I went home for Christmas and, as it usually happens, life carried on and friends in Vancouver had abundant time to spend together since they were all off for holidays. I suspect that my family feels the same way after I’ve shared two weeks with them at home in Halifax and then they are helpless as I resume my life here.
NPY scheduled a shindig in my 500 ft2 studio apt the day after I returned because Canada took on USA in the world junior hockey finals (remember that? sad result) and then the Canucks faced the Columbus Blue Jackets (happy, lopsided result) and he offered that I would cook for 4 or 5 of his friends.
I can be hard-pressed to cook even for my own sustenance so I was a little anxious. It’s not to say that things went off without a hitch–because I forgot about someone’s “intolerance”–but I had fun and I want there to be (a) next time(s) when I prepare something less generic as a pasta casserole. I learned what I need to do to be and feel equal, to take on some share of the hosting so long as people don’t mind being strewn on my carpeted floor because I quickly run out of chairs.
Did I say resolutions?
I can make my share of male friends. Nearly all of my co-workers are male, very intelligent mathematical men. I can pretend that I’m still a technical person talking to guy friends (I know, I’m such a sham). It’s the girlfriends who are elusive and have been elusive all my life. These days, I am so self-conscious I get nearly the same kind of butterflies and fear of rejection trying to set up a time to hang out, to wriggle my way into someone else’s already-established social circle.
Thus, one of my resolutions this year is to improve my relationships with my great friends from university (who all live in Toronto or further), come out of my shell amongst the “girlfriends and wives” (a safe environment, they are practically “built-in friends”) and be friends in our own right, and be more approachable in other realms where there are as-yet unfamiliar people, like work and the extra-curriculars I may participate in.
I have been quite good about it for the first few weeks back here and at work, especially since we have new hires–some female–and they are great and friendly people. Oh, but I’ve eaten and spent more money than I normally would like–it’s the common price of being socialable. This is one of those ongoing, life resolutions.
Which makes another resolution of mine all the more difficult to accomplish. That is to reach and maintain a weight that I last measured myself at in 1999, back when my metabolism was so youthful. My “weight-loss trick” depends on my being a slave to my Google Calendar and writing in each week’s “Goal Weight” and each week completing the “event” with my actual weight. Otherwise, I’m not following a particular diet and merely running and dancing regularly, practicing more and conscious restraint than I have in a decade, and striving for 1 pound/week loss. That puts me at goal at end of April!
Another resolution of mine this year is to cleanly finish a half-marathon race (21.1KM or 13.1mi) in under two hours. If hard work and registering for a race that has a net drop (i.e., taking place at the end of June) doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will!!
My last resolution is to watch the Cantonese news every night (or a few nights a week). My Halifax-hating grandmother gives Vancouver credit for improving my Chinese in all manners but Mum knows better: I was immersed in it at home with my parents and at my part-time work at the restaurant and, conversationally, it’s gone downhill. This another ongoing, life resolution.
There, I might report again on these at end of April and end of June. ;-)