How totall freaking awesome is this?

I wish to take this occasion...

To wish myself Happy Birthday from all of you.

Thank you.

Jazz (who is off having a happy birthday as this posts)

Dear....

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Dear STM*

I just recently saw a big sign at the 51 bus stop crowing that you had added 14% more buses on that line at peak hours. Wow. Impressive. Though as a user of the 51 bus (the last leg of the annoying journey home) I haven't noticed a bit of difference.

Nevertheless, I now know where all those mythical extra buses come from!!!

Obviously from the #90 bus line where I waited in the driving rain for over 20 minutes for those four buses which, according to the schedule posted right there at the bus stop, should have come pootling by every five minutes or so at rush hour.

ZE TRIP - PART ZE SECOND

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So lets continue wandering along the Breton coast. Look! More pretty flowers.

A Breton beach somewhere - Morgat I believe...

Us again.

Only in France will they serve you espresso and macarons at McDonald's.

Me again, with the whole dark glasses and glamour thing going on.  Unfortunately no glass of wine to raise to your health - I had drunk it by then. Draining glasses of wine is a talent of mine. They're there then, poof, they're gone.

Some buildings in Morgat.

On another beach. There were all those weird sand worms all over the place. I've never seen anything like it... (Edit: actually I just call them sand worms cause they look all wormy. However, they are just little swirls/squiggles of sand. I have no idea how they're formed or what they are...Maybe I should call 'em sand spaghetti?)

An anonymous church in an anonymous village somewhere along the road...

The door on this place? It was about as tall as I was. Very very strange door.

The church spire in Roskoff. This is the city where the ferries arrive from England and Ireland.

Who knew artichokes didn't actually grow in supermarkets? I had never seen an artichoke as a... well plant...

More old stones in Roscoff for Violet Sky. I admit to cropping the first couple of pics (and the last one in order to get rid of a bunch of random tourists. They were all over the place.

And thus ends Brittany, next up a medieval castle in Normandy - Nogent Le Routrou....

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ZE TRIP - PART ZE FIRST

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Well, in the interest of keeping Geewits happy (cause I have to keep Geewits happy otherwise she harasses me by email), here are some pictures from the trip.....

We arrived in France on Friday, spent the night at a friend's place near Paris, and Saturday morning... ok, more like Saturday noon, we were off:

See, ze French road, ze French sky, ze Quebecer toes and ze lovely GPS we had the presence of mind to buy before leaving. And of course ze French car... which was actually an Opel, so technically it was a German car...

Brittany is far far away from Paris it is. A good 6 hours away. The next person who tells me France is tiny and distances are really small will get slapped upside the head. Yep....

The view from N&R's deck. They live just outside a tiny Breton village called Hôpital-Camfrout, so called because, it seems there was a leper hospital there back in the 1100s or something. Though I can't help but think a hospital back in the 1100s is definitely a place I wouldn't want to be...

Lucky for us they live close to the ocean. The ocean!!! Getting a regular salt water fix is important to my sanity, so it just couldn't get any better.... The pretty boat parking lot in Camaret. 

Look!  A Breton fisherman! Totally could be a fisherman anywhere in the world. But he's Breton he is!

And his boat was in much better shape than these...

The church on the pier (or whatever it's called - I'm not much for the right terms, as you might have noticed when I pointed out that "pretty boat parking lot") where I guess fishermen stopped off before they set out...

And the inside of the church. Isn't that ceiling cool? I love that it looks like the bottom of a boat. I actually saw several churches like that...

The fortifications:

Course we had to wander around town, more old stones for you Violetsky.

And some really old stones. Dolmens left by the druids thousands of years ago. Funny, really how you expect these places to be all silent and spiritual, not standing 20 meters from a bunch of modern houses.

The next day, on to Concarneau, a great town with a wonderful medieval walled town.... Obviously, this isn't the walled town... Just me and Mr. Jazz on the pier in front of the city... Ain't it nice that Mr. Jazz is able to keep his eyes open for a photo? One of his many talents it is. A talent that obviously I am sorely lacking.

A church where drunken homeless sailors could take refuge. There were, apparently, large numbers of drunk sailors in Concarneau, which is a major seaport...

A Concarnese cat checking out the pigeons... you could pretty much see the lust in his eyes. If he'd had wings...

