Every spring, there’s that one first sunny, reasonably warm Sunday in Montreal. I absolutely love walking up and down St-Denis on that day, watching Montrealers smiling from behind their sunglasses. Although it’s only a few degrees warmer, you can just feel the winter lift off their shoulders. It’s usually followed by a ridiculous 30-centimeter snowstorm, but for that one day, people are out in droves pretending that winter is over for good, enjoying the rays reflected off the wet streets and even, on some level, the smell of dogshit thawing.

That Sunday was yesterday. I had an additional excuse to get out there, and went on a futile apartment-hunting trip, in the lovely company of Bill. We drove around, singing along to the radio with the windows down (all bundled up otherwise), walked around Mont-Royal avenue, window shopped, shop shopped and hardly saw any For Rent signs.

I missed the perfect apartment, which was advertised online, but it was worth it.

Overheard at a party in NDG last night:

My drunken, 92-pound-soaking-wet friend: Men and women can’t be friends. The sex always gets in the way.
Me: Well, what about you and E?
MD92PSWF: Well, that’s different. We have a big age difference. Plus he likes really big women.
(pause)
In fact, he thinks you’re really hot.
Me (reeling from the verbal slap): I see. So, I’m a really big woman?
MD92PSWF: No, no… You should see his girlfriend, she’s really fat. I mean, you’re skinny in comparison.

Why can’t the expression be in vino veritas, in sobriety bitchslap?

First I was supposed to see Bill for some girlie action drinking and chatting, but she ended up getting her new computer tonight. My friends all had plans, Gord’s out of town girlfriend was in town, T was going to the Thievery Corporation concert, so I was left with a Friday night by myself, which is fine when you want to be alone, but I didn’t.

Feeling strangely sorry for myself, I was preparing to spend an evening of home Dance Dance Revolution (shut up, it was T’s xmas gift - but that’s a whole blog in itself) when Gord and his girlfriend called to ask me to have dinner with them. After an odd dinner during which they had a big row because he won’t move to Israel with her, the three of us headed to my place to watch a DVD. The whole time, I’m playing phone tag with a guy who wants to exchange apartments with me. Anyway, we’re 20 minutes into the movie, and the couple with me is fully reconciled and googly-eyed, when T calls and complains that none of his friends showed up at the concert, and he’s stuck alone with a newly formed, googly-eyed couple.

Leaving my own googly-eyed couple at my apartment with my keys, I hop in a cab to the rescue of my man. We have a few drinks with his googly-eyed couple until eleven when the show starts. Since I don’t have a ticket, I head home and catch the end of the movie with my googly-eyed couple. Even in the cab rides, I’m playing phone tag with the apartment man.

So I didn’t really have dinner with my friends, didn’t really talk to the apartment man, didn’t really see a concert, didn’t really see the movie. Tonight was like a hockey game that ends 0-0… lots of little beginnings and nothing really coming to fruition. Not that that’s always bad.

Everyone have a lovely weekend.

How much of a nightmare is it to move on July 1st?

We don’t have to move on that day, so we’d rather not, but most apartments offered are, of course, for that day. We can’t really afford to cut July apartments out of our search. Should we?

So Bill and I are planning a little breakfast date and she offers to provide lox for the bagels. I reply, “no thanks, I don’t eat fish”.

I really don’t like fish (or any other seafood). I deeply regret this because I know how good it’d be for me to eat it once in a while. Mind you, nowadays I’m not even so sure of that - did you know that salmon is artificially colored to be pink? That it’s near impossible to buy real salmon fished out of the sea, no matter how much you’re willing to pay?

Anyway, this caused me to remember with a smile some gastronomic nightmare that once befell me. I was in the beautiful Atlantic town of Bergen, Norway, world-famous for its fabulous fish. The whole town smells of fish. I was visiting the family of a professor I’d met online, and they were of course very proud of their local delicacies, so the menu my first night there was of course going to be fish. Ugh. But not just fish: a bouillabaisse with three types of fresh fish, fresh scampis, mussels, shrimps, etc.

I realized with shame that to most people this would be a wonderful meal, but all I could do was try not to inhale too deeply to avoid the smell.

Too polite to refuse their food, I courageously muscled my way through all the fish and seafood, blocking off my senses to keep from gagging. Finally, at the bottom of my bowl were left only two disgusting-looking mussels, staring up at me with their bivalves. I collected my thoughts, tried to clear my mind, and put one in my mouth, trying in vain to swallow. But my eyes just watered and my stomach contracted in protest. It had taken all it would from the sea.

