norbork

We did the technical inspection walk-around of the house today. The attic's not just got a window; it's big enough for a full-sized room. The only really major thing that's wrong with the house is the insulation up there - it's vermiculite, but it's old, so it might have zonalite in it. Which is apparently carcinogenic (but then, everything is). So we have to wait for the owners to test it.
Looks like I was wrong about the move date - it'll be late November as opposed to early November.

My laptop is broken. This does not bode well for NaNo.

Ran at City's today. Got a medal from regionals - though I placed 6th (the rest of our team came 5th, 7th, and 40th out of a ridiculously large number of people), the team placed second in West region, so we all got shiny silver medals. They lost my ribbon, though. Dorks.

City's was the same course, but with tougher competition - basically, the people who made it at Regionals go to City's, and the competition is pretty brutal - something like 120-150 crazy 16/17/18-year-old runners were in my race. Made 36th place, but I timed both runs and this one was a whopping thirty seconds faster than the last one.  So that's it for cross-country, I guess. We didn't make it to OFSAA, but we did come damn close. I stuck around to watch the senior boys' 7k, which was absolutely and indescribably brutal. Running is largely done in your head, and just watching some people during that race during the finish, or the nasty bits in the woods or on the hill, will probably tell you more about them than they ever could or would. You've got people vomiting on the last ten metres who keep running. You've got people falling and hurting themselves and then you have to decide, in three seconds, whether you want to help them or finish. You've got the guy who had to walk, who's a good ten minutes behind everyone else, taking a good hard look at the spectators and then running anyway. The people who announce the runners who qualified get screamed at so often that they've taken to just writing the results on poster boards instead, so that anywhere from two to five metres away there's a kind of zone where everyone is screaming at each other and crying.

The worst bit of the day, though, came during the last two hundred metres of the midget boys' race - that's the ninth-graders. There was one boy on our team who made it - it's his first year running, and he's definitely got some talent for it. He was coming around the bend to the finish and bumped into a guy, which is normal. The other guy got angry and body-checked him with a elbow to the neck thrown in for good measure. Chris kept going and finished 16th; the other kid came in 17th. Since Chris is an individual, he didn't make it to OFSAA, but the other guy did, by riding on the coat tails of his team. The marshals who were capturing the finish on camera got the body-checking bit but not the bit right before. Because the other kid and his coach started yelling about it, Chris was the one who was going to be disqualified - he was accused of impediment, which is intentionally getting in the way of someone else. But Chris was in front, and it was the final sprint where everything always gets crazy - if you're behind someone, it's your job to watch where the hell you're going. Since they had no evidence of impediment, just assholage, they basically decided to disqualify them both (meaning Chris gets no recognition, no ranking, or anything) or keep them both (meaning a fourteen year old gets to go to OFSAA with absolutely no consequence for elbowing people in the neck at City finals). You could make a case for adrenaline and not really knowing better, but there've been four other meets where the rules were the same.  Anyway, what's worse - hitting someone or getting in their way? Either way, it's all very stupid.

Anyway. That's that.

Tomorrow, field trip to Toronto Art Fair.

It's been a busy week. We just started our oil self-portraits (although we're still doing studies)... and I still can't seem to figure out this concept of 'skin colour'. Or 'correct colours'. Hence, my paintings are weird greeny-blue-multicoloured looking things. I think I have some special form of colour-blindness that's activated by paint fumes.

Watched DOA on Monday. Had an awesome time (thanks for letting me come, Wayne! :P). Need to make LOLPURPLECHICK macros, but have no screencaps. Am swiftly losing faith in our overlord masters Google.

Remember last week's crappy meet? Well, I had another one today. The knee was crappy, I didn't sleep, and I went through that five-k feeling like I would've gone faster crawling (and then I had to stop and adjust my knee brace at one point, which lost me a little time). It was a pretty flat course; lots of grass, one gigantic hill, and a rain cloud looming overhead and making us all freeze to death in our ridiculous uniforms. (This consists of the following: short-shorts, a baggy mesh jersey that's long enough to make it look like you're actually not wearing shorts and are about to moon everyone, grass stains, dust, several burrs clinging to your hair, and an oversized gym t-shirt. Fearsome warrior grimaces are optional, but encouraged). 

