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Recently we have gone a bit crazy with the movies we have seen. Dan saw Star-Wars III and we both saw Hitchhiker’s guide, which was good but not great. I’m glad I saw it but it could have been funnier. There were a lot of inside jokes that people who had read the books and knew them well would laugh at, but they were understated so that newbies wouldn’t feel too left out. The best one was when Zaphod and Ford see each other after Ford’s long absence on Earth and Zaphod says “Good to see you again Ix, uh, I mean Ford …”. Some of the re-written plot and added scenes were clever - for example each time the improbability drive is engaged they turn into different forms of the same type of object and at one point the entire crew becomes made our of yarn for a few minutes which was very cute and well done. Although I really wanted to see the 1000 monkeys with their re-written Hamlet who never made it into this movie.

Last night we actually rented a movie (first time in ages) - The Abyss, which I had seen when I was younger. This is a long, long movie, especially the special edition. Regardless of the relatively bad acting, cliches and 80’s movies stereotpyes it is still a really good movie. I’m watching the “making of” right now. We also bought Tin-Tin (”l’isle noir”) in an attempt to improve our french, which we watched while eating breakfast this morning. The close-captioning was on even though we didn’t turn it on, but it did help in several places when we couldn’t quite catch what they said. Nevertheless, the close-captioning was often quite different from the real dialogue. For example, Tin-Tin and his dog are running through a train chasing two criminals and the dog happens to grap a roast chicken on the way. When Tin-Tin notices this, the captions say “Not now, Snowball” but he really says “Milou, ce n’est pas temps pour le déjuner” (Snowball, its not lunchtime!). Very cute.

I have been reading Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle which I found at the nearby library (in reverse order, don’t ask its a long story) and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I also bought my first book in years - Harry Potter à l’école des Sorciers and have been pleasantly surprised that I understand most of it. The majority of the words that I don’t know are adjectives and adverbs and I have to say that Ms. Rowling does use some very good descriptive language which is good for children to read to improve their vocabulary; for example: ahuri means astonished.

We visited the Bibliothèque Nationale today - the large, recently constructed library near Berri Metro. After my previous experiences with Montreal libraries, I have to say this is a very pleasant surprise. Anyone in Montreal (or Quebec, for that matter) can join this library and it is huge. It has 4 large floors with what appears to be an excellent collection of books, both fiction and reference. I didn’t sign up to get a card because a) I didn’t have a a hydro Quebec bill with me and b) the line up to get a card was about 100 people long. I think I will probably get a membership one weeknight when it will be less busy and take our some more French books there. Much needed and the sheer number of people at the library today shows just how badly Montreal has needed more library services. Now if they can get the whole system networked at make inter-library loans work, it will be great.

Today is Saturday May 28th and it is the first Saturday Dan has off for 7 weeks since his last intensive French course started. He had his exam and last class two weeks ago and last saturday he went to a music festival in Victoriaville with Joseph, Caleb and Joel. BTW Dan was pleased to learn that he not only passed his French class but recieved a mark of 71%, which was even higher than the previous class. Way to go Dan!

So today we slept in, made waffles and poached eggs* (see recipe below) and had yogurt, fruit, orange juice and espresso. Mmm. We re-arranged our kitchen and put the microwave on top of the fridge and have an actually decent amount of counterspace now. This greatly facilitates the preparation of waffles and other breakfast materials at the same time.

After breakfast we got ready and caught the bus at 12:30 to the metro and then went to Lionel-Groulx to walk to Atwater market to the snobby epicerie to get the best jam in the world (Annette de Boulangé from Oka) - Strawberry and Aprocot this time. We also went to Super C, the low-priced mega grocery store across from Atwater where we got some fruit (1.50 for strawberries!). Then we caught the metro to Chinatown and went to the bank, bought some dumpling wrappers and had Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch (only 2.75 each!) while sitting in the square there. Then we had a nice walk to rue Berri where the new library recently opened (look for more in a following post). We walked back to downtown and went towel shopping in the Bay. After looking at and sqeezing every type of towel and humming and hawing, we finally decided on two sets of Wansetta towels which felt the softest and had smaller threads (half price today). We went to the square just south of the Bay (Phillip’s square) and made the mistake of sitting under one of the trees where there happened to be about 20 pigeons. After about a minute, we noticed it was “raining” and quickly moved to another spot. I ran to the nearby Burger King to grab a handfull of napkins, we cleaned up the pigeon shit and braved the consumeristic hedonism of Futureshop to look for an obscure classic movie that Dan wanted to find (”King Solomon’s Mines”) and believe it or not, we found it!

