I’m of very mixed feelings about fencing. I had my first tournament today, the idea being that tossing a newbie in over her head will cause her to improve. I’m underwhelmed, tournaments are large, boring, full of yelling people, shrill beeps and mostly conducted in French. I already knew I had a problem understanding priority, as I usually can’t tell how I’m doing until the match is over. I knew I wasn’t very good. I was also aware I didn’t speak french. Argueably I learned that women’s fencing is technical compared to men’s fencing, which is brutish… but I knew that already. So I got stressed, fealt alienated, was bruised and lightly grazed (flesh wound), and got scolded by the coach, A, for leaving after I was eliminated instead of waiting the extra hour it would take men’s sabre to tie up loose ends, with some complete bullshit guilt trip about how ‘they’ had watched me, so it was my turn to watch them. ‘They’, refering to the sabres, didn’t, because “they” were competing through half of what I was doing. Since I was already pooped and frustrated with the waste-of-a-day it had been already, I awkwardly declined and went home. Now I’m mulling over quitting.
Not because of one bad day, but because I feel really uncomfortable about the coach, and the lack of information I have to work with. I am one of nature’s cautious types, who plans and never leaps into action at random.
I love these boots.
I often find in dressing, as an early twenties female, there aren’t many options for cute without tredding dangerously into either hello kitty hell (I loves me some kitty, but everything in moderation) or the middle aged bohemian look, with it’s disturbing colour choices in loose colourful knits and chunky ethnic jewelry. Not wanting to tell the world I’m five years old or an elder in the Unitarian church, but also being the sort of person who’d wear loligoth princess dresses every day, given her druthers, these boots are a pretty compromise between practical and twee.
Merchant who sells them…
I fence. Not well, as my one tactic is a consistant willingness to aggressively attack my opponent because I don’t mind getting run through. However apparently this is good thing to the fencing coach, who’s decided that I shall be a varsity athlete.
I’m not even sure what a varsity athlete -is-, but fencing, and there’s another downside. I’m in terrible shape. For the most part I glide through life without difficulty, because I’m skinny (not scary skinny, just sans fat rolls, which being a westerner, makes me slim) and I’m strong for a female (or so the people who arm wrestle me tell me). But beneath my breast lies the heart (and lungs) of a consumptive, fainting waif. And the fencing I’m doing involves using muscles that have long since withered during one of my bouts of bed confining melancholy.
The coach in a certified personal trainer. The last exercise I got was in my middle school’s volleyball team. Between his desire that I be in fighting shape and the prefighting warm up and conditioning exercises I’m sore all over, and because my thighs are cramped from knee to crotch (after this season I’ll have thighs to rival mothboy IV, the cycling athlete, at this rate). Actually I’m starting to enjoy it though. Traveling up and down stairs is inconvenient, as is the little stab of pain when I sit, but I feel more alive than I have in weeks.
But I have my first tourney on the 24th. AIIIIEEE! I’m not ready! I’ve only fought electric once, and was completely unable to move properly. I must say it’ll be… interesting.
Because webcomics are usually free, and an unpaid labour of love, sometimes real life intervenes and a real gem drops off the map. These three have gone into what appears to be permanent hiatus. Sometimes they end on a cliff hanger or mid story arc, but as the months go by it becomes clear they’re not coming back.
The first is ‘Rules of Make Believe’, which as well as having frankly beautiful panels, it had a very interesting ongoing plot about a mysterious video game and the beginings of a wacky screwball romantic comedy. Then, just as a carefully set up series of hilarious errors was about to come into fruition, more important things like a baby intervened with the authour. Net result, dead webcomic, sad fans.
‘Orneryboy’, a gift from a Canadian artist, was a touchingly sweet gothic relationship comic. Ornery and his fiancee lived in a little gothic, Adams family style house with a zombie and a kitty and got up to all the normal things couples do: arguements about day to day life, looking after the pets, BDSM fun and zombie invasions. Then trouble loomed on the horizon in the form of a record store girl with Betty page bangs… and the authour lapsed into what seems to be moody artistic depression.
And then there’s ‘Elf Only Inn’, which is a bit of a tease. It started as one of the best jokes about chatroom roleplayers I’ve ever seen, died, was reborn as an equally funny parody of MMORPGs with the same players, reflecting the shift in mediums for roleplay perfectly (including the petty interguild squabbles and some new faces). And then it died again in May. Nevermind, like all of the cooling corpses that rest out in the depths of the internet some day it may rise again. Or at least last forever in the archives.
So I sharpened my kitchen knife (you can tell by the hello kitty bandaids) and watched “Rebecca”, a movie I was intending to catch up with for quite some time. I’m not sure dark brooding heroes are as much fun in real life. For that matter I’m not sure anything is that much fun in real life.
Somehow the house is still a mess. I clean and clean and one little bit of cooking later and it’s flour and crockery city. Today, now that the laundramat’s open again, I tackle the wash. But first, a good breakfast. French toast. Nom nom. :9
Canadian Tire is a dangerous place for a girl on a budget. I had to pry myself away from the irons and meat thermoeters, indeed the tool section had its own allure (why don’t I buy a drill? a woman needs to avoid depending on others! At least a screw driver set?), but I restrained myself and only replaced my measuring cups since the largest of the dollar store set cracked, and bought a space heater and a whet stone, the latter to put an edge on my woefully blunt kitchen knives.
That’s the trouble with student living. All these things feel like a terrible waste because in two years time some new, happy soul will get them, and I’ll be off somewhere else, buying up a whole new kitchen and bedroom. I guess I should feel extra motivated to learn to drive, the better to stuff everything into the back of a van and drive off to whatever location I land in next.
Despite the bad semester I’m feeling pretty optimistic. Matters will depend on keeping a good schedule and not letting things get away from me, as they had in the past. I start classes on Monday…A little Psych, a little Poli Sci, a little Bio. With my fencing, if I had any musical or mathematical talent I’d call myself a Renaissance woman. Tomorrow I need to get all the laundry out of the way and get together the week’s menu. A pity I’m not starting school with a fantastic new wardrobe, but what I have will have to do.