I'm pretty happy , though. I didn't do as well as I wanted to or should have - I was at 21:41, and I wanted to go for 21:00 or less. But it's nearly a minute faster than what I was expecting to do, and I placed twelfth (!!!) out of seventy-odd people. And I'm just completely blown away - I've never really tried to compete with other people, so I've always just tried to go a little further or faster than I did before, and try to ignore the amount of people passing me. And it's just sort of hitting me now that I'm not crap at this; that I'm not even average, and that if I put in the effort I actually stand a pretty good chance against the gazelle-girls (you know - the annoyingly perky, vacuous ones with the legs and the drawl and the posse and the painted-on pants?). It's a pretty weird feeling - and I don't want to sound obnoxious or brag, but the main reason I write about this so much is because I have trouble believing that I actually did that. It's very surreal. Or maybe that's just my head rush.  Better finish this up fast so I can go make myself a sandwich. Mmm. Saaaandwich.

In other news, I hope all you non-minors voted. And if you didn't, you still have about two hours to get to the nearest recreation center, school, or large apartment building. Go. Run, you'll get there faster. Maybe have an epiphany along the way, who knows.

So okay, I'm going to go on and on about my day again, and violate the Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Talk Excessively About Running.

We had a cross-country meet today all the way over at Stan Wadlow. It's in the East End, somewhere around Woodbine station, and it's a dusty little park with a smelly bathroom, a big field, a lot of dusty paths too narrow to pass on leading under power lines and running through bushes, and the kicker: a hill about 200m long with a slope designed to turn your legs into mush. If you're running the 5k, which is what the senior girls and junior boys are pretty much forced to do (senior boys run 7.2), then you run that hill twice - once at kilometer 3, and the second time right before the finish.

It's my first 'real' meet - it's just a mini-meet, really, so it doesn't matter how fast you go so long as you finish and run at least two of them. I ran only one last year, and I did okay for a n00b. This year I was supposed to kick ass and take names, and that's what I was doing for most of it.  I thought I'd come in with the pack, but then we started going down these narrow ravine paths and I started passing people (if anybody out there wants about a hundred burrs, let me know) when we were forced to run single file.  And then the girls started dropping off, until all the elbows I was getting were around nose height and shorts stopped being spandex-y and started turning into mesh parachute pants. Then, just before the last hill - just around the last 500m - some guy body-checked me by accident and I screwed up my knee. So I got up; fell over. Got up, fell over, and stayed down. Then I tried to sprint on that sucker (it was supposed to have healed! aasfadghawdlghadlo;;) and I got about two-thirds of the way up the hill, and it gave out again. On the way up I was passing a girl on my team who's entire purpose in life seems to be to yell at me and put me down; she passed me after I was on the ground for a couple of minutes and then I caught up with her and then she just yells at me and tells me to stay down. On a team, when someone falls down, you encourage them. But anyway.

So I'm two-thirds up the hill, covered in a gelatinous goop consisting of sweat, snot, dust, and tears (I'm not going to lie - I was pretty much bawling), and one of the marshals comes over and asks if I need help, after I get pissed and punch a tree. (At that point I figured she was an environmentalist). I tell her what happened, sniffling and generally making an ass out of myself, and she helps me back over to where the team is. And then it gets out that she's an Iron Man - who finished first in her division. Now she runs 100-milers, which is twenty six hours of (I'm guessing) pure pain, and has a big shiny brass belt buckle to prove it. She also coaches one of the school teams that was in the meet. Man, I'm a dork. And to make it worse, I didn't start acting embarassed or anything - oh no. I pretty much started fangirling the poor woman. You know how fourteen-year-old Myspace nerds used to freak out over Gerard Butler/Harry Potter/Johnny Depp/Orlando Bloom? That was me, but sweatier.

Anyway. Once I got back, I had to give in my tag and make it look like I finished the course - otherwise this season's over for me. So I did, and now my first meet has double the time of what it actually would've been. I wasn't last, though.

