  There are also two tiny glass lamps for ambiance, an inlaid wooden pencil case I bought in Sorrento, Italy, my eeePC and one of our new Panasonic cordless phones.  I'm all ready to begin working, I have my software up, I'm logged into internal chat, my hands-free headset is being shipped as I type.  My mock lesson, which was challenging, was this morning.

I'm feeling rather uncourageous right now.  And vulnerable.

To Look into God's Eyes

Dream:

My family (parents and two sisters) and I stopped at the house where I spent quite a bit of my young childhood to see how it looked after 15 years.  We sneaked inside, and found a very strange and fascinating place, full of massive rooms stacked to the ceiling with books and trinkets, recording studios and...  Huge columned halls full of beaten copper baffles hanging from the ceiling like sails.  I would look into a bathroom and remark to my sister something like, "Look, this floor!  Remember it?"  In the dream, the speckled blue floor tiles were utterly familiar and objects of sentimental reminiscing, but when I woke up, I realized that my brain had invented both the speckled blue floor tiles AND the feeling of familiarity because I'd never seen anything like them in my life.

As I entered the columned hall, which was about two or three stories high with airy warehouse windows near the ceiling, Japanese lacquered wall paneling, bamboo floors and those paper-thin copper sheets, a man, one of the house owners, came in.  The air eddied in subtle cycles through the room.  I asked him if he had bought the lot next door to have room for this addition to the house, and he said yes.  I questioned him about the copper baffles, and he told me that they and the entire room were both a tribute to and a habitat for the wind ursulas.  "Wind ursulas?"  I was perplexed.

Apparently, his life's work had been first creating, and then breeding, wind ursulas, which were perhaps some of the most beautiful things my brain has ever dreamed up.  They were delicate, lovely, diaphanous mobiles with gentle consciousnesses of their own.  They were made of what looked like crystal, hair-thin fibers of spun glass and platinum, and sheets of the lightest, newest layer of spring snow.  They slowly undulated through the air like jellyfish, expanding and contracting and exploring my face with touches like breaths.  I watched them swimming through the room with almost spiritual reverence, recognizing them as things of surpassing beauty and impossibility.  I looked back into the man's sad, kind eyes and saw god.

I think my sleeping mind knew that such things can only exist in dreams.

A Recipe for You

It may not look like much, but it was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever cooked.  I had no idea pork shoulder would turn out so well.  We had it with hoisin (a sweet potato based Chinese condiment) sauce, steamed short grain rice, katsuo furikake and steamed green beans.  The pork was melt-in-your-mouth tender.  I'm going to use the rich, flavorful sauce it produced to make noodles tomorrow.

Recipe:

1 c water
1/2 c mirin
1/2 c soy sauce
1/4 c sake
1 small clove garlic, pressed
.75 lb. pork shoulder, sliced into chunks

Brown pork pieces in a tasteless oil, such as canola, in your medium-sized dutch oven, turning until browned on all sides.  Set the meat aside in a bowl and pour out excess oil (do not scrape the pork cracklings from the bottom of the pan).  Replace the meat, and then pour the sauce ingredients over it.  The pork chunks should be only just covered by the sauce.  Simmer on very low for 2 hours.  Do not allow the sauce to boil - it will make the meat tougher and reduce the sauce.  Dip pieces in hoisin sauce for an inexpensive, flavorful and rich meat course that pairs well with simply-prepared and healthy side dishes.

To feed four, you will have to double this recipe.

Seriously guys, this is a gem.  Write it down!

Experiments!

As much as I love the city, there's one atmospheric phenomenon that really irritates me.  I'll call it channeling.  Imagine you're walking down a street on a lovely, cool fall day.  You're enjoying your music.  You pat the head of a ginormous Saint Bernard.  Then, you come to a particular intersection and WHAM!  Frigid wind rocks you on your feet and blows through your clothes as if you weren't wearing any.  Your eyes watering, you finally stagger through the intersection and continue on your way, and the wind disappears.

Particular city streets channel the wind.  It's so frustrating!

