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Sunday:
Grey Cup party at Martine’s with a spectacular victory by the Edmonton Eskimos. What an incdedible game! Half the people cheered for Edmonton and half the people cheered for Montreal, so every time one team took the lead the interaction between the two sides was very funny. Dave was totally tense about the game and said he liked the overtime rules (he is American so it was the first time he saw CFL overtime). Go Esks go! In other news: Paul Martin was booed by the crowd during the coin toss and the half time show sucked (more on that below).

Monday:
Long day, Dan got home at 7 and we ate at 7:30. Tired.

Tuesday:
Laundry at Dave and Sanan’s with yummy squash soup and a good move (A Day Without a Mexican).

Wednesday:
Supper from Pushap, Dan had a masterclass at school (where the voice students sing in front of the voice teacher and the other students), then everyone went out to the nearby Lebanese restro for supper (Dan and I just had something to drink as we were still full from curry goodness).

Thursday:
Finally a night off, time to slow down. I decided to cook a roast chicken and get some groceries. Kitchen is a diaster zone due to not being home for two days but I got it under control while the chicken was cooking. Dan studied for a test on Friday which he later found out is postponed. Dan was also sick with the flu and had a fever.

Friday:
We’re so tired we ate ramen noodles for supper! Dan worked on OpenMusic and made a chord randomizer.

Saturday:
Dan is studying for crazy week full of exams next week. I’m procrastinating on finishing the Christmas presents and doing the ironing. We went out to get groceries and found Dan’s mysteriously missing mittens frozen to the ground in front of our apartment! I hate having to go to malls, and malls on a Saturday before Christmas are even worse. Groups of slowly and aimlessly wantering people get in the way and blather about nothing either to themselves or their cohort, while someone plays fricking Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on the flute, live. For goodness sakes! Its enough to trigger a psychotic episode!

So, about the grey cup halftime show…
A jorb not well done.
I have heard some of the songs by the Black Eyed Peas (BEP) on the radio and I haven’t really liked any of them. The “Don’t phuck with my heart” song was just annoying, but the “Lady lumps” one is in another category altogether. The worst part was that I didn’t quite get the context of the “lumps” before seeing the halftime show, during which a very clear and graphic demonstration of exactly what they are was done over, over and over again. BEP girl, I don’t want to see you shake any of your humps or lumps! O my virgin eyes!

If that wasn’t bad enough, it became very clear that these people have no talent. They can’t dance, they can’t sing, (no, they can’t walk either, those who remember Genesis) and they have no stage presence. I have seen high school choirs and garage punk bands who are more talented and less clumsy than these people. And the lyrics for that hump song are absolutely inane. Whoever wrote that song should be forcibly exiled to Nunavut to clear out his or her brain from all that “junk in his trunk”. Wretched.

So my question is, when did we lose the whole female empowerment thing in popular music? I remember being in high school and listening to Lisa Loeb (and yes, I admit it, Alanis Morisette) and the Lillith Fair album was out. Now its all about sex and bling and I have to wonder why the whole “objectifying women” thing is back. Have we actually regressed culturally in 10 years?

My guess is that it is due to a combination of so-called “urban” youth culture and the stupid marketing people in record comapnies. Urban kids want cool music with a good beat and recording companies find people like BEP who have just enough talent and so few standards that they can be put in a sound studio with a crew of sound engineers who bust their asses mixing the music to make them sound good. The group comes up with “edgy” lyrics that are supposed to be all about “urban” culture and then the kids are like “I wanna be a gangsta” and “gimme yo’ bling” and buy the album. The whole thing is artificial! So somewhere along the line, the idea that women are only sex objects gets re-introduced (maybe it was always there; I don’t claim to be very aware of popular music). I guess people like BEP would say they are just telling it like it is, but they are also contributing to the way it is because all those 13 year old girls and boys are hearing this message. I’m sure at least half the kids in Montreal would like the BEP, and I have to say this worries me a bit. What kind of culture will the children of my generation be facing when they grow up? Wait, who am I kidding, people from my generation are not having kids.

