logloglog

Just before Christmas a car was parked in front of our house. On top of the car were some styrofoam boxes placed and two people were pacing next to it, trying to stay warm. I went outside to talk to them. It appeared that the parking spot in front of our house was one of the drop-off points of a fish smoking outfit from Kamouraska. I asked if they had some fish for me, but no, you had to order in advance. However, it didn’t happen often, but today somebody hadn’t picked up their order. If I wanted I could have some of the products they ordered. And so I did. I ended up with half a pound of smoked Anguille de Kamouraska (eel), half a pound of smoked of Omble-de-fontaine (a trout species) and in the little pot are some smoked Octopus in oil. They told me all of it was smoked just one day before. It was excellent.

If one of you want to get some, call or email them. I think they deliver once per month or so, in various places in Montréal.

La Boucanerie
111, rue Principale
St-André de Kamouraska

(418) 493 2929
email: laboucanerie@videotron.qc

Poupoune still doesn’t like it when I put her boots on. But she doesn’t bite me anymore, she just growls and shows her teeth. I can even do it myself now, without Alison holding her in a blanket. When the boots are on she stands frozen for a while in protest, but when the door opens she trots through the hallway, happily wagging her tail. Tadadum, tadadum, tadadum…

It was cold today and after a while, even with her wind proof coat, the cold got to her. She still followed us but with difficulty, and was really happy when we were home and she could shed the clothes and boots and warm up near the fire. Oh wait, we have no fire.

She’s getting older and doesn’t have the energy for really long walks. She has a chronic liver condition, and has only a few more years to live, at most. I’m fearing the moment we have to put her down. Of all the dogs I had in my life, she’s by far the dearest to me.

I donated a lot of goats today.

If you wondered why it was so quiet here: I was very busy renovating one of our apartments. Among other things I redid the plumbing and the electricity, and re-enforced the kitchen floor. None of that will be visible to the new tenant. But she they will see and hopefully enjoy the gorgeous new kitchen and bathroom. I went a little overboard so it took 3 weeks longer than I had planned. It’s hard to be your own client for a perfectionist like me.

Update: We found tenants through CraigsList, our friends’ network didn’t yield any interested. Let’s hope things work out and they are good tenants.

More photos:

For the first time as a Canadian, I just voted. It has been 7 years since the last time I voted in the Netherlands.

This year’s Montreal municipal elections are very exciting. There are three parties fighting for our votes and the mayoral candidates (there are also elections for borough councillors) all stand at around 30% in the last polls. A very tight race.

The candidate I voted for, Richard Bergeron, is inexperienced as a politician, a bit of a dreamer but has some good ideas about how to clean up the mess that is Montreal politics at the moments. Canadian current affairs magazine MacLeans called Montreal the most corrupt city in North-America and they might well be right.

Bergeron is an outsider and that’s probably the reason why his poll results are so high. People are fed up with the ruling class of lying crooks that we have now.

[Update 2 November]

The results: our incumbent Mayor strategy of “nobody of the people near me told me they were corrupt” worked and he got re-elected.

Our borough’s Mayor is the candidate for the seperatist party. I briefly spoke with him while he was canvassing, and he is very young and was quite convincing why I should vote for him. I didn’t but a slim majority did.

The city councillor elected in my borough was the candidate I voted for, François Limoges of Project Montréal, the party of Richard Bergeron! (This never happened, I have a track record of voting for the losing candidate.) I wish him good luck. I wish all elected candidates good luck, they’ll need it.

Google’s Street View finally made it to Montreal.

This is our street.

And the photo above is the origin of Montreal.

It’s the point where Google did start and stop. Note that the view at this point is from a parked car, and not from a driving car. If you move back, the cars, the weather and everything else is different than if you move forward.

I made a photo of the Google Street View camera car when it was parked at that spot, but I can’t find it. My best friends live very close to that spot.

It’s almost two weeks now since we had Pepe killed. Every day there are many moments I’m reminded of him. When I look next to the bed: his crate, where he used to sleep in, albeit quite a while ago since after last summer he almost always slept in our bed. When I open the drawer with the dog collars and leashes: no red harness anymore. When I come home: no jumping and yapping dog that is so exited and happy to see me. When I open the fridge: no can of special soft food. When I load the dishwasher: much less bowls, forks and small spoons, used to prepare his food. When I sit outside on our terrace: his grave next to me.

Memories of him are good and I don’t cringe and tear-up anymore when I realize I won’t ever see him again.

Some of the reminders are quite negative though and I don’t mind that some things have changed. When I sleep: no heat emitting dog in between us, who needs to be carried outside three times a night to pee. Uninterrupted sleep and not nearly as much dog hair in the bed. When I walk in the house: no chance of walking in a puddle of dog piss. When I open the garbage can: no weewee pads, no stinky smell of decaying dog pee. When we go in the car to go for a walk: not howling Pepe in the back.

Poupoune in the mean time, really enjoys Pepe’s demise. She has changed a lot now she is the unchallenged alpha dog again, and is really much happier than before. She is also more affectionate, checking us out all the time: “What am I supposed to do?” It doesn’t help that she is very, very deaf and easily startled. The only thing she really misses is the Pepe-food. She cleaned up after he finished eating, and when she got the chance, emptied his bowl. She hasn’t given up hope, and expects that I will give her some soft food when she stares at me long enough while making complaining noises. I have to disappoint her, until she develops a disease of her own she has to eat her regular kibble.

She also gets more walks, since it’s much less of an expedition to walk just her. The only thing she hates even more than before is when I lock her up in the kitchen when I leave to work at a client. Then she apparently feels really alone, even though her companion was very annoying.