Maybe I should start running 100-milers one day. If someone body-checks me again, then I'll have twenty-six hours to get up. And maybe (hey, a girl can dream) I'll get a sweet belt too.

There's some photos kicking around on Flickr. Not too many, because I didn't see too much despite staying out until 5:30 in the morning. This was mainly due to a large group of stragglers that I and a friend had to wait for. We later escaped when they couldn't be bothered to get out a map, and instead opted to get out a bottle of vodka. I still don't know where they got it, but essentially about fifteen random people me and Gavin-the-previously-mentioned-friend had ditched popped out of nowhere, dead drunk, while we were watching a performance at four in the morning. So then we ran off again and went home - they got back okay, but that was a really bad call on my part to let them take off like that.

I kinda think it was better last year, but maybe it was just the company, and the fact that we wasted entirely too much time in Yorkville. Some dude was throwing around Ritter chocolate mini-things there, though, by the secular confession booth. (We tried to eavesdrop. We got a square of chocolate to the face. Fair punishment, don't you think?)

After the subway closed I headed over to a friend's, slept until 8:30, and went home. Then we went hiking for three hours. And then I didn't really sleep , and then we had fartleks this morning at cross-country, and now the letters on the screen are going funny colours and wriggling while I whine about my weekend. :) Narg. I think my diet entirely consists of coffee and self-pity. Oh, and apples. We have a bushel of them taking over the kitchen. Again.

In other news, I found a running article that I wish someone had showed me right around last year, when I was still figuring out just how long a mile really is. I know I'm obnoxious when I talk about running, but hey, maybe it'll come in handy for somebody. In fact, that's number 12 on the list: 'Don’t neglect and irritate your family and friends by spending all your time running and talking about running.' Here, have a link. http://completerunning.com/archives/2006/09/12/100-beginner-running-tips/

Also, just in case I'm not the last person in the world to figure this out: stuff with chipotle in it is pretty damn tasty. Also: biting into a fresh jalapeno and running around screaming is just as much fun as it was when I was six.

I guess that's about it for today. I should go and do something productive and/or sleep.

All knowledge is contained within the intarwubs, right?

I'm trying to prod my mother into learning to swim properly. Now, she's the Crazy Yoga Mom (TM) and everything, but our family's got a bad track record as far as hearts and lungs and things are concerned, and I figure it can't hurt. Our pool's open, and I'm trying to teach her freestyle and stuff, but the fact is that I'm still teaching myself proper swim form since I never stuck with swimming lessons long enough to get serious about it until now. In fact, I'm thinking of signing up for some lessons myself so that I can do this stuff properly, once and for all. I don't glide through the water; I muscle my way through it. I can't do turns. My backstroke is atrocious. I'm fast, but that doesn't mean very much - and the last thing I want to do is teach her how to do everything wrong.

All this is a roundabout way of saying: anybody know any good swimming lessons or programs that a) aren't entry level b) don't have any prerequisite levels c) are in Etobicoke and d) aren't geared towards little kids? Do those even exist?

... *crickets*

Yeah yeah yeah. I know, I'm a bad blog-chick. I'm back, though! For now! (Cue eye rolls from the rest of the intarwubs.)

If this was a forum or something, I'd leave it at that. Since this is a Livejournal, though, I'm going to assume you want to hear all about my life and why it's been keeping me from posting. Ooh, let's make it a bullet-point list, too!

(I'm kind of stir-crazy and sleep-deprived, if you haven't noticed. Lederhosen Lucil isn't helping.)

• First, ART SHOW. I had a huge project, misery and sleep-deprivation resulted, and the results got hung up for all the world to see. I did manage to meet the deadline, after stealing a crooked piece of plywood from the janitors and spending six hours after school being poisoned by varnish fumes. Maybe I'll get cancer later, but for now, check out the results. I rushed it, so the results aren't as nice as they would've been otherwise, and it's more 'art project' than 'art'... but I'm okay with that. What's done is done. EDIT: Had photos, had HTML difficulties. Sorry! I'll try to get them in later.

