Adventures in Biking; Road Kill; Adventures in Walking; Road Kill

So yesterday I decided it would be a bright idea to bike down to 3 Road and Westminister Highway to go to work. And it was, and I did. Was actually somewhat faster than taking the bus sometimes is. Woo hoo. I even enjoyed the light sprinkle of rain that fell just as I left for home, reinvigorating.

Unfortunately about 2 minutes from home I was just going into a left turn when Mr. Kickstand decided to ruin my ride by dropping down and locking. This gave my bike a solid pivot to turn on without slowing down much at all. Yanking me and my bike around until we are actually almost 90 degrees to my direction of travel, this ensured that my bike and I perfectly entered the stage of bike riding known as "falling down with extreme prejudice". Luckily this was on a side street, in my own neighbourhood. On a main road I might of been street pizza.

Leaping from my bike like a gazelle I actually entirely cleared it, sailing past the tumbling aluminum and fibre glass. Unfortunately for me, this is the point where my expertise lets me down for I have no idea what to do when you are in the air flying along at 25 km/h and are about to be reintroduced to the ground. The concept of a break roll or running my legs like in Beavis and Butthead do America occured to me, but I have no training in how to do a roll and I was basicly halfway through my flight when running occured to me.

So, I did what came naturally, slam into the ground and let my tender flesh absorb the impact and all the shredding force of concrete (which at those speeds, is more like a grater than anything else, the principal behind leather jackets and pants for motorcycle riders it that leather stretches instead of tearing, so when you fall it shreds instead of you) which promptly give me a nasty case of road rash on my left leg and the palms of both hands.

After that I go home and wash all the crud in my wounds out, I make myself a delcious dinner of soft tacos, then decide to go for a walk that night again after obsessively playing Soduku all day. It makes me feel smart.

On my walk I go down Steveston Hwy, down the dike, through Steveston village, and just up 1 Road because it was almost midnight and I had class today. Plus the following.

But around two thirds of my walk done, I think my footsteps startle a racoon out of the tall grass of the verge on Chatam, or it just ran out for no reason. Out of the grass and under the tires of a passing Ford Focus. The car stopped and came around, but just a glance told me that the racoon was still alive, but wouldn't be that way for long. It was spasming violently all over the place and leaving a huge smear of racoon blood behind. I moves around 3 meters across the road in its spasms until they stopped and it merely twitched. It was wasted. I got close enough to identify it as a racoon. I callously declare to the driver who came back and asked if it was a cat, "It's dead. It just doesn't know it yet."-and continue my walk.

What would you do if you hit an animal with your car? If it was instantly killed? Leave it there? What if it is still alive and only slightly hurt, leave it to fend for itself? What if, like in this case, it is so badly hurt that it is surely dead? As far as I can tell, the Focus went back and watched this racoon die. Like a relative at a hospital, impotent yet giving witness to the final moments.

This is something I should ask my YD instructor about. See what you are suppose to do. It isn't like we have that many carrion eating creatures around Richmond, that racoon is probably gonna decompose on the street for the night, or get picked up in a shovel and chucked in the garbage can.

What did I learn today

Sake is WAY better warm than cold.

Seriously.

Kung Fu is fun to watch, NOT TO DO UNLESS YOU ARE A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL.

Stairs are not your friend.

That blogger is way cooler to use than LiveJournal.

That this keyboard isn't in fact groddy, it is my hands. Go cleanliness!

That you owe us a rib.

Awesome Day

Sorry this is just going to be a regular ol' boring "About my day" post this time. But my day has just been that good. This is a tad long though.

