New skin for the old ceremony

The coolest things about weight loss are the things no one tells you to expect. I mean, everyone tells you how great it's going to be to fit into new, smaller clothes, or how healthy you're going to feel, but no one ever mentions that you're never going to struggle again to get out of your car in tiny Joburg parking bays. No one mentions that airline seats, while still pretty uncomfortable, no longer feel like you've been poured into them. No one gave me a heads up that finding things like hip bones would be so much fun.

Anyway, I should probably not talk about too much about the whole fitness thing. A couple of beers recently loosened a friend's tongue sufficiently for him to tell me off over the whole body transformation thing. Apparently, it's made me a complete douchenozzle, and his words were that while I've always been someone who's been completely arrogant (and I quote verbatim here) "very difficult to be friends with", apparently it's become infinitely worse since I lost the weight. This was understandably something of a shock to me, but I'm trying to not let it bother me. Truth is, you can make new friends. Also, I did a bit of digging, and it seems that this is a fairly common issue among people who lose a lot of weight. When you're the funny, joking fat guy in a group, that's your role. If you decide to change that role, things can go sour. Ce la vie.

Anyway, on to somewhat more lighthearted topics. I had a superb Valentine's Day, and an even better birthday. In the past, it's always been a massive downer to share my birthday with Valentine's Day, but this year it worked out pretty well. I ended up giving gifts to all the pretty girls I know, which went well (many of them gave me things back), and I got some absolutely amazing birthday presents, including two of the books I most wanted to read, namely, Machine of Death and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Thank you so much - you know who you are!

Speaking of zombies, I'm looking forward to Dead Island in the biggest way since watching the epic teaser below:

What an awesome video! I love how conflicted I was after watching it for the first time. The music, the composition, everything about it is brilliant. What a unique way of presenting the zombie apocalypse. In a genre that I thought was starting to feel stifled and unoriginal, they've found a hook and presented it well. I can't wait.