ehs travels

It's amazing how many things you can think of to blog about in a day, until you actually sit down at the computer to do it.

ehs is down in Champaign/Urbana to do recruitment for his company. He's doing a lot of that this month, going to St. Louis for a night, and then back to Montreal to be at McGill, the silly guy. Never been to Montreal in his life, and manages to make two trips in September. He'll have a great time. We walked through the McGill campus while we were there. It's very pretty, although quite uphill.

I wish the work outside our windows would finish. It's been going on for a long time now. It's very disconcerting to see men outside your window when you live on the 7th floor... Plus it makes the cats REALLY freaked out.

fall at home

Montreal was great. The weather was amazing. It has basically rained all summer there, and the 10 days I was there were sunny and warm every day. We wore ourselves out with walking, but we also did a good job of sitting down and taking breaks to rest and recharge. We had some amazing food, most notably a Thai place that was entirely vegetarian and known for its fake meat dishes. We spent 4 hours at the Botanic Garden and managed to explore exactly three gardens in that time (plus lunch). We had a great time at the Biodome, it's just like I had remembered from being there as a kid. The last day we went to Old Montreal, toured the Notre-Dame Cathedral, ate lunch at a great Polish restaurant. I'm looking forward to visiting some of the same places next time we go (the Botanic Garden, the bagels, some of the shopping and food we found, the Mont-Royal park), but hopefully also doing some new things too: taking in a hockey or soccer game, visiting the little island in the river.

We went from sunny days in the 80s and even 90s to fall in Chicago. Today's high is 66 or 68, and rainy. It was a great last hurrah for the summer.

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!

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.

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.

The 4th

Blogging seemed a little easier when not much was going on. Of course, it was also hard to explain that the big news going on was that we were flying to New England to surprise my Dad in honor of his retirement. It's hard to blog about a surprise...

We had a good, but busy time over the 4th. The weathr was amazing, just wonderful. We were worried it was going to rain, but it didn't until we were back in Chicago. We wore ourselves out some, lugging books, setting up tents, playing badminton, playing boccee ball, hanging out in the sun. The 7am flight this morning was a little tough on me after all the excitement and the lack of sleep.

It was great to see both sides of my family, including the 6-month-old twins we last saw when they were about 7 hours old.

I wish I'd figured out how to blog more over the weekend, then doing a wrap-up wouldn't seem so overwhelming. It was fun.

Montreal

We're starting to think about our trip to Montreal at the end of the summer. I'll be there for a week (but probably not doing much sight-seeing), and ehs will come up for a long weekend at the end. We're looking for suggestions on any one's favorite things to do in Montreal. So far we're planning to make sure and see the Biodome and the Botanic Gardens, a couple of museums and galleries, the Notre Dame cathedral, the Mont Royal Park, the Old Town, and the boutiquey area of St. Laurent. Please excuse the anglicized versions of these place names. Any other sights we should be sure to hit? Any favorite restaurants?

Reunimations

We just got back from my 5 (6) year college reunion. Oberlin reunites in clusters, so I was there with the two classes that graduated after me. ehs was amazing, Oberlin was better with him there. He was friendly, charming, sweet. Everyone liked him, and he met tons of people. He remembered names of people and buildings. By the second day he was waving to people he'd met, and striking up conversations with people in the bar. I was very impressed. He had a great time, and really enjoyed meeting everyone. Things felt extra-special because I got to show them off to him. I can't imagine the weekend being any better (aside from the presence of a few certain people, who understandably were not in Ohio). I guess those are the things that you survive with your spouse and see as a sign of the strength of your relationship: long car trips, class reunions, and what else? Abduction by aliens? We haven't gotten to that marriage crisis yet.