A tavern that's been there for hundreds of years. It used to be out in the outskirts of town - it's about 300 meters from the walled town: the Korrigan Tavern. Korrigans are, according to Breton folklore a sort of fairy or dwarf-like spirit. At dusk they appear beautiful, but in the daylight they are ugly, with wrinkled skin and red eyes, so they tend to hid out during the day. Unfortunately, as I have to earn a living, I cannot hide out during the day when my eyes are all red and I'm not looking my best. Amazing what candlelight can do for your looks. Maybe Korrigans were actually just middle aged ladies in the times before good makeup and lighting.

The entrance of the walled town.

Inside the walls...

And to finish off the day - a purty French flower....

As I haven't yet set up the holiday pic post...

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I was staring at my computer screen, squinting. A colleague passing by said, "Wow, that's really fuzzy". Such blissful relief !  I thought it was my eyes, that my prescription would need to be changed. Again. So soon.

"You mean it's not me?"
"Um, no. How can you work like that?"

One quick call to Mr. IM and it was all fixed.

Unfortunately, I don't really see the crystal clarity of it.  Damn.

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I climb into the waiting bus. It's crowded. Suddenly I hear, "Please take my place m'am, you look tired". This time it's not a 10 year old boyscout practicing his manners because anyone beyond 15 looks positively ancient to him.  No. This guy must be pushing 30. And it's the third time this has occurred in a couple of months.

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So it has finally happened. I have joined that generation of  tired-looking matrons for whom seats are given up on the bus and subway, though manners being what they are today, I thought it would happen much later. You know, when I'm old and decrepit, bent over with osteoporosis, leaning on my walker. I'm not liking this one bit, though I'm not stupid or vain enough to refuse the proffered seat. I don't have that much to prove. Or that much pride for that matter.

Obviously, I'm already seen as old and decrepit. Is it because no one today, even the 80 year old botox-embalmed Westmount ladies who lunch, looks older than 25? In a really really creepy way.

Is it because of the hair? No one has natural hair anymore, everyone colours, even though, truly, does it really fool anyone? Once everything is being sucked into the ground through sheer incapability of  resisting the forces of gravity, I don't believe artfully coloured hair can fool even the blindest among us.

At almost 49 I have joined the ranks of the old and invisible.

I don't know why it bothers me so much, since I've pretty much spent my life being invisible, part of that mass that no one sees, so it's not much of a change. At least now I become visible long enough to get a seat on the bus, that should be a plus shoudn't it?

And yet...

Statistically, the halfway mark is past. And I don't care that 50 is the new 40 or 30 or whatever the hell it is, I can't fathom that I've reached that age. That I'm well into middle age and closing quickly on the "Golden Years" (Golden years my fat ass, more like tarnished pewter maybe).

What the hell happened to my life!?!  Hell, I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up, and I'm supposed to be thinking of what I'm gonna live on when I retire?

Which is a whole 'nother thing. Retire?  I'll probably never be able to afford it and will die working as a Walmart greeter. Now there's a scary thought.

I mean, after all, the only good thing about getting old is being able to stop with the damn work already. And I'm already looking at working at Walmart.

WALMART!

Damn, I need a hot flash to distract me!

And now for the worst. Commercial. EVAH!

And going back a bit to the 50s...

Everyone needs a computer...



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How fucked is it...

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That I am incapable of packing?

I used to leave for two weeks with a gym bag. A month with a small back pack.

Now I'm leaving for around two weeks in France - where lets face it, I can buy toothpaste or a t-shirt if I need them - and having an anxiety attack about it.  I no longer pack light. Hell, I pretty much take everything but my bed. What the fuck!!! Get over it.

I just went outside to chillax a bit, It reeks (in a good way) of lilac out there. There's a word in French - embaumer (which also means, ironically, 'to embalm' - lets not go there), but I can't for the life of me find the English equivalent.

OK, back to the suitcase.

Edited to add: Plus. PLUS!  Whenever I go on vacation I have to clean. I vacuum, I dust, I put stuff away. Who the hell will see that the dust bunnies have been wrestled into submission?  I don't have a problem with breeding dust bunnies when I'm home, why on earth would they bother me when I'm not?