So today started off pretty bleh, still have a bit of a cough from my cold, but that's about it. To bad the day for me started at 5:30 am. Stupid Calculus class. Anyway, so after I ate my amazingly bland porridge (we're kinda out of food. Like, everything. I might just have to make pancakes tommorow for breakfast because everything easier to make is gone.) I was fiddling around the interweb I found this amazingly engrossing, yet subtly terrifying website, The Black Table and was learning about the miracle of food that is Turducken (A chicken stuffed with stuffing, stuffed in a duck with some stuffing, stuffed into a turkey with more stuffs, usually with 3 different kinds of stuffing too, 2 helpings more than satisfies your daily requirement of calories... Not counting the stuffing or spices). I now have no recollection how I found this website. Strange. All my internet history managed to tell me is that I first read the story about how to make Prison Pruno which is basicly an alcoholic (maybe, could be something else entirely, could be antifreeze) drink made from fermented oranges, sugar, ketchup and fruit cocktail. Apparantly it tastes like a bile flavored vodka cooler. Which makes sense. Most vodka coolers taste like bile to me now. Stupid vodka.

This website had me so engrossed I didn't even realise that the time for me to go get ready to leave had come and passed. I had already missed my regular bus and was now in danger of missing my secondary (and last) bus option that would get me on time for class. So naturally I had to hurry.

Alas, all my hurrying was for naught just as I turned the corner to catch the 491 it pulls away from the bus stop and I stopped and cursed my own stupidity and the power of the internet a half dozen times. While this is going on I walk up and a woman at the stop says that sometimes the 401 actually catches the 491 because so many people take it, just as a 401 pulls into the stop. My heart brightens. Then darkens again as the 491 makes the green light and right behind it, we get stuck with the red. I watch a half dozen people plod onto the 491 and then it pulls away with my hopes and dreams.

This day is sound so awesome so far isn't it? Well hold tight.

So it goes on, the 401 I'm on getting cheesey stop lights and tons of people getting on the 491, these two combine terribly to keep the 401 always around 10 bus lengths behind (around 340 feet for those who can't multiply). I silently curse all the people who keep getting on the 401 as the 491 gets farther away.

Then, hope! LITERALLY at the VERY last stop shared by the 401 and the 491 we pull in behind the 491 as it is still at the stop, I leap from the bus and sprint at the 491 flailing my arms like some kind of retard trying to get the bus driver to see me as it closes its doors. Miraculously I manage to catch the bus just as it begins to pull out and I pound the crap out of the closed doors. The bus sighs to a stop again and my day finally has started to turn good, I graciously thank the driver for stopping. I sit down with a sigh on the 491, put my headphones on, flip a smile at the scowling old lady across the aisle from me (I'm not sure if she was actually scowling at me, or if she was just one of those damn old people that have their face stuck in their wrinkled frown forever) and promptly ignore the world for around 30 minutes like all the other polite bus riders.

Go me. The rest of my bus trip is uneventful and I get to my class a whole ten minutes early, just in time to drink a bottle of water I had left in my bag from Tuesday (quick note on bottled water, the freaking Safeway Select bottled water that is super cheap is some of the BEST TASTING bottled water I've ever had, makes Aquafina taste like tap water in comparison) and munch on a substandard and dry raisin bran muffin I had been gratituously overpriced for, but that's what I get for eating at UBC. I've learned my lesson Cinamin Buns all the way.

Arriving on time for my class comes with one drawback. It means I have to sit through the entirity of the most boring hour and fourty minutes I've ever had in a class. And I've taken introductory computer science classes. I find out that the cute girl that I sit next to in my class has once again skipped because the class is so boring, and that I've given my cold to the guy who sits on the other side of me. We quietly talk a lot of the class because we're bored, but he's got to take notes because he is getting paid to by a disability guy, sucker. Rehasing SWE3 and shit like that, apparantly Yoda is the shit. Note that we sit in the second row so we're very slightly disrupting the entire class. Dayquil makes it hard to concentrate on the Calculus and I zoned out the second she said "now this isn't going to be on the final, but it is an interesting example." It was deriving Keplar's Laws in the most round-about annoying as hell fashion. I can recall doing this at least 5 times before in physics or math classes. I almost fall asleep.