We then sat in the very nice, quiet square in the middle of Place de Cathedrale, an odd mixture of a church, Anglican Church of Canada offices, a mall and an office tower. This pleasant square had an octagonal fountain in the middle and a resident population of sparrows who were polite enough not to shit on us. Highly recommended if you need a break from crowded St. Catherine’s st. We went to Indigo and bought some Paris and London pocket guides in preparation for our trip and then went to Café Crème on St. Catherine’s st (expensive, not very good espresso but nice cheesecake) where we read our books a bit. A lot of people were smoking there and a lady sat down at our table and started smoking without even asking us. Then Dan walked with me to the nearest Orange line metro (Place des Armes in Chinatown again) and Dan went to Paul’s for an all-nite videogame nite and I came home.

On top of everything, it was warm and sunny today. It has been cold and rainy for about 3 weeks and the heating in our building is off (and it can’t be turned on again because it is broken) so it was nice to get out in sandals and enjoy being outside for a change.

This is what a weekend is supposed to be like.

*Danny style poached eggs: this is a research topic Dan gave himself one day when working at a certain computer store. Instead of using those little poached egg cups, we boil a pot of water with 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar and crack the eggs into measuring cups and then quickly drop the eggs into the boiling water. After about 7 minutes, they are nicely cooked. Try it!

This week my husband Dan went to see the third star wars movie. I declined to come because a) he went to an early evening show that was too early for me since I was just leaving work when it started and b) I’m not all that interested in seeing it, at least not in the theatres. I have watched all the star wars movies to date, although I was too young to see the first 3 in theatres when I was a kid, they were on TV and at least one or two people I knew owned one of the various versions of the box set which would be watched at christmas or on long weekends. I saw the other two in theatres from what I can remember and they were ok, but just not my cup of tea.

However, on Monday we will be gong to see the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy and although the reviews have been lukewarm, I think it will still be very enjoyable. Now there is something I have read since I was a child (thanks for lending me the books, Dad…) that I want to see in a theatre.

My laundry room still sucks and I have been taking my laundry to the laudromat a few blocks away lately.

Haven’t heard any more about whether Carla Homolka is moving to NDG or not.

We walked up to Monkland last night and went by the Benny Farm site where (hopefully) our condo will be in a year from now. There are quite a number of buildings being renovated on that site now and it is looking really good. I am still waiting to get official approval from the bank… Anyway we also visited our west-coast friend Janice who works at the Ten Thousand Villages there and we also bought a plant at the best store on Monkland: “Provisions Snowdon”. It’s the only store I know of that sells exclusively plants, plant pots and beer. Speaking of the west coast and alcohol, Janice’s sister lives in BC and we are in the process of asking her to ship us a case of of Gray Monk Pinot Gris that we can split … mmm Okanogan white wine …

Dan just left to go to a music festival somewhere outside the city and I am sure he will have a blog entry about it soon.

Dan is just finishing school now - only 3 tests left. He had a music theory test yesterday which I am certain he did extremely well on.

Thank goodness for long weekends!

If there is one thing that makes me angry in this world, it is hearing about women and girls who are sexually assaulted and raped. I just read on CBC’s web page that Corrine (Punky) Gustavson, who was murdered in 1992 was raped so severely that she would have died from bleeding before she was smothered by her murderer. This is truly unbelievable. Apparently this man was so messed up that the fact that she was literally bleeding to death while he raped her was a turn-on or he didn’t even notice. I have a hard time trying to understand the man who did this and although I am usually not an “eye for an eye” kind of person, hearing about things like this makes me strongly wish he would be castrated so he can never do it again. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for her mother to hear this testemony in court.

I also recently heard that in Tokyo, there are now women-only train cars since there were over 2000 reported sexual assaults and gropings in the Tokyo metro in 2001 alone. The whole world has also heard about the rape and torture of Zahra Kazemi.

I am angry that women are always victimized like this. As if torture and beating were not enough, those who prey on women seem to take cruelty to a new level by degrading and hurting women and girls lin this way - indeed, nothing is too far to them. I can’t understand the mindset of someone who walks on this earth and thinks they have the right to use and abuse the body of whomever they see. I wish there was some way women could defend themselves against this kind of attack, but physically we are generally weaker than our attackers, and if attacked by a group, we really can do nothing.

I also heard that Carla Homolka is getting out of prison soon, and guess where she is planning to move? NDG in Montreal. So I will be living in the same neighbourhood as a convicted, unrehabilitiated sex killer. It makes me have second thoughts about staying in this neighbourhood and having a family here!

I have really tried to think of ways I can get involved in helping to prevent this, yet I have not come up with any good solutions since it is almost impossible to know someone will do this before they actually do it. This too makes me angry.

I just want all the guys I know that I am very glad that you are such great people who treat women with respect and abhor these events as much as I do. The world needs more people like you.

I think it will take a while before I can get over hearing about what happened to Corrine.