Chapter 247

I woke up around 9, well rested. The girlfriend had already taken the dog out for a walk and his toilet duties so I lazily sat around watching YouTube videos and writing yesterday’s entry. I put on some chill dubstep tunes, notably by a producer named Kromestar, I’m getting more and more into electronic music.

Then at 11 we went to her friend’s apartment. I grabbed the keys and said I’d drive. “But you don’t know how to get there!”, the girlfriend retorted, before realizing how retarded she was being. Once we got to the apartment complex, I asked if I should park right by the gate, but she directed me all the way to her friend’s condo building.

“Where’s their apartment?”

“In that building right there. But we have to go to the gate first, to pick up the food they ordered.”

“So why we didn’t just park at the gate then?”

“Because then we’d have to walk all the way to their home”

“...like we’re doing now, twice over?”

Her retardation is endearing, especially since I’m absolutely retarded myself.

We got in and the other guests soon came, in total there were eight of us, two pregnant colleagues of hers, their husbands, a new female coworker, a guy who’s linked to their school in some way I don’t know (Is he a teacher or one of their senior students? He looks 14 but may very well be in his thirties). Huge amounts of food were consumed, a family-sized portion of fish in a spicy sour soup and bags of McDonald’s. I’m not a health nut but if I dove in that pile of junk food the same way they did I knew I’d be all queasy for the rest of the day, and I wanted to go to BJJ practice later. So I mostly focused on the edible bits of fish and the cup of corn kernels, and had a few pieces of fried chicken for good measure.

Then we played poker, christening their newly bought set of chips. I was invited mostly because I know how to play, so after a quick round of explanation and a practice run, we got into it. I suck at poker to the point of being embarassing, I’m always too eager when I have good pocket cards and I take too many unnecessary risks chasing shitty odds. Meanwhile they all got it pretty quickly, and we played all afternoon.

We drove back home, chilled for a bit, and then I went to BJJ practice. I can’t remember much about it, other than a good time was had by all and I sweated about seven liters of grimy salty water. I rode my bicycle to the park where the girlfriend and the dog often go to wait for me at 20:40 on the dot, got home, and did my thrice-weekly routine of opening a beer, throwing my clothes in the laundry, taking a shower, reheating leftovers and eating it in front of the TV. I find comfort in such a routine.

Then I read a few chapters of Frédéric Beigbeder’s Un Roman Français in bed. I’m not giving up on Musashi, but I just feel like reading some other shit than the boring tribulations of a bunch of Japanese peasants in the year 1650.