I have an apartment of my own now, a very, very small two-and-a-half on the semi-basement floor of a house. It's quite nice, the rest of the house is inhabited by the landlord, a super-cool middle-aged lady who spends most of her free time riding around on her motorbike. She lives on her own, with two gigantic German shepherds and a tiny, white fluffy dog that looks kind of like a Maltese. It's a pretty quiet place, I don't see much of the landlord. The location is awesome, the house is right next to a small river, surrounded by lots of trees of various kinds. I even have my own terrace down by the river.
Only thing I don't quite like is the fact that the apartment is really, really small. There's a separate kitchen, a livingroom/bedroom, and a bathroom with a shower cabin. The kitchen has about 4 square meters of usable space, and the other room maybe about 15, but because of a long and narrow shape, and with all the furniture in the room, I'd be hard pressed to find a spot on the floor where I can actually lie down straight. I also have a nasty habit of accumulating stuff that take up space, like guitars and a keyboard, so the place is quite crowded. But hey - no place is totally perfect, and for the price I'm paying, this place is awesome.
I took my girlfriend to a spa last weekend in Morin-Heights. Aaaah... It was great! The place has all kinds of cool and relaxing stuff; a dry sauna, a steam sauna, jacuzzis of different temperatures, massages, etc. You can go to the spa just for a day for 30$ on weekdays and 35 on weekends. I recommend it, it's quite nice! They also have all kinds of packages of different prices. The food was good, but the restaurant was a bit sneaky. If you get a package deal, some meals are included, like the dinner. But when you get to the dinner and have a look at the menu, you notice that this, this, and that is either not included, or you have to pay extra for them. Also, the first impression of the spa is a bit weird when you get there and realize that it's located right next to the highway. Fortunately, you couldn't hear anything of the traffic, and once you're inside, you don't even see the highway at all, so it really didn't bother me at all. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that I was in the middle of a forest. Morin-Heights is also a pretty cute little place, with restaurants, bars and shops within a 5-10 minute walk from the spa. So if you have a few bucks to spare and you need to relax, this is not a bad place to go.
When we got to the spa, there was a lady who showed us around and explained what all the different things were. She told us that for relaxation, you should spend about 10 minutes in a hot sauna, then cool off in cold water for a few seconds, and then just sit around and relax for 10 minutes or so. Well, being of Finnish origin, and having more or less grown up in saunas since I was old enough to not drown in a bucket, I think that 10 minutes in a sauna is for wusses. So I stayed in there for about half an hour, then took a cold bath and went back in for another good 15-20 minutes or so. It was wonderful! I could easily have stayed in there for another hour. However... For my Spanish girlfriend, who is not quite as accustomed to spending hours on end in 80+ degrees Celsius saunas, I think it was maybe a little bit much. She started looking kind of dizzy and had to step outside. But after cooling down for a bit and drinking a bunch of water, she was fine again and jumped into the colder one of the two jacuzzis.
31 July 2008
22 July 2008
Hot dog dinners
Things are looking up, methinks.
I've been dating a nice girl named Gin (to be pronounced [ghin], not [djin]) since around the end of May, and it's going quite nicely. She has an apartment in Montreal, so I'm going there on weekends as often as I can, and she comes up here to see me on weekends sometime too. I've known her since I first came here, but we've just been colleagues until now.
We went to see Quebec City a couple of weeks ago. It's a really nice city, especially the old part. Perhaps a little touristy, but oh well. The buildings are nice, and the food is good. We spent a weekend there just looking at stuff.
I'm not entirely dead broke anymore either. I've managed to pay off all the bills that the stupid fucking @$#%^ left me with when I kicked her out, so I don't have that hanging over my head anymore either. I'm in no danger whatsoever of being rich anytime soon, but at least I don't have to crack open the plastic mug and count 418 pennies so I can go buy the cheapest kind of hot dogs and pasta to eat any more.
This whole mess with my ex fascinates me in some way. I just can't for the life of me understand the trade-off inside your head in a situation like that.
"Hmm. I'd sure like some drugs, because life sucks. But if I do drugs, I'll have to steal money from my boyfriend, leave him with thousands of dollars in unpayed bills and leave him in debt because of me. But I'd sure like some drugs... Bah, screw him, I'm gonna do the drugs."
