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Well. There you have it. One more day until moving day!

We went out to get the remaining groceries for the moving day on Saturday and then we packed and packed and packed this afternoon. Almost everything is done. What hasn’t been packed includes: cutlery, dishes, cups, clothing for the next two days, towels & shampoo, a bit of food in the fridge, some pots, a frying pan and a few cleaning supplies which probably won’t get packed anyway. The boxes are stacked about 7 high and almost reach the ceiling at the wall by the windows. It’s weird to see it so empty in the kitchen!

We’ve been cleaning as we pack, so by the time we leave the only bits that won’t be clean are behind the fridge and stove and the windows. Not bad, considering nothing was clean when we moved in.

There has been rain forecasted for saturday for the past week, but we are now supposed to get a massive thundershower tonight and it’s predicted sunny on the 1st. Let’s hope it stays that way!

There are a lot of people I know moving this month. Lisa is moving to Vancouver, Tyler is moving to Calgary, my cousin is changing apartments and my co-worker is moving closer to work. I hope we all survive it.

Well Montreal is known for its many festivals (it seems like there’s something happening straight from June to September) and this weekend is the unofficial “sell all your crap” weekend - the last weekend before official moving day. There was a sale on the front lawn of our building at 8:30 and we almost bought a toaster oven. Craiglist is a hoppin’ with ads for furniture sales. There are quite a few sales tomorrow in the wealther areas of our neighbourhood (wealthy area = stuff worth buying) which we might check out on the way to help Lisa move. Check out this super-cute ad I saw on Craiglist:

Hello Hello! Well it’s moving season, and I am sure we are not the only ones needing to pawn off a fridge and stove, but here it goes anyway! We have a lovely and charming yellow/golden? fridge. Rather big, rather exciting. We would like to sell it for 150$, and not only that we could, if you should so desire it, throw in a cute little stove for free!! The only thing is that the stove works, but the oven doesn’t. We don’t know why. But we lived the past six months without it, so it is possible. What a winning combination! Maybe we could also give you some cookies too, if you come and pick it up!

We went curtain shopping this week (new apartment doesn’t come with any window coverings and our current place came with evil metal venetian blinds) and finally found some we like - the only question is whether they will actually look good in the new place. We can exchange them for another kind if they don’t work, though, so it should be ok.

Moving is coming together. We have the closets and kitchen left to pack, basically, and should be able to finish it next week. We should have a lot of help.

We’ve been slacking off having fun rather than packing yesterday. Dan did an amazing job of fixing up our bikes this week so we would be ready for the mini bike trip this weekend. After being locked out on the “balcony” for 2 years in the snow and rain, I was amazed the locks even opened, nevermind actually being able to ride the bikes. Remember the depressed squirrel? I left a peanut out for him and Dan found it wedged under my bike seat!

Our friends Ron (and two of his children) and Véronique picked us up and Ron managed to fit 5 bikes on his bike rack after turning a few handlebars and taking off a few pedals. We drove to the North Shore (north of Laval, which is the other island) and stopped at the house of another friend who knew the area we were going to. We all drove past the St. Sauveur & Mount Gabriel ski resorts to an area that is part of le p’tit train du nord. From what I understand, this used to be a rail line leading to ski resorts in the Laurentians but the line was converted to a bike path. It goes quite far into the mountains but we just did a little section (18 k return). We went through several habited areas (most too small to call villages) including val Morin and stopped for lunch in val David before turning around. There was a river/lake on the south side of the trail which looked very beautiful (unfortunately nobody brought a camera!) and we rode through some rock walls created for the train. It’s really nice to visit the Laurentians, since these mountains, while small compared to the Rockies, are part of the oldest range on the planet.

It was so great to get out of the city. It was quiet, the air smelled like vegetation and wood fires, and everyone we met was friendly and nice. It was a wonderful afternoon!

When we got back to town, we knew the most important thing to do was to find a place to watch the Stanley cup game. We thought about going to the pub on Monkland, but I’ve always been a bit disappointed with it. Finally we decided to have supper at the Baton Roughe by my work. I’ve been to the restaurant twice and the first time I wasn’t too impressed, but the second time I had an incredible meal there. They had the hockey game on in the bar, so it was a done deal. We got there at 7:40, just in time to get a booth and order before the game started. Dan had a burger (all the burgers are cooked over wood - yum!) and I had the same meal as before - a chicken salad with avocado, palm hearts, artichoke hearts, mixed greens and ginger lime dressing. Afterward we watched the game at the bar.

What a game! I can’t believe how well they are doing. Ever since the you-know-who trade, hockey seemed to be on a decline in Edmonton and suddenly they’re one game away from winning the Stanley cup! In fact, if they win, it will be the first time since 1993 that a Canadian team has won the cup. The Oilers played so well and the fans were incredible. Dave and Ron were explaining to us how the hockey game rules had changed since the lock-out several years ago, and the changes have definately made for a more interesting and entertaining game. It’s incredible to see them flying down the ice.

So we have to find a place to watch the game on Monday night - the game we all hope the Oilers will win!

