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I thought I'd be all inspired to write.  I felt inspired, as the heat has finally broken (after moving in the 106 degree heat, thankyouverymuch), and relaxed, and don't have anything particularly important to do tomorrow (outside of nothing, as is my A1 priority in these vacationtimes).  But when I sat down at this stupid computer that I have payed entirely too much to use (my first internet cafe since Bolivia!), I realized that I'm exhausted.  Really, really tired.  I can't even imagine how my poor movers feel, because they not only did 98% of the work today, they've been moving people for the past two weeks and had another move after us.  They are heros, and if anyone ever needs movers in the Montreal area, I highly reccomend K-10 Transport.  I'll hook ya up with contact info if you need it.

Anyway, that said, and as I have no inspiration, I will share with you the birthday card and gift I recieved (and two weeks early!) from Patrick and Clarisse today.

Card (very zen looking paper crane on a serene blue background) reads...

If I was a bird in the sky, I'd only ever poo on your head on your birthday.

That way, you'd know that I'd remembered it.

It's tough to buy presents when you're flying around being a bird you know.

Happy birthday, and watch out for the poo.

Gift: "Goodbye kitty" gum.  Has a picture of a cat in a blender on one side and an elephant pooing on a cat on the back.  And we all know how much I love cats (about as much as I hate monkeys).

Heading out of the 514 starting tomorrow.  Sporradic blogging shall continue.

You know those friends?  The ones that you can not see for weeks, or months, or years... but then when you finally do cross paths again, it's like nothing ever changed?

I love those friends.

I spent the morning blowing into tubes and machines. Turns out... everything is normal. Which makes the fact that I CAN'T BREATHE even more frustrating. But I've been given some inhalers full of some stuff I'm supposed to suck into my lungs a few times a day, so we'll see if that makes any difference. I'll go for a spin this afternoon and see if I can do so without hacking up a lung.

I'll be on vacation for the next ten days (yay!). Hopefully this will involve a trip to Kingdom Trails in VT, a graduation party in Boston, a few days in Ottawa, and a few days in Toronto. Oh, yeah, and moving. Frickin' moving. I so hate it. Way to ruin what could otherwise be the perfect week. But, long story short, there will be sporradic blogging until I'm stuck back in front of a computer 8 hours a day on July 4.

For all concerned parties, I'm feeling a muted version of what I was feeling earlier this week. I'm probably not going to snap and kill someone, but I might snap and maim them severely. Suppose that's the better of the two options.

Lil brother is off to India. What? In my head he's still six. There's no way they're going to let a six-year-old go to India by himself. I mean, what's he going to do for dinner?

My sense of humour is my defense. It's my last defense, and it's the toughest one to penetrate. I use laughter to keep myself sane. I create rediculous extrapolations of people in my head, changing them from real people into hilarious, sitcom-worthy parodies of the real thing. They have catch phrases and slightly ridiculous clothing and mannerisms. And I live my life chuckling at the better-than-TV absurdity that is the world surrounding me. I make up nicknames. I make up words (for example, in the previous sentance, I was going to use "ridiculum" in place of "absurdity"... I wasn't sure how to spell it, so I went online to check and discovered, much to my surprise, that it's a word I created somewhere along the way.). One of my (many) matras is "I'm not here to amuse anyone but myself."

But lately, I feel like my humour pool has dried up.

And I'm not a huge fan of what's left.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at it: that I should occasionally stop laughing and take life seriously, or that my sense of humour is an integral part of who I am and if you can't take the heat, etc etc.

But lately I just feel like I'm on the verge. And stupid trips to get ice cream at lunch, or nice weather, or a ride, are all just delaying the inevitable. I was like this about this time last year, when I was working in what is essentially a sweat shop, building boats for about minimum wage with two bitter, screaming small-town Quebecois. I miss school, when all stress was caused by specific events (midterms, projects, finals) that would have a due date and, come hell or high water, be over after that date. I'm at the end of my rope, and I'm marinating in my own bad mood.

I feel toxic. I feel dangerous. And I don't feel like I'm anywhere near solving any of it.

addendum...
I went out for a ride after work, feeling near the breaking point.  I'm sick.  I'm injured.  I didn't care.  I was going to ride until I couldn't ride any more.  That lasted a grand total of 45 minutes, until my exhuasted body caught up to my raging mind, and forced me to stop.  On my spin home, I saw another cyclist, his bike folded neatly in two, surrounded by paramedics, firemen, police.  Traffic stopped.  At least thirty onlookers.  After a cursory call to some other team members to check and see if it was one of ours, I moved on out of respect for the guy.  But seeing someone get mangled like that puts it all back in perspective.
I ran the same red light he probably ran about thirty minutes before.  I've never stopped at it.
Helmets, kids.  ALWAYS.