How do you justify something like that to yourself? I payed all the bills, worked all the time, borrowed money from friends and parents, made sure we never ran completely out of food, payed the rent, and she somehow decides that it's OK to just completely fuck me over. I'm not trying to sound like a saint or anything, I'm no more perfect than the next fellow, but it amazes me to no end how incredibly selfish you would have to get to do something like that.
It fits the escapist profile of a drug addict, though. Nothing is ever your fault. Life sucks, things go wrong, but no matter what, it's never because of something you did. There are no consequences to your actions, everything just happens to you because life is unfair.
Well, guess what? If you start stealing and borrowing money from everyone you know, never paying it back, and lying all your friends straight to their faces, it's not a coincidence that you don't have any friends left after a while. It's your own damn fault. I suggest growing a spine and actually dealing with stuff. Seems to work decently for the rest of the world.
I've been dating a nice girl named Gin (to be pronounced [ghin], not [djin]) since around the end of May, and it's going quite nicely. She has an apartment in Montreal, so I'm going there on weekends as often as I can, and she comes up here to see me on weekends sometime too. I've known her since I first came here, but we've just been colleagues until now.
We went to see Quebec City a couple of weeks ago. It's a really nice city, especially the old part. Perhaps a little touristy, but oh well. The buildings are nice, and the food is good. We spent a weekend there just looking at stuff.
I'm not entirely dead broke anymore either. I've managed to pay off all the bills that the stupid fucking @$#%^ left me with when I kicked her out, so I don't have that hanging over my head anymore either. I'm in no danger whatsoever of being rich anytime soon, but at least I don't have to crack open the plastic mug and count 418 pennies so I can go buy the cheapest kind of hot dogs and pasta to eat any more.
This whole mess with my ex fascinates me in some way. I just can't for the life of me understand the trade-off inside your head in a situation like that.
"Hmm. I'd sure like some drugs, because life sucks. But if I do drugs, I'll have to steal money from my boyfriend, leave him with thousands of dollars in unpayed bills and leave him in debt because of me. But I'd sure like some drugs... Bah, screw him, I'm gonna do the drugs."
How do you justify something like that to yourself? I payed all the bills, worked all the time, borrowed money from friends and parents, made sure we never ran completely out of food, payed the rent, and she somehow decides that it's OK to just completely fuck me over. I'm not trying to sound like a saint or anything, I'm no more perfect than the next fellow, but it amazes me to no end how incredibly selfish you would have to get to do something like that.
It fits the escapist profile of a drug addict, though. Nothing is ever your fault. Life sucks, things go wrong, but no matter what, it's never because of something you did. There are no consequences to your actions, everything just happens to you because life is unfair.
Well, guess what? If you start stealing and borrowing money from everyone you know, never paying it back, and lying all your friends straight to their faces, it's not a coincidence that you don't have any friends left after a while. It's your own damn fault. I suggest growing a spine and actually dealing with stuff. Seems to work decently for the rest of the world.
15 July 2008
Fresh start
Ok, let's breathe some life into this blog again. Seems like the last couple of posts have all been attempts of revival for this place, but too much stuff has happened in the last six months, I just haven't had any time for writing.
So, I think I left off as a fairly newly appointed lead tester, with plenty of stuff to do at work. A lot has happened since then, it's almost comical in some way. These past six months have probably been the most stressful time of my life so far. Let's start from the top.
I had a girlfriend, with whom things weren't really going all that great. She had no financial brain at all, often resulting in me paying the bills and her spending money in accordance to a budget she thought she should have had. The Danish dude was still living in the house, and the three of us would share the bills, groceries, etc. keeping track of who payed what and then settling the bill at the end of each month. The Danish dude left and went back to Denmark in February, and my girlfriend insisted that we don't get someone to replace him, keeping the house only for the two of us. The house was pretty expensive, and for only two people it was a bit of a stretch. And since she never payed me back for any of the bills or groceries, it was even more of a stretch for me.
