Monty Python in real life

I'm off today, which is out of the norm for a Saturday. Normally I'd still be in my robe, sitting at my cramped desk, sipping cold tea and plugging away at some assignment. Not today. It's like a real proper weekend, the likes of which I've rarely seen since 2004.

So how does one spend a Saturday? A child would get up at the buttcrack of dawn and watch cartoons. A teenager would sleep in until 1:00 pm. A college student would nurse their hangover with fried breakfast.

Me? Well, I did have a hangover-- which I will get to later because Sweet Jeebs, was last night something else-- but nurse it I did not, pardon the Yoda talk. The Dude and I decided to go to the markets to purchase ingredients for a new meal he wants to make for our friend who's coming over tonight. And it made me very happy.

We went to a fruit market, a butcher and a bakery/deli. For the first time grocery shopping was fun. All this time I thought I hated it. But no. What I hate is supermarkets. Fiesta Farms was the best grocery store I've ever been to and I miss it, but even when I lived nearby, making myself go was a struggle in maturity ("I should go. *Whine* But I don't want to. But we're out of food... but I can order in! Yeah, I'm not going today. Fuck the grocery store.")

I'm soooo looking forward to tonight's meal.

Now, as to why I'm hungover, last evening I went out for dinner with a friend of mine, one of the men who so wonderfully helped me find my new couch. As he put it last night, we're in each other's top 10 friends (Not on Myspace or anything, just in our heads.)

We had some Thai food at my favourite Thai restaurant downtown and one of his friends joined us. My goodness, was this man a trip and a half. I find it too overwhelming to chronicle the evening, so I'll detail the night in point form:

• When he arrived he insisted he would not buy any food. He'd bicycled 7 km in about 4^oC and said if he saved $10 on a meal, he could give more to his charitable cause.
• My friend, whom I shall refer to as McPal, and I badgered him to eat, to eat at least from our meals, which were served family style. Finally he ordered his own tofu dish, claiming to be a new vegetarian. At which point he discussed our brutal choices of duck and chicken.
• He was the devil's advocate for every conversation topic. When I pointed out to him he was contrary, he said he was not. Then he realized the irony. And then I won a small point of satisfaction.
• He claimed to be a communist. I told him he'd get along with a quirky friend of a friend of mine named Stefan. He then made a Family Matters reference about Steve Urkel's cool machine.
• They asked me to come out for a drink and so I thought why not. We went to a pub and McPal wanted to split a pitcher with his friend. I ordered wine. The friend vetoed all the beers McPal wanted on the basis that he may not like these brands. He was wooed into going for it when it was argued that a pitcher was very economical. He said he was a fan of economics.
• He brought up sexual orientation out of the blue and suggested everyone was inherently bisexual. I said I didn't think so and that if you couldn't bear to put your face near the junk of the same or opposite sex, you were pretty well on one side of the fence. He said it was all conditioning. I then observed he was most likely a bisexual if he really thought all people could go either way. This was on my second glass of wine.
• At various points in the evening he mentioned "females" instead of girls or women. He said in his age group, they were neither one nor the other. He's 24.
• He silly-walked down the street like a Monty Python skit. Being 6'4", it was very John Cleese-esque. He then stopped to stretch against a tree.
  

Truly he was the strangest character I've ever met, and I know some weird-ass people. I liked him, but kind of the way I like egg nog. Really touch and go, that drink, and you have to be in the mood for it. I stayed for the second glass of wine purely out of fascination.

The stomach growls, the body shivers

Putting off buying groceries means finding creative ways to eat. The Dude and I haven't gone grocery shopping since we moved... 13 days ago. Yeah. 13.

We've done the old run to the store for a handful of things, ordering in, grabbing takeout, eating snacks, filling up on popcorn at the movies, eating at other people's houses and so on. We need to go today. It's getting ludicrous. It came to a head for me when I went to go make some toast and found the bread was mouldy. So I ate what was left of a bag of BBQ ruffled chips for lunch. I feel like a slug.

I crave vegetables. I've been dreaming about them again, making meals with zucchini and carrots and peppers. Then I wake up and it's a godforsaken tease and I go scrounging in the kitchen for scraps of something, old takeout, forgotten leftovers, something, anything.

This needs to stop. I did this all the time when I was 22. I'd say nuts to groceries, as I was a bad cook and often didn't bother, and I'd just run out and grab a sub, or a pita. Problem solved. Now the thought of doing so depresses me. I want a homemade meal. I've gotten accustomed to eating like a real person. The thought of more pizza makes me feel like retching.

In other off-skilter-tilter type news, the Dude is downstairs talking to the neighbours about the heat. It was 14 degrees in here last night. We share the heat controls and they're about five degrees warmer than us. I hear a pleasant conversation taking place. That's encouraging. Last night we clung to each other and shivered ourselves to sleep. Apartment growing pains, they keep a comin'.