• Exams! And tutoring people for them who then proceeded to screw me over. This will probably be the topic of an Angsty LJ (TM) entry sometime around the December exams. I know you're all squirming in anticipation.
• My back is actually A-OK! The chiropractor lied. The x-rays came back fine, other than some lumbar scoliosis (read: my lower back's crooked, but most people's are anyway). I do creak all over, but I figure that it's kind of inevitable - go the distance, suffer the consequences. And hey, if my daily endorphin high has a side effect of knee soreness, well, I'll suck it up and take it. Better than crack, right?
• Got my exam marks back; I did swimmingly on them. Also, I have earned the grudging respect of my math teacher and science teacher, both of whom really, really didn't like me at the beginning of the year. Hooray.
• My school screwed me over again. Looks like I'm stuck in grade 11 math next year after all. Don't think that you'll be safe once I graduate, TDSB. I WILL COME FOR YOU. HIDE YOUR CHILDREN.
  
• I have been dared to master clapping push-ups by September. Eek!
  
• I'm doing virtual school right now. Since they registered me two whole weeks too late (in a five week course), I've been doing catch-up work like crazy. This has led to Jenny not getting sleep or her endorphin fix, which is very very bad for Jenny's sanity.
• Hanging out yesterday at Fresh was awesome! I'll let other people blog about it, though. This entry's looking crowded enough.

And now I have to go write an essay on Gorbachev and democracy. Kill me now.

I'm back, for the most part!

I say 'for the most part' because my Huge Art Project (TM) is due this week, and my chances of meeting the art show deadline are slimmer than a stickman with a tapeworm stuck in Ethiopia. My coffee consumption is averaging out at a hefty four mega-sized cups a day, I barely sleep, and when I stare at blank walls I start seeing funny blotches of colour. I have a callouse on one of my fingers from my felt tip pens, and I think I'm getting paint fume poisoning.

Ohgodohgodohgod. I'll post some photos of the work I've done. It's pretty, but it's time consuming, and my art teacher hasn't given me a data projector, which I need if I'm going to have any idea of how much work I need to do.

Anyway; I'm taking a break with some tea on the balcony and procrastinating my life away on the laptop. Certainly not the best course of action, but I'm getting kind of sick of this whole work ethic thing. I could've gone and watched fireworks last night with my friends; but no, had to work. Could've slept normally last night after six hours on the road in the front seat with a map: nope, work. And I figure I've vanished from the intarwubs for so long that it's kind of ridiculous; I've had to turn down pretty much any social contact over the course of the past month and it isn't fair.

Can't wait until exams. We get a moratorium, and I generally do well on exams anyway - it's just a matter of going in and putting ass into chair for an hour in a half.

In other news, I'm doing implicit differentiation in my math course. This makes me sound smart, which would be true if I could, y'know, do it. Now generally, you can stick some numbers in front of me and the lizard brain takes over. It's very zen, sort of like diving into a lake and gliding along happily underwater. Calculus, by comparison, feels more like diving into a wading pool. You know that feeling you get when you careen fingers-chin-and-nose-first into the bottom? Yeah, that's pretty much what it's like.

Anyway. Like I said, I just came back from Montreal - and it kicked ass. No other words, guys. Maybe downtown Toronto's comparable or even better, but if you're out in the boonies like I am it's an absolutely amazing city to be in. Here, I'll make a list. 

1. It's alive. Again, I'm north of Bloor West, a land of 70's condos and dimly lit Italian delis. But there's actually stuff to do - as in, even without being downtown, you can walk out the door and have a good time without too much money, transportation, or effort. In other words, it's not boring, and if you just want to go and sit around to talk or work or whatever, you don't have to head on over to the nearest coffee joint just for somewhere to sit.
2. It's got bike paths everywhere. And they're networked! Not only that, but you can pretty much get anywhere you want to by bike or on foot, and when you can't, they've got a huge public transportation system. We tested out this theory, rented out some bikes and, over the course of three days, covered about 60%-70% of the city.
3. It's pretty! Lots of trees, not a lot of high-rises, and those cool old Victorian-style rowhouses are all over the place. And average middle-class citizens live in them, as opposed to a) really rich people or b) not having anybody live in them at all, but instead being in a state of constate renovation and resale between real estate agents.
4. Advertisements are pretty much incomprehensible unless you actually concentrate on them.
5. As a corollary to #4 - everything sounds funny in French. Especially swearing.
6. The food is great; even greasy spoons have good coffee; and I only saw one or two franchise-y places like Starbucks or Second Cup. Yay!

