Happy Birthday Blog

It doesn’t take much of a detective to figure out that I published the first post here in March.

But, see, I have these places on the web that are my private refuge. I can go there whenever I want, and I can rant and I can rave and I can spew, and I am in the company of likeminded individuals, people whose experience mirror my own sometimes so closely that it can get scary.

And one of those places set us up with profile pages back around last December, and with profile pages came blogs, and so me and my southern confidante, we challenged each other.

"You gonna blog? "

"I dunno. You?"

Now she had a good head start on me. By the time I posted my first post on December 31, 2007, she had a good three posts done.

And so I started blogging. For a while I was able to sustain a pace of a post a day – well six per week anyway. Come February I spent more time commuting and I had to slow down, but I tried to maintain 2 per week.

The problem, though, was this. I didn’t necessarily want the whole world looking at my profile page, and tracing my userID back through all the messageboard posts I’d done and who knows, even into the chat room.

So I came up with a brilliant, and what should have been obvious, plan. I started a “mirror blog.” And so for a while I posted each post in two places. I picked up some of the good posts from the old blog and reprinted them here. After a bit I stopped posting there altogether. Then I branched out and started dj’s groovy sounds, and here I am.

So while my blogging partner writes about her feelings, her life, her search for meaning and fulfillment, I write about beer, and obscure 50s recording artists.

But hey, I’m having fun.

Happy birthday blog.

Montréal

Montreal - Good

Ok overdue, but here it is.

Why I like Montreal:

Beer: Ok you can get beer anywhere, but in Quebec you can get it in the supermarket. That alone makes life worthwhile.

Service: Ok, I know I put this down in the bad category, but consistency was never one of my strong points. I don’t know if this is province-wide, or unique to provincial services offered in this city, but I have never met a rude or unco-operative beaureaucrat. Every single person working for the province in a serve-the-public capacity, RAMQ (medical), drivers licence guys, income tax, Régie de logement (residential tenacies), doesn’t matter, has been helpful and courteous, sometimes going beyond the call of duty.

Music: I have heard Irish music and modern jazz in pubs, I have heard classical music by the Montreal Chamber Orchestra and various student performances. All you have to do is open the Gazette on Friday, and there are all kinds of musical events going on, often for free or almost free. The McGill School of Music will be presenting Britten’s The Rape Of Lucretia in January, and I have this hankering to go…

Art: I know I am making myself sound highbrow but I think the opposite is true – if I were really highbrow I would probably recognize all the sculptures around the city for the kitch that they probably are. But I’m ignorant, and so I enjoy the random works or art scattered around here and there. I also like the Musée des beaux arts.

French: Another entry from the bad category. But there is a good side to it. Living in a city that uses a language that I don’t know gives life a kind of piquant flavour. It keeps me challenged and focused. It makes this city different from any other major city in North America.

La Grande Bibliotheque: well I go there usually once a week. It has an incredible CD collection, about which I’ve written elsewhere. If I left Montreal, I would be as sorry about leaving that library as about anything else.

Having a coffee and danish in the morning at Jewish General Hospital restaurant in the morning before work: I do this about once every two weeks, and it costs me $2.35.

I live here: I don’t live anywhere else. I live here. I don’t live where I used to live, which wasn’t a bad place really, but I didn’t want to live there anymore, and I got to come and live here, and I like that.

Two Holiday Parties

I was at two holiday parties this week.

One was the office party. It was bearable. I got three glasses of blonde, courtesy of my employer, so it wasn’t a total loss. I palled around with the same people I pal around with every day. But I got to drink beer while I did it.

There was no beer at the other party, no alcohol at all, no caffeine, not even in the soft drinks.

I wasn’t sure what I expected when I showed up Sunday afternoon at the annual AMIQuebec[1] holiday party. I’d never gone before, so this year I made up my mind that I’d be there.

I knew almost nobody, a few facilitators, administrators. There was a music man playing a keyboard, and people were dancing, awkwardly, but they were having fun. I parked myself and watched.

It was something I needed to do – to show my face, to be there, to show support. They were there when I needed them, the support group meetings, the one-on-one.

Back when, when I started going, I told my story and blew everyone else out of the water. I went to a number of meetings, told my story a number of times, and it was always the showstopper. How many kids!?? they’d ask Married how long?? At the first meeting there was a girl who looked like a blonde Carly Simon. She was struggling with bipolar disorder, had been in and out of treatment, was separated from her husband who had the two boys. She heard a bit and started filling in the details. I bet this, she said, and that, and I said how did you know, and she said I lived it. That was me, said blonde Carly.

This is not your fault they said to me, what should have been obvious. Get perspective, they said. You’re not alone they said.

Later I found more support online, and I made friends, and I get some personal counselling. But it was that first contact with AMIQuebec that turned my head around in the right direction. And I am their fan ever since.

There was a gift exchange, and I brought a cheap gift, and got a cheap gift back. I guess I stayed about 30 minutes.

