english

The dogs really like their dog bed, but they just don’t like to be on this photo.

The dogs have their own duvet, with a cover in matching colours. (It took a while before Alison made them, that’s why this photo took so long to appear here.)
The drawers underneath are used for our recycling bins. This way, the ugly green plastic bins are available but are out of sight. And when you have to put them out on recycling day, you can just easily take them out of the drawers.

The carving of the turkey.

The menu for the Christmas diner is more or less the same every year. When Europeans try to cook something different every year, here it is the custom to make the same thing every year.

This year’s menu (and probably next year’s too):

• Turkey
• Turkey stuffing
• Mashed potatoes
• Cole slaw
• Cranberry sauce
• Creamed onions
• Baked pepper squash
• Mixed pickles
• Giant stuffed olives

This all on one plate, no difficult thing serving different courses. Only the dessert is served apart, being Mince tarts with brandy butter.

It’s good winter food, but not very… subtle.

Baking Christmas cookies.

Our local pharmacy, part of the Jean Coutu chain, was totally dark. When I passed I saw two pharmacists running out of the door, only dressed in their white coats while it was -17 degrees. Apparently they were looking if they could fix the blackout.

Inside the Jean Coutu usually stands a man who sells pens and pencils. He’s blind and has a bundle of pens and pencils in his hand while rocking back an forth a bit. I seldom see people buy something, but he is greeted by almost all passing customers. In the summer he stands outside, but in the winter he is allowed to stand in the entryway, to shelter from the bitter cold. And there he stood now also, in the pitch black entryway, not aware of any change. I found it sad and comical at the same time.

One block away I found that the SAQ, our liquor store on strike, was also hit by the blackout. And outside there were a lot of picketers, much more than usual. Was there a connection?

After last weekend’s false start we tried again this weekend to go out to test our new cross-country skis. Mine are already a year old but because of various circumstances I haven’t been able to use them yet. Alison’s skis are new, although second hand, and an early Christmas present.

Yesterday we were ready to go, everything was packed and the weather was great, but then the car wouldn’t start because I had left the door open, and the interior light had almost drained the battery. And after a cold night you really need a good battery. So I put the battery on the charger and Alison went for some Christmas shopping. She came back when the day was almost over and it didn’t make much sense to head out anymore.

Today we tried again although it was snowing and even raining sometimes.
Alison did fine, but she still has a lot to learn. Getting up after she falls for instance, because she lacks the strength in the legs to get up without taking off her skis. But she liked it nevertheless, so my fears that it would be ‘once, but never again’ were proven wrong.

My skis weren’t properly waxed so it wasn’t a very nice experience, because I had to use my poles a lot to go forward. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure my shoulders will hurt a lot tomorrow. Nobody tells you how to do wax your skis, and there were no instructions on the wax set I bought last year. Even the ski wax manufacturer’s web-site didn’t have clear instructions how to apply the wax. I now, finally have found some instructions, although it’s for another brand of wax.

So hopefully, it will work out better the next time.

This family of polar bears, to be found in a shop window of a shop on St. Denis, seems almost alive because they are moving their heads and paws. They also look sad, probably because polar bears don’t live in families and certainly don’t live inside shops.

The workers in the SAQ are on strike. Since months already. The SAQ is the state owned monopolist liquor store and so, close to the holidays, it is really hurting some people. Only a couple of stores on the whole island of Montréal are open, staffed by scabs. In front of those stores, one of them close to our house, are picket lines and people who come out of the stores with their boxes of wine and beer are yelled at and the picketers try to convince them to never do buy there again.

The way unions work, and the power they have in Québec is so alien to me. In the Netherlands unions are completely different institutions and you join them voluntary, to get cheap insurance and other benefits. There is even a union for artists. Here some jobs/sectors are unionized and if you don’t join the union you can’t get that job. On the other hand, if you are in other sectors or have a management job you can’t join a union. If the union decides to strike and you don’t want to, or can’t afford it (you won’t get paid your salary by the union like in the Netherlands) you also face serious repercussions by your co-workers. Unions are very powerful here and some unions misuse that power regularly. So is the union of city blue collar workers threatening to go on strike when the next snow storm hits…

I do however like the way the SAQ picketers used snow to advertise their message.

Because we want to get out to go cross country skiing for the first time this year (and for Alison in years since she just got skis) all the snow has to be cleared. Just a couple of minutes after this picture was been taken we get into a huge fight over weather it’s okay to use salt to melt the ice on the driveway. Alison thinks it’s inexcusable, it kills her plants, and therefore put’s all the snow (containing minute amounts of salt, sprinkled by me on the thick layer of ice a couple of days before) outside the gate into the alley. Therefore snow clearing takes forever which seriously annoys me. So we’re both annoyed and that clashed, resulting in not going out for skiing.

Ah well, it’s still snowing, so not ideal conditions anyway.

(Yes, we made up, but it took a while. The joys of living together… And I won’t use salt anymore, partly because Alison hid the bag somewhere.)

The paper boy was probably not happy this morning. 20 cm of snow and it’s still snowing.
It looks wonderful. I guess I go out on my snow shoes today.

Two days of freezing rain and an American build courtesy car. I have to get the more than 2 cm of ice from that car, but it takes more than an hour to do so.