Things went downhill between us quite fast. It wasn't great to begin with, lots of fights, her spending money on stupid stuff, while I was working overtime and borrowing money to be able to pay bills and buy food. She was clinically depressed and was seeing a psychiatrist in Ste-Agathe. She attempted suicide once, I forced her to the hospital, but they sent her home again after she refused treatment, and her psychiatrist decided that she was no danger to herself. Over the next three or four months she would try to commit suicide several times more, almost using her suicide attempt as a weapon against me in fights, but I quite physically wrestled the pill can out of her hand, so she didn't succeed.
Her expenses were quite high, she claimed that her car was leaking gas again and that it was costing her a lot of money. I also noticed that money was disappearing from my bank account, so I went to the bank and asked them to investigate. They reimbursed me for the money that had disappeared mysteriously and said they would check things out. More money disappeared, even out of my wallet, and I started getting suspicious. One morning, the livingroom door was open when I got up, and money was missing again. My girlfriend insisted that someone must have snuck in while we were asleep, taken some of the money (not all of it) out of my wallet and left. Yeah. What kind of burglar sneaks in, leaves all the valuables and takes only part of the money in your wallet. Both doors were bolted from the inside, so how would someone get in? One evening she goes to get some snacks and is gone for an hour. By now I am pretty much sure, so I check my wallet and find that she has replaced my bank card with her own. I head down to the hotel bar and find her walking out of the front door. She tells me her car overheated and she had to stop and wait for it to cool down. Right. I took my card back from her and broke up with her there and then.
There were no expenses. She was doing drugs again, stealing money from me and using it to get crack. She was the one who had been stealing money out of my account and my wallet. She had stopped taking her medication and started doing drugs instead. I was borrowing money from family and friends and working all the time to be able to pay all the bills, while she was stealing money from me and smoking it up. I even took a cash advance from work, which didn't really help much. She admitted everything to me and got even more depressed. She attempted suicide again, this time taking well over a lethal dose of ibuprofen and locked herself up in the bedroom. When I notice, she refuses to open the door, so I kick it in, drag her out of bed and out into the car and get her to the hospital. She makes phone calls to her father, telling him I'm kidnapping her and beating her.
Ibuprofen is a really, really stupid kind of pill to try to commit suicide with. It doesn't kill you right away, it causes severe liver damage over a period of time, which eventually causes liver failure a month or two later, and your body literally poisons itself with toxins and you die a very slow and painful death over the course of about three or four days. Once your liver is damaged, there is no antidote.
She didn't die, the only thing that saved her was the fact that she was fat. 7 grams can cause irreparable liver damage in a normal person. She took over 10 grams, along with some other pills and cocaine. But she's fat, so the concentration in her system was lower, under the lethal dose. She refuses treatment again, and the psychiatrist again decides that she is no danger to herself and releases her. I will never understand this. After two trips to the hospital for attempted suicide, the psychiatrist decides that she is no danger to herself. What kind of fucking idiot of a psychiatrist...? The psychiatrist recommends that she get out of this relationship with me, because it is obviously a "psychologically and physically abusive relationship."
What the fuck...? Abusive relationship? She spent all that time, all those visits to the psychiatrist just avoiding any of the issues she had problems with, and made up lies about me instead?
Finally, she moved out to go stay at her father's place and I found a new apartment to move into. She left owing me close to 6000 $, I'm not expecting to get any of it back. If she has any money, she will smoke it or spend it on alcohol. She certainly won't go out of her way to pay me back.
I cannot explain how much resentment and hatred I have towards this woman. I spent more than a year and half with her, doing everything for her. She payed me back with lies, backstabbing and by stealing everything I had just to support her addiction. After more than two years in Canada, I have less than I had when I came here, and I'm not just talking about money.
A fresh start from zero, I guess.
So, I think I left off as a fairly newly appointed lead tester, with plenty of stuff to do at work. A lot has happened since then, it's almost comical in some way. These past six months have probably been the most stressful time of my life so far. Let's start from the top.
