Nonsense

Time-consuming things completely brainwash you. You work every day for a month and then you stop for a week and on the 2nd or 3rd day you'll be consumed by this horrible listlessness, like there never was anything to do but work in the first place. You could learn to be an ice-dancer, but it's summer, and you could practice your skateboarding tricks but the streets are covered with ice, and the other things that you could do and maybe even should do, you'll eh...do them...some other time. I've seen this happen to so many people - they start watching copious amounts of TV and then they can't imagine life without it, they quit their job and they have no idea who they are anymore, they get a divorce and suddenly they're not so interested in their mistress and don't really feel like buying that house for her anymore, they get a maid and they die of starvation when he/she forgets to take them out of the high chair. Getting you in that thing was hard enough. And who buys a house in this economy anyway? Or is it the other economy that you're not supposed to buy houses in? And why did I assume the maid was female? Maybe he/she is one of those androgynous people that you can't get a grip on, literally and figuratively, and when you finally get a grip, they sue you for them turning out to be the opposite of what you thought.

Yuan Yuan is in Korea again, so good luck finding anything in our apartment. I found the flame on under the fried rice today, half an hour after I made it, and the leftover rice had fused into a pancake, charred on one side and completely edible or at least lickable on the outside. I resisted the urge to lick it, in case my tongue decided it'd rather live on the pancake side of life, but I salvaged the top layer and now I've had it for dinner. It smelled like cancer but it looked pretty tasty so now it's in my stomach.

I had to do all my exercises alone today. There was no camaraderie, no team spirit, no high-spirited but pain-rich wailing as the timer counted down the last seconds, but there was that dream of chocolate at the end of the tunnel, and it turned out to be good enough. I haven't eaten it yet, I plan on smearing it on my face like a mud mask and then chasing my face around the room and trying to get it all into my mouth.

Yuan Yuan the bear

My plank-holding times are steadily improving, but Yuan Yuan, whose body is some kind of mystery of science / voodoo, is gaining on me quickly. When we started out a few weeks ago, I could do 2 minutes and a bit. Today I hit 3 minutes 45 seconds, but then I had to lay there and drool on the floor for a while, until there was enough of a buoyant force for me to get up without popping an absicle. Yuan Yuan started out at a max of 40 seconds or so, and hit 2 minutes today, though she was whooping like a Native American at a scalping for the last 30. In a few weeks she'll catch up and overtake me. She could always do handstands longer than me (1 min 24 seconds), she can hold a bridge for 3 minutes, and she holds the record for jump-roping - 650 in a row. Mario would just shrug and say "that's impossible, I refuse to believe it," when she would beat us both at some new exercise. I often call her bear-related affectionate names, but I'm starting to think she might really be part bear. She sleeps a lot, 15 hours a few days ago, 10-12 regularly, she's super strong but she can barely do 5 push-ups, she can eat twice as much as me easily and being full is no deterrent, she's got a big head and her yawns are closer in shape to a banana (vertically) than an apple, she runs uphill faster than downhill, and she's covered with 3-inch long thick brown fur all over her body. The only thing not in her favor is that she's completely indifferent to meat. Maybe that's the only thing standing between me and a bloody puddle of me-leftovers.