I am inventing a recipe tonight, and I think it will be a journey of ultimate deliciousness.  We bought stewing pork the other night.  We aren't really pork eaters at all, but it was cheap and we decided to experiment.  Stewing pork is cut from the shoulder and is generally pretty tough, so I surmise that I can simmer it for a couple hours and have it turn out tender and juicy.  But what to simmer it in?

Then I remembered eating simmered pork belly at I's house a couple months ago, and my mouth watered.  Pork shoulder isn't pork belly, but I am absolutely positive that it would taste delicious simmered in that sweet, salty liquid.  So, I went to the Japanese/Asian grocery store across the way and bought mirin (a very sweet rice wine), soy sauce and hoisin sauce.  I plan on putting the pork pieces in a dutch oven and covering them with a mixture of water, soy sauce, mirin, sake and garlic, and letting them cook to perfection for two hours during French class.  The sweet, rich hoisin sauce will go perfectly with the salty pork...  I hope!

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Shockingly Predictable

An old friend of mine has slid back into touch, and it's my fault.  I'm still not sure why I contacted her, but I did.  There were lots of reasons.  She just had a baby.  I wanted to shock her by still thinking of her.  I'm nosy.  Maybe I miss her.  I don't understand her and I have always, always been the one to provide the maintenance required for us to be "in touch."  If I neglect this maintenance, she ditches or fades away or turns inward - but as soon as I ask her about herself, she's right there again.  At least she isn't pushy, but it still always feels like she counts others lucky to be her friends, and something others must do in order for her to deign to reciprocate.

Gah, I am sure I shouldn't be writing such arbitrary (or armpitrary, as I originally typed) stuff about real people who really probably could find me...  But I don't think she cares enough to.  I say I tried to "shock" her by thinking of her, but I've done it so many times that it's really an ordinary thing to happen.  I daresay she expects it, and I'm falling into my old role as the sub.

I should have let her go and have her life with her new baby and whatnot without burning with curiosity about how she deals with this new insanity.  And it's totally insane to me, to think of this particular individual reproducing.  Not a shame, not a joke, just mind-blowingly immature or poorly thought-out, but what the hell do I know?

But you know what?  I loved her.  It just sucks that she doesn't love me back.  I don't think she ever did, even when we were innocent kids.  Maybe after this little flame is extinguished by the slow-moving but relentless zephyr of time, I'm going to let the ashes grow cold and blow away.

OK Go - Montreal 2010

It was a dark and stormy night...

I've been wanting to post for a few days but we have been without internets since Wednesday afternoon.  At first, we thought it was because Caspian exploded them (the internets) after hacking into our landlord's router.  We changed our minds after our phone line failed to be installed, but recently reasserted that Caspian had in fact (brr, the bitter and rainy wind was just howling through the courtyard) exploded the internets during his exploits.  Our landlord had (and still has) no idea and called somebody out to fix the router.  It's dismaying how much I missed the internet.  It's also dismaying how much I got done in the meantime.

I just bought tickets to see OK Go tomorrow night at Le National.  They put on such an awesome show and we really can't miss it, considering they are playing 13 minutes from our house (by metro).

In other banal personal news, my haircut has withstood its first washing with flying colors.  Not only was it easily duplicated, it barely takes any work at all and is now in perfect condition for the first time in maybe 8 years.  It arrays itself into the ideal flaring teardrop shape on its own in the back, and requires only a few passes with a round brush in front.  I'm absurdly protective of my hair now that it contains nary a split end.  I lovingly coax tangles out of it with my fingers and only very carefully run a brush through it after it's dry.  I think Davi the Syrian Stylist's final pronunciation will be quite unavoidable.

I always underestimate what big attitude adjustments very simple changes can make.

During my internet-free time, I dragged out my lifting handbooks, opened Caspian's beautiful set of 40 lb. chrome free weights and kicked my own butt with yoga stretches (mostly for my still-hurt back) followed by a 45-minute heavy duty upper body session and 12 minutes of plyometrics.  I even made a new Microsoft Works calendar to log the exercises, reps and weights I choose each day.  Working out 3-6 times per week has been such an integral part of my personal agenda for so many years and I've done so much weight lifting that committing to a new routine requires very little motivation.  Now that I know my future work schedule for the next few months, I'm confident that I have a nice block of time during which to put more focused effort into exercising, since I've only been running for the past few months.  I need to establish a cardiovascular and anaerobic routine that doesn't rely so heavily on it, now that cold weather is setting in and I'd rather spend possible gym membership money on dance lessons...

