I checked out the original tweet and the contest details and decided to retweet as well, you’ll never know.

And then, on Friday the 13th, I got these tweets:

Yay! I had won!

I never win things but now I did. So on 7 October we’ll be flying in this gigantic plane, the biggest passenger plane in the world, to Paris, making a lot of people jealous. This plane is normally not flying on the Paris-Montreal route, but it’s a special flight celebrating the 60th anniversary of Air France in Canada.

Air France A380 Landing

Okay, Paris is not my dream destination, that was Thimphu, the capital of the kingdom of Bhutan, who’s former king invented the GNH index, the Gross National Happiness Index. But I’m sure we’re going to have fun.

Now we’re researching a cheap hotel in Paris. If you know one, please leave a comment.

Update: No need for an hotel anymore. A friend offered to loan us her apartment in the centre of Paris for the weekend! Thanks for all the tips, in comments or by email.

8 comments so far, add yours now!

Two days ago I bought Alison a hammock for her birthday. I had no idea how I came up with that gift, she never asked for it. Then I saw this photo, taken 3 years ago, that I used for our calendar. Subconsciously I must have been inspired by it.

Unfortunately it rained and thunder-stormed all day yesterday so Alison couldn’t try it out. (Fortunately it cooled things down a bit, after a week of sweltering heat with temperatures of 30-35 and high humidity)

She likes it. She stole my iPad and just read the whole Internet. And Plume likes it too, just as Poupoune did before. She eats her Kong toy and enjoys the rocking motion of the hammock.

Plume is slowly taking over the special place Poupoune had in our lives. I still love Poupoune, but she’s getting older and isn’t as active anymore. She still goes on walks, but usually not in the morning when she’s too stiff of arthritis. She seems reasonable happy although she’s a bit jealous of all the attention Plume gets. To keep her busy we gave her a Kong for own and that seems to have helped.

3 comments so far, add yours now!

Alison asked if she could use the ladder: “I want to remove the vine out of that almost leafless tree so maybe it will do a bit better.” I went into the basement to get the ladder, which took some effort since I really should clean up, and put it up against the tree for her. Then I went inside to continue my work on the computer.

A few minutes later Alison came in. “Uhm, I think the tree fell down.” I asked if she was okay and then went outside to see what had happened. The tree had snapped off at its base, just below ground. Apparently the reason it didn’t have much leaves was that it had rotted away, probably because the strangling vine had deprived it of nutrients. Fortunately it didn’t fell all the way to the ground which might have injured Alison, but just fell a metre until it rested against the neighbour’s garage. I hate that garage, since it takes away a lot of sun from our garden, but for a change it proved useful.

I interrupted my work, got my electric saw out of the garage, and went up on the garage’s roof to cut the tree in pieces. That went pretty quick and a few hours later the whole tree was in my car and I was underway to deposit it at the Eco Centre at the end of our street. Usually when I come here to deposit debris of one of my renovations it’s very busy with contractors. But today it was Sunday and there was hardly anyone. So I was relatively quick back to work.

leave a comment and be the first!

We, Plume Regina, declare that our bosses are cruel.

[Long time no post, sorry for that. Twitter (http://twitter.com/MareMtl) seems to be easier and faster for quick and dirty updates, and I don't have much patience/stamina/time for writing longer posts. Excuses, excuses, excuses… I should, there are some things I want to write about, but for some reason I can't bring myself to writing them.]

Plume is doing well. Not so much today though. She has been sterilized two days ago and was licking her wounds. So Alison thought it was better to put this Elizabethan collar on. Now she’s sitting in her basket —she refuses to lie down— panting at a fast pace. I’m tempting to take the thing off again, she’s right: I am very cruel.

Poupoune and Plume are getting along quite well, the animosity of the first weeks is gone. Poupoune still growls now and then, but they sometimes even touch each other when they’re lying on the bed. Something that never happened with Poupoune and Pepe. Plume’s size makes Poupoune less bossy and I think she secretly likes it. No need for to constantly play the boss.

Plume still tries to play with Poupoune, especially when Poupoune is excited just before we go on a walk —she get much more walks these days—, but Poupoune is still refusing to play. In the dog park Plume sometimes plays with other dogs, but she doesn’t have good social skills. She barks at dogs when she wants to play, but her barking is a bit menacing so the other dogs aren’t sure what to do. She’s much better and quieter with smaller dogs and made some friends with those.

5 comments so far, add yours now!

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

leave a comment and be the first!

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.

one comment so far, you can be the second!

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:

8 comments so far, add yours now!

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.

5 comments so far, add yours now!

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.

one comment so far, you can be the second!

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.

leave a comment and be the first!