Dealing with arachnids

I don't like spiders

Yesterday, I was happily procrastinating, when suddenly I saw something move in a dark corner, near my 4 port USB hub. Intrigued, I decided to turn on the lights. Just as I feared: it was a spider.

I decided to throw everything off the desk, to get a clean hit at it. I looked around, I needed a weapon. Laptop? Not worth destroying it. A fork? Might be hard to actually hit the spider. My hand? Eww. That's when I saw the water bottle. Perfectly shaped to kill a spider, if you miss on the first shot, you can always roll over it, squeezing the life out of the beast. I prepared myself mentally, having a plan for each and every direction the spider could go if I missed my first strike. I killed it. Yes, finally.

Just as I came back from throwing out the kleenex with the dead spider in it, I put back some of the things I had tossed earlier. What's this...? Another fucking spider. Great, just great. But this spider was wiser. It decided to go under my laptop, a fragile object I couldn't just toss away. I had to study its movements, to have the avantage of the surprise attack! I tried to move the laptop just a little bit, so that the spider would run away. Nothing. I lifted the laptop, expecting a similar reaction. The spider had some nerves, just standing there, mocking me. So I killed it, with the SAME water bottle.

Matsam 2, spiders 0.

"The spider is mugging you, it wants crack."

Memories of a dance floor

Since nothing really interesting is happening these days, after all, it's the point where the semester comes to an end, everyone is busy studying, working on papers or, like me, procrastinating.

So let me tell you about something that happened last semester. Might have been the mid-term party (or some other excuse to make a party). I have to say that, before going to college, I wasn't exactly the crazy party boy you think I might have been (it's the hair, I know), so I was still new at this. All I knew is I could have fun, and I could dance. Dance like I had never danced before.

Unlike my first college party, this club was going to play alternative rock music. Awesome. Also, since that kind of club doesn't want a male-exclusive population (who wants that...? Seriously), drinks were free for the ladies until 11:30 and the admission was free for college students. I also decided to bring a friend of mine (free drinks surely convinced her).

So as I was getting ready to go, I suddenly remembered I had just bought these awesome green Converse shoes. Yeah, I was going for the rocker look. After carefully lacing my Converse, putting on my AC/DC t-shirt, I was on my way to party.

After a few minutes of where-the-hell-is-this-club, we finally saw some familiar faces. As we came closer, the gang's Converse specialist immediately recognized what kind of shoe I was wearing. After some shoe-talk, we got in the club. At first, things are a bit uncomfortable, you ask for a beer, sit down since nobody is dancing and engage a quick conversation (which is actually hard to do since the music is already so loud). Most of the girls were at the bar, absorbing as much alcohol as they could before 11:30. At some point, some other people noticed my new shoes, and for some of them, having clean Converse just wasn't right. That's when I got attacked by two of them. Their mission was to get my shoes to look dirty...and I must say they did a good job. They rubbed the bottom of their shoes on the top of mine, the white part. I now had the perfect look of a rocker, at least shoe-wise.

After a few beers, still nobody was dancing. Suddenly, the dj decided to play some AC/DC. Being the AC/DC fan I am (who other than me would dress as Angus Young for Halloween?), I basically duck-walked to the dance floor. Of course, everybody followed and the dance floor wasn't empty anymore. From this point, music got a lot better, classic after classic, we were starting to show off our best moves, such as "put-your-hands-on-your-knees-and-cross-your-arms- so-that-your-hands-go-from-one-knee-to-the-other". Of course, some of us were feeling more willing than others, and that's how four of us, including me, climbed on the stage and started dancing so that everybody could see us. The choreography was pretty awesome, and since the beer we had must have been diluted, we had good timing and coordination. We even did the "put-your-hands-on-your-knees-and-cross-your-arms-so-that-your-hands-go-from-one-knee-to-the-other" dance.

After the club closed, some of us suggested we'd go to the 24/7 Bagels shop next to the club: St-Viateur Bagel. I have to say, those are some fine bagels, the best in town. The bagels are only 50 cents too. One of us decided to buy some cream cheese to go with it, so we all shared a well deserved snack, at 3:30am.

I slept at a friend's house that night, I dreamed of shoes, dancing and bagels.

Cast art [update 3]

Having a cast sure does provide a lot of attention. The frenzy often sounds like "OMG, can I sign/draw/write on your cast!?" and since it's kind of hard to turn them away, because I am an attention whore anyway, I ended up with writings over half my cast in a matter of minutes.

