My new yoga instructor told our Yoga for Beginners class that proper breathing would make you taller, and consistent practice of yoga asanas would make your feet and hands bigger. I am already endowed with gargantuan paws and stand 5’11”, so I’m not sure I’m game for that kind of elongation: could be beneficial for swimming, though.
Rumour Alert! Disgraced Tour de France cyclist Michael Rasmussen may be staging a comeback with IM France; however, I seriously doubt ‘The Chicken’ will be able to pull himself through the water with those skinny arms of his.
Bought a coffee and sandwich at Tim Horton’s yesterday, and the flustered cashier gave me an extra dollar in change. I usually don’t even look at my change, but since it was a $5 bill rather than the expected $4 coinage, I noticed the mistake. Funny how this situation brought back the memory of a particular class given by a venerated senior professor… I remember him standing there in Vanier hall, preaching to an auditorium full of impressionable first-year students. I remember his reaction to the prospect of “free grapes”. I remember being shocked at what I perceived as a blatant disregard for ethics in this case, shocked by the students’ appreciative laugher when he suggested that it was ok to profit from others’ “stupidity”. Big deal, one dollar, who cares.
I wrote to him afterwards, expressing my dismay. One dollar may not mean much to us, but a cashier with a till one dollar short is often accused of stealing and “written up”. These people have families and need to put bread on the table too. The professor’s reaction was one of surprise; he suggested that I had misunderstood (which is the only defence he could possibly have claimed), but I never forgot. For the next 4.5 years, whenever I saw him, talked to him, took a class with him, or read his name in the paper, I recalled that incident. That, and the time he said the only good reason for attending business school was to get rich.
I gave the cashier a loonie.
Had a breakthrough last night with “Les robes bleus” : I found out the meanings of some words which had been eluding me. That is, I found out why I couldn’t find them in the dictionary... had to go to the Alternative French Dictionary of vulgarities and slang. Ahh, makes much more sense now (I can’t mention them here, because somehow it is more embarrassing! Let me just say that I found out “putain” is not your average adjective). As an author, Findlay is a pretty intense dude, but I never realized how liberally he availed himself of crudities.
