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February 23, 2007

I Did It!

---MASON ENTRY---

I have completed my first Canadian sports class! Ice Skating for Beginners! Thank you - thank you all for your kind applause! ;-)

I had a real sense of accomplishment. I was a little shaky from having the face-plant last week, but I slowly got back into my groove. Another lady in the class fell about half-way through the class and broke her glasses in two - I felt so sorry for her (and empathetic!)

I have to say that walking home from the rink last night was a great experience. I also had this intense, warm feeling about walking down the street with my skates hanging over my shoulders and looking around the neighborhood. I had another one of those moments where a sledgehammer hit me emotionally and I realized that DAMN - I live in Canada - with an ice rink in my neighborhood park, people that say "hi" to you as you walk down the sidewalk and I felt safe and accepted and secure. Yeah - I'm very happy.

Against my better judgement, I realized that there is a video-function on the camera I took with me to the rink, so for your viewing pleasure (and only one small slip-up and fall) you get to see me work on my cross-overs, skating forward and backwards and switching directions a few times.

February 06, 2007

OHIP-A-GO-GO

Sorry for the absence everyone, but I needed a month or so to catch up with myself. I think my mind finally caught up with my body's stress. I'll do a more in depth update later, but for now, here's how the day went....

So today was Mason and I's first foray into the world of socialized medicine. We actually found a gay-friendly doctor in the downtown core that is taking new patients by referral and is highly recommended. Mason's boss at the B&B referred us and we met the doctor today - he is a nice guy, very professional and quite a bit younger then I expected but he instantly put me at ease. He's going to get our records from the US and I have a physical scheduled (my first one in over 5 years) for March 7th.

No instruments from the 1970's, I didn't have to wait longer then 5 minutes to be seen and he actually took the time to get to know me before just writing me a new script for my expiring medication. Wow, the system actually works!

Anyway, it was a good experience and I enjoyed seeing my weight in kilograms instead of pounds (made me feel skinnier), but in all honesty I've lost 15lbs since moving here. That made me feel a bit better. He's also going to have to recheck my cholesterol since they use a different measuring system up here (who knew.) He's also a specialist in HIV, so I got the whole safe sex discussion - it's nice to be able to have such an open and comfortable relationship with your doctor.

I think I may call it an early night tonight, I'm pretty drained from work shit today.