Back From My Hols

Returned late (very late) Sunday night from my jaunt to Montreal. Had a grand time, though not without a few speed bumps en route.

Flew up on Tuesday evening straight after work, and J. had Wednesday off. So we headed into the city centre that morning, and had a stroll around Old Montreal - which is very characterful and pleasant. Must spend more time exploring there in future. We poked our heads into a few shops and galleries. The weirdest place we went into was an old costume shop called Joseph Ponton, which has been in business since 1865. They are housed in an old and rather stately residence, and have four floors stuffed with every costume imaginable. You could have a lot of fun in there for an afternoon, if you were in a silly mood. ;-)

Had lunch at a very modern café called Daylight Factory, then walked up to St. Catherine Street to the Fashion & Design Festival, which was going on there all week. After wandering around and scamming some free goodies, we headed back to J.'s neighbourhood to get her manicured before going to pick up her daughter A. from daycare. We'd hoped to head back into town that evening for a vintage fashion show at the Festival, but ended up staying in with a bottle of wine and an AbFab DVD since K. was on call all week and didn't get home from the hospital until really late each evening of my stay.

Thursday, J. had to work so I headed downtown on my own for a day of shopping. Was quite successful as there were lots of sales on - got a skirt, a shirt, a sweater, two nightdresses, and two pairs of sunglasses, so that was OK! But the best was still to come - met up with J. after work and came straight home with her so we could get ready to go out. Two weeks prior to the trip, I'd managed to snag us some tickets off eBay for the Madonna concert that evening (yaaaaaaaa!).

With Miss A. relegated to the care of K.'s sister for the evening, we headed off to the Bell Centre. Arrived to find that we had nearly the worst seats in the house - the back row of the very top section! - but it didn't matter because the show was amazing. Lord, that woman can dance! The setlist was heavy on material from her latest album, which I love, and it was a somewhat political show too. But extremely entertaining - we had a great time and it was well worth the inflated ticket price we'd paid the eBay scalper, definitely! ;-) No encore from her, which was unusual, but she performed for a solid two hours, so we couldn't complain.

Friday morning dawned, and J. and I got ready for our road trip. We'd booked in for a night at the Inn at Essex, near Burlington, Vermont - about a two-hour drive away. The drive, however, ended up taking nearly four hours, as there was a highway detour in place and we were held up at the border for 90 minutes! Arrived at the hotel about 2 pm and found out we'd gotten a free upgrade to a suite (woo hoo!). Found ourselves some lunch (we were starving) then checked in and got ourselves ready, as we'd booked a cooking class which was due to start at 3.30. This particular hotel is home to a cooking school (the students do all the catering) and they offer individual classes for guests, which we thought would be fun.

The chef running the class was very nice and walked us through a three-course menu, which was not at all difficult to prepare, but just required a few basic techniques and good ingredients. To start, we did a green salad with mustard vinaigrette, accompanied by roasted walnuts, blue cheese and orange honey. So we got lots of hints on preparing fresh salad dressings, infused honey, and roasting nuts. For the main course, we had roasted chicken breasts accompanied by a 'salsa' of pineapple, lime, cucumber and red onion, served with herb couscous. She also whipped up a very nice chipotle-lime sauce to drizzle over the chicken. Really delicious. Dessert was much more hands-on, as the chef had us doing crepes. We mixed up the batter, prepared fresh strawberries and cooked down some rhubarb for the filling, then took turns making the crepes on the stove. Once they were assembled, we served them with whipped cream flavoured with lemon and fresh vanilla. Good stuff, and really not very difficult - I'll have to have a go at replicating that menu sometime (luckily we wrote everything down).

The only down side was that we ate as we went, and the class was over by 5.30. I'd been under the impression that we'd eat after the class had finished, so the lunch we'd had at 2.00 meant that we were in pain by the end of the class, we were so full! However, on the plus side, it meant we had time to go shopping after dinner and walk off some of the meal, as the nearby shops didn't close until 8 pm. J. got some clothes for A. and some athletic gear, while I got some cropped trousers. Later that evening, we ordered some Irish coffees and went outside, where there was a big bonfire going on the lawn. It was a beautiful warm evening, and despite being eaten by the mosquitoes, it was quite fun.

