loglog

Any idea what these ‘doghouses’ are used for?

Don’t be shy. Fire away in the comments.

Black Friday, white snow and a loaner dog.

On Black Friday, when you are suposed to support the US economy by buying things you don’t really need, we managed to sneak away with Aliosn’s uncle’s dog Alias for a hike. It was cut short because the dog was tired and fed up with the snow accumulating between his toes after an hour. He should have worn doggy boots, but uncle Sean didn’t have any available.

On our way for the American Thanksgiving celebrations with Alison’s family. Even though the weather predictions only mentioned “some flurries” we ended up in a snow storm near Mexico. No, not that Mexico, but the town of Mexico, in up-state New York. After some googling (an iPhone is really handy in the car to look up points of interest and to settle disputes) we found out that the region gets the most snow in all of the Eastern US. This is caused by the lake-effect from nearby Lake Ontario where moist air is blown ashore.

We managed to pass the storm without any damage although I saw some cars in the ditch and even saw a car, coming from the opposite direction, spin out and go straight into the median ditch right in front of me. A spectacular sight with a huge fountain of snow. The passengers seemed to be unharmed. In retrospect I should have called 911, but I’m not that used to having a cell phone on me.

Next to the Montreal General Hospital they are building an addition to the hospital. Or maybe it is just a parking garage, I don’t know. Since this is literally in the mountain they have to remove a lot of rock. When I passed they were just finishing up drilling deep holes in the rock with a giant drill, mounted on a crawling vehicle.

Then the covered the just drilled hole with these big grey mats. Suddenly it dawned to me and my suspicion was confirmed when I saw this sign.

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In a couple of weeks there is yet another election. Frankly, I’m getting a bit tired of those elections, especially since my citizen application is going nowhere, and I can’t vote myself. A friend who also applied for Canadian citizenship but a couple of months earlier heard that it takes 2 months longer when you live in Québec.

But I digress. There are a lot of election banners in our riding. The incumbent candidate of the Parti Québecois apparently isn’t too confident he will be re-elected because he literally covered the streets in election banners. Not only the main arteries and intersections, which I see in other ridings, but also the residential streets are plastered with PQ banners. On our quiet street almost every hundred meter there is a banner attached to a tree or pole. What a waste of good plastic.

Maybe there is a reason for him to be worried, because one of the competitors for his seat in the Assemblée Nationale is one of the spokespersons (they have two and don’t call them party leaders because that sounds to undemocratic) of Québec Solidaire. In last year’s elections —we seem to throw them like birthday parties— she managed to get 26% of the votes, without much of a campaign. So this year she might actually beat him.

So a few days after PQ’s banner action the Québec Solidaire also put up banners in our street so now we have even more banners. More good plastic wasted.

But I must admit that it’s much more fun to vote in a contested riding. Here is a link to the Québec Solidaire website so you can read their program, but it is all in French. They apparently don’t want any anglophone voters.

I agree with almost all their points (except the separation issue but who takes that serious) so they might get one anglo vote. But only if Alison follows my advice and checks the box in the voting booth.

It’s getting cold and I’m feeling lonely. I jump on the bed. Nice and warm under the duvet. I crawl towards the top of the bed, past the giant. Wait! What’s that? There is somebody else in my bed. A little white fellow. I growl ferociously at him and he backs away. Good. That’ll teach him who’s boss around here.

I turn and snuggle my back against the warm belly of the giant. I slowly rest my head on his knee and close my eyes. I hope the giant won’t twist and turn as often as he did last night. That really annoyed me and if he does it again I have to growl at him as well. There can only be one alpha dog in this bed.

Since a couple of months I’m regularly visiting a workshop in Improv Theatre.
Improv theatre is a form of improvised theatre were people go on stage without a script and react to each other and create spontaneous scenes.

The basic rules of improv are “Be positive” and “Don’t block other people’s ideas”. Both are things that I’m not very good at in real life. So it doesn’t come natural to me. But —maybe because of that—I like it a lot and I’m slowly improving. So maybe I’ll be performing on stage soon. I won’t tell you exactly when that will happen because it sure will make my stage fright even worse.

The workshop is held every Sunday afternoon and afterwards there is a show with around 12 performers, most of them participants of the workshop. The performers ‘compete’ —in a very gentle way— with each other by playing scenes together that are rated by the audience. One by one they are eliminated until there is only one left, who is then declared the winner.

So even though you won’t see me performing yet, I’ll invite you to join me as an spectator and enjoy the other performers, some of them are very good and outrageously funny. It is much more fun than hanging in front of your TV all night.

Sunday Night Improv
Théâtre Ste. Catherine
264, rue Ste. Catherine E. (between St. Laurent and St. Denis, Metro Berri-UQAM)
Every Sunday at 8 PM until 10-ish
Admission $5.

Hope to see you there soon! (All three of you.)

O, and here is an article from Montreal Magazine about the event.