Its very strange to be my age. There are various demographic theories and groupings you may or may not subscribe to, but here’s my take on it. I was born just after or on the trailing end of genX during a time when fewer people where having children (some call it “Generation Y” which is so lame I just can’t use it). In the mid to late 1990′s however, lots of so-called baby boomers were having children, leading to a large cohort of children with lots of purchasing power (the so-called echos or perhaps the iGeneration). As is always the case, these children grow up in a different environment and have different values from their parents and precdeeding generations. The end result of all this is I can’t for the life of me understand what is so funny about Spongebob and I can’t tolerate bands like the BEP. When I’m on the bus I feel like an grumpy old fart compared to the kids who wear Juicy or Sean John and are constantly yapping on their cellphones, and who almost never are even aware of the people around them, partly because they’re all listening to BEP on their MP3 players.

So, my grouchy old-person response is to listen to MagnaTune and sometimes Club977 and to not own a TV.

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Yuck. I went Christmas shopping yesterday. Four hours of exhausting misery!! I needed to get it done early because we are mailing our Christmas presents back home and I want to mail the package by Dec 1st. I really thought I would be the only one out Christmas shopping on Nov 12th but I was so very wrong. It was very hard to decide, but in the end I think I got some very good gifts for the hapless victims on our Christmas list (you know who you are, well at least some of you do! (evil laugh)).

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We all knew it, but finally there is documented evidence. Édith’s mouse, M. Souris, is indeed a Vampire bat. I guess his bat wings are only visible once a year on Halowe’en…see Bonnie’s album for more proof on the existence of vampires of all species!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sublimedissonance/

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Last night it was Bonnie’s birthday so Paul arranted a vampire party for her at Ediths! It was really fun. Paul spent hours decorating for it (as usual) and replaced all Edith’s lightbulbs with red ones. Edith made gravestone brownies and an eyeball cake and everyone brought red drinks (um I mean blood). We watched Nosferatu accompanied by very appropriate creepy instrumental music. I think its scarier than any of the other vampire movies I have seen. I was Mercy Brown, the last American Vampire. The tooth fairy also showed up.

More on the connection between Vampires and TB:
http://www.ceev.net/CEEV/biocultural.pdf

Earlier in the day we went to Café art Java on Mont-Royal with Joel and Sofi. It was so good! Finally we have a good place to have coffee in Montreal!

Then we went to the Library and Dan worked on his French homework while I took out some books. I was able to get Hawking’s “The Universe in a Nutshell” as well as “The Sun in the Church” which is a book about how the Church promoted the study of astronomy in order to set the correct date for Easter and develop a calendaer. I had no idea the whole calendar/Easter thing was so complex. It looks like it took over 1000 years of fiddling to get it to work. Apparently there was a year that was 454 days long to correct for the drift in the calendar since spring was happening in winter!!

Then we hung out at Place Desjarsins and had supper until the party. Dan worked on his French and a guy came in and started preaching at the top of his voice but was eventually escorted from the building.

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Well before I get into the process of posting a blog about our amazing vacation, I should say a few words about how I almost did not get home!

I arrived in Montreal Sept 10th at 1 PM as planned, but far from the trip I expected. I was scheduled to fly out of Rome Ciampiano airport to Paris Beauvais airport at 7:15 on Sept 9th, stay in a hotel in Paris, then catch a flight to Montreal at 11:30 AM on the 10th.

Unfortunately, there was a very heavy rainstorm just as I was supposed to be boarding my flight. I have never seen such rain in my life. There were just buckets and buckets of it. There were shuttle busses parked alongside the terminal about 5 feet away and we could not see them because of the rain. I was standing in line with the other people ready to board our flight when it was cancelled. All the inbound flights were re-routed to other airports and people going to Paris, London, Edinbourough, Frankfurt, Basel and Geneva were all cancelled as we were. Eventually we found out that we could get tickets on flights tomorrow morning and/or evening, so we all headed out back to the ticket counter. I just about slipped on a very large puddle of water that had dripped from the ceiling on the way there, but fortunately a guy beside me stopped me from falling. We were the first flight to be cancelled, so we got to negotiate our new flights first.