Fast forward to after the class. After class I stroll to the bus loop with a somewhat cute girl in my class. Fourty seconds into the conversation I realise that she is A) stupid, and B) lives in Richmond so there is a chance I might have to talk to her for the entire 50 minutes or so back to Richmond. I make a bid for freedom claiming I'm not going back to Richmond right away and have to stop by Kerrisdale for something and hop on the 41 as she sits and waits for the 480.

The 41 ride is entertaining because riding through Kerrisdale is awesome. I get off and walk through the "little store" portion of it because it is a really neat part of Vancouver. I go window shopping, I get a vanilla latte (I also just realised that I almost capitalized vanilla latte, I nearly laughed at myself) at Starbucks because I am a consumer whore with a Starbucks card that I don't pay for. At Maple street I get back on the 41 and ride it the rest of the way to Granville, this is when my day starts astronomically improving, right across the aisle from me on the 41 sits a really attractive woman. Like. Really, really. Skin the color of caramel, wearing thin (really thin, like could see through them when the light was right) white pants, a white with green highlights overshirt and a lime green tight t-shirt underneath. Plus she had pretty big, yet perky, boobs which is always a plus with tight t-shirts. A psych major at UBC, so we chat about school, how summer morning classes are such a drag, etc. I try to not make it painfully obvious that I'm checking her out body every 10 seconds or so. I probably failed at that. Stupid roving eyes, always giving me away.

She gets off at Granville too and sits with me on the 98 so we keep talking. I gotta take this bus combination more often. She gets off the bus at Alderbridge, me at Westminster.

Just as I get to the crossroad to my bus stop to take the 401 home, the 401 pulls away. Shoot. 20 minutes until the next bus comes, so I decide I'll walk along Westminister Highway a while because it is nice and sunny with a bit of a breeze plus I got new shoes that still need breaking in a bit. So away I go. I make it to 2 road in 20 minutes or so and I'm heading to the stop about 20 feet away and the 401 flies by at around mach 2. Crud.

Oh well, I turn down 2 road and start walking, I get to Blundell Center, have another latte because I am a consumer whore, do the Soduko in the Metro, do the crossword in it too, then [almost] do the crossword in the Globe and Mail (stupid G&M hard ass crossword, only got like two thirds of it done). The Sudoku took me 4 minutes, which is 9 under the time which would confirm my "genius" level of doing stupid math problems. I feel smart.

I set off again down 2 Road slowly changing my mind that it is "nice and sunny" and revising it to "Blurdy hot out." I crack and get on the 402 which comes by conviently when I'm at Francais, I take it in to Steveston to see how the village has been doing without me checking up on it often. Turns out pretty good. I eat lunch at Alegria beacuse overpriced, yet tastey food, is good. I use up Emily's break talking to her. Good times.

Then I came home had a shower, etc. And now I've been typing away at this blog post for nearly an hour, so it is time for me to go. Stupid blog post.

By the way everyone, I am now going to Young Drivers like my parents insisted (and paid for) Tuesdays and Thursdays 6:15 until 9:15 pm. Yes, I am the oldest in the class by about 4 years. Yes, it is boring. Yes, I want to do something tonight afterwards.

Toodles.

//Edit: I looked back over the day and really, it hasn't been awesome. Pretty normal actually, just today I've been feeling good all day. Sorta like how when you get an enema you feel REALLY CLEAN all day. Or maybe not that way.
No, I haven't actually had an enema. Danks.

Fever addled or just the status quo. Former.