I spent many years basing my self-worth upon my obsessive worship of my diet and workout schedule and I refuse to do it again.  Those shows that glorify diet and exercise as a sort of personal religion (ex. Biggest Loser) are sending a harmful message to the population.  Is there anything fun about living your life in the grip of a mania centering around your looks and the foods you eat?  Is there time and energy left to have passion for anything else?

Diet and exercise should be means to an end (a long and healthy life) arising out of respect for one's body; a hobby at most, and nothing more.

This post is all over the place.

Studios, Injuries and Syrian Stylists

I found my studio.  My beautiful, wonderful studio, and it's only...  AN HOUR AWAY.  ::facepalm::  But, I still made the trip north and discovered Studio 2720, and the generous and venerable owners and dancers Mireille and Pierre.

The metro ride itself was 40 minutes long, followed by a 15-minute walk (or a 5 minute bus ride, if you're patient enough to wait for it).  After chatting with M and P and having my studio tour, we talked about my partner options and goals I have for my dancing future.  I told M that I would probably not be able to make it to the studio but once per week, and that I'd rather pay for private lessons only if I had a partner to split the cost.  She seemed so happy to meet a new dancer and have the opportunity to teach me.  She even generously drove me to the metro after our meeting, giving me the French greeting/farewell.

The day hadn't started out so well.  Almost as soon as I woke up this morning, I injured myself.  I was still nursing my first cup of delicious coffee when I tripped over the cat, fell, but caught myself on my fingertips and twisted most awkwardly.  I pulled muscles I can't even point to, but I know they exist somewhere in the depths of my lower back and abs.  Thoroughly pissed off and sure that I wouldn't be able to walk for a week, I popped 800 mg of ibuprofen and went to bed for 2 hours.  Things have progressively improved all day, and I even got in a haircut:

I've never had layers my whole life!  I have abundant but very fine hair, and I thought layers would make it look stringy and gross, but Davi the Syrian stylist changed my mind.  He cut over 7 inches off in the front, and 3 in the back.  Davi was hilarious.  He barely spoke ten words of English, and four of them were "you a beautiful, beautiful woman."  I tried to describe the type of cut in my mind, but he said dramatically, piling my hair pointlessly on top of my head and swirling it around, "Shhh, non.  I know what you want."  And then he attacked my hair like Edward Scissorhands, cutting expertly for almost 40 minutes.  I had no idea layers were so intense.  When he was done, I told him how much I liked it, and he said, "Oui, mon chéri.  You come to see me again."  He narrowed his eyes and remarked with import, "...next time."

Busy Daze

Feeling blue over the past couple days.  I think I'm going to ditch social networking for awhile and focus on here and now.

Two full days of orientation have come and gone.  I've had so many things crammed into my brain; ESL and EFL teaching techniques, subtle grammar points and instruction on how to use brand new (to me) software to interface with clients.  Met some neat people from interesting places (Albania, Ukraine) and enjoyed getting to know them.  In a week or so, my stupendousness will be set loose upon the English e-learners of the world and I will be forced to sink or swim - but it seems that it's such a tight-knit company that I will never, ever be alone.  We're constantly connected and communicating over Skype, Google Talk and corporate Gmail accounts.  My manager is at the click of a mouse point and I have colleagues scattered across the globe who are always willing to help.

I was feeling really antsy after work yesterday and decided to take the metro a bazillion miles away to one of the dance studios I've referenced.  I was disappointed.  For such a big city, Montréal has very few adults or university students interested in competitive dance sport, and studios just don't teach syllabus ballroom and Latin.  There's so little demand for it.  But they have some killer awesome competitive kids.  I chatted for about an hour with the Russian instructor at this studio, and he told me about upcoming competitions in Canada and one that is right now as I type, at the Delta Hotel just a few blocks away, Dansesport Extravaganza.  I may have stopped by to watch if I hadn't gone to see...