So what did I do yesterday? On top of tearing my hair out packing. I vacuumed, I cleaned, I did a load of laundry. That's just so fucking anal.

But now, I'm done and I will be gone.
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I can't help comparing this to my MacBook Pro...

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Pffft to titles.

Spring seems to finally have sprung in Montreal - though of course my saying that probably ensures that we will barely get above freezing temperatures tomorrow...

To celebrate, it's time for that Spring vacation.

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Come Thursday evening I'll be on my way to France to see friends in Brittany and in the vicinity of Paris. And, if various constraints work themselves out and schedules miraculously mesh, maybe to meet a blogger - that would be Dumdad.

Who knows, maybe I'll haul some inspiration back from Europe with me. That'd be nice. 'Cause right now? Not so much. I try to believe it's because I'm too busy having a life, knowing full well that that's so not the case at this point.

Maybe since we're actually renting a car, we'll have all sorts of driving adventures where I navigate us clear up into Norway. Of course, Mr. Jazz - smart man that he is - went out and bought a GPS (aka Simon) with all those nifty European maps so he doesn't much have to beat his head against the steering wheel while I try to turn the map so that it's headed in the same direction we are because otherwise it just makes no sense whatsoever. Spatially challenged? Me?

And so, to paraphrase my friend Sully, Soon(ish) with more better stuff.
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Our Nation's Capital

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Ottawa that would be. Where I spent the weekend and was tardy about blogging about it so both XUP and Violet Sky beat me to it 'cause they're way on the ball and organized and get everything done right away and make me feel like... hmmm... well, basically like a) i'm completely disorganized and b) total aside, the Habs just scored, so it's 3-2 against the Penguins and Mr. Jazz is a happy camper and I inserted this into the blog because his screams of joy pretty much lifted me 6 inches off the bed. The boy can yell, indeed he can.
And c) as you can see, I'm easily distracted so that might explain why I'm, as always, the last to blog. That and for some reason on Mondays they always seem to expect me to actually work for a living...

Aaanyway.

I seem to have digressed. Par for the course ain't it. And I will not digress into golf. I. Will. Not.

This was supposed to be about my weekend in Ottawa.

Let's start again.

I went to Ottawa to meet XUP and Violet Sky - and a passel of Ottawa bloggers I pretty much had no idea actually existed for the most part.

'Twas lovely it was.

Things I learned this weekend:

• Ottawa bloggers are cool. They meet up once in a while and have Saturday brunches. Hell, I know of two Montreal-ish English bloggers, and though we've been in contact, I've not met either of them. It's a shame really. Paula and Bonnie, I'm talking to you.

• The Ottawa Tulip Festival (the biggest in the whole wide world - prolly 'cause it's the only one) attracts LOTS of Japanese. Lots. Really. Oodles of 'em. Sorta like fall in Quebec attracts them. It's sorta scary actually. They are everywhere, taking pics of themselves taking pics of themselves taking pics of each other. The relationship of the Japanese to cameras is strange to say the least.

• Frigid weather and rain make for cool pics of flowers with drops of water on them, but really, who gives a shit about drops of water on tulips. I mean seriously, this pic has been taken a million times - and way better. And Blogger, bloody minded thing that it it wouldn't let me put the pic here unless I go into HTML and do a copy/paste there and I did it so FUCK YOU Blogger and that's all I have to say about that  and yes, XUP I know: WORDPRESSS.

• It seems the Parliament buildings are not "just a pile of stones" and that I will never live down having said that they were. In my defense, I was cold!

• It seems the Portage buildings (one of the big government complexes) ARE just a pile of ugly. 

• A women's weekend is truly something every woman should experience periodically.  Much as I love Mr. Jazz, an estrogen weekend is something he cannot provide - even though he feeds me.