Here I sit.
Alone yet surrounded by memories. Their dullness nearly overwhealms their multitude, but still worth sifting through. Like a fevered dream, they flit by and end well. Or maybe not. Usually not. Computers have to much power, they don't want those silly meatbags (re: meatbags, us, people) to limit their reign as the fresh and new anti-christ for the 21st century, we're imperfect beings who create imperfect things all the time who think that they are perfect and that they alone are qualified to hold both missle keys and the might to take them and the mettle to use them. Thus negating the purpose of having two keys! What were we thinking? Were we mad? Is it mad? Is it an it anyway? After giving unlimited power, you can never take it back. There is no undo key. Do you bury me when I'm gone/Do you teach me while I'm here
I feel like someone jabbed a beer bottle cap with the ridges running little concentric circles into my shoulder. But the tylonel I took more out of habit than anything should stop that from slowing me down. Can't slow down, there is nothing here to bother stopping for. Just as soon as I belong/Then it's time I disappear
Apparantly they were all angry because someone leaked the super secret "good" version of their song.
You use to be a mighty warrior who felt the intoxication of breathing deep lungfulls of fresh strong air, drank straight from cold clear streams, and felt the raw unsanitized cuts and bruises of pain and love, sapped without diminishing returns for your efforts to change the world. Or doomed to be changed by lessers trying to get you to buy vegetable hot dogs and cans of sweet peaches stashed away in what they claim to be their own juices and a tinge of honey.
Raven black hair and a flash of reckless grin, tossed around the room unabashed and uncaring for the consequences. Just a smile is enough, because you knew all along didn't you. Maybe that's the allure. A walk, a gentle sway, and I'm yours.
Intermission. What a strange word. Inter-Between, among; In the midst of, within; Mutual, mutally; Reciprocal, reciprocally; I guess our use is the first. -mission, many meanings, mostly related to Christians bugging people, but I think we'll go with A special assignment given to a person or group. So why is being between special assignments given to a person or group used to take a breath and stretch your legs? Probably because the mission isn't YOURS. You big critic, professional appreciater, this isn't for you. You just happen to have some spare time. While real people go on about their between assignment duties.
Time for thoughts. About what though. Maybe this pad of paper will help. ATI Technologies, it says stenciled in colors of red and black across the top with ATI's curious logo below, sent this to my brother when he tried to get free stuff. But he had no E-Fame yet so they just sent him a box filled with ATI information booklets he could give people because he told them he was in a position to give computer hardware recommendations. Like they probably don't get THAT offer a few dozen times a day.
Below this curious header a picture done entirely in green pencil crayon (which still lays across the desk, abandonned after its work) etches out monsters and what appears to be a bridge, with a man on it, who is green. With wings. Angel wings, green ones. The words "Who says I can't fly to escape. Who will come with me?" are written beneath (in green) while creatures of terrible horror (mostly teeth and tentacles, that devour 1d6 scientists every turn, that are also green) clammer at the base of the supports of this bridge which comes from no where and goes no where but stands as a single section of roadway suspended by these massive concrete pillars (which happen to also be green).
Silly scientists and their machinations of technology. Machinations. Root, machine. A crafty scheme or cunning design for the accomplishment of a sinister end. Best definition ever Dictionary.com!
Save as Draft? Think not. Publish Post for the orange button of doom so it can swallow this post and not get the word out.

FINAL INFOZ for McMovie Marathon! Now with SCHEDUAL!

Pls forgive the rampant copying and pasting!

When: Next Friday (May 13th), aim to arrive ~1 pm. Movies start 1:30 pm. Lasting as late as 11 pm with director's cuts of the films. Closer to 10 pm with regular versions. If we're all sick of Alien by the time Alien 3 ends, we'll skip Alien Ressurection. Feel free to show up any time in there.

What: Alien Movie Marathon (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Ressurection). I know, I know the middle 2 are the best, by a lot, but we're GOING TO WATCH THEM IN ORDER. If anybody owns them (prefferably on DVD) LET ME KNOW! Depending on the size of the group that comes, we may be in the smaller room with the big TV or in the bigger room with the smaller TV.

Who: Everybody. Seriously.

Where: MY HOUSE. If you don't know how to get here, MSN me and I'll explain, or get a ride from someone who does.