What to do? This was a desperate time. I took advantage of baby Harald grabbing everyone’s attention, and, feigning a mouth wipe, quickly transferred the mussel to a napkin, disposing of the napkin in my sock. The other mussel quickly underwent the same journey. A quick trip to the bathroom, and they had recovered their freedom.

Sometimes I feign an allergy to fish because people insist “oh but you must try this”. And don’t get me started on the whole social stigma associated with the blasphemy of not liking sushi.

Some tastes are not meant to be acquired.

too dark
too small
too long a line-up to visit
too far from the metro
too dodgy a neighborhood
too crooked a house (think I’m kidding?)
too expensive
too cheap - must have roaches

Picked up a letter of reference from my landlady last night, and it’s quite the glowing review. She only stops short of saying I always wash behind my ears, and have been known to perform minor miracles. Makes me wonder if she wants to be rid of me.

My landlady is a very… special person. I can easily say I’ve never met anyone who was more of a control freak. This is good, only in some ways.

When I moved in, she gave me the address of the store from which I was to buy my washer and dryer. Because you have to understand, other places might have bugs and I might bring them in. Whenever she comes to fix something, she cleans one thing or another. Last time I saw that she had taken the empty plastic bottles from behind the trash, rinced them and placed them in the recycling bin. The cleaner bottles under my kitchen sink were all nicely aligned too, and the plastic bags nicely stacked. Thank God she doesn’t live in my building.

When I killed the fridge this summer, she came to take it to the dump, and lectured me about how there were still things left in it. By “things” she meant those pieces of dry onion peels in the bottom of the veggie drawer. The thing was going to the dump!

My landlady doesn’t use or eat anything that comes from any animals, and practices voluntary simplicity (i.e. if she buys a shirt, she gets rid of one). She toured Montana and California to find an appropriately-bio farm that could grow her beans for her. Every year, the farms she has selected send her a year’s supply of her beans.

On the other hand, the house is in top shape, she constantly offers to make improvements and renovations, and whenever anything breaks, it’s replaced within 48 hours. Also, I was curious (if not dubious) about her eating lifestyle, so she had me over for dinner a few times, and I must own that it was delicious. I’d doubt that she’s really getting everything she needs nutritionally, were it not for the fact that at 65, she looks like a hip, healthy late-forties woman.

People often have the qualities that come from their flaws, and the flaws that come with their qualities. I try to remember that whenever I have the impulse of judging someone.

…God knows there’s plenty reason to do so.

Our dear own Premier Landry says “Never again will the Quebec nation lose a referendum on its national sovereignty”.

And in order to ensure this, it seems there are lots and lots of referendums ahead, should the PQ be re-elected… including one to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote.

Maudite gang de voleurs.

(link via Kate)

Isn’t it a little ironic for an electronic journal to have a paper anniversary? Shouldn’t it be the Hyperlink anniversary or something? Yes, the Lightspeed Chronicles are a year old today.

A coworker asked me a while back what I get out of blogging, and it’s actually quite an interesting question. What’s the point of this?

I first read about blogging in shift magazine, and decided to check out some blogs. The things they spoke of, little vicissitudes of life, immediately made me want to comment, and eventually ramble on about things myself. I’d been looking for a creative outlet, and there it was. An outlet for daily catharsis. But it’s turned out to be much more.

It’s allowed me to keep in touch with faraway friends, notably in Belgium, Norway and Sweden. It’s given my parents a window into my life I don’t think they would have gotten otherwise. It’s allowed me to vent, decry, exchange, exhort, rant, rave, opine, as well as to get new perspectives, solutions and advice about a variety of issues. Last time I went to the Montreal bloggers meeting, Boris was telling me that in his blog, he sometimes dared more than in his life, but that eventually that some of that fearlessness had seeped into his actual life. I, on the other hand, felt that in blogging I was less than myself, as I often found myself blogging about little nothings while big somethings were going on in my life, but too personal to share in so public a medium. Either way, it says something about who we are.

When I announced that I was going to Venezuela in December, NY Times reporter Francisco Toro, from Caracas, wrote and offered to show me around while I was there. After doing the usual sniffing around to confirm that he wasn’t some freak, I replied. The situation in Venezuela ended up degenerating, I came back and we never did meet, but we’ve kept in touch and his blog on the situation down there keeps me up to date on a subject in which I’ve come to be interested.

Most importantly to me, I’ve made some good friends, and met some other very interesting people. I’m looking forward to meeting more still.

That’s what blogging has brought me, year one. I’m looking forward to seeing where the medium goes, where this particular blog goes, what new people and experiences it will bring to me.

In the movie About A Boy, Hugh Grant’s character looks at a site called supermodelswithseethroughtops.com. Check out what’s really at that address.

Before you go and ask how I discovered this, it’s on the trivia page of the Internet Movie Database.