We had to collect our checked luggage first, and then they re-booked us on the 6:35 AM or 6:35 PM flight in preference of how early we had checked in for the cancelled flight (very fortunately I checked in early and was the 13th of about 130 people). There was complete chaos in the information counter as everyone tried to get a ticket and they spoke almost excluseively in Italian. Lots of pushing and shoving and one lady got really angry and they called the police to the airport to keep us under control (the scary army guys with machine guns came too…). Somehow I got a flight on the 6:35 AM to Paris (I don’t know exactly how as I never spoke to anyone, but suddenly I had a new ticket). This was extremely good news because I had my flight to Montreal from Charles de Gaulle that morning and the evening flight would mean I would have to book another flight home.

I stayed up all night in the airport with a group of three lovely Canadian ladies who were going to Toronto tomorrow afternoon from Charles de Gaulle as well. We had to buy water from the cafe, as there was no fountain available. For supper we had chips and popcorn since the restaurant closed. Eventually they kicked us out of the eating area for the restaurant while they cleaned it, and at that point they actually gave out bottles of water. We got in line to re-check in for our flight at about 4 AM but then the conveyer belt would not work and they started to ask people with hand luggage only and a whole bunch of people started to make a second line. Then the conveyer belt started to work again but the original line was gone, so it was everyone for themselves. I tried to check in and they guy at the counter told me I had to wait for the people that originally had booked the 6:35 AM flight to check in first and then he would do the people who were re-scheduled, but this was absoluely not true because he booked a whole bunch of people who were cancelled right after he told me this. All the time I had been telling people that it was imperative that I catch the morning flight because I had an international connecting flight this morning and they did not care about this at all. Anyway, eventually I checked in again and when I went to the boarding line the Canadian ladies were right at the front of the line and saved me a place. The computer terminals were not working but they just let us board anyway. The flight was scheduled to arrive at about 8:45 AM in Paris, but in Beauvais airport and we had to get to CDG.

By this point I was very lucky to have a flight at all (some of the people we met were bumped to Monday or Tuesday next week) but it was far from clear as to whether I would have enough time to catch my flight to Montreal since the two ariports are quite far apart and Beauvais has no airport to airport connections. I knew I would have to catch a taxi and that it would be very expensive. It all depended on how long it would take (or if at all) we would get our luggage at Beauvais and how long the taxi ride would take. We landed on time and fortunately our luggage came out right away (one of the advantages to a teeny-tiny airport I guess). I was extremely lucky in that there was a mini-van taxi that just happened to be waiting outside the airport (its is really in the middle of nowhere so who knows how long it would have taken to call one) so myself and the 3 Canadian ladies talked to the driver. The good news was yes he could take us to CDG, but we did not have enough cash between us. Again, I was extremely lucky in that there was a bank machine in the little terminal, so I ran in, took out 100 Euro, and ran back out. We were on our way. It took about 45-50 minutes which meant that I arrived at CDG Terminal 3 at about 10:20 AM (the check-in supposedly closed at 10:45). The ride cost 120 Euro, but worth every penny! I checked into the Paris to Montreal flight without any problems and arrived. I was a very, very fortunate person!

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Yesterday we had a fire. It wasn’t serious, nobody was hurt, and most importantly, it wasn’t our fault …

We went out to get groceries after supper at about 6:30 and when we returned, the power to our building was off and an alarm was ringing. We assumed that the building’s power was overloaded due to heavy aircon use (it was 31C yesterday and is hotter today). We were in our apartment when we heard a strange electrical ripping/farting sound (sorry, that’s how it sounded to me, gross as it is) and then a whole bunch of red/brown smoke appeared. I went outside but could not tell where it was coming from due to the tree that grows in front of our apartment. After some confusion I realised the transformer on a power pole outside our apartment had caught fire and was still burning. The fire department came, but for about an hour they did nothing aside from looking at the burning electrical mess. In fact, they did not come into our building or ask us to leave, although the fire was slowly burning the whole time. Finally, a Hydro Quebec truck (the guys who supply the electricity) arrived and did something which finally allowed the firemen to put out the fire. I was expecting some state-of-the art anti-electrical fire technology, but in the end, they used the garden hose on our building. A few minutes later, the power was back on. The burned out bits have not been replaced yet, so I do not understand how it is that we have power right now. It was one of the more strange things to happen to me, although not as strange as the time the transformer by my mom’s apartment was hit by lighting – well, that’s another story. Needless to say, I am glad they restored the power so quickly.