Food & Drink: Nachoes + Pop will be provided in limited quantities, people are welcome to bring more beverages or food to supplement. Please no alcohol, if I'm not going to drink, nobody else gets to! (4 bottels of pop, 2 bags of taco chips which will become full fledged nachos under my careful hand).

We're watching aliens. And that's final.

Schedual for those who are coming late and want to play their day:
REGARDLESS of how many people show up on time this is how it goes, if that means I watch the first hour of Alien by myself... So be it, this is a lot of movie watching and apparantly my mom has to wake up early on Saturday. All times are assuming that is collectors edition set that I rented (score! 4 movies, $10!) are all the Director's Cut and that the times on IMDb are spot on.

1:00 pm: Mark hopes in vain people show up on time.
1:30 pm: Alien goes on.
3:30 pm: Alien finishes, Aliens goes on.
~6:10 pm: Aliens finishes. Damn that's a long movie. Get up, move around. Bathroom is around the corner.
Mark makes nachos! Nachos served! And there is much rejoicing.
6:30 pm: Alien 3 goes on.
9:00 pm: Alien 3 finishes, Alien: Ressurection goes on, assuming we're not all sick of alien or not hungry enough. if people want to order pizza sometime during 3, that's cool. I'll chip in some bucks if we order something simple enough I'd like.
By 11:00 pm: Alien: Russurection finishes. Rejoicing is had. Post Aliens bitch session that Ressurection sucked. Everyone gets the hell out of my house and on with their lives. Anyone got any ideas for stuffs after the movies?

Warning: All 4 Alien movies are rated R for "monster violence" and language. If anyone is easily scared by movies and DON'T LIKE BEING SCARED, don't come. People who scream for longer than 3 seconds at a time, don't come. People who like breaking stuff at other people's house, don't come or I will break you. Leave all drama and interpersonal problems at the door or I WILL kick you out.

What's with all the towels.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the beady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kafrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; use it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you-daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of coruse dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might have accidentally "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

I am SO disappointed with that movie. It was enjoyable but it had the potential for so much more. If only they had followed the book more closely. Like, as close as the Dune miniseries did. (Thanks Vicki, I guess blogger hiccuped away the rest of my post...)

McMovie Marathon: ALIEN

When: Next Friday (May 13th), aim to arrive ~1 pm. Movies start 1:30 pm. Lasting as late as 11 pm with director's cuts of the films. Closer to 10 pm with regular versions. If we're all sick of Alien by the time Alien 3 ends, we'll skip Alien Ressurection. [NOT 14th, because I'm stupid.]

What: Alien Movie Marathon (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Ressurection). I know, I know the middle 2 are the best, by a lot, but we're GOING TO WATCH THEM IN ORDER. If anybody owns them (prefferably on DVD) LET ME KNOW!

Who: Everybody (might be a bit crowded though, only 2 couches in my TV room so optimisticly ~15 people, 20 tops). Let me know early and RESERVE YOUR SPOT! If to many people want to come, I can see about moving the big TV to the other room and watching in there and then we can have up to 30 or so people, but it is a big pain to do it, so probably max 20.

Food & Drink: Nachoes + Pop will be provided in limited quantities, people are welcome to bring more beverages or food to supplement. Please no alcohol, if I'm not going to drink, nobody else gets to!

Alternate marathons if people suck and don't want to watch Alien:
Batman, Indian Jones, Die Hard, Misc. Movies off Mark's Necessary Flick List.

*All Plans Subject to Change*

Warning: All 4 Alien movies are rated R for "monster violence" and language. If anyone is easily scared by movies and DON'T LIKE BEING SCARED, don't come. People who scream for longer than 3 seconds at a time, don't come. People who like breaking stuff at other people's house, don't come or I will break you. Leave all drama and interpersonal problems at the door or I WILL kick you out.

Blogging

So... unimportant.
So... unmotivated.