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ed_rex
I know folks, I know - I've been more than remiss, and I am grateful that only two of you have jumped ship during this, my latest absence from the LJ world.
Part of this extended break has been due to the fact that Young Geoffrey spent more than 6 weeks wandering the world without his specs. Considering his wage-slavery required that he stare at a computer monitor for 7 hours a day, his enthusiasm for social computing was less than as per normal. Worse, he had not yet entirely wearied of the siren-call of yet more half-naked babes rushing like nubile lemmings to display their sometimes dubious wares on myspace. And then there was Literati over on yahoo-games.
So yes, I've neglected you, Gentle Readers. And thus, a catch-up post, of mostly happy tidings.
(More or Less)
Laura and I have managed to decide that the anniversary of our first meeting falls more or less falls on St-Patrick's Day, a "holiday" I had hitherto loathed on some mild level of loathing. But maybe the Irish are good for something after all.
(Ahem. Some of my best friends, etc etc.)
(Now, where was I?)
Ah yes. It has been 2 years since Laura and I first met (and bloody hard to believe April will make it a full year since we've been living together!) and we decided that something special was in order by way of celebration.
Despite that, Laura decided we would head up north for a ski weekend.
embarassed coughs echo through the hall ...
And so it was that the morning of Saturday the 18th found us ensconsed in a rented Echo (my fantasy car - but I digress), heading North to Horseshoe Valley and my first experience with room service - not to mention my first time on down-hill skies or those fucking terrifying gondolas what sway their way up "mountains" (relatively large hills, for those of you not from Sourthern Ontario).
I am happy to report that I not only managed to stay mostly upright while skiing down hill (and not just on the bunny-hill, thank you very much), but that I survived repeated encounters with the ski-lifts. More than survived - I found that repeat encounters actually rendered my fear of heights weaker with each time, as if I were building up an immunity.
Nevertheless, I found it amusing - when I found myself alone on one trip up the hill - to listen to myself babble a non-stop commentary as to the state of my mind during the ascents. ("Oh, this isn't so bad - wait, why is it swaying? I don't like when it bumps like that oh shit now it's stopped. Oh I don't like this, we're too hi ... You're going to be all right, Young Geoffrey, this isn't so bad ..." How she puts up with me I'll never know.)
Skiing itself was hard, but not so hard as I'd imagined. More fun than I'd expected it to be, too. Still, sliding downhill with your skis in a permanent "vee" gets to wearing on the thighs and buttocks and 3 hours was about as much as I could take, thank you very much. But we'll do it again - and more often - next winter.
Long story short, we had a wonderful day and night (and the food was mind-blowing), but Sunday proved less than idyllic.
Laura had a sore throat when we arose, which grew worse over breakfast, during our tubing experience and through the drive back to Toronto. By the time we reached home she was off to bed and so it was I went out alone to stock up on heavy groceries and some surplus shelves from the office (amazing what that magnificent Echo will hold!).
To the point, however ...
I returned home and lugged groceries and furniture into the apartment, then fired up the computer. After a little while, I heard Laura stumble out of our room. And presently, heard her call my name (she'd been calling for a while, but her voice was weak).
"Geoff? Geoff? Geoff, please come out here ..."
When the fact she was calling me finally registered, I left the office and found her sitting at our table, slumped in a chair, naked and sweating like an athlete in a sauna.
I asked what was wrong and she told me, with a remarkably calm matter-of-fact-ness, "I can't see."
That's right. She couldn't see. She had gotten up to puke, then found her vision pixilating to the point that she was blind.
Long story short, I called 911 and we spent the evening in the emergency ward at St-Mike's, where it was determined she had "only" a bad case of the flu and she was discharged.
And by Monday morning, I too was sick as a dog.
Since then, neither of us has had a cigarette(!), we've mostly recovered from the flu and I have begun to grow accustomed to once again wearing glasses.
Not to mention to having eyes that look more or less before they did before "Chad from Syracuse" broke my face.
I am feeling good, folks, and I remember that there not only have a bunch of economic insults to which I must reply, but much else besides.
Stay well, enjoy the renewed sunshine and wish me luck on cooking dinner. We'll talk again soon, I'm sure.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 12:31 am (UTC)skiing is sooo much fun though i always fear the day i fall off the mountain!
the case of the flu sounded absolutely horrible. you poor things.
glad to hear you're better though.
take care.
Thank You, Ms Star ...
Date: 2006-03-27 04:48 am (UTC)As for skiing off mountains, I think I'll be safe so long as I stay within an hour and a half of Toronto. I might fall down a mountain, but there ain't nothin' round here that's steep enough for me to fall off it.