• The By Ward Market. It's where Obama bought his cookies. It's one of Canada's oldest and largest markets. And the inside part of it has this creepy sculpture hanging from the ceiling. Look, the guy's apron has BLOOD painted on it! I might have creepy ideas, like looking at my face with my eyes hanging out, but damned if I'd do a sculpture with a guy holding a pig (4-2 Habs from what I hear) with blood on his apron. 'Cause, yeah, we all know he's gonna slit that pig's throat (and to hell with Blogger for not lettting me upload. I'll have to try tomorrow. Who knows I might get lucky - yes XUP, i know, WORDPRESS...)  Update: This morning Blogger seems to be in  a better mood, here's the pic

• *le sigh*

• Drinking chocolate milk (through a straw no less) is so many levels of wrong when you're an adult and eating a plate beyond full of beef. Imagine it. A huge plate of roast beef, a domino size of salad and a potato... and a glass of chocolate milk. With a strwa. NO! it wasn't me. But you gotta admit that this image, this whole idea, is beyond wrong. And XUP - she provides a mean colour commentary regarding chocolate milk and beef. A commentary involving stomachs exploding in the middle of the night. Hell yeah!

• On the drive home I noticed that Ontarians generally drive in the right lane and use the left to pass and get right back into the right lane. Probably 80% of cars that drove in the left lane just because it was there were Quebecers. We're such scofflaws we are (have you ANY idea how long I've been waiting to use the word scofflaw? Thank you Quebec drivers for helping me to do so). The law - Pffft.

• There is something inherently wrong about snow on May 9. Even if it's just flurries. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sometimes I hate this country. Y'all are suprised to hear that eh? I had to say y'all, it warms me up.

• 4-3 for the Habs. Game over. Heh. I said they'd win. No one believes me. Probably cause I'm not a fan. But I know. It's my superpower. Except when it doesn't work. Which is 50% of the time. But tonight I got it right. Hopefully I'll do as well in the World Cup this summer. That is one series I'll watch. Me and Violet Sky.... yep.

OK, 'nuf of this going on and on and on... I'm going to bed.  'Night all.
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A solution to every problem...

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Sometimes you gotta wonder at the things people will buy...



But I guess if it saves a marriage...

As an aside: I'm off to Ottawa today to meet the wonderful XUP and Alison, and hook up again with Violet Sky.  I'll  let you know if I still think they're great after the weekend, but I'm assuming they're be even better in person....
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Dear Cyclist

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Wow. You're doing the green thang!  Good for you...

Must be great, pedaling along, the wind in your hair, eating bugs now and again. We all need protein....

What you don't seem to realize though is that riding a bike does not make you a really really fast pedestrian. On your bike, you're considered a vehicle; as such, you are obliged to follow the rules of the road. You're, like, a really really small car.

So, stop signs are for you. As are red lights. A four way red light with that picture of the little man? It means vehicles must stop so pedestrians can cross.

Yes asshole, this means you!

It doesn't mean, "Hey cyclist, cross now cause you're sure no cars will get in your goddamn way and to hell with whoever is crossing the street".

Because you count as a fucking vehicle you damn moron!

And because, if you don't stop, who knows, maybe a pedestrian will stick out a rigid arm and whip you off your damn "oh look at me I'm so cool on my $6000 rich asshole bike" and stomp on your head when you fall.

Just because she can.

Just sayin' dude.

Jazz

Cottage vignettes

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It’s not all sinking pedal boats and killing rodents.

I’m back in bed on Saturday afternnon, reading a hopelessly outdated (and hysterically funny) issue of Women’s Day from July 1955, learning how to "cook" it in the refrigerator or freezer (jellied tomato-cucumber mold anyone?) and - this was the Woman's Day Workshop - how to cast a fish in plaster of Paris (I shit you not, page 66! - "Once the negative mold has been made, it can be used many times to make duplicates of the fish - fine gifts for sporting friends" 'cause everyone needs a fish cast in plaster of Paris!). I can't help but wonder if anyone actually ever did this, and more to the point, why?

Mr. Jazz is in the living room, watching the hockey game and transferring Gotan Project and the latest Porcupine Tree onto my computer so I can sync my iPod.  Yay, I won’t have to do it for myself. Happy Day.

I push aside the magazine and snuggle down into bed with a sigh, finding that perfect position for a snooze. Mr. Jazz comes in, closes the curtains, kisses me and leaves, closing the door behind him.

I listen to the chipmunks rooting around in the old leaves under the feeders, and to the rain as it starts falling softly - then less so. My thoughts drift to the new hostas and ferns pushing their way out of the earth. This will be good for them.

My body grows heavy as I write this blog post in my head and sink into slumber, to the sound of the hockey game and falling rain.

Life is good.
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