As my journal title says, DON’T PANIC!!! I am alive and doing well and missing you and maybe I will start posting journal entries again on a regular basis but don’t hold your breath… Please don’t hold your breath, I wouldn’t want the deaths of any friends on my conscience.
As i said i am doing well and still very much in love with a very wonderful woman, demonrapunzel with whom I am co-habitating and spending as much time with as possible… along with our four cats… yes, I said four cats (maybe there will be more on them later… if [when] I post again. You aren’t holding your breath are you?)
Love ya!
Bull

Happy Birthday hub_!!!
I hope the Czech is treating you right today!

Happy Birthday gravity!!!
Make it a great one!

Happy Birthday flirtini!!!
Hope you have a good day Darlin'

How are things in LJ land?

I know I have been very delinquent in posting here and I should be punished... but I will leave that for demonrapunzel.

Speaking of demonrapunzel, I am still very much in love with this woman... to the point where we have decided to move in together. We have even found a place to live, small one bedroom plus den with a great view that is right between where we work. I am very excited to do this (although it's not like I haven't pretty much been living with her for the last few months anyway!) but this place will be ours (and the cats... Spot, my cat, has already officially moved in with Jaime and Sully, her cat, and they are all getting along pretty well!)

Anyway that is my life for the past 9 months... Jaime, Work, Work, a little Tai Chi Chuan and sleep (very little of it!)... Oh, yeah! Somewhere in there was a trip to England, which I still need to post pics for!

I can't say for sure that I am back regularly but i should be posting a little more often than once every 9 months. :D

Tags: jaime, life
Current Mood: excited

Boo!

Last night demonrapunzel and I went to see Korn and the Deftones at the Family Values Tour and the best part of the night? When we were sitting on the lawns before the Deftones came on and some guy walks by and yells to Jamie "Hey, you're the girl from Sunrise!"... to which all I heard from Jamie was "Oh shit!" Why was this so cool to me? Because it is usually me that gets unrecognized everywhere I go, especially at concerts, it was great! As for Korn and The Deftones, they were good but they are past their prime. Back in 1996 they were awesome, 10 years later they lack the energy they once had and their new music isn't as good. Although the guitarist from The Deftones had one guitar with this Louis Vuitton pattern on it which was pretty funny!

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr. Seuss

Tags: quotes

In just over two weeks I will be jetting off to England for three weeks of fun and family! I have not been back for 16 years... waaay too long! It will be a great trip, a week in London with my cousin, a week in Cornwall with my aunt and then a week in Birmingham with multiple uncles and cousins. Today I arranged the train travel between those points and will be seeing a lot of the wonderful British countryside via Virgin Rail! I am soooo excited about this trip it isn't funny! The only downside of the whole trip is that I will be away from Jamie for 3 weeks just as our relationship is really starting to take off!

We could learn a lot from crayons:
some are sharp, some are pretty,
some are dull, some have weird names,
and all are different colors...
but they all exist very nicely in the same box.

On A Plane is one bad movie! So bad that is will go down in history as another cult icon! It was hilarious and had some definite gross out scenes and seeing it last night with a cinema full of Snakes geeks and freaks who were hissing and yelling when Jackson says the cliche lines and other things depending on what was going on. There was even one guy who came back from the washroom who asked if there had been any plot development yet and someone else yelled out "apparently there is a plane" to which the entire audience burst out laughing, it was GREAT!!!

for doing this but I needed you too meet the person who has all my attention right now.

Here is Jamie (demonrapunzel) and I on the boat cruise this past weekend.

Picture taken with my camera phone 'cause I was an idiot and forgot my real camera.