I stayed at the office party longer, and I talked to more people, and I had beer, but that first party left me at peace, and with a strange feeling that my being there made a small difference in the world…


[1] Action on Mental Illness

The Suit

I had two suits. One was black and one was navy. The black one was newer, I’d had it about 8 years. The navy suit was older; I’d had it for ages, and obviously it was quite worn, in both senses of the word. But I still wore it, and it was still a suit.

We moved, that was in 2006, and I remember hauling clothes out of the van into the new house, and I remember taking the suit and putting into the house.

And that was the last time I saw it.

That was a very journalistic thing to do, putting that sentence into its own paragraph.

But back to the suit – I never saw it again. I can’t imagine where it went, but it went somewhere. Maybe someone put it in the garbage my mistake. You never know.

Two years later we were getting ready to move again. And someone gave me a bunch of clothes. That’s unusual. When people give us clothes it’s generally girls’ clothes. that doesn’t help me much, except maybe saves us some money. But I can’t wear any of it, much as I’d like to.

But I got this big care package, and it was nice stuff, expensive stuff, but useless – not my style, not my size. But – guess what – there was one nice suit. It was navy and it fit. It had a vest that I could ignore, and two buttons on the jacket. (I could not bring myself to wear a three button jacket). So I put it aside, with plans to get the trousers shortened after we moved.

And so it went. We moved. And the suit moved with us. And I put it into my closet, because that’s the right place for a suit. And I went to see the tailor, and he said bring in the trousers, I am open every day at 6 am.

So I took the trousers and …. Oh no… where are the trousers?? The trousers hanging on the suit hanger are not the right ones!!?? Oh no!!

No idea where the trousers are, no idea where to look, very likely they got into the give-away bag and they are gone forever….

…..

So much for the suit…

So I wandered into a store called Henry Marks. That was on a coffee break. And the suits there are $900. Seriously. They have a few clearance items for $300. they are nice suits. The salesman, his name is Glen, he says you want a 36 short. He’s right. I say for a while I needed a 38. He says you don’t need a 38. We try some on. I tell him what I’m looking for. He says I’ll bring some in and call you. I say I’m not making promises. He says that’s ok.

A day or so later he calls and I go down and try on a navy suit. $300 he tells me. Pure wool of course. I put it on and he starts to measure and mark the adjustments. I say I don’t know if I’m buying it. He says that’s ok.

I go home. My wife says if you want the suit buy the suit. So I bought the suit. I went in and paid and said go ahead and do the adjustments.

Two days later I found the missing trousers…

Pens

The pen I use doesn’t look very nice. It used to look nice. It came in a velvet pen holder kind of thing, which I still have, and it’s fancy, but not so practical. The pen was a promotional item given to me by the company that laid me off in 2006. I got two, and the other one still looks new. The new one is really nice. The one I am using, though, is all scratched up. It looks like they impressed gold letters on red paint on top of a gold base. Then the red paint comes off so it has gold letters on gold. Can’t read it so well. Doesn’t matter though; I know who gave me the pen, and I’m not about to avail myself of their services anytime soon.

The company that I’m writing about, I didn’t start out working for them. I started out working for an entirely different company, and I have their pen also. It’s not as fancy, and it’s all wrapped up in plastic, and I’ve had a few of them, and they don’t write very well. But they look nice.

The last company I worked for, not counting the one I work for now, they also had pens, and I have one. It also writes black. It’s a fat one, blue sparkly with a black rubber bottom part where you put your fingers, white lettering.

All of my former-employer pens write black.

I have four Microsoft pens. Two are black and two are blue. They write nicely, and I don’t supposed Microsoft made the pens, anymore than they made DOS. One is a black pen with an orange cap. It says “Microsoft.” You can’t get more direct than that. Two of them are TechNet pens. They have this kind of weird triangle shape. TechNet is Microsoft’s network for technical people like system administrators and the like. Maybe all sysadmins have mucked up fingers from plugging in too many cables, so they have make special triangle pens for their fingers. Maybe not. And then I have an MSDN pen. That’s Microsoft Developer Network, for programmers and developers. I got all these MS pens going to Microsoft events at the Paramount and at the Convention Centre and places like that. They used to give away not just pens, but backpacks and software and books and stuff. After a while all they gave away was paper and a pen, and I quit going. I think they quit having them.

All the rest of my special pens write blue, except the Novell pen. But the rest are blue.

I have a pen from fuze HR, that’s a recruiting company. They tried to set me up with a company that specialized in XML, but they didn’t want.me, and the truth is that I didn’t want to work for them either. But I got a pen. I have a CGI pen, and I don’t remember exactly where I got that, but it’s got an hourglass figure. And then there is LMB Systems Services Inc., that’s a company that provides simultaneous translation services, and the pen only writes in one language at a time, and the colour scheme looks black, the it writes blue, and I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure it means something.

The last tech pen I have says “Novell” on it, and it doesn’t work. So I don’t know what colour it doesn’t write.

Well that’s almost it; I have an FRI pen, it’s a translucent red, and I’m not sure that a financial company should distribute red coloured pens, although it does write blue, and I have a pen that says “Mon Frére” on it; my sister gave me that, sweet eh? It’s a big fat green one. And it… oh no oh no, my sister is *not* green.

