Cherry Beach, Toronto.
Midnight.
Come swim in a Canadian Lake in the middle of the longest night of the year under a moonless sky to celebrate the moment we pass through the birth of the new year. Feel free to do so in drag if you'd like — that was part of our noon swim today.
So I met with my surgeon today and will be having some sort of assessment/orientation at the start of January, and then a few days later a minor surgery (but under a general). Then I guess they decide whether I have problematic cancer (which isn't so much dangerous; it's more that it requires that more of my leg gets cut off) or just a big fucked up piece of bone they can trim down without damaging my leg. I'm glad it's coming along so quickly, but I'm still sore from the physical exam today… The doctor had to feel it out by hand as well as seeing the scans and there are a few spots around it where the tissue is in relatively constant agony and I definitely don't like it being pushed on!!!
On to more pleasant news. First of all, the noon Solstice swim is totally a go, and I just got off the phone with the police who've told me that there are no legal issues with the midnight swim! So that should be pretty awesome. Cherry Beach is where we're swimming, link to the club below.
Roo, Allana, and I swam a bit longer today, working on figuring out how long we can comfortably swim in water at that temperature… I think our consensus is in the region of thirty to forty minutes without any real training or conditioning. We walked out as far as we could to see where the channel is cut (since I think a decent rule is to stay in water that's “walking height” so if there's a problem others can help you out easily even if they're not confident swimmers).
Come join us at noon and midnight (police permission pending for the night swim) on the 21st (Solstice, and a new moon) for our next swim! That's Thursday by the way. Oh, and I think the news are coming, so if you have something to promote, wear the t-shirt. And trust me, it's a lot more fun than our faces make it look in that last photo! www.winterswim.com
Oh! And I met with a really talented friend of Blair's today who's going to carve a skull with my tattoo on it to fit on the top of my cane. I was going to make a few for other friends with canes, so drop me a line if you're interested… If it turns out nicely I'll commission a BME belt buckle from him — I've wanted to do a proper 3D buckle for a while.
So the dicks at “IMPARK” want me to pay a $137.80 fine over a couple of parking infractions. Normally I'd just assume it was legit, but unless I'm missing something, they are attempting to charge me twice within one minute for two parking lots that according to google are an eight minute drive apart. Nice try, assholes.
I'm working on getting the weekend's update fixed; we have about 10,000 images for posting but there's been a mystery problem with the software (probably due to the bulk). I'll get it sorted out soon (it's rebuilding now).
And now on to your regularly scheduled update…
I've finished a lot of paintings lately… Here's two (there are around twenty of mine here in all that I ought to post). They're in the basement where it's kind of dark so I couldn't get a very good photo of either of them but I'm happy with how they turned out. The painting on the right took about half an hour, and the painting on the left about an hour (although it's painted over an old painting). I'm trying to get into the habit of painting faster.