Last weekend we went to the nearby mall to return some empty bottles and get some groceries. The grocery stores in Montreal (and possibly the rest of Quebec as well, who knows?) have a clever system in place to prevent the theft of their grocery carts. They put a whole bunch of metal posts around the entrance of the store so the carts can’t make it out into the parking lot. Good idea? Well, yes and no. One obvious downside is that if you purchased a large amount of groceries you can’t carry them all to you car. So the solution is not carry out service (which would seem reasonable to me but what do I know) but to pack it all up in these red boxes and then load them into your car as you drive through the grocery pick-up lane.

So the result of all this is that when I go to the grocery store, there is a mass of carts pushed up against the metal bars just outside of the store entrance. While I was in line getting groceries, one resourceful woman figured out how to get around the bars and took her cart out to her car. It appeared for a while there like the whole store would break out into rioting. Our cashier was so increcibly upset about it that she actually stopped checking out the groceries of the people in front of us. After some tense discussion with the other employees, it was decided they wouln’t go out there and take the cart from her. There was also much bitter resentment (”You can bet she won’t bring it back, she will just leave it out there”) and the people in front of us had to chip in too (”In Toronto they have to have a guy go out with a truck and pick them all up!”). Well in the end, the resourceful customer did bring the cart back and got a reprimand from another (relieved) employee. Disaster averted! I’m certain if people were allowed to do this regularly then teenagers would be riding around in them hitting old ladies and homeless people would be sleeping in them etc. It would be the end of the civilised Montreal we know.

Now of course, one final option is to use the system that large grocery stores out west have been using for about 10 years - lock the carts together and have the customers put a quarter in the cart to remove it. When returned, the customer gets the quarter back. But that would be too branché for here, I think.

What’s new? What isn’t new! Life has been really crazy since I returned from Orlando.

• My gallery is broken. Unlikely to get fixed until after the move. Too bad, as I took a whole bunch of lovely pics during a walk two weeks ago so I can finally have more than 10 photos in the Montreal section of my photoblog. We flirted with the idea of Flickr for about half an hour until we found out how restrictive the free accounts were. There are some alternative programs out there, it’s just a matter of updating/transferring.
• Our friend Lisa was accepted at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver and is moving there in August! She has been giving away and selling most of her stuff, including her lovely black cat Rusell, who has yet to find a home.We bought her TV stand today.
• Our friend Tyler is moving to Calgary on July 1, lured by jobs, jobs, jobs. Lucky guy will be so close to the mountains! It isn’t a complete surprise, but we didn’t know it was a done deal until this week!
• There are 20 days until the move. Most of the addresses have been updated and I just got mail forwarding set up today - just in case. Have to start packing!
• It’s been raining like crazy here!
• We’ve been watching Blackadder recently and loving it. Queenie is absolutely brilliant. We’ve also seen A Bit of Fry and Laurie and enjoyed it tremendously.
• Dan bought me an Intellivision off of Ebay last week! We had one when I was a kid. It came with a bunch of games, some fun and some just weird (I can’t figure out what we’re supposed to do in that Utopia game for the life of me) and one didn’t work (Space Armada, Intellivision’s answer to Space Invaders). We need to get a TV/monitor to plug it into. Good thing we bought that TV stand from Lisa.
• We finally bought a pair of oven mitts! When we moved there was a single oven mitt in our apartment and it had been used/abused so much that there were holes burned right through it. After burning our fingers and hands a few times this past week, we finally decided it was time to upgrade.
• We just did the most grown-up thing today. After Lisa’s big sale and setting up the mail forwarding for our move, we went into a little antiques store in the block next to our new place and … bought a beautiful table. Just like that. It was originally a baker’s table and of course this won points with Dan. The price was reasonable - I was willing to pay that much for a new one, and this one has so much more character, and plus part of it folds down so it is quite versitile. They’re keeping it in the store for us until after the move, so pictures will come later. My head is still spinning.
• I spelled out “ELO” in vegetable/alphabet soup today.
• Our friend Édith is getting married (in fact, it’s quite possible she is already married as of today…I forget the exact date) and there was a lingere party for her last weekend, which was a blast. They’re heading off to Europe for a whole month and I hope they have a wonderful time!
• I totally slacked off for cooking this past week and it was awful. Between all the busyness and rain we haven’t had the motivation to go to the market and that has meant buying produce at the nearby grocery store. We gave some of the fruiteries nearby a try, but I don’t think they quite understand the concept of selling fruit at a fruiterie, since there was hardly any, and what was there looked awful. It’s kind of pathetic, really. It’s the kind of thing you expect in a Monty Python/Fry & Laurie skit. “Sorry, sir, but we don’t sell fruit in this establishment…yes I realise the sign says ‘fruit’…”
• The big hole down the street actually got fixed! Dan and I made a wager over whether it would be fixed before we moved. I won, not because I really thought it would be fixed, but because Dan thought it wouldn’t and you can’t make a wager with someone if you both bet on the same outcome.

I haven’t posted anything in ages since I was waiting to put the rest of the Orlando photos on the photoblog. But Mr. WPG2 is misbehaving and suddenly refuses to accept any more uploads of any file to any album. Suspect a plug-in problem. I know I need to upgrade both WP and G2 but have been loth to do it, considering how difficult it was to set up. Am currently investigating other options with Dandroid. In the meantime, try to imagine pretty purple flowers, a lizard (or gecko), a crow/raven birdie thing and some creepy swampy land, because that’s what I was trying to upload for 2 days.