We stayed in a bed and breakfast pretty close to the downtown core and Old Montreal and everything, somewhere between Saint-Denis and Parc La Fontaine. On the first day we spent about three hours walking around downtown until my mom started jonesin' for some crepes (in case you're interested, me and my mom had Breton-style buckwheat crepes - mine with asparagus, hers with cheese and sauteed apples - while my notoriously conservative father had wheat crepes with strawberries). The next day, I went running at around seven in the morning and it was amazing  (big hills, bakeries and cafes opening up for business, real honest-to-god alleyways with cats waiting on the fire escapes... Okay, I'll stop waxing rhapsodic about scenery.) - which was followed by a terrible bed-and-breakfast breakfast, and a trip on the metro for the obligatory biodome and botanical garden visit and then some more ambling around in that part of town. By the time we'd gotten back, we'd walked about four hours and it was late, so we just sort of crumpled into bed.

On Sunday we rented bikes and went around downtown for a while, stopping over in a cafe that was just opening up for breakfast for some really good coffee and some French flaky-pastry-type baked goods (a croissant and a chocolatine for my mother and father respectively), and then we biked up the Lachine to the Atwater market to snarf down exactly what pizza should be. Another two hours of walking around downtown, and then we saw Kooza at the Cirque (again, typical tourist thing to do). We also got some really good Indian food on our way back. It rained. We froze. Came back to the bed and breakfast, ate our take-out. Slept. Got on the road early the next morning. End.

So now we've got the bad news and the good news out of the way. Here comes the ugly.

We went to a new chiropractor last week. Nothing actually got done; just a weird electronic scan and a check-up and a coupon to get some full-back X-rays (funny that with all these problems and talk of lateral sway and whatever that I've gotten, this is the first doctor who's actually bothered to try and find out what's actually going on). Some poking around my knees also found that something is very wrong with them (and they have been hurting a lot lately)- that my left leg is possibly shorter than my right, and that my left tibia is set backwards from where it should be. My dad's got something like that - when he was a kid, he had to wear a special insole on one foot because his leg was shorter than the other - and he still ran 5- and 10Ks, but the knees of male athletes are generally more resilient than female athletes. There's something screwy with my hips, too, and while I can't reliably reproduce what he said, I can say it's the kind of screwy that you can't just leave alone - it does need to be fixed somehow.

I guess that doesn't sound too bad, and it didn't at the time. Except then he said something along the lines of "You know, I'm not sure you should be running." That's nothing probative, but I'm scared. I don't want to stop, I can't stop, I won't stop. I'm not even going to navel-gaze; it's just something you have to do for yourself.


I'll say this, though - they'll have to amputate my legs at this point. And if they don't, looks like I stand a pretty good chance at destroying them thoroughly enough that they'll have to get amputated anyway. Anyways, we live in the future. In twenty years, my knees can fuse solid for all I care - I'll just have to make do with getting around by jet pack.

I went to the library today. That's not the point of this post, but let's start off there; the library was open in the morning, I had some time to kill, and I went in. I picked up a novel and went looking for some science books to fuel my geekiness, but there was a librarian reshelving that section, so I poked around the section beside it; just picked out some books at random without even seeing what they were about. Turns out I'd ended up in the health and fitness section, and so I leafed through a book or two on the subject of weight training (we have a weight room at our school; we can use it if we know how, but most people don't, so nobody goes) and sports training-oriented yoga. Both had something to say on the subject of running and swimming and triathlons and whatnot, and the librarian was taking forever, so I thought what the hell and started reading.

Well, this is basically what they both had to say on the subject of triathlons and endurance sports, if you're a chick:
Women, especially young women, should be extremely careful when competing in endurance sports, and Ideally, they should be avoided. To paraphrase: don't even bother.

