Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

This week has been fairly active, with many activities in addition to the normal games and reading and swimming and all… On Friday, Nefarious and I stomped all over Ontario Place with a friend of hers (with a season pass I’m sure we’ll go many times with many friends). I took lots of breaks and relaxed while they played, and I even had the strength at the end of the day to climb the spiral staircase all the way to the top of the tower and take a couple rides on the water slides with them. By the end of the day everyone was completely wiped out, and, to my delight, the worst part of it was not my legs, but my sunburn.

It was a lot of fun though, and I think this week we’ll make a trip to Canada’s Wonderland as well, since Nefarious is now tall enough to go on a majority of the rides… I love roller coasters, and I think she will as well, since thrill-seeking-behavior is so thoroughly encoded in her DNA.

Last night, in addition to the big fight, Caitlin and I went to see Iron Maiden (also at Ontario Place incidentally). It’s really a surreal experience going to see a metal school, because it pulls the strangest people out of the woodwork. I mean, where do all these oldschool metalheads come from? Judging by their real-deal hair, it’s not like they’re just playing dress up for the concert. Security were being dicks at the door — I’d just bought a big mango smoothy at the venue, but outside the security check and they insisted that I throw it away and buy a Molson product inside. But that wasn’t as bad as the guy in front of us, who they told couldn’t bring in his ancient portable CD player (which clearly wasn’t capable of recording, and it’s not as if they were stopping phones anyway). For me, I just waited a minute until they were distracted and had forgotten me, and walked in with my drink anyway. Inside security was mostly taking away kids’ joints, and checking ID of beer drinkers (appropriate since not long after we got there the kid in front of us spent a couple minutes puking).

Anyway, I also did some animation work (entry below this one), although it’s such a time killer that I really need to stop, because I have a pressing need to finish my writing projects which have been on hold since I discovered Pencil (the free software I use for flip-book animation)… I’ve also started working on some home-schooling software that prints out worksheets. It’s nothing special — mostly just something to make sure that my programming skills stay sharp. That said, now that I have an iPhone after years of having bottom-of-the-line junker phones, I kind of feel like doing some programming for it as well.

Other than that — well, there’s a lot other than that, but I don’t feel like writing much, to say nothing of my memory of the week being hazy — I had yet another frustrating visit with the doctor… Frustrating because I feel stuck in limbo again, waiting for the results of tests that were done many months ago. The lab sent me a letter telling me to be patient and that I’m in the queue, not that this does anything but annoy me. The biggest reason that I hate being in limbo like this is that I desperately need to get into a physical therapy program, and it would be massively easier if I could walk in with those results. And it sucks that I, the patient, have to constantly be calling and hounding my doctors to keep the process from stalling… I shouldn’t have to, and more importantly, at the times when I’m at my sickest, I’m not physically or mentally able to do so anyway.

Quite seriously, there are many times when I think I would be better off buying an RV and just spend the rest of my days exploring and living free (I’m sure Nefarious would vote for not going to school — although I would be a far tougher teacher with very high expectations were I to homeschool), and then when the time comes, jump into the Grand Canyon and never be heard of again. Last time I was there, I talked to a park ranger about jumpers and she told me that it’s a regular occurrence, and they often don’t find the body — all they find is a suicide note in a motel.