French class is going well I think. We've had no tests yet but the class is entirely in French now and I'm expected to follow along. I missed 3 of the first 4 classes and when I returned it was difficult for me to follow but now we're another 4 classes in and I can follow along fairly well. I often will hear the words now but not catch the meaning of them. Either I'll miss one key word or not know a verb but often it's also that the string of words means something other than what I would expect them to mean. For example 'mal au coeur', translated it means sick heart or ill heart, something along those lines. So what would you expect that to mean? Maybe broken hearted or something right? Nope, it means you want to throw up from eating too much sugar or something. Why not say 'mal au estomac'? Dunno, it's just one of those language things. When you're learning a new language you have no idea when these idioms are coming. Or there are some verbs that can be used it a lot of different ways like 'mettre' to put as I learned it but means a hell of a lot more than that. If you google translate mettre you'll find 19 dictionary results.
Now we're debating putting me in an intensive conversation French course for 2 weeks. Since I have no job and finding one is proving difficult in this french climate I may have to ramp up my language learning. I can write it fairly effectively as this point if I'm not expected to win awards for my prose but speaking it and hearing it are different matters. This intensive conversation course may be the spring board I need to be able to communicate in French consistently.
I've decided to try my hand at film making for a living. I've been on sets in the past and I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the job itself. I did grip and electric work a couple years ago but now I want to get into something a little more challenging so I've decided to get into camera work and video editing. Of course while I learn those trades I hope to gain employment working as a grip or coffee boy or something. The film industry is pretty good at encouraging new comers, film makers will often take on volunteers and help you learn the craft.
We bought a new camera, one that they film the show Trauma with. I'm going to make a portfolio with it while I volunteer my time and hopefully work part time. I've also got to wait 5 more months until I'm allowed to join the editors union, you have to live in Quebec for 18 months. It seems though that once I'm in the union jobs will be pretty easy to find. Let's hope anyway.
I'll probably post anything I make on a blog but it may take a while. I've got to film whatever I want to make then learn the editing software and do the edits. Intensive French will slow that down too although I intend to bring the camera and film the city on lunch breaks which of course are stupidly an hour. What the hell can I accomplish in one hour, I need to eat that's 15 min unless I make it longer. I can't skip eating either. So maybe I can rush a visit to the gym in but not if I want to do any cardio. Why not make the lunch a half hour and let us out a bit earlier. Every time I take all day classes it's the same thing. The teacher will often suggest we come back from lunch early and quit early, they want to get the hell out too, but you know there's always some asshole who wants the full hour.
I scored my first touchdown in football. It was my third game, we're 1-2 after two one point losses. I've caught a ball in each game for a total of 36 yards, my touchdown catch was a 5 yard square in route on the goal line. I'm very glad I didn't drift out of the endzone as I had to do a bit of a dive to catch it. It's a lot of fun the football. It kinda sucks that we have late games on Saturday night, 11pm for example, but everyday is like a Saturday to me these days.
Also Assassin's Creed 2 is awesome.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Stiches
These mouth stitches are annoying. They hang from the roof of my mouth like stalactites and I'm absent-mindedly trying to push them out with my tongue as if they were a free floating cat hair that got sucked in by accident. Often I will only realize what I'm doing when I poke my tongue at the wound too hard and it hurts a bit. At least it's not the graft area itself I've been poking at with my tongue.
Every once in a while a piece of the stitches will come off and get stuck somewhere in the back of my throat, that's the worst. You can feel it back there but there's nothing to be done except swallow and chug whatever I happen to be drinking. The front of my gums, the left side only thankfully because I seem to automatically eat everything on my right side, looks like a miniature war zone, or a full size flea war zone, not that fleas war, perhaps we should follow the fleas example, do they suck blood from our pets?, maybe we shouldn't follow their example. It hurts less than it did a couple days ago and I'm going to play football on Sunday regardless of what it looks like. I'll have to be wary of that side of my face and protect it, that basically means don't let the ball slip through my hands and hit me in the face.
Somehow my lips are numb on that side. I'm going to assume that the feeling will come back once things have healed up a bit and I have a follow up appointment on the 20something so I'm not worried but it's weird to have numb lips, if I say more than one or two sentences in a row I begin to sound like Sylvester Stallone.
I got Kate 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' but Julia Child for Christmas. Turns out she really wanted it. I just wandered into the book store to get some ideas and there's this picture of Meryl Streep and I think that's the Julia Child movie we watched recently, well Kate watched and I did something else occasionally paying attention. So I'm looking through the book and I note the price so I look at some other books but none of them seemed to be half as good as the Julia Child book so I go back to it. During the second round of indecision I see that there's a section on how to cut things properly, even a diagram of how to properly hold the knife. So now the book is going to be useful for both of us, it's hard to live with a real cook and not want to learn some stuff yourself, plus I like cutting things with a knife, maybe it's a guy thing. The price still forces me to do another loop around the cooking book table at whatever store I was in. If the Child book was the only one there I wouldn't have balked at the price, maybe it's baulked?, neither word appears to be spelt wrong. There were so many to choose from but of course the most expensive one turned out to be the best one, the kicker was that the book was originally published in 1970, I figured it had to be good and worth the price. I think I was right, Kate loves it and it's a nice hard cover with little fleur de lis all over it. Of course it won't take look to have oil spilled on it and flour and bacon rubbed into the binding. I actually prefer a book that's beat up, cook books need to have things spilt on them. If you go to some one's library I'm willing to bet the best books are the ones that have the most damage done to them.
