the slowest gazelle is the one that gets eaten

okay, well, i might have mentioned before that i once ran into yannick fournier (the other one, not the yoga one) while out jogging, and he mentioned that there is a group of them that jog together around lunchtime on wednesdays. so, he invited me to come this week, and silly me, i actually went.

good lord, i got my ass kicked nice and squarely. i mean, i thought i had been making progress (well, probably i am, just obviously not enough), but there was no way i was going to be able to keep up with these people. eh, i suppose i didn't do too bad, but i was indisputably the tail of the pack. it was a humbling experience. though, i did finish without completely collapsing (which of course reminded me unpleasantly of the goddamn "persistence" award they insisted on giving me when i was dumb enough to try going on the morning run during the walla walla prospective student visit weekend thing. sweet christmas, that was awful.

my progress with my weight was kinda stalled for most of last week (stuck around 67kg), but the last few days have weighed in at 66, so i'm crossing my fingers and hoping we've made it off the plateau and that we're back on track now. i want 60 by christmas---and i want it bad. i guess i'm starting to feel a little impatient, but at least for the moment, it is fueling my resolve rather than eroding it, which i suppose is the far preferable of the two options, even though i feel a bit frustrated sometimes.

the boy and the rest of the hanley family appeared in town on saturday, and i got to spend the day with them, which was positively awesome. i miss him a lot, and his family's pretty cool too. we took the boat across to the chateau de chillon, and saw the fortress on the lake there. mrs. hanley and i were constantly fighting over who got to pay for things, but it was all in good fun (sadly, she won every time, though). oh, and in the prison section of the chateau, there are a bunch of carvings including lord byron's personal signature in one of the columns. however, of greater importance (discovered by jason, i think) was on the adjoining column, an inscription which read "boyron." and hence, that is what we shall dub the boy forever more. :) or at least, add it to the list.

also, i was very happy that the weather was nice for them; it was a beautiful day. i'm curious how the rest of their trip is going though, seeing as just after i put them on the train to interlachen it started pouring down rain in lausanne saturday night. sunday was overcast in the morning, but that was okay since i had to come in to the office and do work anyway. then around three i went to the gym to lift with ildar, and while we were walking back afterward, someone up there just started dumping buckets---fucking unbelievable. there must have been at least an inch of rain in less than half an hour. i was literally soaked to the bone.

eventually the poster got finished, and i went to dena and conlin's for dinner, which was great. we had tasty fish tacos, and i made airplane and hostel reservations to go with them to london this weekend for the holiday. (some national swiss fast or something; but i'm not arguing if we get monday off for it...)

we also played monopoly, which was very amusing; seriously, it must have been the first time i played since i was, oh, what, say fifteen years old? wow, talk about flashbacks. anyway, i've got news for you; even once you're older, the game still takes forever. :) but it was fun, and surprisingly unpredictable. for a while there it was really rather uncertain who would win; the big pile of money moved from one person to the next basically every turn. by the time we finished the busses were already stopped, and it was still raining pretty fierce, so they let me stay in their spare bed, which was very nice of them.

yesterday afternoon, i finally made it over to OBI to look at their canvases and stuff for painting, and realized that it's likely to turn out to be a bit more of an investment than the joke that i had originally planned it to be. the 60x70cm canvases were like $25 each, and then i'd have to start buying paint on top of that. so, suffice it to say that i chickened out, and i'm back in "thinking about it" mode for the moment. maybe i'll be able to buy something cool in london this weekend to go on the walls...

also, my computer has escalated it's tantrums from being finicky about overheating when you ask the processor to do too much at once, to now it won't even start up. i am supremely irritated by this, and not sure what to do about it. jim suggested giving it a thorough smack with the compressed air (which i tried to buy at obi last night, but they didn't have any), but if that doesn't work, i guess i'm going to have to sink for a new motherboard (and probably a new processor to go with it). hopefully i can reuse my ram; having to replace everything all at once would rather suck.

twinpeaks tonight. we're starting back in with episode 10 of season 2. which reminds me, i need to figure out what i'm serving, so that i can get my ass to the store and back home in time to set everything up...