23!
It's been quite some time since my last update. I've lost a lot of my interest in livejournal... but I do check it daily to see how the outside world is operating. I'm proud of myself for leaving the ftm community a week or so ago. I already feel less irritated.
So I've mainly been keeping busy with
In terms of the gym, I haven't been going as regularly as I'd like, because megan and I have been busy with things (like last weekend, when we went home to London to film the interview with my mom for the documentary) and once I interrupt my routine it's sometimes hard to force myself back into it. But i've been doing okay. I've managed to increase most of my weights. I do:
- reverse cable curls, 2 sets of 10 at 90lbs
- v-bar tricep pulldowns, 2 sets of 10 at 100lbs
- front cable raises, 2 sets of 10 at 30lbs, both arms
- low cable delt raises, 2 sets of 10 at 30lbs, both arms
- incline dumbbell flyes, 2 sets of 10 at 40lbs (20 each dumbbell)
- flat bench dumbbell press, 2 sets of 10 at 70lbs (35 each dumbbell)
- dumbbell delt raises, 2 sets of 10 at 60lbs (30 each dumb.)
- preacher barbell curls (biceps), 2 sets of 10 at 50 lbs
- leg extensions, 2 sets of 10 at 50lbs
- leg abductors, 1 set of 10 at 50lbs, inside and outside
- 50 crunches
- 20 pull-up type things... i don't know the real name.
- 10 lower abdominal, 10 oblique
and generally 10-20 mins cardio, unless it's a day off from lifting, when I do 30 minutes. I've been slacking off for the past two weeks, but I've managed to bring my weight down to 190lbs or thereabouts, which isn't too bad. I'm hoping that my fat starts to redistribute soon... I feel like I'm working out a whole lot (and I'm gaining a lot of upper body muscle) and not seeing any change in my waist and hips. It's a bit frustrating, but I have patience.
I've managed to work my way through a few books so far this summer... I'm slowly working my way through the huge list of books I've amassed over the year. I have this rabid and uncontrollable addiction to buying books. I seem to go in spurts too, where I'll polish off a book a day, and then I won't read for two weeks, and then I get the urge again and plow through another few books. I'm trying my best to quiet my anxiety about not doing anything this summer by setting book goals. So far I've read/finished:
- Without a Net: the female experience of growing up working class, by michelle tea.
- Both Sides Now, by Dhillon Khosla
- Sex Change, Social Change, by Vivianne Namaste
- Exile and Pride, by Eli Clare
- Whipping Girl: a transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity, by Julia Serano
- Chinese Takeout, by Arthur Nersesian
- Self-Made Man, by Nora Vincent
- Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinburg
- Nobody Passes, by Matt/ilda bernstein Sycamore
Only in the past two years have I developed this problem of starting and forgetting about books. I have unfinished books scattered everywhere... it's such a pet peeve. So I've read partially (select chapters, or huge chunks of)
- How sex changed: history of transsexualism, by (i forget) meyerowitz
- privilege: a reader, edited by Kimmel
- Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg
- Trans/Forming Feminisms, ed. by Scott-Dixon
- Public Sex: the culture of radical sex, by pat califia
- Undoing Gender, by Judith Butler (I have one friggin' essay left.. I should just finish it right now)
- gender outlaw, kate bornstein
- the end of gender, by (i forget) Thurer
- the will to change, by bell hooks
- fargo rock city, by chuck klosterman
- the ethnographic I, by Carolyn Ellis
- we don't need another wave, by Berger
- transmen and FTMs, by Cromwell
- genderqueer, by Wilchins
- second skins, by Prosser
and a fuck of a lot more. What a daunting list of things to finish... I won't get them done this summer like I'd planned. Oh well.
So yes, my birthday. I turned 23
My entire weekend has been full of birthday awesomeness, care of my partner, megan. Friday night, we went into Burlington with the last car-load of garage sale crap and started sorting through everything. Saturday morning we got our asses up at the crack of dawn and started putting everything out around 6:45am - and PEOPLE WERE ALREADY OUTSIDE WAITING. What the fuck? Anyways... we yard-saled until about 1pm and managed to make about $200. That'll go towards moving costs or maybe the first rent payment. Not too shabby.
Afterwards, we cat-napped for about 45 minutes (more like fell on the couch in a heap of bodies) and then took off for Springridge farm. We bought some blueberries, raspberries, cherries, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge, and left. It was rainy and we were too tired to play at the farm. Megan's mom made us veggie burgers and more dinner awesomeness, and then I opened the presents they got me, which included four super-cool shirts from Bluenotes, a dvd copy of What Dreams May Come (one of my favourites), some lottery tickets, and the board game of JEOPARDY!!! I'm such a sucker for board games.
On sunday, megan and I got ready and took off in search of Byng Island Conservation Park for a night of camping. We ended up getting pseudo-lost because the directions on the website fucking suck and we were stupid enough to try and follow them... but after I hopped out of the car and knocked on someone's door for directions (imagine that, a man asking for directions...), we eventually found our way. We set up tent, went for a few walks, took pictures, sat around the campfire, drank beer and wine, and uh... celebrated my birthday. In the morning, I opened a few presents (the Amnesty International Save-Darfur Instant Karma cd, a Rise Against EP, and a travel-journal book that has awesome pictures that I want to try and incorporate into my tattoo in August).