I had a girlfriend, with whom things weren't really going all that great. She had no financial brain at all, often resulting in me paying the bills and her spending money in accordance to a budget she thought she should have had. The Danish dude was still living in the house, and the three of us would share the bills, groceries, etc. keeping track of who payed what and then settling the bill at the end of each month. The Danish dude left and went back to Denmark in February, and my girlfriend insisted that we don't get someone to replace him, keeping the house only for the two of us. The house was pretty expensive, and for only two people it was a bit of a stretch. And since she never payed me back for any of the bills or groceries, it was even more of a stretch for me.
Things went downhill between us quite fast. It wasn't great to begin with, lots of fights, her spending money on stupid stuff, while I was working overtime and borrowing money to be able to pay bills and buy food. She was clinically depressed and was seeing a psychiatrist in Ste-Agathe. She attempted suicide once, I forced her to the hospital, but they sent her home again after she refused treatment, and her psychiatrist decided that she was no danger to herself. Over the next three or four months she would try to commit suicide several times more, almost using her suicide attempt as a weapon against me in fights, but I quite physically wrestled the pill can out of her hand, so she didn't succeed.
Her expenses were quite high, she claimed that her car was leaking gas again and that it was costing her a lot of money. I also noticed that money was disappearing from my bank account, so I went to the bank and asked them to investigate. They reimbursed me for the money that had disappeared mysteriously and said they would check things out. More money disappeared, even out of my wallet, and I started getting suspicious. One morning, the livingroom door was open when I got up, and money was missing again. My girlfriend insisted that someone must have snuck in while we were asleep, taken some of the money (not all of it) out of my wallet and left. Yeah. What kind of burglar sneaks in, leaves all the valuables and takes only part of the money in your wallet. Both doors were bolted from the inside, so how would someone get in? One evening she goes to get some snacks and is gone for an hour. By now I am pretty much sure, so I check my wallet and find that she has replaced my bank card with her own. I head down to the hotel bar and find her walking out of the front door. She tells me her car overheated and she had to stop and wait for it to cool down. Right. I took my card back from her and broke up with her there and then.
There were no expenses. She was doing drugs again, stealing money from me and using it to get crack. She was the one who had been stealing money out of my account and my wallet. She had stopped taking her medication and started doing drugs instead. I was borrowing money from family and friends and working all the time to be able to pay all the bills, while she was stealing money from me and smoking it up. I even took a cash advance from work, which didn't really help much. She admitted everything to me and got even more depressed. She attempted suicide again, this time taking well over a lethal dose of ibuprofen and locked herself up in the bedroom. When I notice, she refuses to open the door, so I kick it in, drag her out of bed and out into the car and get her to the hospital. She makes phone calls to her father, telling him I'm kidnapping her and beating her.
Ibuprofen is a really, really stupid kind of pill to try to commit suicide with. It doesn't kill you right away, it causes severe liver damage over a period of time, which eventually causes liver failure a month or two later, and your body literally poisons itself with toxins and you die a very slow and painful death over the course of about three or four days. Once your liver is damaged, there is no antidote.
She didn't die, the only thing that saved her was the fact that she was fat. 7 grams can cause irreparable liver damage in a normal person. She took over 10 grams, along with some other pills and cocaine. But she's fat, so the concentration in her system was lower, under the lethal dose. She refuses treatment again, and the psychiatrist again decides that she is no danger to herself and releases her. I will never understand this. After two trips to the hospital for attempted suicide, the psychiatrist decides that she is no danger to herself. What kind of fucking idiot of a psychiatrist...? The psychiatrist recommends that she get out of this relationship with me, because it is obviously a "psychologically and physically abusive relationship."
What the fuck...? Abusive relationship? She spent all that time, all those visits to the psychiatrist just avoiding any of the issues she had problems with, and made up lies about me instead?
Finally, she moved out to go stay at her father's place and I found a new apartment to move into. She left owing me close to 6000 $, I'm not expecting to get any of it back. If she has any money, she will smoke it or spend it on alcohol. She certainly won't go out of her way to pay me back.
I cannot explain how much resentment and hatred I have towards this woman. I spent more than a year and half with her, doing everything for her. She payed me back with lies, backstabbing and by stealing everything I had just to support her addiction. After more than two years in Canada, I have less than I had when I came here, and I'm not just talking about money.
A fresh start from zero, I guess.
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