Chapter 242

Up a few minutes before 6, back to the grind. I called the dog to chuquwar and there was a dilemma on his triangle face, as much as he wanted to go out he also seemed happy to stay in bed with his mama. We walked around a bit, and there were old people doing tai chi in the square. I considered joining them for a second but the tai chi they do is pretty different than the one I learned so I went to another, more secluded place.

Then I had more time to chill a bit and drink green tea before getting on my bike and going to work. It was weird sitting in my cubicle for the first time in two and a half months. There’s been a few changes in the office, some of the previously empty desks are now occupied by math teachers, the one constant is that it’s deafeningly loud and my Beats headphones will get a lot of mileage.

We had a short assembly, basically just the principals welcoming us back, and then I sat down and did a bit of preparation, though most of my stuff was ready. We also had a short departmental meeting, alloting classes and which part of the curriculum will be taught by whom. Fairly uneventful stuff.

I went back home to eat lunch and play with the dog. I ate my leftover pasta while watching an old Breaking Bad episode, the one where Gus Fring is blown up. I remember watching it the first time and audibly yelling OH SHIT! but now that I knew it was coming I found the whole deception about him walking out of the room, adjusting his tie and then falling dead extremely cheesy. Walter White’s plan and execution was seriously twisted and unpredictable, though, gotta give them that.

In the afternoon there was a Zoom meeting with science teachers from the whole network. The internet kept crashing. I’ll have to make sure I have plenty of music saved on my hard drive and generally have a mindset where I don’t depend on the internet or other first-world modern amenities.

I got home, took a nap and went to the gym. We drilled a few attacks and defenses related to the De La Riva guard, then rolled three rounds. A good time was had by all. I had a bit of energy left, and saw that two of the Chinese kickboxers training in the other half of the gym had put on their shin guards and were touch-sparring. I changed into shorts, got my gloves and a pair of shin guards myself, then sat next to them. After a minute, one guy stepped out and the other one called me in. I said “Let’s go light, I don’t have my ball protector” and he nodded, but pretty much immediately started throwing full-power strikes. Why? Fuck if I know. I don’t think I crossed a line by asking (non-verbally and implicitly) to spar, I’m a fucken paying customer at the gym. And I don’t think he’s a douchebag bully, we boxed a while ago and it was controlled.

I got a few licks in, but I took some serious leg kicks that turned my thigh to marmalade. The next few days will suck shit, but can I really be mad? It’s not as if he snuck behind me and hit me. You get in the lion’s cage, expect to get hurt.

I went home, and though the thing I wanted to do the most was lie down, I took the dog out and did a circuit, sipping a beer. I ate sardines and crackers while sitting on the couch, icing my leg and my jaw, and put on the first episode of the second season of Bad Blood. The first season was produced by a Canadian channel and was inspired by the true story of the Risotto family, but the second season was picked up by Netflix and is entirely fictional. I made it to the 20-minute mark, there’s just so much painfully cliché dialogues and sassy female characters I can handle. Also while the first season was a classic case of French erasure in Montreal, the second season featured Italians from Italy speaking to one another exclusively in English, but doing the little hand gesture, which gave me cancer.

So I watched Hip-Hop Evolution, the episode about the death of Notorious BIG, and the rise of Puff Daddy and Jay-Z. Great series.