I made the mistake of using the outhouse thingie though, and even though I tried my best to breathe through my mouth, eventually sucked in some foul air and just about threw up. Needless to say, that was the last usage of the outhouse. Byng Conservation will forever be marked with my territorial pissings, if you will. It was really relaxing and I definitely would love to go back. The park is pretty sweet and the site we had was fairly private and decent.
So after Byng, megan and I came home and showered (tent grime is amazingly hard to get off) and made some lunch. Then I opened the rest of her presents, which were two golf-polo type shirts and WHEEL OF FORTUNE in board game format! I'm a lucky boy... made out like a bandit in presents and birthday love.
I finally finished editing and fixing the thesis and handed the mother fucker in last week. It's not what I'd like it to be, but I had to let it go. I'm sure that I'm going to pick it back up during my MA and try and extend the parts that I had to abruptly end, due to space limitations. My thesis advisors both feel as though it reads as a book and is highly publishable, with some additions and revisions, so that's what I might spend my MA doing. Fix it up, make it pretty, and try and have it published. As it stands, the final copy is 118 pages. Jesus fucking Christ. If I were to use my MA major research paper (which is supposed to be 60-80 pages or so) to do the additions and revisions, I could potentially have a book-sized project that may be publishable. That's the big goal, anyways. Anyone who would like to read the thesis should be able to take a copy out of the Brock Library in about two or three weeks, or, if that's not possible, contact me and I'll think about sending an electronic copy.
So next week is a busy week, with SCENE on Sunday, a Jays game on Wednesday, and then megan and I take off for MA/RI to visit with my family for a few days (july 26-30th). We'll get back for about a week and then we're off to NYC for the American Sociological Association conference, which I'm presenting at and am super excited for. I'm sure I'll write more about that later.
And just for your viewing pleasure, Megan and I decided to demonstrate how to properly roast and
Follow these instructions:
1. stick veggie dog on some kind of fire-roasting device.
2. Stick fire-roasting-device-complete-with-added-veggie-dog over the fire for an undetermined amount of time (generally in life, the veggie dog starts to develop blisters and begins to look like it has leprosy or is somehow related to the cheetah family - sounds yummy, doesn't it? I digress.)
3. add ketchup.
4. and mustard.
5. take ridiculously large bites.
6. Do NOT get smoke in your eye. It really fucking hurts.
7. Continue to shove said veggie dog into mouth. Swallow.
8. If of age, wash down with beer.
Voila. Cheers!
So I've mainly been keeping busy with
In terms of the gym, I haven't been going as regularly as I'd like, because megan and I have been busy with things (like last weekend, when we went home to London to film the interview with my mom for the documentary) and once I interrupt my routine it's sometimes hard to force myself back into it. But i've been doing okay. I've managed to increase most of my weights. I do:
- reverse cable curls, 2 sets of 10 at 90lbs
- v-bar tricep pulldowns, 2 sets of 10 at 100lbs
- front cable raises, 2 sets of 10 at 30lbs, both arms
- low cable delt raises, 2 sets of 10 at 30lbs, both arms
- incline dumbbell flyes, 2 sets of 10 at 40lbs (20 each dumbbell)
- flat bench dumbbell press, 2 sets of 10 at 70lbs (35 each dumbbell)
- dumbbell delt raises, 2 sets of 10 at 60lbs (30 each dumb.)
- preacher barbell curls (biceps), 2 sets of 10 at 50 lbs
- leg extensions, 2 sets of 10 at 50lbs
- leg abductors, 1 set of 10 at 50lbs, inside and outside
- 50 crunches
- 20 pull-up type things... i don't know the real name.
- 10 lower abdominal, 10 oblique
and generally 10-20 mins cardio, unless it's a day off from lifting, when I do 30 minutes. I've been slacking off for the past two weeks, but I've managed to bring my weight down to 190lbs or thereabouts, which isn't too bad. I'm hoping that my fat starts to redistribute soon... I feel like I'm working out a whole lot (and I'm gaining a lot of upper body muscle) and not seeing any change in my waist and hips. It's a bit frustrating, but I have patience.
I've managed to work my way through a few books so far this summer... I'm slowly working my way through the huge list of books I've amassed over the year. I have this rabid and uncontrollable addiction to buying books. I seem to go in spurts too, where I'll polish off a book a day, and then I won't read for two weeks, and then I get the urge again and plow through another few books. I'm trying my best to quiet my anxiety about not doing anything this summer by setting book goals. So far I've read/finished:
- Without a Net: the female experience of growing up working class, by michelle tea.