The next day we were very energetic and got up at 7.30 am for a dip in the (lovely heated) pool outside, before breakfast. Then we checked out and headed into nearby Burlington for more shopping and strolling. It's really a lovely town, with the main street being pedestrianised. We were both thinking that you could easily spend a week in Vermont on holiday, as there's lots of things to see and do. J. did some serious damage in the sale at Ann Taylor (which is one of our favourite stores) and then we had a cracking good lunch on the sidewalk patio at Smokejacks, on the main street. All very pleasant, and lots of opportunity for people-watching - Burlington seems to be largely populated by students, hippies and preppies.

By 1 pm, it was time to head home, as K. was leaving that evening for a conference in Amsterdam and we needed to be back in good time for him to get to the airport. We set off for what should have been a completely uneventful trip...except for the border. The border was not our friend, last week. We got pulled over for a spot check of our vehicle, and J. got busted by Canada Customs for going over the duty-free limit on clothes! Argh! (We were only out of the country 24 hours, so the limit was $50...J. spent, um, considerably more than that, hehe.)

After that little adventure, we made dinner and had a quiet evening at home, renting Casanova on DVD (ludicrous storyline, but Heath Ledger ain't ugly, so it wasn't a total waste). We decided to take Miss A. on a picnic Sunday, so that morning we headed off to the Atwater Market to pick up supplies, then went to King George Park in Westmount. It was such a beautiful day, with perfect picnic weather, and A. had a good time on the playground for a while before we packed up. We had a drive around Westmount and gawped at all the big fancy rich people's houses, before heading back to the house.

Instead of going to the airport, though, we ended up taking A. for a swim in the community pool that afternoon, since Canjet called me while we were at the park to say that my 5.50 flight back to Halifax had been delayed until 7.30. That wasn't so bad, until I got another call at 5.30 to say the delay was now until 9 pm! As it turned out, I didn't get on the plane until nearly 10.00. I should have been home by 9 pm that evening, but by the time my flight arrived, A. collected me at the airport, and we got home, it was 1.00 am. Felt tired and cranky Monday morning at work as a result, but what can ya do?

Minor gripes aside, it was a very fun little trip. I posted a bunch of pics (mainly of the Madonna concert and our cooking class at the Inn at Essex) over on Flickr.

busybusybusy

Weekends are supposed to be for relaxing, they say. My last few have been ridiculously busy, albeit very productive. So many house and garden jobs to do - I'm hoping for a break by August.

A. continuing to insulate the crawlspaces on the top floor of the house, in an effort to keep our insane oil heating costs down in wintertime. Going reasonably well so far, but it's a slow job - and my newly-painted spare room and hallway are disaster areas again, as everything from the crawlspaces (which serve as very handy storage) had to be removed so the work could be done.

Meantime, I spent a couple of hours weeding the garden Saturday and Sunday. All the rain we've had the last few weeks made the job easier than usual, but it's still fairly strenuous. Yesterday afternoon I vacuumed and washed the car, which hadn't been cleaned properly since late last summer (yuck) and was littered with A.'s veterinary detritus. The trunk had a pervasive odour of horse, which happily has now been banished.

Lucky the weather was so beautiful this weekend. Last night after dinner, even though we were knackered, we moved the woodpile, just so we could be outside for a bit longer before the bugs started getting bad. We had the woodpile in a corner of the deck, handy for the winter, but it's looking ugly now so we shifted it to under the shed. In the process, we disturbed a colony of salamanders like this one. I caught about eight of them and moved them to the other side of the garden, but at least as many escaped my clutches. They're such neat lil critters - I love 'em. I should add, however, that I had no regard whatsoever for the welfare of the legions of wood lice we encountered, as they are Very Horrible creatures. And yes, I know they play an important role in the ecosystem and that I am guilty of species prejudice, but there you are.