I write this post because I’m procrastinating. I’m working on the update of “Clean My Screen” and after some deliberation I’ve decided to put Pepe in as one of the cleaners, even though he is dead. He has a distinct cleaning style and an enormous long tongue and it has to be preserved. It took me a while but now I can see it as an homage and a monument.

I shot the footage of him licking during his last weekend, but he still looks and acts very healthy. Canned tuna water on a piece of glass does wonders. The video had to be cleaned (removing blemishes and blacking out the background) and I did that last week. It was a bit surreal, staring and retouching images of a dead dog for a couple of days (yes, it’s an elaborate process) but I could handle it by just pretending it was a random Chihuahua. But now i have to dub his licking sounds and that feels kind of spooky. It’s like I’m somehow reviving him by adding sound to the silent video.

However it has to be done, so back to work. The results can be admired soon on an iPhone or iPod touch near you.

We killed Pepe today.

No, don’t worry; not with a saw, a spade or a pitchfork. And we didn’t even do it ourself. The vet did the dirty work with two injections. This photo was taken during the dress rehearsal on Sunday. I dug his grave and Alison let him try it out.

Eight years ago Pepe and I got off to a rough start. He bit me the first time I slept in his (and Alison’s) bed and ate half of my expensive mouth guard a week later. I wrote to a friend that this licking Chihuahua monster was awful. But over the years we got closer. And because Alison was away a lot I took care of him a lot in the past months. Fed him every couple of hours, regularly carried him outside so he could pee (and didn’t do it all inside) and tucked him in under his blanket.

I’ll miss him.

For a longer report of the events, illustrated with my photos, I direct you to Alison’s story, I’m too tired to type more right now.

On her weblog above you can also find some previous posts she wrote (eloquently) about the final weeks of Pepe.

And you can follow this link for much more Pepe.

(No need for sympathies in comments or emails; he had a good life and we’re fine.)

Yup, I’m now officially a passport carrying Canadian.

I feel like James Bond, who also has a stack of passports. Only difference: his are fake.

I guess I have to make a trip abroad now…

Dear IKEA,

Yesterday I was shopping in the IKEA in Boucherville. I started by returning a $12.99 IKEA 365 sauce pan, of which the handle had broken off the second time my wife used it. It had been sitting some time on my things to do shelve, but since I hadn’t been to IKEA in a while I hadn’t returned it for a replacement.

After a short wait (as you know that isn’t always the case) I showed my sauce pan to the service representative. “Do you have a receipt,” she asked. I explained that I had bought for more than 10,000 dollars at IKEA last year (I installed some kitchens and a bathroom for people) and that it probably was on one of those long receipts, but very hard to find if you don’t know the exact product code. On a previous occasion I experienced that even IKEA staff has sometimes a hard time finding things on long receipts.

She told me, and not very nicely I must say, that without a receipt she couldn’t do anything for me. I explained again that I didn’t want my money back, I just wanted another sauce pan. In my experience IKEA’s service and return policy was very good. Not now, not with this girl. I explained again that I had too many receipts to find this product. She would probably not like it when I brought them all and she would have to weed through them finding a needle in a haystack. No dice, she refused to be lenient.

Okay, off I went inside, with the sauce pan in my bag, and bought for almost $3000 worth of kitchen cabinets, the start of a new kitchen project. After that I had to wait an hour for the pickers to get all the items (110 packages) from the warehouse. So I went inside again to grab a lunch in the restaurant and to shop a bit for myself. I happen to pass the kitchen wares in the Marketplace and decided to buy a new sauce pan. I also bought some other things.

After I paid and walked towards the pickup counter I passed the return counter again and there was still the same girl working and only one other person waiting. So I pushed the button on the number-tickets machine and waited for my turn.

When it was my turn I greeted the girl and said: “It’s me again!”. I showed her the sauce pan again and she asked if I had found the receipt. I said: “No, I just bought another one,” and showed her the receipt of the new pan. She was a bit perplexed and said she was going to ask her manager. It took more then 5 minutes before she came back, much to the annoyance of the people that were waiting behind me, who saw a completely deserted Service Counter.

She wasn’t alone, but had her manager in toe. The manager spoke in continental French to me: “Sir, you have to leave. I accuse you of fraudulent behaviour. I informed security and you can never come back here again.”

“Wow,” I said, “you are a bit exaggerating here.” But she went on for a while but not all of her words reached me since I was just too perplexed. I was so upset I thought for a moment to tell her to call the police if she really thought I was a fraud. I would have liked to see the faces of the police officers that would have to waste their time with somebody who just wanted to return a defective sauce pan.

But I had more to do that day, like trying to fit those 110 packages into my car and transport them back to Montreal. So I just took my sauce pan and the receipt from her and walked away. Inside however, I was very, very angry. Angry that I wasn’t helped to my satisfaction and even angrier because somebody had dared to call me a fraud. Believe me, if I wanted to defraud IKEA I wouldn’t do it with a $12.99 sauce pan.

At home (yes, the 100 packages did fit in my car, albeit with difficulty) I was still angry and upset, so I decided to write this letter. I also published it on my weblog.

I always have had good experiences with IKEA, and with IKEA’s return policy. I buy a lot and return some of it, since there is always something that isn’t exactly like I wanted or something that doesn’t exactly fit in.

If I can’t return things anymore, or if I can’t even be in your stores anymore, you lose a very loyal and frequent customer. Over the past 5 years I think I bought for tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.

So my question is, was this manager out of line, or is this really then new face of IKEA? I surely hope it’s not the latter, since then I need to find a new supplier for the kitchens I install for my clients.

I expect an apology.

With regards,

mare