Considering most of the comments are nice and pleasant to read, I thought of keeping my cast after I wouldn't need it to hold my bones together anymore. My inexperience came as a disappointment, as my friends all came to the same conclusion: Old casts stink.

Although I love material possessions, I'm not a fan of smelly objects. Therefore, keeping the cast after it is cut off sounds like a bad option. Good news! I can write all of the nice (and mean) things some of you wrote on it, as this blog will probably live on forever in the immensity of the interwebs. So here it is, I'll update as more people have urges to write on my cast.

Prompt rétablissement. Si tu veux te ré-incarner en Angus Young, je ne suis pas une référence.

-Anh Khoi Do

Soigne-toi bien Frisou! Si t’avais besoin d’aide pour te branler, t’avais qu’à me le dire! Je t’aime! HAHA

-Mélina la frisée =|

Bon rétablissement, si tu as besoin de te branler et que Mélina est pas là, bin pense pas à moi, force toi prend l’autre main!

-Danick « bassiste »

Friséé! Tu vas avoir ben du retard à reprendre dans Guitar Hero! Courage!

-Caro

Une chance que t’as pas une Telecaster, pauvre gars!

-Le gars qui a une Telecaster

J’espère que tu vas bien prendre soin de ton bras parce que moi j’ai bien hâte de t’entendre jouer de la guit :) J’tm

-Ninnie

Ce plâtre va valoir autant qu'une Telecaster.

- Sébastien Bordage

PS: Réponse d'exam: Mer Rouge!

Comme un sage me dit: "Maintenant, du sexe sans forcer!"

-Beeman
bzzz

Le Dove, c'est un shampooing FÉMININ!

- Caro

/use item Phoenix Down
...error... Phoenix Down value 0
/cast Cure
...error... MP value 0
/equip Smelly Cast
STR -3, Armor +1, 3 months countdown

- Félix B.L.

Guérit bien Frisou! Ça aurait pu être pire...tu aurais pu te fracasser la tête et ils t'auraient rasé les cheveux! Quelle horreur!

- Millie a.k.a. Maman -xx-

Je suis lucide.

- Caro

Après la pluie le beau-zo le clown!

- Félix B.L.

Snowboarding madness

Snowboarding being considered an extreme sport, it's only normal to hear about people getting injured from time to time. The thing is, although you know about the risks, you would never think it would happen to you, especially after 5 years of uninterrupted enjoyment of the sport. Well, I am glad to announce that I am no exception. After all this time thinking my glorious hair provided me incredible luck, I finally got my very own injury.

It was a Saturday morning, me and my buddy Mathieu (same name, don't get confused here) agreed to go to Ski Morin-Heights, the ski resort I work at as a snowboarding instructor for 3 years now. It was one of our last "ski days": as the summer was getting closer, the snow was melting and the time had come to hand in our bright red instructor jackets (which is our uniform). Since it is quite a drive to get there, we decided to spend the morning there and leave early in the afternoon.

The conditions were decent, but the snow was hard since we didn’t get any snowfall in a while. It wasn’t the perfect day to attempt any crazy tricks, but there’s always this uncontrollable will to nail something special before the season ends. So being the freeride type of snowboarder I am, unlike those freestyle riders, my “crazy” objective was to do some 360s and maybe try a few jumps in the snowpark. I did succeed when it came to the 360° rotation. The jumps, however, were a different story.

Although the jumps at Ski Morin-Heights may sound ridiculously small for some, I find them to be quite a challenge. A new jump had been built the week before. Not only was it the biggest in the snowpark, but it was also what you would call a “step-up” jump. The particularity of these jumps reside in the fact the landing is actually higher than the launcher, with a gap between the two. Knowing that, it’s obvious that you need to take the jump with a lot of speed to get to the other side. So after doing pretty much every other jump in the snowpark, I actually thought I had what it took to take on that step-up jump of hell.

After letting my friend try it, I decided to take my chance. Picking up my speed and going downhill from at least two hundred feet away, I was preparing myself mentally, as my snowboard was taking me closer to the jump at blazing speeds. When it was finally time to takeoff, I took one last breath and flew through the air. It was an incredible feeling, until I realized I was turning sideways, now facing the landing. After this 90° rotation, I also started rotating in a way you would want to if you were trying to do a backflip. Sadly, that’s not what I was trying to do. As I was losing altitude, out of balance, my body’s natural reflex was to try and stop myself with my hands, the result being that the first part of my body hitting the ground was my wrist.