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About a month and a half ago, we had a very intersting week. Dan was into school about a month so we were still adjusting to that; perhaps what happened wasn’t so abnormal but it certainly appeared that way to our over-stressed minds.

Dan was washing the dishes after supper and somehow one of our glasses broke. He didn’t notice because of the soap and he started to wash the broken glass. He got a very nasty cut to his right index finger, but fortunately the cut was parallel to his finger (not cutting right into it) so the damage was not bad. He still has a scar from it, though.

The next thing that happened was we had a fire somewhere in our building. They evacuated us and the fire department showed up (4 trucks)! The fire must have been very minor as I think it was under control by the time the pompiers arrived and we were soon back at work.

The third thing was the light right above our kitchen table fell down! We had just finished breakfast about 10 minutes before and fortunately neither of us were at the table at the time. I saw a flash of light and then heard a big crash and then looked over to see the light fixture sitting approximately where I would have been 10 minutes ago. It was hot as well, because the light was on at the time. We have figured out how this happened: Cote st Luc road is extremely busy and many large trucks go down it (not to mention about 100 busses a day) and sometimes they shake the road so badly that we feel it in the apartment. Over time, this loosened the light fixture (it is the screw-in type) and eventually it just completely undid itself. I’ve heard of checking smoke detectors each month, but never have I had to check my light fixtures every month to make sure they will not fall on me!

Fortunately, no more near accidents have happened lately…

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In January 2005 we went to a gallery exhibit put on by our friend Claudia at the l’oeil de poisson gallery in Quebec city. Her exhibit was great and we were very priveleged to go. It was something like -24 C in Quebec that night and it was windy. We were so cold!! We went out for supper at a funky restaurant and thought about going down the ice chutes, but changed our mind because of the weather (see Dan’s blog for more descriptions). When we were in the gallery, many students, friends, family and aquaintances of the other artist with works on display arrived and all hung out together in the hallway. Unfortunately they were all smoking as well (oblivious to the no smoking sign in the entrance of the building). I have NEVER been in such a smoky atmosphere in my life, never, not even when I was young and both my parents smoked at home, or in any restaurant or pub I have ever been in throughout the world. The air was so thick it was hard just to breathe it. I tried in vain to go outside and get some fresh air, but it was so damn cold that I could only handle about 5 minutes before I had to go back inside. Because of a complication with travel arrangements, we had to stay at the gallery longer than expected so by the time we left I think we had been in the gallery for about 5 hours, 4 of which were smoke-saturated.

A couple of days after I got home I started to cough and didn’t stop until about a month later. I think I had an accute case of bronchitis that was brought on by the smoke and the cold. Bronchitis is an inflammantion of the major airways in the lungs, and acute bronchitis is caused by exposure to something that temporarily inflames the bronchi so much than the tiny cilia (hair-like things that beat upward to remove particles from the lungs) stop working. So someone who is having an acute case of bronchitis ends up coughing a lot since they must cough to clear their bronchi of the dust and other particles that collect there. Fortunately it is reversible when the swelling goes away, and this is exaclty what happend for me. I have never experienced this in my life, and I can say I don’t ever want to again! I was coughing all the time, and when I went anywhere that irritated my lungs I almost couldn’t eat or talk because of the coughing. I went to a cheese party at our friend’s house and had to leave early because of it.

I honestly wonder why the people in the gallery were smoking so much … the air was really toxic! I guess thoughts like “Hmm, I can’t see the ceiling in there anymore, maybe its a little too smoky in here” or “I can smoke at home but I am in a gallery tonight and I don’t want to ruin someone’s art by smoking here” didn’t cross their minds. I guess I just don’t get it. I realise people who smoke enjoy doing it, especially if it is a social event, but there should have been at least some respect for a) the artists and b) the other people in the gallery! It’s tough being an asthmatic here in Quebec because I really feel that I cannot ask people to not smoke around me (e.g. public places or waiting in line for the bus), even though it makes me quite sick. Its not just that it smells bad or bothers my nose a bit (if this were the case I would accept it without complaint), but it really does damage my lungs.

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