loglog

Today three new Metro stations, connecting Montréal to Laval, opened. For the occasion riding the Metro was free so we defied the huge crowds and went to Laval. There we saw the new stations have a new feature: elevators. What a novel idea. Of course there are only two other stations that have elevators (the neighbouring ones in Laval) so their use is fairly limited. It is apparently too expensive to retrofit the other 60 stations with elevators but I read somewhere that 3 of them get them in the coming years. So if you’re in a wheelchair, you can travel with the metro soon.
I myself. try to avoid getting into a wheelchair for a while. And if I do, I might go back to the Netherlands.

But first we go to Laval. But what does one do in Laval? One goes to a shopping mall. The shopping mall that has an Apple Store in them, so I could ask Alison what Mac she would like as a replacement for her ancient Powerbook that gave up the ghost two days ago. Not that we have the money to actually buy one, but we had to have a goal, in Laval.

We skipped the free shuttle busses so went by foot. Walking in the suburbs is an eye-opening experience. Firstly, all the distances are far greater than they look on the map (that might be related to the scale of the map). Secondly, there are no sidewalks, so you have to either walk on the road and be prepared to get into that wheelchair after all, or walk in the muddy strip between the road and… and what? Well lots of, eh, lots that aren’t developed yet. Lots that are waiting to be transformed in yet another shopping mall or shiny new office building. Unfortunately a lot of developers thought they would strike pure gold when they bought these lots so most are still barren. Maybe in a couple of decades they will be built upon.

When we, after more than an hour, finally arrived in the Carrefour Laval, the biggest and shiniest shopping mall of Québec ó not to be confused with the neighbouring shopping malls Centre Laval, Marché Laval and (original name) Centropolis Lavaló we had just enough time to have an overpriced lunch on a terrace inside the Carrefour. Bad choice but Alison was low on blood sugar and had to eat. Immediately.
After that we went to the Apple Store (we decided what Mac we’ll buy, eventually), windowshopped, and we even bought some clothes for Alison. Man, do I hate shopping malls. Everything is fake (well, the plants were actually real) and there are way too many people. I just don’t feel well in them, they make me queasy. But it was 5 o’clock before we knew it so we could go home again.

This time we took the bus back to the Metro station.

Dear Maestro,

My wife has a new job and travels a lot and she’s in Toronto right now and I felt too lazy to prepare a fresh meal myself. So I bought one of your Wood-fired pizzas that come in a giant box with a saliva-inducing picture.

I don’t know why I keep buying you pizzas because they never look and taste as good as on your packaging. I know you say “suggested serving” on the packaging, but I thought that only meant that I don’t have the wood-fired oven with its licking flames in the background. I should have known better, it means that instead of spreading the topping on the whole pizza, you just put a tiny drop of onions, cheese and dried tomatoes in the middle, and expect that gravity and the heat of the oven does the rest. Well, gravitational forces are strong in my house, but they can’t make up for a lack of matter.

I basically grew up on those pre-made pizzas, like every student in the Netherlands that lives alone does. So I can call myself an expert in the field. But not only are the store-bought pizzas much cheaper in my home country, they also are of much better quality. And don’t tell me that is because it’s closer to Italy and you can’t find the same quality ingredients here, maestro, because I don’t buy that argument.

So maestro, yet again I’m very disappointed in your offerings. I’m even tempted to call the toll-free number on the back of the box and tell you I’m not 100% satisfied. Not 100% satisfied? I’m not even 50% satisfied.

Yes, the mix of dough and cheese you put in your box, in no way bearing any resemblance to the glorious picture, filled me, but it didn’t taste very good and certainly didn’t live up to my expectations.

Maestro, I bet you aren’t even a real Italian, because I’m sure every real Italian would be seriously ashamed of this item you dare to call “pizza”. I almost would suggest that you crawl into that wood-fired oven of you (that probably consists of an electrically heated conveyor belt with a sprinkling of charcoal) and check out if your own fat melts as well as the cheese on this cardboard semicircle. But I won’t, because it would be too cruel for your underpaid factory workers to endure that sight.

So I’ll do what I should have done in the first place, and never again will buy one of your products. That’ll teach you.

Sincerely.

mare

(I’m hungry again)

This picture makes me very happy.