Every once in a while a piece of the stitches will come off and get stuck somewhere in the back of my throat, that's the worst. You can feel it back there but there's nothing to be done except swallow and chug whatever I happen to be drinking. The front of my gums, the left side only thankfully because I seem to automatically eat everything on my right side, looks like a miniature war zone, or a full size flea war zone, not that fleas war, perhaps we should follow the fleas example, do they suck blood from our pets?, maybe we shouldn't follow their example. It hurts less than it did a couple days ago and I'm going to play football on Sunday regardless of what it looks like. I'll have to be wary of that side of my face and protect it, that basically means don't let the ball slip through my hands and hit me in the face.
Somehow my lips are numb on that side. I'm going to assume that the feeling will come back once things have healed up a bit and I have a follow up appointment on the 20something so I'm not worried but it's weird to have numb lips, if I say more than one or two sentences in a row I begin to sound like Sylvester Stallone.
I got Kate 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' but Julia Child for Christmas. Turns out she really wanted it. I just wandered into the book store to get some ideas and there's this picture of Meryl Streep and I think that's the Julia Child movie we watched recently, well Kate watched and I did something else occasionally paying attention. So I'm looking through the book and I note the price so I look at some other books but none of them seemed to be half as good as the Julia Child book so I go back to it. During the second round of indecision I see that there's a section on how to cut things properly, even a diagram of how to properly hold the knife. So now the book is going to be useful for both of us, it's hard to live with a real cook and not want to learn some stuff yourself, plus I like cutting things with a knife, maybe it's a guy thing. The price still forces me to do another loop around the cooking book table at whatever store I was in. If the Child book was the only one there I wouldn't have balked at the price, maybe it's baulked?, neither word appears to be spelt wrong. There were so many to choose from but of course the most expensive one turned out to be the best one, the kicker was that the book was originally published in 1970, I figured it had to be good and worth the price. I think I was right, Kate loves it and it's a nice hard cover with little fleur de lis all over it. Of course it won't take look to have oil spilled on it and flour and bacon rubbed into the binding. I actually prefer a book that's beat up, cook books need to have things spilt on them. If you go to some one's library I'm willing to bet the best books are the ones that have the most damage done to them.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
From Texas To Hamilton
Texas was good and bad, visiting my parents for the first time in their southern winter home and meeting their friends was the good, the bad was the weather. The weather was a great improvement over the weather in Montreal but 12 degrees and a light rain does not make for hanging out by the pool. It is fine for visiting Mexico however which we did a number of times.
The food was another good thing, lots of Mexican and obscure Texas/Mexico snacks like a corn on the cob smothered in mayo some red stuff and shredder cheese, that one was actually pretty gross but walking down the street washing it down with a salted Corona made up for it's grossness, and the garbage can I found helped a bit as well.
I picked up some nice Tequila, although it doesn't have a worm in i,t as well as a few classic Mexican items like a blanket and a nacho dish, at least I think that's what it is. There was a shootout at the Mexican pub with the mechanical bull the previous month so we couldn't try the bucking bronco out although I'm sure I could have put my 8 seconds in. The other pub my parents usually go to was randomly closed every time we went too so we tried a couple of new places. They all love putting salt around the neck of Coronas. I know adding salt to an alcoholic beverage is not a great idea, especially not when you drink 6 of them, but it tastes pretty damn good.
The food was another good thing, lots of Mexican and obscure Texas/Mexico snacks like a corn on the cob smothered in mayo some red stuff and shredder cheese, that one was actually pretty gross but walking down the street washing it down with a salted Corona made up for it's grossness, and the garbage can I found helped a bit as well.
I picked up some nice Tequila, although it doesn't have a worm in i,t as well as a few classic Mexican items like a blanket and a nacho dish, at least I think that's what it is. There was a shootout at the Mexican pub with the mechanical bull the previous month so we couldn't try the bucking bronco out although I'm sure I could have put my 8 seconds in. The other pub my parents usually go to was randomly closed every time we went too so we tried a couple of new places. They all love putting salt around the neck of Coronas. I know adding salt to an alcoholic beverage is not a great idea, especially not when you drink 6 of them, but it tastes pretty damn good.
Yesterday I had gum surgery. They take a piece of gum from the roof of your mouth and then stick it under the gum line that's receding and then they stitch it all up. It was a very smooth procedure they numb up the area before they use the needle to numb it up for the surgery so I didn't really feel much pain. There were a couple stitches that went in a bit outside of the numbed area and the metro ride home was unpleasant but the pain is negligible today and I've not even taken anything for it. The toughest part will be ensuring that the new gum heals, minor damage done to it in the next few days could prove costly. I can eat just fine but I have to chew on the right side of my mouth and I should probably avoid getting punched on the left side of my face as well.
I've got a final football practice tonight before the season starts Sunday. I am confident I'll be good to play on Sunday but tonight I may have to sit on the sidelines. We'll see how much healing I can get done in the next 9 hours.
All the animals were alive upon our return although we were a bit concerned. Not that we don't trust Ludo but the rats are getting more adventurous and they may decide they can make the jump from their shelf to the table one of these days and as much as I trust the cats with the rats when I'm around I don't know how they would react to a rat lose on the floor boards for three days.
Next week I visit Hamilton to see my good friend Eric who was my roommate for about a year in Toronto. I'm going to try out the double decker overnightaven't decided the dates just yet.
Unemployment does have it's advantages, I can travel, I watch a lot of movies, the house is cleaner than it's ever been. This trip is hopefully going to have as much business in it as fun, I'm hoping to break into the same vocation as Eric and being unemployed, in this case, is a pretty good first step.
Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to anyone I missed, which was most people, but fear not some gifts/cards have yet to be mailed. I'll get to it though!
More crap to come...
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