Chapter 245

I had serious insomnia and didn’t fall asleep until 2 AM, after three hours rolling around in bed and thinking about random shit. Taking that 5 PM nap must have played games with my sleep schedule, but if I don’t get a bit of sleep before jiu-jitsu I’m all drained. What’s a boy to do?

So I didn’t get up at 6 on the dot, I tried to catch maybe one extra hour of sleep but could only get 30 minutes. I took the dog out and got ready for work.

I had three classes scheduled all day, plus one extra since the Srilankan physics teacher is still stuck in quarantine limbo and we have to cover him. I met the two other grade 11 classes, and they’re angels. I hope senioritis won’t kick in for a long time and they will remain cooperative.

I also listened to the Metal Minded review podcast, only one album really interested me, the new offering by Finnish death-doom outfit Hooded Menace. I have to get around to listening to it. I then put on an episode of Vox & Hops, the podcast hosted by Cryptospy vocalist and craft beer addict Matt McGachy, he was talking to deathmatch wrestler PCP F’n Crazy Manny. The rest of my audio experience in the office was comprised of grindcore EPs and live sets by Gorilla Panik, Nuclear Holocaust, Meth Leppard and Blockheads, I definitely feel like grindcore is a good soundtrack to these current days.

I did a bit of prepping and school-related stuff, but most of my afternoon between classes was spent reading a collection of short novellas by French author Frédéric Beigbeder, mostly about drugs and graphic sex and a general yuppie decadent spirit reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis. I think I only read 99 Francs, his caustic semi-autobiographical novel about the world of advertising, and now I got a few more ebooks of his. But I want to plow through Musashi first, I must have 8000 pages left, and it’s a bit of a chore reading all those dialogues by Japanese samurai talking about swordfighting. Apparently it builds up to a really cool finale so I keep going.

I got home and tried to exercise, but there’s something in my elbow that makes pull-ups impossible. Life of an aging jiu-jitsu practitioner. Anything involving legs in any way is out of the window, so I just did a bunch of push-ups. Then I felt antsy and hungry, so the dog and I rode to the supermarket. A shurgwaydinger by the entrance came to me and said that I have to hold him in my arms or put him in the cart, fair, very fair. I bought steaks, brussel sprouts (my favorite vegetable, and only this particular upscale supermarket stocks them) and a lot of beer. At the counter, I ran into my Ugandan coworker, he was holding a huge piece of yam, something he likes but is also only sold there. Tasteless roots are a huge staple of the diet of a lot of countries I have visited, to my great chagrin as a hipster hedonistic foodie. I guess you could say the same about northern Europeans and their potatoes, but at least there are tons of ways to make them taters delicious.

I rode back, stopping at a park in the ghetto to make dips on gymnastics bars. I cooked two steaks and a heaping portion of brussel sprouts, and sat there contented.