|
|
|
|
     |
Summer so far Part 2 It has been hot. There have been sections of time where it's been maddeningly hot for a week or more and it's been aggravating me greatly. I'm a baby when it comes to dealing with heat, did you guys know that? It makes me a lot more easily irritable and fairly lazy to boot. There's not much that I think I'd rather do on those hot, hot days then to retreat to the cool tile floor of my basement to take a nap, or even just doing a bit of reading. It doesn't help that my mother is still going strong on her rearranging the backyard binge. Let me tell you, lugging around giant bags of rocks, heavy stone tiles all day in the heat and humidity is most definately not fun. And yet, she wants it done...so it gets done :P I tutor a bit more now too as I'm working witht he girl's older brother (grade 9) as well. It's a bit...different than what I expected. I just want to say right now for the record that teaching seems to be a hard business. It's all well and easy for me, myself to understand the little things that makes Shakespeare's works effective...but how on earth do I explain that to a kid? Ii am trying of course, and damned hard, but when the subject at hand bores the crap out of him, I find it really hard to keep him interested enough to try his best. I also want to say that the education in the early grades has been amped up a bit. On top of dealing with me, he goes to one of those organized extracurricular tutoring places that a lot of asian parents seem to make use of and he's learning some pretty outlandish words. A lot of the vocab that he's being forced to pick up on are words that I know, yet have never ever used before in my entire life. An example that stands out to mind is "bellicose." Like...I understand it, but just have never had a chance to use it before (till now, yay!). Cut the hair short about two weeks ago now. It felt extremely strange at first as I haven't had hair this short for a long time and I'm not yet accustomed to how 'light' it feels compared to how it's been for the past few years. Everytime I freshly cut my hair though, I suddenly look like I've grown a good 5-6 years younger, especially when I greet my sister at the door with it with a goofy grin on my face. I'm not quite sure how I feel being what is essentially a 22 year old boy...but since Sam as well suffers from the same problem when he cuts his hair, I think that I'll manage. Camping trip. Jen organized a camping trip with a crowd of people from the old high school days and off we went. We went up to Algonquin for the weekend which is about 3-4 hours drive up north from Toronto. The weather was hot, but refrained from getting unreasonably humid so I guess that was a blessing. The food was good, Tomo playing master chef, especially with his beer stew XD. Don't ask me, I had no idea you could make a stew with beer and vegetables. Since none of us got trashed, I'm assuming that the alcohol was somehow magically boiled out of the stew, leaving just a sort of broth with vegetables and meats in it? The moon was extremely bright on the weekend that we went so the star gazing wasn't quite as majestic as I rememeber it being on previous trips but the company and the setting (moonlit lake at night anyone?) more than made up for that. Oh and before I forget, rawr to Jen for the two piece swimsuit XD. Go courage! Hehehe. There was the beach though all I did was doze lightly in the shade (no swimsuit), but even that was nice too. There's some light pleasure to be had in dozing, where you're sort of asleep, but little things bring you up closer to the surface of waking, only to let you drift back down before you come up too far. The sound of a couple of kiddies near me attempting to make sandcastles as I drifted in and out in the shade of a tree on a few towels was a nice memory. There was a hike we went on through what seemed to be some fairly dead looking forest with broken trees all overhanging the path looking all spooky...then suddenly, we popped out of the treeline and could see a dense blanket of green forest stretching out beneath us straight up to the horizon. It was quite a view. Talks with some old friends late at night around a dying campfire...there's pretty much no comparison to that, though sadly some friends turned in early *hinthint XD* but it was still all good. I don't understand a girl's reluctance to accept a perfectly normal offer of a sweater. Ava forgot to bring a sweater as I guess she thought it wouldn't get so chilly at night? So of course, I'm quick to offer her the one I'm wearing, and she refuses. For a long while she refuses until about ten minutes later, I see her actually trembling as she sat next to the fire and just without a word, took off my sweater and draped it over her. THEN she wears it with a thanks. This was repeated the following night in pretty much the exact same fashion. I don't quite get that. I mean...you're cold, and more, I KNOW that you're cold as it's that visible so why refuse the offer? Two reasons I can sort of hazard a guess at. The first being a sense of politeness? This came across in protestations such as "no, it's yours," and "but then you'll be cold." To clear this up, I LIKE the cold. I like goosebumps and shivers and if there isn't two feet of snow on ground and a freakishly low wind chill factor, any sort of sweater that I have on is more of a comfort thing rather than because I'm actually cold enough to need one. Around the house from autumn to spring, I often wear a sort of sweater jacket thing. It's actually an unzippable inside thick lining to a winter jacket that I have but I detached it for my own nefarious purposes. Do I really NEED to be wearing it? No. More often than not, it's left unzipped with the sleeves rolled up to keep from getting too toasty. But it's comforting to have it on, like being wrapped in a childhood blanket you know? The second guess that I'll hazard is for fear of a sort of romantic overture? That one, I can understand more easily I suppose and who knows...maybe to a part of me, it sort of was >.> but I don't think that I'm one to linger over the impossible anymore hehe, so if it was in part some sort of gesture, it was one made without any real thought of following up on it. But all that aside...I want it said that talking one on one with a friend around a dying fire after everyone's gone to sleep is reminiscent of a certain conversation I had once in a dark basement. It was both kind of nice and kind of uncomfortable at the same time. We headed home when the weekend was over. Jen heard me sing on the way home, and more than that, "sing" along to things that I had no real hope of singing XD. Gogo all the parts of Bohemian Rhapsody and TRYING to hum along with Sarah Brightman and her maddeningly high pitched voice XD. Was picked up at Jen's place by sis, Sam and mom and went to watch the Pirates movie right after I got back into town, mosquito bites and all hehe. I've also gotten new glasses, frameless and transitions, they cost a stupid amount of money but got a good deal on them compared to what other stores in the area were selling them for. Transition lenses are a funny thing really. I remember when I first heard of them, I was opposed to the idea as I didn't like the idea of having them fluctuate so often but talking with Will about em this past school year convinced me to give them a try and now I'm not sure I'll ever give them up. It was funny the first time after I got them I was mentioning to my sister that I didnt' think they were working at all, only to be told by her with laughter to take off my glasses and look at them and lo and behold! The lens were very noticabely darker. They had done their job so gradually and smoothly that I didn't even notice until I'd taken them off to see how bright the world really was. And that's another thing about them. To my experience so far, I like them even more because they're not as effective as outright sunglasses. They don't really dim the world in any noticable way but simply tone down the glare and the brightness to a more manageable level which is a huge relief on the eyes. I suppose that about wraps up my second update this summer, supposing that I'm not missing anything. Anyway, look for a vengeance themed post int he near future (relatively >.>) as I finally tracked down Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and have now see all 3 of Chan Woo Park's vengeance themed trilogy. Take it easy. |