Month: October 2006

A bit of a gray day

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The weather was gray and bleh and it kind of set the mood for today. Katy and I went to the tea shop we'd found on St-Sulpice and relaxed over tea (Oolong, for both of us) and we ended up spending a rather obscene amount of money on tea and tea-making paraphernalia. Still, it was *really* good tea (it should be, it retails for $180/kg)

It seems that we were doomed to be cutting it close, time-wise, all day. We made it to Bishoku with 30 minutes to spare before they closed for lunch. The food was yummay, as per usual. After lunch, we picked up some sweeties at Premiere Moisson and headed back to the flat to chill a bit before heading to the botanical gardens and the Lanterns. I didn't know what to expect with my camera (it can be a pain sometimes because there's no fully-manual setting and sometimes it decides what it think is best for you with disastrous results…) The pictures came out really nice and I'm happy about most of them. I'd upload them to my web server but it's being a serious pain in the ass at the moment and I can't reach tech support. Bunch of nimrods. As soon as my contract expires with them, I'll be looking for another web host. I am not impressed with their service since the last merger/acquisition/whatever.

We wanted to go to Reubens for dinner. I was a bit worried because I thought they'd stop serving food at 9pm (and we got there at 8:35, hence the comment above). Anyway, I shouldn't have worried because it's open until midnight. In a nutshell though, I have to say that this was one of the least enjoyable Reubens experience ever. I'd been hankering for a bacon cheeseburger all day. Waiting for it, thinking of it, drooling over it. So when I ordered it and said my usual spiel about garlic and sesame, the waitress got all ruffled and said that it was on a sesame bun and that it was the only sort of bun they had, but then made a big deal about her favouritest sandwich in the whole wide world that had big chunks of steak, portobello mushrooms, fried onions and lots of cheese on rye bread. Since I couldn't have the burger, I figured I'd have that. It sounded nice.

It was one hell of a letdown. The cheese was a processed kraft single, the onion were onion rings that were ultra greasy, the steak chunks was one slice of fatty sandwich steak. She'd made such a big deal of it, I expected something nice. All I got was meh. And then I saw Katy's grilled chicken hamburger, with swiss cheese and crispy bacon. Served on a cornmeal kaiser bun.

Dumbass waitress couldn't tell the difference between sesame and cornmeal, and because of that I got a mediocre sandwich instead of the burger I'd been awaiting all day. Fucking letdown, let me tell you :(

To make it up to myself tomorrow, I will get myself a mille-feuille from Cafe Lyonais (because the one I had today was average) and I will make myself a huuuuge burger when I'm back at the folks' place. Sounds like a plan.

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Montreal, day 2

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Day 2 in Montreal. Katy had her haircut, we had sushi (yay!) and then went for a 4-hour walk on Mount Royal (from Beaver Lake all the way to the tam-tam park and back to the hotel). We got glared at at Camelia Simensis by two dyed-in-the-wool french quebecers because we dated to ask the waiter if he spoke english (so I wouldn't have to do on-the-fly translation for Katy). Screw em, they were pretentious anyway. We went to dinner at Michel and Isabelle's apartment and had a really, really good shrimp and scallop pasta with a cream and curry spice sauce. I'll have to do that one again, it was yummy! I'd bought a nice Bordeaux Rose and an Alsacian Riesling which was a good compliment with the mille-feuilles and tiramisu we got from the Cafe Lyonais bakery. Good food, good wine, good friends. You can't have a better recipe for a good night than that :)

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People'd out and still alive

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No real time to blog yet, but I have material for a few very long entries. In a nutshell though, the wedding went really well, with lots of food and lots of laughs and nice weather.

We're both in Canada now and completely exhausted and we're looking forward to having “us” time when we're alone in Montreal and Quebec, though we're looking forward to meeting up with a few friends here and there.

Wedding pictures should be up online as soon as I can get my hands on a decent broadband connection (cause I ain't uploading 200+ pictures over dial-up).

Quote of the day: “I'm easy but I'm expensive”.

Also, your support to the <theme music>Hairy Caterpillar Rescue Squad</theme music> is much appreciated.

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What's been happening in the last few days

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In a word, busy! Friday was a half-day at work. Michel had landed at Heathrow at 7:30 that morning and was making his way to his B&B to grab some sleep because he hadn't been able to get any for the whole flight and was now a bit of a wreck and was flirting with a migraine so it was best for him to get some kip and soon. Unfortunately, the lady at his B&B wasn't there when he arrived, so we set him up in the guest bedroom for a nap and we headed into town to get some errands done. We bought a nice pen for people to sign the guest book and made a special trip to Clinton cards for some Bobbles and some other stuff. We'd had the brilliantly sappy idea to make Mr. & Mrs Bobbles cake decorations (one is wearing a top hat and coat, the other has a veil! how cute is that?).

Our afternoon plans were severely derailed when the cat decided to go all toxic-waste-factory (TWF) on us. We'd run out of his normal cat food and had begun giving him some other brand that the breeder had given us a sampler bag of. He really, really liked it, but it's too rich for him. Not only was he smelling like a TWF but at one point that afternoon, he had diarrhoea from hell, which managed to coat his entire backside with shit. Nice. He smelled awful, and even he wouldn't go near it to clean himself – so we ended up having to clean the couch cover, a chair cover and my jeans because they got slimed. Imagine the scene of me holding the cat down in the bathtub with a pair of work gloves while Katy is using the showerhead to clean our cat's ass. The joys of pet ownership they tell me. Still, he ended up sleeping on us for most of the night so I think he doesn't bear us a grudge. After the cat incident, we went to the Red Lion for a nice pub meal cause I couldn't be assed to cook.

Saturday morning saw me up bright and way too early because I had to go fetch my parents at Heathrow. Took the train from Whittlesford to Liverpool St and then the tube to Kings Cross (where I'd planned to take the Picadilly line all the way to Heathrow). I know it's not the optimal route, but it's one I know and I can navigate it when I'm still not really awake. The problem was that Picadilly was not stopping at Kings because of maintenance work, and the Circle and Hammersmith&City were also running late (security and electrical incidents, respectively). I found an alternate route and ended up arriving a few minutes late so they were waiting for me at arrivals.

Their flight was mostly good and my dad seemed in decent shape considering his back troubles. We started the trip back to Cambs with little incident and regular smoking breaks for my dad. I think he got scared by a vending machine selling chargrilled steak flavoured crisps at one point.

Katy picked us up from Whittlesford, giving my parents their first taste of driving on the wrong side of the road. I now understand why it would have been a Very Bad Thing for Katy to come pick us up from Heathrow directly :)

Once we'd gotten my parents settled in with some tea/coffee/ashtray/chair in the backyard (my dad is really impressed with the chestnut tree out back), we went to pick up Michel to go do the final suit fitting. That turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The shirts we were fitted for turned out to be too small. They called the other Moss Bros branch in town, but that turned out to be completely useless. Apparently, they were overworked and understaffed and though they did call back the first time the fitting clerk called, they were less than polite to him on the phone the second time (so we ended up having to buy our own shirts from Debenhams and they'll be giving us a refund on the shirt hire).

Once we got home, we had time for a bit of a hurried meal and then Michel, my dad and I were off to the pub for my boys-night-out. We had a good time and the boys were not evil with me (though there had been mutterings that Some Things Might Happen :) The worse I had to do was to wear a god-awful silly had the whole evening, but that I can do. Had a few drinks and some good hearted laughs and everybody dispersed around midnight. That was a fun night.

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