My eyebrows got caught somewhere up in my hairline. Er, why not?

They stand a high risk of developing medical complications because of training. Medical complications. Okay. What kinds of medical complications?

Neither of them said anything else. The yoga book also cautioned against going running when angry, but it was a yoga book so that was entirely to be expected. Well, too late; I was going to run seven kilometres that evening and I'd gone swimming for an hour (at a really crappy pool) the day before. Yawn.

So I put the books back and went to the now-reshelved science section and poked around there. I started thinking about last year, before I started running and all that jazz, and how I'd gone to the doctor's for some minor little complaint and checkup; the standard cheerful little medical get-together. I mentioned that I wanted to get more into sports and stuff; I'd been on the swim team but I was pretty crappy at it, and I wanted to be more athletic. He said sure, start doing some sports. I said well, I was thinking of running. His exact words: "No. Do anything - anything - except running. Anything you want." (On the subject of swimming, though, he was much more enthusiastic. Again, his words: "Swimming's the best possible thing you can do.") He didn't say why, not even when I asked; just made some vague hemming and hawing noises and ushered me out of his office.

Today, I poked around on the internet a little on the subject. Other than some references to anorexia, obsessive exercising and really low body fat, there really wasn't anything. I even poked around a bit more on the subject of running being a high-impact sort of thing; arthritis, joint problems, etcetera ad nauseatum - and I got nothing, nada, zip. But still, there was roughly the same message; the way some sites talked about it, you'd think running was street for some new party drug or something.

Which kind of bugs me, because in gym class, we get all this crap thrown at us by the TDSB - "30 minutes a day" and all that stuff. And at the same time, they don't want you to actually put in any effort. The message is: do stuff, but don't do too much, where 'too much' is this arbitrary limit that's code for 'anything'.

The problem is that most of the girls in my gym class are a) unable and unwilling to get off of Myspace and/or the couch and b) absolutely neurotic about the subject of bodies (theirs, hers, yours, etc.). Especially since it's an arts school, with the dancers and the singers and the actors and even the artists (one of the most typical recurring themes in paintings and sketchbooks and whatnot is the female body, the female face). So when there are sign-ups for sports, for anything that doesn't propagate that really stupid situation, they start saying 'oh, that's too much for me', 'oh, I can't do that', 'oh, that's really not supposed to be good for you', or (my personal favourite) 'oh, I'll get too muscular and muscles are ugly'.

Now let's go back to the doctor's office. I had a crew-cut and sported a monitor tan and bags under my eyes from pulling two or three all-nighters in a row in front of the computer. It was winter, so I was wearing this baggy sweatshirt and a big ski jacket; I pretty much passed for a guy right there. Now, let's say you're the doctor, and this short, tired, pale teenage boy comes into your office and starts talking about maybe starting to get into sports. You encourage him, but he's kind of lazy. What would you suggest? Swimming involves too much preparation, scheduling, work. Team sports involve participation. Running requires a pair of shoes (and, if you live by a beach, possibly not even that).

I'm not going all femi-nazi or anything, I just find it weird.

Types of physical activity that the TDSB finds kosher:

• walking


• walking up stairs


• yoga


• walking your dog


• walking up one extra bus stop

... which is okay if you're a total couch potato, but I've never heard of pro-athlete dog-walkers. I mean, hell, that's not even enough exercise for the dog.

I guess what bothers me is this concept that we're so fragile, you know? That if we do just a little bit too much we'll break or explode, and that 'too much' is doing anything more than sitting still, while at the same time I've got friends who can't walk by a reflective surface without frowning and sucking in their stomachs and re-doing their hair, and I've got friends who've got friends who eat maybe five grapes and a bag of chips in a day, and it's just this great big stupid cycle of obsession. Most of my female friends do worse than my male friends do in academic subjects; is it maybe, just maybe, because most of my friends who are girls spend about an hour each day trying on outfit after outfit after outfit and hating each one? That's an hour that could be spent doing, say, homework, or reading a book, or even staying on Myspace. Hell knows it's better than that.