- Both Sides Now, by Dhillon Khosla
- Sex Change, Social Change, by Vivianne Namaste
- Exile and Pride, by Eli Clare
- Whipping Girl: a transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity, by Julia Serano
- Chinese Takeout, by Arthur Nersesian
- Self-Made Man, by Nora Vincent
- Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinburg
- Nobody Passes, by Matt/ilda bernstein Sycamore
Only in the past two years have I developed this problem of starting and forgetting about books. I have unfinished books scattered everywhere... it's such a pet peeve. So I've read partially (select chapters, or huge chunks of)
- How sex changed: history of transsexualism, by (i forget) meyerowitz
- privilege: a reader, edited by Kimmel
- Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg
- Trans/Forming Feminisms, ed. by Scott-Dixon
- Public Sex: the culture of radical sex, by pat califia
- Undoing Gender, by Judith Butler (I have one friggin' essay left.. I should just finish it right now)
- gender outlaw, kate bornstein
- the end of gender, by (i forget) Thurer
- the will to change, by bell hooks
- fargo rock city, by chuck klosterman
- the ethnographic I, by Carolyn Ellis
- we don't need another wave, by Berger
- transmen and FTMs, by Cromwell
- genderqueer, by Wilchins
- second skins, by Prosser
and a fuck of a lot more. What a daunting list of things to finish... I won't get them done this summer like I'd planned. Oh well.
So yes, my birthday. I turned 23
My entire weekend has been full of birthday awesomeness, care of my partner, megan. Friday night, we went into Burlington with the last car-load of garage sale crap and started sorting through everything. Saturday morning we got our asses up at the crack of dawn and started putting everything out around 6:45am - and PEOPLE WERE ALREADY OUTSIDE WAITING. What the fuck? Anyways... we yard-saled until about 1pm and managed to make about $200. That'll go towards moving costs or maybe the first rent payment. Not too shabby.
Afterwards, we cat-napped for about 45 minutes (more like fell on the couch in a heap of bodies) and then took off for Springridge farm. We bought some blueberries, raspberries, cherries, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge, and left. It was rainy and we were too tired to play at the farm. Megan's mom made us veggie burgers and more dinner awesomeness, and then I opened the presents they got me, which included four super-cool shirts from Bluenotes, a dvd copy of What Dreams May Come (one of my favourites), some lottery tickets, and the board game of JEOPARDY!!! I'm such a sucker for board games.
On sunday, megan and I got ready and took off in search of Byng Island Conservation Park for a night of camping. We ended up getting pseudo-lost because the directions on the website fucking suck and we were stupid enough to try and follow them... but after I hopped out of the car and knocked on someone's door for directions (imagine that, a man asking for directions...), we eventually found our way. We set up tent, went for a few walks, took pictures, sat around the campfire, drank beer and wine, and uh... celebrated my birthday. In the morning, I opened a few presents (the Amnesty International Save-Darfur Instant Karma cd, a Rise Against EP, and a travel-journal book that has awesome pictures that I want to try and incorporate into my tattoo in August).
I made the mistake of using the outhouse thingie though, and even though I tried my best to breathe through my mouth, eventually sucked in some foul air and just about threw up. Needless to say, that was the last usage of the outhouse. Byng Conservation will forever be marked with my territorial pissings, if you will. It was really relaxing and I definitely would love to go back. The park is pretty sweet and the site we had was fairly private and decent.
So after Byng, megan and I came home and showered (tent grime is amazingly hard to get off) and made some lunch. Then I opened the rest of her presents, which were two golf-polo type shirts and WHEEL OF FORTUNE in board game format! I'm a lucky boy... made out like a bandit in presents and birthday love.
I finally finished editing and fixing the thesis and handed the mother fucker in last week. It's not what I'd like it to be, but I had to let it go. I'm sure that I'm going to pick it back up during my MA and try and extend the parts that I had to abruptly end, due to space limitations. My thesis advisors both feel as though it reads as a book and is highly publishable, with some additions and revisions, so that's what I might spend my MA doing. Fix it up, make it pretty, and try and have it published. As it stands, the final copy is 118 pages. Jesus fucking Christ. If I were to use my MA major research paper (which is supposed to be 60-80 pages or so) to do the additions and revisions, I could potentially have a book-sized project that may be publishable. That's the big goal, anyways. Anyone who would like to read the thesis should be able to take a copy out of the Brock Library in about two or three weeks, or, if that's not possible, contact me and I'll think about sending an electronic copy.
So next week is a busy week, with SCENE on Sunday, a Jays game on Wednesday, and then megan and I take off for MA/RI to visit with my family for a few days (july 26-30th). We'll get back for about a week and then we're off to NYC for the American Sociological Association conference, which I'm presenting at and am super excited for. I'm sure I'll write more about that later.
And just for your viewing pleasure, Megan and I decided to demonstrate how to properly roast and
Follow these instructions:
1. stick veggie dog on some kind of fire-roasting device.
2. Stick fire-roasting-device-complete-with-added-veggie-dog over the fire for an undetermined amount of time (generally in life, the veggie dog starts to develop blisters and begins to look like it has leprosy or is somehow related to the cheetah family - sounds yummy, doesn't it? I digress.)
3. add ketchup.
4. and mustard.
5. take ridiculously large bites.
6. Do NOT get smoke in your eye. It really fucking hurts.
7. Continue to shove said veggie dog into mouth. Swallow.
8. If of age, wash down with beer.
Voila. Cheers!