loglog

Some cats bring their owners presents. Dead birds, mice and other small animals are favourites.

Poupoune is not a cat, but nevertheless she brought me a present. She had found it in our pantry and left it in front of the door of our bedroom in which I was still sleeping.

Now I was wondering if she was commenting on my eating habits? And if so, was it a reproach (”You shouldn’t eat this crap”) or a recommendation (”Look boss, you should be having this for lunch.”)

I chose the latter and had it for lunch! And so should you when your pet brings you a present.

Being downtown and being an Apple “fanboi” I decided to attend the grand opening of the first Canadian Apple Flagship Store. Well, it involved just standing in line and chatting with people for an hour, so survival didn’t prove that hard.

The store looks clean, empty-ish and boring, just like the other Apple stores i visited. There was an abundance of staff present who cheered and hi-fived us when we entered the store. Kind of cheesy and very loud.

It’s nice I don’t have to go to Laval anymore if I want something. But I have all the Apple gear I want (read: can afford) so I won’t be visiting that often. But I scored a nice T-shirt and that was well worth the wait. I actually like it and I’m not going to sell it on eBay.

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.

Tu es mon fils aîmé,
du très bon marque Mark.
Moi : seulement ton père,
plutôt ton frère aîné,
qui t’ai fait tant d’misères.
Mais comme au ciel un arc
se lève (fin d’orage)
je te donne en gage
mes intentions (”sous sage”)
de rendre heureuse ta mère,
Marguerite ma chère femme,
de nous deux belle flamme.
Tu m’aideras? “Si, si !”
Merci ! Ton faible père,
qui pour finir la chasse
t’embrasse.

Karel.

Rotterdam, ce 25 juillet 1988

That box stays.

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]

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.

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?

5 years later.