My school has a ratio of three girls to every guy. On the triathlon team, there are three girls and five boys. On the track team, there were about twelve boys and eight girls. On the swim team, of the swimmers who actually were serious about training and got past regionals, 95% were boys. I'm not saying it's a massive sexist conspiracy out there that wants to keep girls out of competitive sports. I'm just saying it'd be nice to see a few more chicks out there who aren't afraid of doing a push-up, that's all. Or at the very least, a few more chicks out there who can look in the mirror and think yeah, okay, that's me and just walk away and forget about it and let it go.

It's just a reflective surface. It can't do anything except make light bounce back in the direction from which it came.

So after the Awesome Run, we were supposed to have a swim practice Thursday night from nine to ten-ish. Well, turns out that the pool staff were running a Bronze Med examination that night, so the practice got cancelled, so me and the one other person who showed up legged it back to the subway station and went home. I got back around ten-thirty, and decided that I was too annoyed to just go to bed. Now, after a long run like that, you're supposed to give yourself a rest day. Especially if you have shin splints - which, to the uninitiated, is searing OMFGPAIN! in your shins from having really tight calves, or something - which I did (though they weren't that bad).

Knowing all that, I promptly decided to go for a run. Wondered about the searingOMFGPAIN not just in my shins, but in my knees. Hobbled home. Slept.

The next day, as you recall, I had that weird hip-hop aerobics class in gym, along with a really late performance and also a yoga class. This proved to be hilarious, because we've got dancers in my class who make anything look good, then we've got the terminally unathletic, and then we've got me. It's only at arts schools that jocks end up being the nerdy ones.

Teacher: *puts on bad-ass hip-hop* And right - two - three - and step! *executes hip-hop dance move* *seems to have a terminal sugar high*
Class: *collective ass-shake*
Random senior boys who've walked in to talk to the other gym teacher: ... *grin*
Me: *ass-shakelimphobble*  Er.. what? *gets confused* *gives up* *starts dancing like a crazed gangsta chicken*

This went on for all of forty-five minutes. Then we did push-ups and crap like that, except 98% of the class had to do them on their knees (the other 2% consisted of me, two really amazing gymnasts, and a track and field team member. Dancers, while being crazy fit, don't generally have a whole lot of upper body strength. So if you ever get attacked by a ballerina with a knife, now you know.) The senior boys who'd been spending their spare ogling us left, and then the teacher bounced around like a sugar-high chipmunk some more, and then we left and got changed.

Then, at yoga:

Teacher: Today we're going to concentrate mostly on our hamstrings. Let's start with our feet about four feet apart and move in to a forward bend.
My hamstrings: *yawn*
Me: *can't bend* Oh, come on, guys.
Hamstrings: Screw you. You make us work too hard.
Me: *huff* Okay, fine. This is probably all that we're going to do anyway.
Teacher: And now *insert random ridiculously complicated yoga pose of dh00m*.
Hamstrings: *chortle*You're on your own, kiddo.

After class:

In the changeroom:
Me: *attempting to negotiate a way into putting on pants that does not involve leg activity* ... *sticks out tongue*
Woman #1: It's so nice to have an easy practice like that today. It's been a long week.
Woman #2: Yeah, but it'd be nice to actually have a challenge...


Granted, I've always had bad hamstrings/lower back/whatever. I mean, all the cool pretzel twist poses where you tie your back and shoulders into an insane knot? Totally my jam. All the yoga-version-of-army-bootcamp-arm-strength poses? Again, my jam. My legs have always sucked flexibility-wise, but I had no idea running could mess with them that badly.

Some examples of really basic stuff I can't do:

• Sitting with your legs straight in front and your back straight. I'm serious. I have to go all Hunchback of Notre Dame.


• Any kind of forward bendy thing. Again, Notre Dame.


• Bend forward, touch your toes, keep your back straight. Notre Dame!


• Spread your feet out, touch your palms to the floor. Touch the top of your head to the floor. Keep your back straight. Notre Dame.


• Any variation of the splits. Even the sissy ones.

You get the idea.

Now, this is the kind of stuff we did yesterday:

• 


• 


• 


• 

(There's more, but I value your internets).


