Montreal 1st Day

So, it only takes an hour and a half to fly from Chicago to Montreal, which is nothing at all. We got up at 4 this morning so I could make it to the airport (ehs drove me, since we still own the car). I landed around 11am here and grabbed a taxi. I was interested in taking public transit to the apartment, but it looked like it was going to take an hour and a half or two hours, with 30 minutes of walking, a bus, and two trains. Taxi it was.

I rented an apartment, since I'm here for 10 days. It's about a 10 or 15 minute walk to the place where my class is. I had lunch, then spent the next 3 1/2 hours walking. It turns out Ste. Laurent, the major botiquey shopping district is having a street sale, either this weekend or the whole week, I'm not sure. I wandered through there, managed to blow my intended shopping budget in the first store I went to. I had a blackberry popsicle though, which was exciting.

Then I found the Park Mont-Royal. It was full of people playing frisbee, soccer, and listening to drumming. From there I walked to the grocery store. By then I was so tired I didn't do the world's greatest job of grocery shopping. I got a lot of fruit, some veggies, proteins, and only a few carbs. If it still seems terrible tomorrow I can try again.

I have made good use so far of my one strong phrase in French: "I do not speak French." People have been very friendly, the weather's beautiful, and I'm already exhausted! I'm still excited about class starting tomorrow though!

grey

I have found I think my first official grey hairs. I'm pretty impressed I've lasted this long. I haven't figured out how I feel about them. Somehow I'm a little bit proud, but also have the impulse to go schedule a hair appointment right away.

I guess I don't mind my hair getting old, I just don't like to think of it as a precursor for my joints getting old...

weekend

So, this was a busy weekend. We think we've found buyers for our car, Saturday was spent learning what you need to do when you find a buyer for your car. We turned out to be very unprepared for the part where they said, "OK, we want it, and we'll give you a great offer for it."

Sunday we went to the Field Museum to see the Mythic Creatures exhibit, which was really interesting. It wasn't necessarily a lot of new information for me, but I really liked seeing how myths are still present in a lot of cultures, even though we may not rely on ours as much anymore. There's a Japanese creature called a kappa, they used to be thought to lure children and travelers close to water and then pull them in and eat them. Like the Grimm's fairy tales the stories have gotten less scary, and now they're sort of silly critters who love cucumbers. They get their power out of water from a depression in their skulls that holds water. All you have to do is bow to them, and they feel obliged to bow back, dumping their water and then having to scurry back to the pond. There was a list of common Japanese phrases still used today. The only one I can remember is "kappa no he," which was "no more than a kappa fart," to say that something turned out to be not a very big deal. We do still use a lot of cliches in our language, but I can't think of very many that come directly from fairy tales.

schedule

I've been having a hard time getting going the last couple of days, sleeping in after all the travel. It's great to feel like I'm finally back on track, some days I'm hardly even out of bed by now. Today I've already had breakfast, exercised, showered, practiced my Spanish, and done three loads of laundry. Much more accomplishful!

home again home again, jiggity jig

It was great to see so much family in Georgia this past weekend: our new niece, an aunt and uncle we hadn't seen since our wedding (!), and all the other wonderful family down there. The weather wasn't as stifling as we had expected either, which was a welcome surprise.

Last night we managed to see The Dark Knight. I missed all the commercials and all but two of the previews (stupid 151 bus), but I made it. It was good, definitely scary, and somehow knowing that Heath Ledger is dead made his performance even creepier. It's really neat to see all the Chicago places in the movie. A lot of the action was on a street very close to where ehs works, and it was exciting to see those familiar buildings and streets.

ehs has borrowed a bike to see if he likes biking to work, which it turns out he does. The bike itself is not the right one for him, but he's enjoying the exercise and the breeze I guess. It's fun to send him out on errands, although the first night I told him I felt like I was sending a toddler to play in traffic. Which he reassuringly responded, "You are." But he's fine, wears his helmet and is cautious.

We've talked in the past about Working Bikes, which is an organization that refurbishes bikes and also uses the proceeds of selling bikes to bring bikes to other places in the world. So maybe we'll try to check them out at some point. We're still in the process of selling our car, and he may be taking it around for people to test drive this weekend.

Meanwhile, this will be my only Sunday at home in the month of August, so I intend to spend it thoroughly. We'll be going to the Mythical Creatures exhibit at the Field Museum, and then ehs's first annual work picnic.

You always remember your first

ehs held his first baby this weekend. And he didn't drop her.

It was fun the first day to say that we had both failed baby. Madeline was hungry when I held her, and cried until I gave her a bottle. She was hungry when ehs held her too, so we both got to hold fussy baby. But the next day he held her after she woke up, and she smiled and laughed at him. Briefly. Until she realized she needed to spend the next 8 minutes trying to poop. When we figured out what her goal was, her dad was happy to take her back.

She's cute, and we love having a niece! Even if she's not always happy for us to hold her yet... That's ok, we'll be around forever!

If you can't say anything nice, use the Internet...

ehs says that the Internet killed the "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule. Particularly when it comes to the comments sections of things like youtube, cuteoverload, and anything at all. For some reason instead of commenting on the item at hand, people get sort of off track, and begin to comment on themselves.

For example, I just got sent a link to a great youtube video of the Pilobus dance company performing on Conan O'Brien. For some reason the comments started out actually about the video, but then degenerated. I didn't need them all to be positive critiques, but saying "How is this different from what people do in kindergarten?" isn't exactly relevant, and even less so is a comment which says, "I'm FUNNIER."

Sadly, instead of using comments forums as a way to intelligently discuss items on the internet, the online community seems to be using them to show their own desperate and pathetic need for attention.

As I finish this post, I realize that the comments that may arrive here could be interesting.... good luck!

today happened

I'm not sure even what to say about today. It was accomplished. I got the car washed, did laundry. We're finishing packing to fly to Georgia, which is tomorrow. I'm very happy that we're flying out of Midway, they have yummy things like Ben and Jerry's and greek-style yogurt. In addition to not taking an hour and a half to get to.

facebook

So, while I was home I saw a lot of people from highschool that I hadn't seen in a long time. And everyone kept asking me if I was on Facebook. At Hutchie's service a man who had graduated high school with him stood up to speak, and he asked all the people who were there from their high school class to come up on stage, and there were about 10 people, which I thought was pretty amazing. That whole weekend was a real lesson in community, and I realized that community for our generation might mean online. We're all so spread out geographically, but it doesn't mean we have to miss out on the day to day adventures of a community.

So now I'm on facebook. I haven't really figured it all out yet (a garden? why can I make a garden?), but I'm learning. I'm actually kind of excited about expanding and recreating friendships.

August in Vermont

I can't believe it's August. I love my birthday, but I'm always a little bit sad though. Because it's at the end of July, whenever it's my birthday it means that summer is headed into the last month.

It's been raining a lot in Vermont, but I like that way too. It's not too warm, and when the sun is shining everything is green and beautiful.

Hutchie's service was really nice on Saturday, Dad said he thought there were about 500 people there. I hope everyone there felt as much as I did the desire to be a better, nicer, kinder person because Hutchie was. I also hope we can all remember to share the stories and tell people we love them before they're gone. I feel like this is a chance for me to reconnect with people who used to be very dear friends, and I'm glad to have them in my life again.

I'll be home on Tuesday, and on Friday we fly to Georgia, where there will be a new baby Maddie to see!