Anyway, no rest for me - packing tonight as tomorrow evening I am off to Montreal for a short holiday. It will be a great trip, but continuing very busy - J. and I have loads of stuff planned. Full details in due course.

...But I Got A Laptop Instead!

Went to Robertson's after work this evening. An odd little business - they sell new and used computers and office equipment, but have an electric bicycle division as well (?!).

Looked at some e-bikes and had a chat with the owner. I think I'm going to get this Mongoose Electric Comfort Bike, in silver-green:
I looked it up online tonight, but shouldn't have. The shop here is charging $899 for it, which seemed reasonable given others I've seen - but it's less than half that price in the US. :-( Eh...anyway. Turns out that Robertson's do not do rentals after all, but the owner said that if I bought that bike and found after a week or so that I really didn't like it, he'd let me return it. Can't ask for a fairer deal than that. So I'll give him a ring in a week or two, when I'll have more time.

After looking at the bikes, I took a look at their supply of second-hand laptops. My boss has been sending foreign students (with little money, in need of decent second-hand computers) to this store for years, with pretty good results. I've decided that I really want a laptop of my own (a PC) to have upstairs at the desk in the pantry. But since our Macintosh is not even two years old, and is pretty good, there was no need to go spending a lot of money on something new and fancy, when all I really needed was something on which to access the internet and do word processing.

Anyway, I ended up getting what seems to be a pretty great deal. I got a Panasonic Toughbook CF-48 - A. is quite familiar with these, as the military uses them. It has a Pentium IV 1.6 GHz chip, a 40 GB hard drive, 256 MB of memory, a DVD/CD writer, and has Windows XP installed. It's a couple years old, but I should still get good mileage out of it - and it only cost $499.

A. is going to get it set up with a wireless internet connection this week, and see about finding me some software (MS Office and an anti-virus program). Then I should be ready to go. And not a moment too soon - the Dell laptop we've been using the past year was issued to A. by the army and has to be returned to them next month.

I Want an E-Bike

I've been much preoccupied of late with the subject of e-bikes (i.e. electric bicycles). I've been doing some internet research on them, viewed a couple last Saturday at a new shop downtown, and I'm going to check out some more after work tomorrow.

Ideally, I'd love to get a new moped, like I had in Dublin. But it seems very impractical to spend that much money on a vehicle I can only use 6-8 months a year (in Ireland, of course, one can drive them year-round, cos it rarely snows or gets icy). Also, it seems extravagant when I only live two miles from my workplace. And if I gave up walking, that would be the end of my regular exercise routine.

A regular bicycle would be fine, but there's a couple of bloody big hills between me and my office - it's not the easiest cycle. So it seems like an e-bike could be the ideal solution for me. The models I'm considering look just like regular bicycles, but with a battery pack attached. The battery plugs in to an ordinary outlet, charges up in 4-6 hours, and holds a charge for anywhere from 35-50 km. As you're riding, you continue to pedal as normal (which gives the battery an extra charge), but when you encounter hills, you just twist the throttle and get a little extra boost. So I'd still be getting some exercise, but wouldn't arrive at work in the morning a big sweaty mess. Sounds perfect.

I really need to give one a go, though - I'm a bit concerned about the weight of these things, and how I'll manage. Luckily, the shop I'm going to tomorrow apparently rents e-bikes. So, if I can, I'll arrange to rent one for a week and see how I get on, before taking the plunge and buying. They're not cheap - the basic models run anywhere from $700-$1,200. But we shall see!

Another Election Day

Provincial election here in Nova Scotia today, and like many people in this province, I can't remember the last time an election campaign has been so boring. I'm completely uninspired by the three main party leaders - there seems to be little to differentiate them - and I have no idea who I'm going to vote for tonight. Not very civic-minded of me, I know. I suppose I'll have to sit down with the brochures and do a little internet searching when I get home from work, in order to cast a semi-educated vote.

Vintage Postcards

The local art & craft store is having a big sale this week, on all kinds of stuff. I went up there on Saturday morning to see about having a couple of items framed, since all their custom framing is half-price at the moment. I had a browse afterwards and ended up buying one of those padded memo boards, crisscrossed with ribbons (apparently, they're known by the crafty set as 'French memory boards' - who knew?).