This is the first time Alison went cycling with me. Actually it is the first time Alison cycled in almost 20 years. And, much to her and my surprise it went really, really well.

Alison was very anxious beforehand because she still had bad memories of the last time she had cycled. She wasn’t totally comfortable on my old bike that, albeit it’s a teenager bike, has a higher crossbar than she would have preferred. She also needed a bit of help, in the form of a bench or a rock, to provide a starting point. But she managed quite well and she actually liked it.

We went to the national provincial park Œles-de-Boucherville, a couple of flat islands in the St. Lawrence river were cars aren’t allowed so they are a haven for cyclists. What we didn’t know was that only one island was accessible because the ferry that links the islands wasn’t in service yet. But nevertheless we had a good time, and we did two rounds around Sainte-Marguerite island. Not bad for a bike novice.

And yes, she had a sore butt the next day.

It’s spring weather and we have our first picknick in the park. Last week it snowed, but this weekend they predict more than 20 degrees and sunny weather.

[yes, that's Alison's new haircut.]

For the first time in my life I cut somebody’s hair. That somebody was of course Alison, who had a lot of it so it’s not so bad.

Don’t worry, she still has lots of it, I just cut it a bit. And a bit more, and a bit more.

I decided to cut her after she had tried to cut my hair and eh… failed a bit. Just a little bit, but it’s on the back of my head so it’s not so bad because I don’t see it anyway. But I had to take revenge. Her colleagues think that my revenge suits her very well. So I failed as well.

We got a visiting dog today. Her name is Happy and she is a Mira dog. Well, actually she is a Labernese: a cross between a Labrador and a Mountain Bernese, but since she’s owned by Mira she’s a Mira dog.
Mira is an organisation that provides helping-hand and seeing-eye dogs to people who need that kind of assistance. But before the dogs go into training they have to grow up first so the puppies satay in foster families until they’re one year old. One of those foster families is a reader of loglog and she asked me if I could take care of Happy now-and-then when she can’t take the dog with her.

Before I’ll do that I wanted to see how our dogs reacted to her, so I asked her to come by and see how the combination of Happy, Poupoune and Pepe would fare. Well, it turned out as expected. Pepe made friends and Poupoune just growled. Poupoune doesn’t like other dogs, not even cute little puppies.
Happy was a bit scared, she wasn’t used to being growled at.

So after this little experiment I decided it was probably a better idea to go to Happy’s house than to bring Happy into ours.

Halfway when tiling the bathroom floor of my client, I found out that we lacked a couple of square feet of tiles. Oops. Somewhere in the measuring and ordering process something had gone wrong. Probably the fact that we added a toilet to the surface that needed to be tiled and omitted a border.

Fortunately the missing tiles could be re-ordered and the next day I could finish the job. It looks gorgeous, although it has a bit of an op-art effect which makes the floor ripple.

The tiles originally consisted of little mats of 36 white or 36 black tiles. But since the client wanted a checkerboard-pattern they meticilously removed every other tile on the mats and glued a tile of the other color in its place. A huge amount of work, but it made my tiling job a lot faster. If I had to exchange tiles during tiling I probably wouldn’t have finished the job before the winter…

It’s Easter every day for Poupoune.

But instead of eggs she has to hunt for pig’s ears, carefully hidden by me. She is a hunting dog and loves the game, and also loves to eat them. And I love to see her jump up and down chairs to reach all the concealed treasures.

Finally I got to see in which house on Esplanade across Parc Jeanne Mance, Alison and her parents lived in when she was young. Her mother still knew the exact address and showed it to me.

These houses are now very, very expensive but 35 years ago her parents, still studying, could afford to rent them. The Plateau wasn’t yet the hip neighbourhood it is now, and houses where crappy and cheap.

I used to work on a house one block to the North of here, and I can attest that they look nice, but aren’t very well built. And because Montréal was (is) a poor city, landlords and home owners often had no money to spend on maintenance which made matters worse.

For some reason I like to cut things in two.

This old bath had to be removed while the floor that surrounded it needed to be left intact. The only solution was to cut this thick cast iron bathtub in two. Having two pieces also helped in carrying it outside since each piece was heavy enough as it was.

Maybe we can turn it into this.