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So, folks have been asking me to post some photos. I don't have enough blogging experience to do this well, and I don't carry around enough extra batteries for my camera to do this often. But I'll be working on fixing that.

This is a picture of downtown Montréal taken last summer from the top of the Mont Royal, the highest point in Montréal. I've been there in the winter too, but I'll save sharing those photos for a colder day.

The other day my beau, I'll call him "Bo," and I went to Vieux (old) Montréal as tourists. We went to the museum of archeology and history at Pointe à Callière and both of us learned a lot: me from reading every single little label of every artifact and Bo from talking at length to two different museum guides, leaving me with plenty of time to read all of the labels.

We saw ruins and artifacts dating from the 1300's (but mostly from the 1600's and 1800's) through this century. They had some cool "multimedia" displays without an excess of lights, bells and whistles, and one in particular with a "you are here" red dot that showed you what your surroundings would look like at certain points in history. It was moving to be standing in the spot where the city of Montréal was founded. I had a similar feeling to when I visited my first cathedral as a college student in Europe, the Strasbourg Cathedral. It was the feeling of being a part of the history of the future and of the weight of all the footsteps that had passed in that very place before mine.

It would be nice to feel that way more often, in my daily life, to think about the people who rented this apartment before me dating back to the 1930's, for example. Bo and I were walking on a nearby shopping street and we paused to notice the facade of a church that we can see from our apartment. We were talking about how the combining of parishes had changed the church's name over the years. Just then a woman, who told us she was 86, joined our conversation as she rested her cane against a nearby bench and sat down. She had been baptized in a church on the same site some years before the current building was built in 1931. She has lived in Rosemont, the neighborhood of Montréal where we live, her whole life. To me, after only two weeks of living here, I find my view of that church from our apartment to be something special...and it is.

8 Random Facts

Shabbydoll, my dear friend and inspirational blog mentor from afar tagged me…I am therefore, according to the laws of blogosphere, obligated to tell you 8 random facts about myself. Hope you’re entertained! (Shabbydoll—your #6 blew my mind!)

1) I am a total snob about chocolate, beer, and bagels (among other things). Only the best for Bijou.

2) As you will see, I am somewhat less of a snob about movies…I’m proud to admit that I own Grease and Grease 2 on VHS. (Believe it or not, I own Kingpin on VHS and DVD—ahem, not so proud!)

3) Again with the movie theme, I can just about recite Grease, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club by heart along with my favorite onscreen characters!

4) Moving violations: I was pulled over for speeding three times in the last twelve months and once for a blown out headlight, and although all the charges were reduced or cleared, I paid almost $400 in fines. I haven’t had a year like that since 1993. Just call me "Leadfoot"...

5) I can tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue. Great party trick, until you’ve seen it a thousand times.

6) I LOVE “Secret Santa” gift giving at work. My last job didn’t have it and that gave me the blues.

7) I have six holes pierced in my ears: four in the left and two in the right. I’m not sure why.

8) Similarly, I have a tattoo that only goes half-way around my left ankle. Did I think that being asymmetrical would make me cool or non-conformist or something? (No, just cock-eyed actually, but this could explain why I keep walking in circles…)

I’m tagging whitneyarlene and dougfine. Go get ‘em!

Cat Ladies

So, I am now living in Canada!

My cat made it too. My cat, who I now often refer to as Houdini, was the central missing character in a typical moving day crisis. Chico, his real name, found an unfindable hiding spot somewhere in my house, where he stayed for about 12 hours! In the meantime, I had assumed he had gotten out because all of the doors were open for hours. The crisis reached its peak during a nasty thunderstorm where I was left crying and thinking that I must be the worst pet owner ever after letting this happen to my poor "defenseless, never-been-outside-before" cat.

To make things worse, my neighbor came over to warn me about a vicious grey fox he had seen in the area. He was wielding a baseball bat to defend himself en route. Thank goodness I still had my internet connection because I promptly googled grey foxes and found that neither humans, nor cats were likely prey.

Chico finally showed himself, dirty and stressed (wait--was that him or me?) at around 11 pm.

The rest of the moving experience went smoothly. My worldly goods are now in storage waiting for a visa to set them free...

Chico was again a concern when I crossed the border. Even though I had crossed the Canadian border many times before with a cat, I figured that this would ironically be the time that it was not OK. So armed with his papers from a recent trip to the vet I went ahead, bumper to bumper as usual.

Just my luck, "la douanière" was a purple eye-shadow wearing, cat-loving woman! She proceeded to tell me at length about her five cats and their roles in her and each other's lives and eventually said "OK, have a nice day..." That was basically it! Chico's reluctant presence definitely made the last leg of the journey a pleasure.

Unfortunately Chico has done little more than hide behind the washing machine since, but he'll come around. Like me, he's getting used to the new noises of city living.