I bought it to display some of my collection of vintage postcards, which have been languishing for a while in Ziploc bags. These kind of boards are ideal, because the ribbons hold everything in place - no need for tacks or tape, which could damage the cards. I put together a display of some yesterday, and I'm going to hang the board on the wall in the upstairs hallway, in a spot that doesn't get too much direct light (click on the picture to enlarge):


I'm planning to change the display periodically. I've got over a hundred postcards (the majority of which my parents found for me, at an auction last year). Nearly all of them date from the 1900s to the 1920s, with most from the time of the First World War. The ones in the picture above are ordinary greetings, mainly - except the maple leaf one at top, which is timely given that Canada Day is coming up. But I've got others for different holidays, including Halloween, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and Valentine's Day - not to mention loads of Christmas and New Year cards.

They're so interesting - as are the messages and stamps on the reverse. I'll try to scan some of the best ones periodically, and post them here.

Teaching

I don't think I've posted recently about the situation regarding my teaching job for next year, at one of the other universities here in the city. I had to apply for it (as it's a union post), but had informal word about three weeks ago from the head of the history department that my appointment has been approved. I should be receiving my contract and all the official stuff in July. So that's quite exciting.

Must knuckle down and start preparing for it, though. I have thirteen two-hour lectures to write (*gulp*), covering two hundred years of British history. To this end, I've been ordering free inspection copies of relevant books from publishers today (nice little perk, that - cos God knows I'm not doing this for the money).

I also checked the university's registration website today and got two very nice surprises. First, the enrollment for this class is capped at 50, which is absolutely excellent (given that this is a second-year undergraduate survey course, I had fears of lecturing to an amorphous mass of 100 or more). Second, 40 people have already registered for the course! I suspected it might be rather popular - they don't have any British history specialists on staff in this particular department, and I think it's been quite a few years since this course was offered. Given that the department is small (hence the small class sizes), I'm sure many of the students would be keen to take a survey course in a new subject area.

Needless to say, I'm nervous about the huge amount of work and responsibility that teaching this course will entail, but quite excited too. Climbing back on the academic hobby-horse after so many years will doubtless be a bit daunting.

Maudit

Lately, I've been reading and hearing about a campaign by Catholic churches in Montreal to remind francophone Quebeckers of the true origins of some of their most beloved curse words. They've taken to putting up big banners on the sides of churches with some of the more colourful Quebec oaths, such as tabernacle, ciboire (chalice) and hostie (host), and it seems the campaign is causing a bit of a stir (Montreal Gazette story about it here, and a CBC radio piece here).

I've always found the Quebecois practice of using liturgical forms of profanity to be pretty interesting (and funny, of course - I know, I'm going to Hell). Wikipedia, naturally, has a very informative entry about it here, featuring a history, usage guidelines, and handy list of common sacrés. Heh.

The Euston Manifesto

In Saturday's Globe, I read about the 'Euston Manifesto', which was launched in London this past week. It's a statement of principles that unite democratic socialists, progressives and liberals, and it's caused quite the firestorm in the blogosphere - from both the far right and the radical left.

Intrigued, I checked out its website at www.eustonmanifesto.org - and I found myself nodding while I read the text. As I've felt kind of disturbed in recent years by the direction in which the Left has lurched, I thought it was a highly rational and realistic statement - a bit of a relief to read, in fact. Amongst other things, it affirms the importance of human rights, social justice, equality, internationalism, and historical truth, and is against terrorism under all circumstances, as well as anti-Americanism.

I want to read and think about it some more, but I'm seriously considering signing it. I've found it quite inspiring. Plus, not enough people compose manifestos these days. ;-)

In My Garden - May

This past week, I've finally had the realisation that summer is nearly here. I've been able to walk to work without a coat, and the leaves on the trees suddenly seemed to spring forth, fully formed. Oh, and the lawn has to be mowed every week, and there's flowers on the strawberry plants.

High time, then, for my garden pics for May. You can see them here.