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As you know, I have a cold.
Earlier this week I lost my voice for a couple of days. I'm a chatty kind of guy, so I have really had to work hard to just relax and not talk too much to give my voice a rest. The funny thing is, the less I talk, the less I write. It seems that I want to relax more than just my physical voice.
So...see you next week.
Here's something that I never admit to...I'm sick.
I am very proud of my resilient constitution. In the past, when everyone around me has been incapacitated by the flu or a cold, I have remained completely oblivious to what it even feels like to be sick. Anytime I've felt something coming on, one good night's sleep and I've been 100%.
But this cold has lingered. I actually feel quite well except for a throat so sore that I'm currently living off of hot water with lemon and honey. And now I can't help but wonder what has changed in my life to make me susceptible to illness...
It's probably my job: All of the sick people coming in and handing me money -- the number one pathogen carrier on the planet.
Yup, it must be the job. I'm sure it has nothing to do with swimming in the ocean in February.
I went to a birthday party the other night.
I had to work that evening but I headed over after I closed the store. Now, when you are the last person to show up at a party It is very likely that you will be the only sober person there. So when I got there I felt like an explorer to some distant British colony that had been isolated for several generations because everyone was speaking a language that sounded a lot like English, but the words were strung together strangely and the grammar was all wrong. It was like being in a room full of Australians: You're pretty sure you know what they're saying but there's a good chance that they mean something else entirely. These people weren't just speaking English anymore, they were speaking drunken English.
And philosophy comes up when people are drunk. I think that Drunken Philosophy should be a philosophical movement. I mean, I love
what people have to say when they've been drinking. If you can get to
them before they start slurring, they often have some enlightening
things to talk about because that's when they get brave enough to talk
about far out stuff like the space/time continuum and spirituality and
the hopes and dreams that they would never share when sober. Take a
person talking about something he feels passionately about: When he is
sober, he/she will explain things logically and often with the least
amount of information required to get the point across. But when he is
drunk, he will include even the minutest detail to make you comprehend
what he is talking about. This is because when he is drunk, whatever he
is talking about is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER and he will not stop
talking until you also believe it is the most important thing ever. I
believe that listening to drunken philosophy can give you great insight
into the inner workings of a person's mind.
So showing up at the party late was great. I had a really good time learning about the things that people won't normally talk about when they're sober. And I met some wonderfully interesting new people who I hope are at least 80% as interesting when they aren't drinking.
But in the end, the greatest thing about showing up at the birthday party where everyone was already drunk was that nobody noticed when I snagged a second piece of cake.
I have the day off.
It's a good thing too, because I didn't want to work today. I mean, I love my store but I don't want to be there all of the time. Some days I just want to relax. Now, I need to point out that I have no right to complain: my job is easy, my customers are great and I rarely work more than three days in a row. Sounds great huh?
Still, some days I do have to go to work when I just don't feel like it. It is on those days that I check the news regularly throughout the day before I head for work. Why? Well, my hope is that in the news I will find an excellent excuse for not going out, like a nuclear meltdown or other such horrible disaster has taken place or a terrible new war has broken out and all human civilization is in danger. Then I can say , How can I go to work on a day like today? And with such a horrible thing having happened somewhere on the planet, how could anyone argue with my decision to remain closed for the day? Would anyone even feel like renting movies anyway when there is such imminent danger out in the world? Probably not.
But today I have the day off and it's absolutely beautiful outside. I'm about to go for a long walk.
I hope that nothing comes along to ruin it.
When we moved into our apartment just over a year ago, I was very happy that it had high ceilings. As a 6'2" person, I do not like living in places where I can potentially whack my head on a regular basis. Luckily, there is only one spot in our entire home that has head-whacking potential: the stairway. The ceiling above the stairs drops straight down to create a nice clean edge that's only slightly above head height. Even better, the edge is reinforced with a piece of hardwood trim. So ever since we moved in, I've been very conscious of how I walk down the stairs; As long as I don't bounce too much, I'm safe.
But today I was in a wonderful mood; It was a gorgeous day out, the birds were singing, blah, blah, blah... I had a spring in my step. Well, a spring-loaded step does not jive with a low overhang. I bounced down the stairs with a little la la la song in my head and WHACK!
I crumpled onto the stairs. The first thing I thought was OW! The second thing I thought was, I can't believe I went 13 months without doing that. And now I'm thinking that it will probably happen again some day. I'm sure I'll be in a great mood, bouncing down the stairs and WHACK! Then I'll likely scream Not again!, because that's really the kind of thing that should only have to happen to a person once. But now I'm led to believe that it happens once every 13 months. I guess I've got until next March to convince Morgaine that we have to move.
I was going to meet a friend for breakfast the other day.
It's Friday morning rush hour and the bus is packed so I can't sit down. There I am, on my way to have breakfast and I have to hold the rail. I hate holding the rail. The dirty, germ-laden rail.
Lucky for me, I'm tall so I grab the rail above my head. Less people
can grab the top rail. Less people = less germs. Still, all I can think
of while I'm riding the bus is, my hand is contaminated.
I attempt damage control: Once I grab the handrail, I do not move it. This is where I will stand for the rest of my bus ride so that I don't have to grab some other virus-infected rail. But then the people in the packed bus start shifting around, getting on, getting off. I hang on to that top rail as tightly as I can until I'm forced to either move or block the passenger flow. I let go and shuffle along with the crowd. The bus starts to move and there's no time to think, I just reach out and grab a waist-high rail. Ugh, I'm thinking, how many children have sneezed on this?
Of course I will wash my hands when I get to the restaurant, but washing my hands in a public restroom doesn't make me feel any cleaner. I remind myself to use my other, non-contaminated hand to hold my toast.