Anyway, thank you for the good wishes. And, because we're cool like that, we'll be celebrating our first anniversary as co-habitants in less than a month!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 02:05 am (UTC)Yeah ...
Date: 2006-03-27 04:49 am (UTC)Re: Yeah ...
Date: 2006-03-29 06:42 pm (UTC)Re: Yeah ...
Date: 2006-03-29 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 02:48 am (UTC)Laura Nipple?
Date: 2006-03-27 04:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 02:51 am (UTC)You do lead an adventurous life. Not really "entertaining" in the positive sense, because it seems to be mostly bad things happening and I'd feel morbid if I was fully entertained, but certainly compelling and interesting. And it makes my bout of illness feel so uninteresting - I'll have to pick up an exotic disease of my own just to keep up with the neighbours...
And is that top picture of what I think it is? Has this journal turned the corner into not work safe? If so, I'm all for it!
Not Positive!?!
Date: 2006-03-27 04:59 am (UTC)steel platetitanium mesh in my head! Oh, wait, that's right. My surgeon has pronounced my socket as good as new ...Hmm.
Well, we're it not for my philosophical pacifism, I'd challenge you to those fisticuffs, yessiree bob.
But them's the breaks, as we say whislt under the influence of Zen.
I don't actually see my life (or even my posts about same) as being all that negative - besides getting my head beat in, what other bad things have happened in, say, the last two years?
Just curious, seeing as how I'm the writer and I don't see my annals [note to the peanut gallery: that doesn't mean what you think it does - look it up!] as being un-positive.
Not that it matters, so long as you do find them compelling and interesting.
And if you really want an exotic disease, I can't promise we're still carrying, but we both are still coughing ...
Re: Not Positive!?!
Date: 2006-03-27 05:08 am (UTC)Well...there's the violence, and then there's the relationship drama, all of which makes for gripping prose, and I'm always excited to see a fresh posting so I can hear the latest, but it's not all kittens and gold.
To be fair, there's much commentary regarding the happiness of the relationship, but those are generally incidental to the plot of the post. A quick perusal shows burning flags, dreams of violence, prison shots and fisticuffs!
But in no way is this a complaint, I'm enjoying it very much, I just didn't want to say "you lead a great life that looks like a lot of fun!" because getting one's face pounded in likely doesn't rate so high in the "let's do it again" charts.
Re: Not Positive!?!
Date: 2006-03-27 05:19 am (UTC)Anyway, I'll stop arguing; what the hell do I know how it sounds from the outside?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-27 04:48 am (UTC)Incidentally, I enjoyed a bit of wry amusement the other day when I found out a tiny piece of trivia, that Alan Greenspan, who spent four consecutive terms as Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board and has widely been lauded around the world for his helmsmanship of the US economy - was for 20 years a disciple of Ayn Rand, that his first time in print was to defend "Atlas Shrugged" and articles by him appear in the Ayn Rand book, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451147952/104-3939003-4898341?v=glance&n=283155
You should buy it.
Although, personally, I would have prefered if she had titled it: "Capitalism: Improving the Lives of People Too Dumb to Understand It for a 100 years".
Just to Catch Up ...
Date: 2006-03-27 05:07 am (UTC)- You are the person to whose insults I am planning to reply. And fortunately, the vagaries of Capital's roulet ball do not serve to disprove my Brilliantly Original ConceptTM; in fact, such only serves to buttress the sinews of my
theseusthesis.As for Greenspan, history will show him to have been as luckey as he was incompetent. That he was also an acolyte of Rand doesn't surprise me, but does go some ways toward understanding how it was he was proud, and not ashamed of his small role in the affairs of the world.
Re: Just to Catch Up ...
Date: 2006-03-28 01:53 am (UTC)As for Greenspan, history will show that he was more lucky than he was competent. I suspect that central bankers are like hockey goalies - able to blow the game, but very seldom good enough to win it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 12:46 am (UTC)I do not think I would ever attempt skiing. I would come back with too many things torn and broken. You are brave.
And happy anniversary to you both.
Yeah to Skiing!
Date: 2006-03-28 01:57 am (UTC)But thanks for the kind wishes. Flu aside, it was a happy anniversary.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 06:04 am (UTC)Also loving that you refer to yourself as Young Geoffrey. Kudos on not dying while hurling yourself down a hill and having the flu.
Kudoses Accepted
Date: 2006-04-06 12:50 am (UTC)Incidentally, I'm crossing my fingers you get the gig with The Current. Radio is good; CBC radio is Very Good.
Re: Kudoses Accepted
Date: 2006-04-06 03:27 am (UTC)