October 5-8, 2001 — Unhealthy eating and Thanksgiving

For those not in the know, Thanksgiving comes much earlier in Canada than it does in the US. It happened this weekend, actually. But before that...

Thursday and Friday were pretty useless as far as days go. I was still getting over my cold, and I just couldn't convince myself to do any work. On Friday Johnston and Andrew left for Ottawa, leaving me alone. That night I decided to rent The Game and The Prophecy. The former was as good as I'd expected (and definitely worth watching, if only once) and the latter was as good as I'd remembered (having seen it three times already).

The problem with watching three or four hours of movies, though, is that it turns my brain into a substance with a rather thin, soupy consistency. The rest of the day is invariably a write-off.

So I spent the rest of Friday night stumbling about with a numb feeling in my head, unable to accomplish much of anything or even to concentrate long enough to continue reading The Lord of the Rings. Conclusion: staring at a television gives me ADD.

I slept for eleven or twelve hours and woke up on Saturday feeling better than I'd felt in a long time. I was smiling quite a lot for no reason at all. Even doing the dishes left behind by Andrew and Johnston made for a fun time. (In its own way.) It's strange to have the energy to do things that I wouldn't normally want to do.

Cuff The Duke was playing a show that night, so I mostly spent the afternoon catching up on little things like dishes and cleaning as I killed time until I could go downtown. At around 7:00 pm, I got together some Cuff The Duke pins that I'd made for them to take a look at before I made their full order of 100 and I put a proof of the album cover Andrew and I had designed in my notebook so that I could let them take a look at it.

Arriving downtown well before the show, I went book shopping with nothing specific in mind. At The World's Biggest Bookstore I bought Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai (which I'd been looking for since it had been featured rather prevalently in the movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and I spent a lot of time in the Albert Camus section, annoyed by the fact that they only had the English versions and by the fact that a book as small as L'Étranger cost $15.00. So I went to a used bookstore down the street and bought The Outsider and The Plague for $2.00 each. After tax.

I walked up the street to Reillys, where Cuff The Duke were playing. I saw Wayne and Brad sitting in their van out on Yonge street. I assumed they were in the process of moving equipment in. As it turns out, the van had broken down. (They had only received the license plates the day before.)

The next half-hour was rather surreal as we pushed the van backwards down Yonge Street and then parallel parked it. Pushing.

Arrangements were made with a tow truck and the night went on. I gave Jeff the pins I'd made. They seemed to approve and I said I'd make the full 100 pins for their next show (on Wednesday). The album artwork was still very much a rough copy, but they seemed to agree in theory with the font and colour choices and with the general direction things were going in. Now it's just a matter of organizing to have things printed at three separate places...

The show itself was poorly attended. The girl who arranged the show didn't even show up, and it didn't seem as though she'd done much promotion for the show. With the van broken down and playing to a handful of friends, it wasn't really an ordinary show. Hopefully things will be a bit less stressful for them come Wednesday.

After the show, I walked Jeff to a club on Spadina and then alone to the subway. As I was walking, Alice, a girl I met during my days of attending raves back in Ottawa, ran out of the Pita Pit on College Street and talked to me for awhile. I ran into her last year at Christmas when I took the train back to Toronto, too. Funny the way these things work out.

On Sunday, I had to set my alarm for 8:00 am because my father was picking me up at a bit after 9:00 am. It was the first time I'd had to set an alarm in quite awhile, which was a nice feeling. (Until the alarm went off, anyway.)

My father arrived at 9:20 am with all of my mail from Richmond and a new set of horizontal blinds that would actually reach the bottom of my window. My mail included four copies of Converge's Jane Doe on vinyl for Johnston and I, and 24 Homies that had arrived in the mail courtesy of a girl in the US who is going to get more Bran Van 3000 stickers in return than she'll know what to do with.

We then drove to my grandmother's apartment in Toronto and met up with my mother. After lunch, we set out to go to Peterborough where most of my extended family was set to have dinner. Except for my sister, who was stuck in Richmond looking after the cat and dog. And nothing says "Happy Thanksgiving" like dinner with pets. (I really would've liked to see my sister, though, which made things a bit disappointing.)

There was much talk of football and of September eleventh and of how hard it is to be a teacher in Ontario these days. And then there was turkey. I ended up having a couple of dinner rolls and cheese. I don't mind at all, I just worry that my relatives will think I'm being rude.

At 9:30 pm I got a drive to downtown Peterborough (which may or may not be an oxymoron) where I caught a bus to Toronto. I was home at around 1:00 am.

Without an alarm to wake me this morning, I managed to sleep well into the afternoon. It helps that my blind now reaches the bottom of the window -- a bit less of the morning sun to worry about.

To start the day, I stood my 34 Homies in a row in front of my computer monitor. Then I started work on the Doublenaut page and didn't stop until 9:00 pm. It will be done soon.

Wanting to spend some time away from computers, I made 100 Cuff The Duke pins. My arm started trembling while working the button press, and I realized that all I'd eaten since waking up was a bowl of Cheerios and two pieces of toast. Life would be much easier if food came in pill form and I never had to think about it or need to be lazy about it since sustaining myself would be effortless. I'd undoubtedly forget to take my food pills on a regular basis (as proven by my five days' worth of surplus antibiotics from during the summer when I was supposed to take three pills a day for two weeks), but life would still be far less complicated.

I'd noticed on the bus back from Peterborough that the translation of L'Étranger that I'd bought at the used bookstore on Saturday wasn't all that accurate. There were grammatical errors and typos and inconsistencies. I checked today and found that in the 36 years since my copy was printed, a new translation was made. So I've stopped reading The Outsider with plans to buy the newer translation and have moved on to The Plague.

I also realized that my vaguely snobbish disappointment at not being able to find the original French text was a bit misplaced, as I found myself having difficulty with even the smallest French excerpts that were in the introduction. My French is becoming rusty enough that reading a French book mightn't be possible anymore. Which is rather depressing after all those years of French Immersion in high school...

I shouldn't write journals when I'm sleepy. I'm far too wordy.