I got an email on Wednesday.
It told me that I would know by today if I got into grad school or
not. My biggest question is: If they knew on Wednesday that they were
going to tell me on Friday, why give me two days of extra stress? Why
not just let me know on Friday? Now instead of just going about my normal day, I have had this sitting in the back
of my mind making me nervous. I mean, it was already in the back of my mind but it was way
back...so far back that I didn't think about it except for that one
single moment every day when I heard the mailman at the door.
But the notice didn't come in the mail. It came as an email. And it
came a day early so I didn't have to spend any longer worrying about
it.
It went like this:
"Dear Craig Warkentin:
On behalf of the faculty and staff, I am delighted to inform you that you have been invited to the UBC Creative Writing MFA Program starting in September 2008..." and so on.
This week I was fascinated by my keys.
Every time I pulled my keys out of my pocket, I was a little puzzled. They seemed like foreign objects. I had trouble comprehending what they actually do. I mean, you stick them into a tiny little hole and turn. That's it. Of the keys on my ring, two are for my home, four are for various locks at my store and one is for my co-operative auto lock box. I looked at these little snaggle-toothed objects and the larger objects and spaces that they represented and it didn't make sense. I couldn't make the connection. Why did I need this teeny piece of metal to get through this door? What's to stop anyone who doesn't have this little piece of metal from coming through this door? I mean, is it really that so tough to bypass a lock without a key? Surely it couldn't be that difficult.
And then it came to me: The only thing that keeps a person from going through a locked door without a key is their morality. So keys are a symbol of our adherence to a common morality. It's funny that we've accepted this little symbol as something much more concrete.
Well, that's my critical thinking quota for the month. Whew, glad I got that over with! Tomorrow I can get back to being witty.
P.S. Please check out Morgaine's blog to vote in her Images of Love Valentine's Day Contest. Yup, love... that's what Morgaine is all about!
Some of you very sharp readers might have noticed that I didn't post on Monday. That's because I was sick. The thing is, I never get sick. If I feel something coming on, it's usually gone within a couple of hours. I feel fortunate that I have such a healthy constitution.
But for those of you who read yesterday's entry regarding my
freediving competition, you probably know that I inhaled a good lungful
of nasty outdoor pool water.
I suspect that we were the first ones to use the outdoor pool this
year. This leads me to believe that they haven't cleaned it since last
fall. I mean, the pool was pretty gross. The water was full of floaties
and the slimy bottom was covered in all kinds of crap -- there was a sock, leaves of course, a dead bird, lots of general junk
and a bunch of bird shit. Not just regular bird shit mind you, but good
sized goose and seagull crap. I was swimming in a petri dish. So when I
couldn't keep my head out of the water at the end of my dive, I inhaled
a nice big dose of the bacteria-laden cesspool. Most of it went into my
lungs but I managed to swallow some of it too.
I had an immediate sore throat. By Monday I could barely swallow and
my muscles were aching. I was thinking that maybe the bird shit gave me
bird flu. But being as resilient as I am, by Tuesday morning I was
already feeling about 92% well. Today I'm at 98%.
I guess it was that 24 hour bird flu.
I had a great time at my freediving competition this past weekend.
Saturday was the static event. Static is essentially holding your breath underwater. The last competition I won the event with a time of 5:31. I managed six minutes easily in training last week so I thought I'd go for it in competition. Well, I came up at 6:02 and had a blackout (not uncommon in this sport). I recovered very quickly and at first I didn't even realize that I had blacked out at all. But that's only because the safety person had held my head out of the water so I didn't drown. So I was disqualified. I could have come up sooner and I still would have done very well in the competition, but for me the competitions are more about exploring my personal limits than winning. Anyway, I had a poor warm-up and didn't really feel prepared to do my personal best but I didn't pay attention to my own body and went for it anyway. My body was saying you can't do six minutes today but my brain wasn't listening, it just wanted that six minutes! So in the end, the disqualification didn't surprise me.
How do black-outs occur in this sport? Here's the simple explanation: while you're underwater, the oxygen level in your blood keeps dropping. When your head comes out of the water at the end of the dive, all of the blood that was in your brain gets sucked away from it by gravity. Then you take that first breath and it still takes a moment for that new oxygen to get to your brain. If the oxygen doesn't get to your brain fast enough, you faint. It's kind of like getting a headrush if you stand up really fast after being on the couch for an entire afternoon. Black-outs donn't happen all of the time, only if (like me) you take yourself a little farther than your body wants to go.
Sunday was the dynamic with fins event. Dynamic consists of doing laps underwater. I listened to myself (the part of me that was saying you're not ready for what you want to do today) and decided I would come up just after the 75m mark, which is something that's very doable for me. I've done 75m many, many times and have always been successful. I had learned from the day before and decided that I wasn't prepared to push myself to the limit.
BUT we were in the outdoor pool at UBC which has almost no distance markers on the bottom. What I had figured was around 75-76m was actually 78m. So I went a little further than I had thought I should go. I came up at 80m but when I exhaled, I sank down and inhaled a bunch of water before my safety diver could grab my head (again!). So another disqualification. My form throughout the swim was very good and well paced, so I was a bit disappointed to be disqualified.
my competition results:
final points: 0
place: last
But like I said, I'm not too interested in winning. I'm much more interested in discovering my own potential. I learned a lot from my errors and how to perform better next time. Plus I had such a great time! The best part of the weekend was watching Jill Yoneda set a new Canadian womens' dynamic with fins record of 137m. She beat her own record of 133m which she set last year.
Next month I begin a 12 week course with Performance Freediving. I'm looking forward to tracking my development over three months. I can't wait!
Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you what happens when you inhale a lungful of dirty outdoor pool water.
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