Friday was the usual uneventful evening at the bar but Saturday was when things got going. Saturday morning I met up with a lady that I bought demonrapunzel's birthday presents from as her b-day is in a few weeks (I mention this here because she knows that I did this but doesn't know what I got her and it will driver her crazy! LOL) Then I went to a Martial Arts Course in Knife Defense. How to react and deal with someone who may attack you with a knife. This was a good course, it is only the first part in a series but it was very informative... the only problem now is that my right forearm is covered in bruises!
After the course was done I went and met up with alen at his friend Mike and Wilma's place for Mikey'b B-day. Lots of food and a pool to warm up in... yeah, the pool was warmer than the air outside and I mean that literally, it was 30 celcius in the pool and 28 outside but it was very refreshing! Unfortunately I had to leave for work at 8 and by 9 when I got to work I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was curl up on the bar and pass out!
On Sunday Jamie and I went on a Boat Cruise for my friend Dave's Birthday. It was pretty cool. The organizer, Emma (Dave's G/F) asked me if I would handle the BBQing duties as I am the one that normally does this for the Sunday Baseball BBQ's and while the actual cooking of the hamburgers and sausages was no problem for me, seeing them a few hours later in the warming pan soaking in grease just reinforced the decision I have made to become a vegetarian! That was GROSS... what was worse was seeing people grabbing 3 hour old burgers and eating them like they were fresh off the grill... the things people will do when they are drunk!
As for Jamie, she makes me VERY happy and I can see this relationship lasting for a long time... and that makes me happy too!

BTW... Jamie (demonrapunzel) is a Vegan, now with my diet I had cut out a lot of meat. Beef was only allowed once a week and I still had it very rarely and I ended up eating A LOT of tuna and quite a bit of tofu and have become pretty good at cooking with it. In the last month, since I started going out with Jamie I have not had any meat of any kind and I am totally fine with it. In fact I am great with it and I feel even better than I was during the diet (and since) and I even think I am losing a little more weight! So, yeah, while it wasn't a hard thing for me to give up meat altogether after that diet i think I have decided to become a vegetarian... but their are some things that I still can't do without... I need my cottage cheese and yogurt once in a while, so becoming a strict vegan is not yet in my future.

I cut my friends list down a little. No hard feelings to the people I cut, I just haven't been spending a lot of time here lately and it was getting too much for me to try to keep up. The people I have left on here are people I have actually met or interacted with on a more personal level and have managed to help me either directly or indirectly though some issues I may have had in the past... to them i say thank you and I hope we can continue to grow our relationships.

In other news (but still talking about relationships) I am still spending A LOT of time with demonrapunzel and we somehow are not sick of each other! It's been a long time since I have connected with someone in this way and it feels real good!

Hope you are all doing well!

Love ya,

Bull

I haven't updated since last week... that's because I have been real busy and having a lot of fun.

On Friday I was supposed to go see Clerks II with demonrapunzel after I weighed in for the Tai Chi Tournament... but that didn't happen, we would have had to go to the late show and she had to work early and I had to be at the tournament for 9... instead I decided to take Saturday off from the bar so we could see it on Saturday instead... and let me tell you it was classic Kevin Smith funny! Jay and Silent Bob RULE!!

Saturday was the tournament and while I didn't do as well as I hoped I had a lot of fun, and considering the guys I was beat by have 6 years + of competition experience AND they beat my instructors as well I am OK with that. As I said I had fun and the next day I was complemented by my instructors on staying with Tai Chi Techniques instead of just muscling my way through. Sunday was a seminar with the 5 heads of the Classic Tai Chi Families; Chen, Yang, Wu, Hao and Sun and it was amazing to see the different forms dome by these people. The head of the Yang family is 80 years old and moved like he was 20 and his form was absolutely beautiful!

Wednesday I went with my sister and bro-in-law to see SPAMalot! OMG Eric Idle is a genius... not that I didn't have that opinion of him already but WOW! That play is amazingly funny and the fact that he combines parts of Flying Circus sketches, The Meaning of Life and The Life of Brian all with The main plot of The Holy Grail is astounding! Go see it if you get the chance!

So... How are YOU doing?

I am actually NOT working tonight! Can you believe it?

Tonight I will be spending the evening with Jaime (yes, demonrapunzel does have a name!) and we are going to go see Clerks II. I can't wait... I haven't seen Jaime since Sunday and you should know how much of a Kevin Smith fan I am.

