Chapter 291

I woke up in the middle of the night with a jacked up shoulder, and couldn’t sleep on my left side. It woke me up a few more times through the rest of the night. Weird, I didn’t feel much, if anything, before going to bed. I popped some pain pills and the girlfriend applied some kind of ointment on it, soon the pain and stiffness disappeared. I must have twisted it during a match and the adrenaline numbed it.

I went through my work day without much worth mentioning, especially after such an eventful weekend. I did my classes, collected homework, caught up on the diary, and listened to music. I listened to an album by Batyushka, a black metal band that caught the attention of fans of the genre with a killer album featuring orthodox christian chants, and with some controversy and conflict about who should get to keep the name after the musicians disbanded. Now there are two Batyushkas, and I have no idea if the album I listened to was the righteous one or the thieving one. At any rate it was OK, but I much prefered Liturgiya. I also started listening to a long stream by The Amazing Atheist, I used to enjoy his rants but now I find him annoying more than funny, and full of shit on a few issues he comments upon, but quite astute on others. I do want to listen to more left-leaning social and political commentators though, lest I get accused by NPCs of being in “a right-wing echo chamber” (pot, kettle, all that shit)

I went home, and relaxed for a bit, watching stuff on YouTube. My left shoulder still annoyed me a bit, and it didn’t seem judicious to go train BJJ or lift weights, but I still felt like doing something. So I went to play badminton, thankful that it’s not my right arm that’s jeopardized. I played for an hour and a half against some lean mean badminton machines, a great time was had by all.

I rode back, and took the dog for a walk. It was super dark out but I could see he was sniffing at something in the grass. Then it moved, and I saw it was a hedgehog! Where the hell did it come from? I’m just thankful the dog didn’t stick his nose in the ball of spikes.

I took the pieces of beef that had been in the slow cooker, stewed in milk, hot peppers and orange peels, crisped them up in the oven, and made tacos with homemade salsa. It was heavenly. I also opened a bottle of homebrew, but it was flat, so I poured it down the drain. Can’t win ‘em all.

A friend had suggested I watch a wrassling match between Minori Suzuki and Bryan Danielson (AKA Daniel Bryan). Suzuki must be around 60 years old now, but he still has this sadistic and tough-as-galvanized-nails aura about him, and the two men engaged in a compelling strong style and technical match that had the fans cheering and chanting throughout.