Rigoletto at L'Opéra de Montréal (Sweeeet.  Just successfully installed the Canadian Multilingual keyboard!).   Which was incroyable.  What was really shocking was that the singer playing one of the main characters, the Duke of Mantua, had severe laryngitis, and the opera company had to import a tenor from Salt Lake City, Utah...  At midnight!  Only 16 hours before the matinée, the very last showing of Rigoletto.  He had a beautiful voice, and so did the woman who played Gilda, Sarah Coburn, also an American.  The original Duke of Mantua did all of the acting and lip-syncing, while the one actually doing the singing was off to the side.  It was baffling, and probably very difficult, especially during duets and trios and whatnot.  It was an interesting experience, and my first one of opéra in a metropolitan area.  I was overdressed because casual is apparently fine for matinées, and there was much singing along and even pictures after the show.

This is my beautiful blue and copper brocade coat.  Everywhere I go, strangers stop me to tell me how beautiful it is (or "boss," as one British guy said).  Unfortunately, the 4-inch Franco Sarto heels gave me eight blisters with all that walking - four on each foot, and it was too chilly not to wear hose.

I love Montréal and never want to leave.  I ate three waffles for dinner with sirop d'érable de Québec.  I am 75% done with Caspian's scarf.  Tomorrow I may or may not go to yoga.  I need to buy a headset, cordless digital phone and timer for my job.  Kiska was just antagonizing a sleepy Jesper by sitting in front of him and smacking him on the head repeatedly.  We're supposed to get our first freeze tomorrow night.

Blessed Employment

Hot sake on an autumn evening is so nice.  So smooth, so mellow, so much better than wine or hard liquor.  Caspian, J and I ducked in at the SAQ (where spirits are sold in Quebec) during our rainy, urban walk home from French class last night.  I specify urban because the flavor of such walks is completely different from residential or rural walks.  You have to be an aggressive pedestrian, asserting your rights, avoiding puddles and crowds convening from the opposite direction, possibly even daring motorists to hit you.  Urban walks are always proactive and never passive.  Anyway, we ducked in and decided to buy a bottle of sake, and it is delightful.

It is the evening after my first full day of orientation with my new company.  I can already tell that I will soon have ambitions of moving into a more powerful position within it, but first I will see what being a bilingual technical English instructor is all about for awhile.  It was so fun to talk to like-minded people!  There were two French Canadians and a Ukrainian also offered positions during the past 6 weeks, and we all have orientation together.  Two colleagues are terrified of the heavy tech aspect of e-teaching; you have to multi-task like whoa, writing flawless lesson notes for reports, assigning homework and articles, keeping the lessons for each student seamless (across instructors, which means massive amounts of documentation), paying the right amount of attention to each portion of the lesson, and politely correcting the student on the fly using prescriptive and descriptive grammar rules (and documenting and correcting 80% of all mistakes made, in writing)...  All at the same time.

On my walk home from headquarters, I decided that I should really manage myself more proactively.  On Monday, I begin my studying regiment:  One FSI online training class per day in Japanese, and one FSI online training class per non-French-class day.  How am I going to become trilingual without studying my languages?  My colleagues and I are setting our 3-month schedules tomorrow and I've been thinking about what kind of schedule I'd like to work on.  I think a divided schedule would suit me best; one block of lessons in the morning, and one in the afternoon, with a break in between.

I'm tired and I have lots to go before I finish a) Caspian's scarf, b) all 166 episodes of Sailor Moon in Japanese c) my household chores and making my lunch for tomorrow.

Konbanwa!

Musings Upon Human Beings and Human Doings

My yoga instructor said something this morning that I probably won't soon completely comprehend.  She reminded us while we were meditating, "You're a human being, not a human doing."  I was surprised and pleased with the wordplay, and then stumped by the application of the philosophy to myself.

I'm only really a human being when I'm asleep.  All other times, I'm a human doing, or not doing, or agonizing over doing or not doing.  Or wanting to be being but unable to find the peace or security to do so.