Tomorrow is my first ever Tai Chi Tournament, of course I pick an international event (the 2006 Pan-Am Wushu Games) to make my debut! I am very psyched up about it and am hoping that I get a medal. If this past week is any indication I should be able to do just that. I beat two of my instructors in practice on Tuesday and on Wednesday the Head Instructor for my Academy wasn't too happy to find out he would be in the same weight category as me even though when he was showing us some moves to use in the tournament I might as well have been flailing my arms wildly instead of trying to "stick" to him the way I am supposed to. Wish me luck!

Last night was another practice session for the officials for the tournament this weekend so I, once again, went to get in some push hands practice against some of the other styles. I fought a couple of fixed step matches and won, after learning the rules last week and also learning how the other styles fight I changed up my strategy a little and it worked. When it came to doing the fixed step there was no one there who wanted to push against me so I wasn't able to practice that... at least I know from last weeks practice that if I am still drawn near the end of the match I need to make a last ditch effort to get at least one point by getting my opponent out of the ring.

In other news I am still spending a lot of time with demonrapunzel, something tells me I kinda like her... maybe just a little ;)

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.	✓ I own lots of books.
× I wear glasses or contact lenses.	× I love to play video games.	✓ I've tried marijuana.
✓ I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	✓ I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	✓ I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.

( it goes on... )

Tags: meme

Spent another evening with demonrapunzel last night. We went to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called "Fresh" at Spadina and Queen as she was craving sweet potato fries and miso gravy and let me tell ya after having them I can see what all the fuss was about! She had hardly started hers and I was having to fend her off of mine with a fork! And for being a vegan she doesn't seem to have any problem chewing off human flesh to get to these things! All in all I had a wonderful evening that culminated in once again sitting at Starbucks talking the evening away.

I was sad to find out yesterday that Syd Barrett had passed away the previous Friday, July 7. Pink Floyd is and will always be my favourite band and I love Barrett's music as much as Waters' and Gilmour's, that and my all time favourite Pink Floyd album is a tribute to Syd, Wish You Were Here. RIP You Crazy Diamond

Last night was interesting and I am sore today!

It was good being able to push against people of other disciplines. I got a good feel of how things will be in the tournament and I was able to hold my own twice against someone who has been practicing tai chi for years AND had won three practice rounds against other opponents before me. He won by 1 point in fixed step and only won in the moving step because a draw goes to the lighter opponent as long as there are no fouls.

There are two types of competitions in Tai Chi Push Hands. The first, fixed step, the object is to get your opponent to lift one foot of the ground (1 point) or get them to fall over (1 hand touches the ground is 2 points, two or more body parts other than the feet touch the ground is 4 points). You can only do this by applying tai chi techniques to the opponents torso and arms, no striking or joint locks are allowed. The second, moving step, there is a "ring" like Olympic wrestling or Sumo and you get 1 point for getting the opponent out the ring or 2 and 4 points the same way you do in fixed step. There is a little more freedom in this as you can apply joint locks and leg sweep are allowed, strikes are still not allowed neither is attacking the groin or knees (thank god). The basis of Tai Chi is to use your opponents movement against himself and to be as relaxed as possible doing it, so brute strength is out of the question (otherwise I could have just picked this guy up and thrown him out of the ring) although strength and size does come into play as it is hard to move someone who is heavier and stronger. I was also confusing these guys as my stance is more front to back instead of side to side, so they were having trouble wrapping their legs around mine and tripping me. Overall it was fun and a very good practice and I am more confident about the tournament... only two weeks away!


I get to spend the evening with demonrapunzel again tonight, we are going down to Queen Street for some eats and to look around but will probably end up on the patio at Starbucks chatting again, which is absolutely fine with me.

Current Mood: excited

This Saturday morning (July 15) I will be riding the Big Bike for Stroke with the COTTQA (Canadian Organization of Traditional Taiji Quan Associations and we need a couple of more riders. The bike holds 29 people plus a driver, we have about 15. So if there are any of my friends in the Toronto Area that would like to help a good cause on Saturday at 11:00 then I would be very greatful! All you would need to do, other than show up and help peddle the bike for 15 min is to raise $50 min between now and Saturday? Any takers? If you are interested let me know and I can e-mail you a sponsorship form.