Having wiped out quite a few times before, I knew this exploding sensation in my wrist wasn’t right. The temperature being cold and the adrenaline still pumping through my veins, I still didn’t realize how serious this was. Wrist injuries being quite common, I decided to get it checked out by someone more qualified. After taking off my clove, my buddy asked me if I could move my fingers. After hearing my positive answer, he told me it probably wasn’t broken. I decided to believe him. At the resort’s clinic, they quickly checked my wrist, told me to apply ice and made me a cast out of carton boxes and ripped clothes. They also suggested I’d go to the hospital, just in case.

Since I took my car to get there, my buddy asked me if I would let him drive. Excellent idea. As we drove back home, the heat of the car made the trip quite painful, as the cold weather would rather freeze my wrist. He dropped me home and I called my girlfriend so that she could drive me to the hospital.

I ended up spending a total of 6 hours sitting on a somewhat uncomfortable chair with other sick people, kids throwing up and old ladies complaining about everything. Luckily, when I got there, I found a ticket with a smaller number than mine, on the floor, it allowed me to pass in front of a few people hehe…After 4 hours, I finally got to see a doctor, who took a whole second and a half to look at my wrist, tell me “Oh, that’s broken, no doubt about that!” and send me to radiology, to take X-rays. 2 hours later, I’m being called again: “Mathieu Lavoie, Cubicule 3”. As I enter the room, I can see the doctor enjoying her sandwich as a nurse quickly closes the back door. The doctor comes back, 25 minutes later, and tells me “So, like I told you, it’s broken, right here (points on her wrist), your radius and also your cubitus.” “…both?” I ask doubtful? Her positive answer left me and my girlfriend speechless, as the doctor gave me a little paper, filled with something a 4 year old hyper kid could’ve come up with. She also told me my bones had to be repositioned, which could require surgery. Great…

The thing is, the specialist, who would reposition the bones to their original emplacement, wasn’t there until Monday. So I go to the secretary to get a rendez-vous. Some painful times in perspective… I still got this semi-cast though, which was so uncomfortable, my fingers ended up hurting more than my wrist, but that might have been my loose bones messing with my finger nerves/muscles.

So after two nights of unsuccessfully trying every position/pillow combination to make my arm stop hurting, it was finally time to get that thing back into condition. Back at the hospital, I present myself at the counter, give my hospital card, and say my name, only to be told that she doesn’t have any rendez-vous for me. Tabarnak… I reach for the little piece of paper filled with gibberish the doctor gave me and hand it to the secretary, who finally decides to put my name at the end of the list.

After a decent amount of time passes, I finally get called. I go in the room and a doctor with a strong accent starts asking me questions. After I answer them all, I go sit back in the corridor, as I can also get a peak of what is going on in the room. The doctor seems to be a bone repositioning specialist, as I see a number of kids get in, scream, cry and get out with a freshly made cast. It’s finally my turn, I’m being asked to lie down in the chair as the nurse cuts my semi-cast. At last, liberty! Not for long.

After the nurse cleaned my arm, the doctor came back and pokes me 3 or 4 times, injecting me some kind of anesthetic liquid into my now double-sized wrist. Then came the time to reposition the bones. The nurse’s job was to hold my arm down, as well as pulling my hand so that the bone would have some space to move. The doctor then secured his grip by putting his fingers behind my wrist and pushed with his two thumbs to put the whole thing in its original position. The feeling was similar to having a tooth removes with poorly done anesthesia, except 10 times worse, since the bones are obviously bigger. I couldn’t help but to let go a huge nervous laughter, making the doc say the anesthesia did its job. 3 nurses then gathered around, making me a nice cast going from my elbow to my fingers.

So here I am, typing with one hand, I can’t play guitar anymore, I can’t play video games, it takes me forever to type things on my laptop (I don’t count in hours, but rather days now, for this entry). The doc said my wrist will never be the same, because it broke too close to the articulation. It will deteriorate with time and I’ll probably feel the temperature change. Hopefully I’ll be able to regain those guitar skills in 4 to 6 weeks…

I'm going back to the hospital next week to see if I need surgery.