above: elaha – her face hidden, as per always – and the feast of chocolate we decided to buy from the metro because she had a craving (as per always).

summer has brought with it a sense of stagnancy. things are, for the most part, the same, day in and day out. to add to this, i plan on refraining from going out so much on the weekends in an effort to save up for my family’s trip to the philippines this august. anyone who knows me knows i thrive off of change and excitement and spontaneous adventure, and so i’ve been feeling quite a bit bored lately.

as such, i’ve swapped booze for books and clubs for video games to offer me whole new worlds of experience. i’ve been reading a whole ton and i’ve gotten back into song-writing – something i’m really feeling good about. i’m also continuing to reteach myself french in preparation for my return to montreal – something i should’ve done last summer. it should keep me busy for a while.

the serving position at cocoberry that courtney offered me didn’t really work out. i asked her, too frequently, when she would train me and she told me to be patient (something i’m still not very good at) and it kind of pitter-pattered off into oblivion, never to be mentioned again. however, shannon says she might be able to get me a serving position at one of the places her boss owns, so i’m reserving a little excitement for that. i’m not going to hold my breath though – i was already disappointed once.

elaha and i had to go to work at 7 in the morning to help fold down the store and make it look pretty before it opened. we weren’t able to close it down because of the shooting and it was closed yesterday due to ongoing investigations so nobody’d been in it since. we stayed up all night playing silent hill and scaring ourselves, worried that if we fell asleep, we wouldn’t be able to wake up on time.

by the time six o’clock came rolling around, we were caught in a state of delirium and everything seemed kind of surreal. i laughed far too often at nothing at all. we went for a timmy’s run before work and we were the first to get to the store, followed by craig who mentioned how it was far too early.

regine and akira followed shortly afterward and the shift was actually pretty fun. we listened to the radio while we folded and eventually discussed the recent string of bizarre events that have been plaguing the east coast – the face-eating man, the killer porn star and etc etc. the world is such a strange place. has it always been this terrible?

when we mentioned that we’d actually watched 1 lunatic 1 ice pick (luka magnotta’s video showing him dismembering his victim and committing vile acts with the body), they began to question our humanity (and sanity).

akira mentioned the most disturbing movie he’d ever watched (slaughtered vomit dolls) and i made sure to take a mental note.

elaha and i have been dipping our toes into the world of extreme macabre lately. i don’t even know why. it touches nerves that should never really be touched and opens our eyes to the darkest parts of humanity. it’s strange to believe that some monsters aren’t just the stuff of nightmares.

we went to my house after work to take a little nap, falling asleep to the music of explosions in the sky. she said she’d only rest for fifteen minutes and then get up and go to school, but i already knew better. we woke up hours later and watched slaughtered vomit dolls, which wasn’t that disturbing considering you couldn’t really see anything at all. the camera was all too shaky and it was far too bizarre. too many people find things to be somewhat profound just because they’re incoherent.

then we went to metro to get chocolate and proceeded to have a feast. elaha likes to think of herself as something of a chocolate connoisseur and she tasted each piece carefulyl, weighing them on her tongue and making comparisons. she made me sample each bar and asked for my opinion. it seems that chocolate is very important to her.

we shunned the brownies because they tasted suspiciously of fish.

i also had my first parisian macaroon, which was delicious although i can’t imagine myself ever eating more than two at a time.

so sweet, so sweet.