Jul 20 2008
Run
Poupoune chasing the ball.
With my new camera I can actually take action shots, with the old one I was always at least 3 seconds too late.
[Long time no post, but I’ll try to fill in some gaps over the coming days]
english
Jul 4 2008
Attic
We went to the US for the second time this week, this time to visit the annual Fourth of July barbecue at Alison’s uncle’s house in Cortland, upstate New York.
We booked late but nevertheless got the most spacious suite to sleep in: the gorgeous attic. Despite it being very hot during the day, at night it was remarkable cool and we slept very well.
Alison has a huge family (her grandparents had 11 children) and a lot of them (more than 50) travel from all over the country, from Hawaii to Cleveland, to attend. After 5 years I got to know them a bit so the whole reunion is not as much an ordeal as it was the first few times.
The owner of this attic is reading loglog so leave a comment and tell him what you think about his attic. Please keep it positive otherwise we aren’t allowed to book it for next year. Note the upside down hanging lamps he made for over the huge conference table at the right. Very original and nice.
Jul 2 2008
Metric
This photo was taken on Highway 89 near Montpelier in the middle of Vermont. Is this a message to tell the world Vermont really wants to join Canada? By becoming metric?
Jun 27 2008
Pay
I saved a lot of money today.
For over a year I’ve been eying an iPhone, Apple’s hot touchscreen gadget. Recently it was announced that the iPhone would come to Canada and also that developers would be able to write applications for it. I have some ideas for a couple of cool iPhone games so that would be a reason to justify the purchase.
But today Rogers, the only carrier that has a GSM network in Canada, announced their subscription rates. But their 3-year contract and exuberant high monthly fees would mean that an iPhone would cost me 5700 dollars and that without unlimited use of the Internet, my main reason for getting it. There’s no way I’m going to pay that. No iPhone for me.
But I saved even more money. I planned to go to an outdoor concert of one of my favourite bands, Sigur Rós from Iceland. So this morning I called Admission, the Québec Ticketmaster monopolist, to buy some tickets. My ears fell almost off my head when they told me there was a surcharge of 8 dollars per ticket for their services. Eight dollar for picking up the phone! And 5 dollar on top of that as a fee to pick your tickets up at the box office. So I told them that was ridiculous and hung up. No Sigur Rós for me.
If I’ve the time and inclination I might check tomorrow if I can still buy tickets in a brick-and-mortar music store in town. Support your local businesses.
And I might look into buying a hacked phone when/if they come available but for now the deal is off.
I feel so frugal now.
Jun 24 2008
Sawdust
While I was working in my workshop Poupoune thought she would keep me company. She lay down under my table saw; a nice, cool and above all, soft spot. Sometimes she’s a real chameleon.
I had to dust her off, though.
Jun 17 2008
City
We walked a lot, doing a couple of walking tours.
Today we spent exploring Harlem. It was a very strange experience for me to be surrounded by non-white people. I didn’t see any Caucasians for over two hours.
I wasn’t afraid or felt threatened or something like that. I just felt slightly uneasy. Being the odd one out. It made me understand a bit better how black people must feel when they are surrounded by whites. And I wasn’t even oppressed or treated badly.
Alison didn’t have any of these feelings. She lived in Africa for 4 years, and simply doesn’t notice race.
Jun 16 2008
Playing
We’re a couple of days in New York City, visiting friends and visiting the city. We saw an installation by former Talking Heads singer David Byrne, in which he attached a organ to a building. Playing the organ causes all kinds of whistles, clicks, bangs and rumbles.
Just being in that building, an old ferry terminal, was already nice. All these sounds added to the experience and made it even better.
Jun 10 2008
Crime
Ever lived on the wrong side of a crime scene tape?
I do now.
Don’t get too alarmed though, it’s (un)fortunately not as “Journal de Montréal” as it sounds. I heard a big bang in the front of the house. High winds preluding a thunderstorm had broken off a big branch of “our” erable and it had landed smack on our and the neighbour’s fence. It was just small enough that I managed to move it aside since it blocked the sidewalk. Then I went inside because it started to rain heavily. Ten minutes later the police had put up this tape. I thought it was overkill until I investigated the tree overhead. There is another branch broken off and the only thing that keeps it from falling to the ground is the power line entering the neighbour’s house. So that crime scene tape is maybe not such a bad idea.
Why we don’t have subterranian power lines like in Europe (also in Scandinavia! so don’t give me the snow argument) is of course another topic of discussion.
Jul 23 2008
Mail
For a couple of weeks now I’m busy cleaning the house. I started with the basement, which had accumulated a lot of stuff since Alison moved here and even more when I moved in with her. But then I moved up to my office that basically hadn’t been cleaned up in five years. Yes, I know, I’m a slob.
Anyway I threw away many things and brought a couple of car loads of basement crap to the EcoCentre and stuff that was still useful to Le Chaînon.
I also sold three old computers and cables, drives, etc. on Craigslist and Kijiji for a couple of dollars. A Mac I bought 6 years ago for $6000 made me a whopping $40. I hope the new owner will get some use out of it.
It was easy though to part from it since I never used it anymore. I brought it over from the Netherlands to work on a project that required Mac OS 9, but that project is now finished so the computer could go.
But now I’m nearing the finish line and the decisions are getting tougher. What to do with a box full of love letters of past girlfriends? This dates from way back when, when people wrote postcards and real letters instead of e-mail. I only have a couple of postcards from Alison, but I received a ton of e-mails from her. Don’t worry, I’ll keep those, actually I keep all my e-mail.
But I digress. What to do? On one hand it is extremely unlikely I will read them all again, but on the other hand doing so will be a blast from the past, and will certainly bring back —sweet and bittersweet— memories just like photos from that era. Why can I keep the photos and not the letters? What would you do?
I also ‘found’ a box of letters from my father. I glanced through them and found a poem in French he wrote for me. Reading it made me almost cry. It was written when both he and I were in bad break-ups. Here it is, verbatim.
That box stays.
By mare • art, english, home, montréal •