I spent the entire weekend in a worn-out heap on the couch. I don't think I've ever felt this drained. I seem to have some sort of sickness. Anyway, while I was wasting away the ideal riding weather, I nursed myself with bad... no, terrible... TV. One of these travesties was a show called "Driven" featuring Avril Lavigne. I guess the premise of this show is they interview everyone but the celebrity themself and everyone talks about how hard they worked to achieve their dream. One of the people interviewed was LA Reid, president of... I don't know, some record company. Who cares. Anyway, he was called into the studio to hear this fifteen-year-old pheonom, blah blah blah. But what he said totally describes how I feel today. I'm going to misquote, but the gist is "I was in a bad mood. I liked my bad mood. I wanted to be in a bad mood, and I didn't want anyone to change that." That is how I feel today. I wasted a beautiful weekend being sick and I'm going to spend the entire week packing. I hate packing, and I hate moving. There is absolutely nothing going on at my job this week. NO-THING. I have been relegated to administrative tasks (read: updating vacation time. Where I happily found out that I'm getting a whopping SIX DAYS next year.) I can't ride because I'm still sick (even though I'm so ticked off that I may go ride tonight just to keep myself sane, health be damned). My knee is busted. I got a PFO from a company I'd forgotten I'd even applied to.  My elbow hurts.

This could go on forever, but the point is:

Steer clear. I'm 'bout to blow.

I

will

never

drink

again.

(except maybe for tonight)

Excerpts from my musical choices today.  If you can name them all (without Google), kudos to you!  You get a cookie.

Demolition woman, can I be your man?

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing....

There's a black man with a black cat livin in a black neighbourhood... he's got an interstate runnin through his front yard... you know he think that he got it so good... and there's a woman in the kitchen, cleanin up the evening slop. And he looks at her and says "hey darlin, I can remember when you could stop a clock."

I'm burnin through the sky... 200 degrees, that's why they call me Mr. Ferinheit.

Now, Watergate does not bother me. Does your consicence bother you?

hey yo fat girl, c'mere, are ya ticklish? Yeah, I called you fat, look at me, I'm skinny! That never stopped me from gettin busy... I'm a freak! I like the girls with the boom! I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.

So, I've learned to dance with a hand in my pants... and I rub my neck and I write 'em a check, and they go their merry way.

Baby, here I am, I'm the man on the scene... I can give you what you want but you've got to come home with me.

- Either have uniforms or no dress code whatsoever. If I have uniforms, they will consist of jeans and hoodies.

- Abolish school dances.

- Serve pasta as the vegetarian alternative no more than once per week.

- Have a "no tolerance" policy on smoking and drug use. And when I say "no tolerance," I will actually mean it.

- Have a "no tolerance" policy on intolerance of other peoples' race, sexuality, religion, nationality, etc. Public flogging will perhaps be the punishment.... yes, I like.

- Final semester of senior year, instead of frittering away time in classes nobody cares about, have dorm ec classes where you learn to cook healthy food on a budget, do laundry, manage your finances, and prefunctorily clean (yeah, I could have used that last part).

- Mandate every child learn two more languages. And actually learn them.

- Make the required list full of books that people should actually read. The Invisible Man, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Two Solitudes, One Man's Bible, the Upanishads, 1984, the Inferno, Out of Poverty (and Into Something More Comfortable), Angels in America...

- I am also going to recognize the importance of cinema as a viable and important means of communication in today's society and assign movies as homework. Such as American History X.

- Hire only extremely qualified teachers with funny accents.

- Require way more than 15 hours per year of community service.

- Set the school theme song to the tune of the Humpty Dance.

- Have an "exhange week" where the jocks have to do theater, the drama geeks have to go camping, the tree-hugging hippies have to study, and the nerds have to play football.

- Start the day at 10am. This 7:00 BS is rediculous.

- Mark PE on effort and improvement, so a chunky 15-year-old girl isn't being marked on the same scale as an 18-year-old male varsity athlete.

- Mandatory didgeridoo lessons. Fo sho.

So this weekend was the F1 in Montreal. Read: a huge influx of 60+ year old men driving Ferraris and sporting twenty-something arm candy, composed of 90% silicone, followed by a second wave of men with brightly-coloured leather jackets and mullets and aging, cougar arm candy. It was also Fringe and Nuit Blanche. Craziness all around.

So following my Thursday exploits, I toned it down to some Six Feet Under and quality time with the now-mobile and nonsensical Francis. Had to be up at 6:30am on Saturday to ride... where I leared a very, very valuable lesson.

Just putting sunscreen on does not protect you from the sun. The thought does not count.  You have to actually cover all your exposed skin. Particularly the two inches of shoulder that a sleevless tri top expose. Needless to say, I am sporting two strips of BURN on my back that do not feel or look particularly good. But I have rediscovered the beauty of cold showers. Oh, so good. Saturday night I finally saw some people I haven't seen in a long time, after a bizarre tour of Montreal's only non-smoking (and therefore least busy) bar with the roomie. After living in Montreal since 1999, I finally witnessed the F1 craziness on Crescent Street, which I've been avoiding like the rotting pool of stench, filth, and corruption that it is. On the cool, breezy balcony of a slightly off-the-beaten path bar we met a guy who just traded cocaine for parts on his Harley (why you'd tell a total stranger this is beyond me!), watched a 18-year-old girl puke all over her own feet while the guy with her talked on her cell, and observed the general debauchery that is F1. I hope they don't renew their contract. It's revolting.

Anyway, long story short, it was an insanely busy weekend with no respite, and I'm happy with that. I miss my life being full-tilt.

Now it's packing time. T minus 15 days til we move. What bloody fun.