Caspian and I can sometimes both be quick-tempered, and we were having a little disagreement the other day.  He said gently to me, "You have enough insecurities without me in the picture."  He's right, and childishly I ran away and hid in the shower.  Yup, I did.

But, you know what?  I'm totally insecure.  Not in a professional environment; that's probably where I'm at my most confident.  Definitely not in an academic environment either.  But those are also not who I am or comprise the pinnacle of what I want to be.  They're nice places to run away to and hide in.  Bah.  I look at all I have, am struck by moments of happiness and two seconds later, I find myself thinking...

Why don't you have more?  What decisions could you have made better?  How could you have applied yourself more to get more?  You're an idiot to be remotely satisfied with this simplicity.  You could have been famous.  You could have two PhDs.  You are wasting this day and your youth and your intellect reading and jogging and doing yoga and pondering and snoozing in the sun, lazy bitch!  You could be learning Norwegian and French and Japanese.  You could be studying.  There are a million things you could be doing and you could get up off your ass and do them.  You're a fake.  There is nothing about you remotely appealing.  You attained this through a facade, and it will come crashing down.  Everything you are you've based on something outside of your true self.

::sigh::  I guess I fear that the human being I am is joyful and inward-focused and simple, while the human doing seems much more interesting, but is so much more...  Metaphysically pointless.

But I'm so much happier being.  Is it possible to die an ambitious person who achieved only peace and love?  Am I belittling peace and love by putting an "only" in front of them?  Love shouldn't be something one applies only to others, either.  I have the hardest time loving and accepting myself.

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."
— Carl Sagan

Brrrr!

It's downright chilly here.  In the mid-50s during the day, and tonight it will be 35 degrees!  It's October 3rd and we're having weather in Montreal characteristic of late December where we used to live.  My parents Skyped me last night and mentioned that they'd had a 98 F day last week!  Yesterday when Caspian and I were walking to breakfast amidst the falling beech leaves, our elderly neighbor saw me shivering in my wool sweater and light jacket and commented that winter temperatures in Montreal fall to 20 below, and I'm hoping he meant Celsius because -20 F is REDONK.  After he said this, I remarked that my parents were sending me a heavy down coat that falls to my ankles, and he replied, "The cold will make you strong and keep your heart healthy!"  And then put on a brief gun show.

I've been Googling winter images of Montreal, and they paint a frigid picture.  I am so glad that I get to do my work from home!  I hear that the winds here are brutal.  In my father's hometown in coastal Michigan, it snows and snows and snows; Montreal receives less snow but more wind.  Personally, I'd rather have the snow, which would insulate our little burrow and provide plenty of entertainment.  Freezing winds cut like knives.

On Friday, my friend A and I went together to la ville souterraine - the largest underground complex in the world.  Imagine five 5-story malls interconnected under skyscrapers, and then add several of the busiest metro stops in the city.  It's a mad hub of activity, and Fridays seem to be shopping days in Montreal.  We had a blast as well as two heaps of pad thai, and I also bought four 100g skeins of wool yarn to make scarves for Caspian and I.  We also had a field day in Dollarama...

The Montreal-based franchise Dollarama is a delightful enigma to me.  At first, I'd equated these stores with American "dollar stores," full of cheap but mind-blowingly shoddy goods and subpar food items.  Not at all.  It is a wonderful place, and most of its wares are made in Canada.  Not only does it have an extensive and multicultural grocery section, but it has quality kitchenware, glass and ceramic items, home repair items, and organizational and craft supplies.  It's my new favorite place!  And it seems to bridge culture, age and socio-economic status; everybody has a reason to shop there.  We will save hundreds of dollars in a heartbeat buying nonperishables from Dollarama instead of at the grocery store.

I've been doing much better on the socialization front recently.  The hours of French classes keep me as busy and as obnoxious as ever, and the new yoga classes and friendly outings are refreshing.  If I decide not to get a cell phone (which is likely, since my job requires me to have a landline) and we can afford it, it would be nice to get memberships to the nearby YMCA and meet A and M there, especially in the winter when I can't jog outside.

I have a cold and haven't exercised in several days.  Blug.