---

I keep all my pens in a plastic box in a space in my desk, and they will stay there for a very long time. I will bequeath them to my children, and perhaps to my grandchildren. As it is I probably write about 20 words a week, mostly just grocery lists, and I think that the average pen has the capacity for 4,567,789 words. So I would have to live 4392 years to use all these pens, at the rate of 20 words per week, and Methusela only lived 969 years, and he didn’t buy groceries. And he used a pencil…

Montreal - Bad

Everyone rags on this city. Indeed he does.

I don’t. Not much. I like this city. But I can’t deny that living here can be a royal pain in the foot.

So here are some things that I don’t like about this place. Some are city specific, some are province wide; I don’t bother to diffrentiate.

Weather. Hey, I’ve was born and raised in this country, the only winter I ever missed was the winter of 1975 – 76. So It’s not like I’m not used to the cold. But here, it’s that melting – freezing – melting – freezing thing that goes on, making the sidewalks into deathtraps, while all the while these vile ice pellets plummet down on your head.

And then there’s the snow storms, last winter we had about 20, each one paralyzing the city. If you happen to have a dentist appointment that day, well then you’re lucky, but if you have a job interview, then you’re not so lucky.

And, well, cold. I’m from the praries. It’s cold there eh? Says everyone. It’s cold here too, I say. Not like there, they say. Yes like there, I say. Sheesh.

Which brings me to:

Services: let’s start with snow removal. This deserves a post unto itself. Suffice it to say that it’s bad. Very bad. The city congratulates itself each time on a job well done, and it makes public statements to the effect that the crews are doing an excellent job, and that they are doing it very quickly, and the truth is the opposite. They are doing a terrible job, and they are doing it very slowly. So traffic slows down to nothing, and parking becomes nonexistent. Heaven help you if you have to go anywhere.

Transit

This is like the little girl with curl, when it’s good it’s very very good, and when it’s bad it’s horrid. They go on stike, or threaten to go on strike, every five days. The Métro is great until it breaks down, then there are a series of announcements over the loudspeakers that garble everything, and anyway it’s all in French. But at least on the métro you get the courtesy of an announcement.

When you’re waiting for the bus, there’s no way to know why the bus that’s supposed to come every 6 minutes hasn’t shown up for half an hour. And then of course when it finally appears it’s so full that it sails right by. And of course this is most likely to happen in winter while the ice pellets are pounding on your head…

Parking Signs

Really this is No Parking Signs. On one side of the street it’s between 12 and 2 every Tuesday and Thursday from March 15 until November 22. Then on the other side of the street it’s every Monday and Wednesday between 10 and 12:12 from February 21 until September 22. Then you have to watch for registered parking. This isn’t easy to spot, but in some neighbourhoods you must have a permit, and it is indicated on the signs but it’s difficult to see.

There is a street in my neighbourhood which is a one way street, and there are no parking signs all along the right hand side of the road, then at the bus stop it says no parking until the bus stop, then after the bus stop it says no parking.

Everything here is in French, the stops signs say “Arrêt” and the French word for parking is “stationnement” but the parking signs all have “P”. Call the language police.

French: I don’t have any thing against French, not the language, though it’s impossible to understand, nor the people, but having to live in an environment where your ability to communicate is limited by language issues is difficult. I have run into very few people in this city who don’t speak any English, but they exist. And so I am talking to the animal control person, called out by our neighbour because of a gopher that happens to live in our backyard. But I don’t know how to say gopher (gaufre, apparently), nor do I even know that it’s a gopher, could be a groundhog (marmotte d’Amérique – I kid you not) and I get that he’s here to find and I guess dispose of the unwanted creature, but I can’t really talk to him very much, il y a un petit animal I say, there is a small animal, mais il se cache, but it is hiding, and that is the best French I can do. He goes away. Tell your neighbour I was here, he tells me. I think. I don’t really understand.

I’ve already mentioned the métro issue, annoucements I can’t understand, do I sit and wait? Do I get off and take the bus? Do I ask someone? Do I expect to get an answer if I do?

The premier, who is a Liberal, and who gets all the anglophone votes, complains that there is too much English spoken in downtown Montreal. If the premier of Ontario complained that there was too much French in downtown Toronto, he’d be roasted alive.

Pedestrian walk lights: being neurotic, I have this unfortunate tendency to walk when the sign says walk, and not to walk when the sign says don’t walk. That leaves me in a minority of one in this city, where people tend to stampede across the city without regard for lights, traffic, weather, astrology, anything. I told someone not long after I arrived, when it says don’t walk, I don't walk, if nothing else I am making a statement. The only statement you’re making, says he, is that you are from out of town. But that’s not what I hate. What I have difficulty with is this. Not every traffic light has a pedestrian light, and those that do are highly inconsistent. Usually all four directions say walk at the same time, making it impossible to cross both ways in one go. And the busiest and widest corners, like the ones on Réne Levesque Blvd which I cross every day going to and from work, have none. So you step off the curb when the light is green, and I have no idea how long it’s been green, and chances are that it turns yellow, and then red, and I’m only half way across, and do I have a prayer book with me.

Animals. Okay, I don’t mind the gophers. But I could do without the skunks…