So you see my pain.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to crawl to the kitchen for some breakfast.

I RAN SEVEN KILOMETRES TODAY AT TRIATHLON PRACTICE.

Who's a badass little Russian? Who? Oh yeah, that's right. Me.

Now, granted, I probably ran more in September during cross-country, but that's seven kilometres of hills, a beautiful day, people I know pointing and laughing, wind in my face, getting lost... granted, seven kilometres isn't a lot, but I got out some old training logs from last year. I couldn't even run one kilometre last March (which was about the time that I started running) without stopping.

I am made of steel.

In other news!

• Dana and I hung out at Starbucks yesterday.


• The Grade 10 literacy test is tomorrow and I entirely fail to care!


• We have to do a gymnastics routine for gym class. And just when I thought it couldn't get any more humiliating, turns out we have a 'cardio hip-hop' class on Friday. Picture, for a moment, thirty mostly-white or Asian girls shaking non-existent booties to wannabe gangsta rap for seventy-five minutes. Alright, you can stop now. It's okay to cry.


• Speaking of Friday, my school's having a symposium on climate change. I have no idea if it'll suck or not, but there's some City of Toronto people coming. Apparently they need lots of people to come. Apparently I should be putting out a frantic plea to the intarwubs for attendees. But I don't really feel like it.


• Apparently I'm the only person in my history class who knows anything about the Cold War, the Soviet Union, or Communism. This makes me a Scary Badass Russian Who Is Also Made of Steel. Tomorrow, if it's cold enough, I will wear my furry hat, address everyone as 'comrade' and possibly kick them in the face if they protest. After all, if you're going to do something, you might as well do it right.

Today is a good day. :D I want to go outside and skip and dance and sing, but I think my legs will mutiny and try to strangle me.
Instead I'm off to twist myself in a yogic pretzel, and then perhaps haul my smelly self off to a shower.

Also, if you're reading this right now? Get off the computer and go outside. It's too damn gorgeous out there for sitting here and burning an LJ entry into your corneas. I'm serious. Go! Go now!

You can thank me later.

We're back on the air.

So, first, let's go on and on about my life! That's what blogs are for, right?

My mom's flying out to Odessa tonight and I have to see her off. She'll be there for a few weeks, taking care of things and people and everything else. She's five-two, tiny and probably the toughest person I know right now. Which is interesting, because I had this whole macho thing going on and it came through in my writing a lot. So last night I was looking through some notebooks, reading some old story snippets, and I just sort of started laughing at them. They're ridiculous. So, note to self; macho posturing =/= tough. Being Mr. Capable Smart Muscle-man =/= tough. Being Little Miss Machiavelli =/= tough. Being butch =/= tough.

Anyway.

I had a pretty crappy day yesterday, which I don't actually want to write about. It's too depressing, and I blog about too much depressing stuff (funnily enough, when anything good happens to me, I don't have enough time to blog about it. The better my life is, the further I am from the computer. Hmm. Maybe I should take a hint?)

I've signed up for a triathlon in August, which is going to be awesome. Turns out I don't have to try to train by myself; my art teacher (who I found out today was a member or coach or something of the national cycling team) is taking us out for bike rides, and we're going for runs and swimming and whatnot. Now, don't get me wrong. I am scared shitless of this thing. I am going to die out there, in a sad little saggy sweating heap during the first practice. And I can't wait until the first one.

I can't wait I can't wait I can't waaaaaaiiiiit. (As soon as I start talking about it, I start bouncing up and down. Seriously. This'll probably stop as soon as we start practicing, but for now: SQUEEEE!).

I'm also working on a painting right now. I have some progress photos, which I don't really want to post on account of fact that the blogosphere will lose any respect that it had for me before. Like I said before, I'm not a prodigy or an artist or anything; and I'm sure as hell not a painter. Worse, I have to paint in acrylic, and I have to paint a flower (actually, when I'm done, it'll be a robo-flower). I'm also doing a watercolor which is prettier, but needs to be done by tomorrow or else I get killed by my art teacher, and, um, it's very far from being done.

( Picasso I ain't. )