nos vacances, partie deux

Here's a picture of our powder room on the main floor after we painted on July 3 & 4. The glass shelf refracts the light and distorts the color a bit. It's Behr's "Silver Charm," although I maintain that it looks a tad blue to me--but that might be because I outfit the place with navy nautical accessories (which sounds redundant, but I suppose nautical things aren't navy of necessity).

my ship came in

The life preserver with its display of sailor's knots (see reflection in mirror) and the sailboat were both purchases from Winners. I'm not sure what my fascination with things seaworthy stems from; maybe it's one of those Jungian "collective unconscious" impulses rising from the leviathan depths.

nos vacances, partie un

Instead of an excursion to New York (purchase of new car took care of that), James & I took a day trip to Montréal with our friends Dave & Ci on June 30. We parked the car near the Metro and took the subway downtown. We walked around, shopped, had lunch, and then made our way to the Infotouriste centre, where we decided to go on Gray Lines' two-hour double-decker bus sightseeing excursion.

James resorts to snapping a photo with his cellphone,
because I have the camera

Meanwhile, across the street,
Ci guards our stuff while waiting in the shade

Robert Burns statue
Square Dorchester, Montréal

In the park or "square" (it looked round to me!) adjacent to the Infotouriste centre is the above statue of Robert Burns. It made me wonder just how many cities in the world boast such statues. I remember taking a picture of one I came across in Milwaukee, WI, back in April 2006. This Bobby Burns, though, was sporting an unusual headdress. I watched in fascinated repulsion as a few people allowed pigeons to perch on their arms as they held out handfuls of birdseed. (I thought of how traumatized Mom or Ellen would be if they were asked to help.)

Our tour took us past many historic buildings...

Biosphere

...and a statue or two...

Illuminated Crowd
(The one at the back looks to me like Gollum from Lord of the Rings.)

...and then more historic buildings. Our photos don't really do the city justice.

L'Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal
(Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal)

We'd been to St. Joe's in 2002, and it's quite impressive with its Italian Renaissance architecture and stained glass windows. There are 283 steps from the street to the Basilica, with a special flight of 99 wooden stairs specifically for those pilgrims who choose to ascend on their knees. None of our group took our piety to those heights. (Click here for other curious trivia.) Last time we visited, we posed the pig--James's bright pink carnival-game booty from days of yore which rose up the ranks to become the travelling mascot of whatever team/company for which he works. This time, it was a drive-by.

James with Ci & Dave

Since pretty much everybody in Montréal is bilingual, we could no doubt have gotten by with English only. I might even have been able to get by on my painfully halting, bumbling French-in-progress. Fortunately, however, the trilingual Ci has an excellent command of French, and both she and Dave know their way around the city. All in all, it was a great way to kick off a week's vacation.

love potion #9

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
~ Mark Twain

flowers from James

Happy Anniversary to us!

It seems awfully surreal to think that we've been married for nine years. How bizarre. Including the three-month stopover at Mom & Dad's, we've moved five times, we've each finished a degree, and I've "travaille'd" (worked) for eight different employers in twelve separate capacities.

We've had our times of dormancy (like everyone else, I imagine), but I'd like to think we've grown as an ensemble as well as individually. I used to sit at the table with James and ask myself, "Who is this stranger across from me?" I catch myself thinking that less and less. James remarked jokingly that the warranty runs out next year, and he may have to return me to my parents, to which I replied that my dad would certainly have something to say to that!

According to the "experts," there are traditionally prescribed wedding anniversary gifts to mark the milestones. For number 9 they suggest gifts of pottery, willow, or leather. Nuh-unh. It ain't happening. Perhaps it's time to postulate a "postmodern gifts" list: CDs, DVDs, cellphones, laptops, anyone?

We decided to walk over to Guava's Shawarma for a take-out celebration supper. I had resisted the whole shawarma scene for quite some time (huge slabs of meat on a spit? no thanks), until one day a few months ago when I summoned my bravado and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the vegetarian wraps are sooooo good, as are the potatoes. Subsequently, I've always ordered the small vegetarian wrap, with garlic, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, exactly two slices of hot peppers, grilled cauliflower, and sesame sauce.

A word of advice, however: it is not good for a man to eat alone--or a woman, for that matter. The garlic sauce/spread is très, très potent. In fact, one could conceive of it as an aroma or savour of death as opposed to a fragrance of life. To eat or not to eat, that is the question, but whichever one chooses, so should the other, thereby keeping the marriage breath undefiled (or equitably defiled).

something old, something new

She breaks the lengthy silence...
We had obtained our passports in anticipation of a road trip to New York the first week in July. However, Saturday, June 21, those plans came to a halt. The morning started out like many a weekend, except that we were surfing the Web--ooo, suddenly that "surf" sounds archaic...does anybody surf the Web anymore? or take a ride on the "information highway," for that matter?--for hotel and car rental rates.

We decided to check into prices via CAA, and drove to the Kanata customer service centre. That was a huge waste of time: there were better offers online for both hotels and car rentals. Ultimately, we purchased insurance, stopped for lunch at Rockin' Johnny's (a '50s-themed diner), and were on our way home to book the aforesaid two items on our own, when James suggested we stop in at Tony Graham's Infiniti Nissan. (Little did I suspect this would actually lead to its obvious conclusion.)

Needless to say, in a matter of, oh, maybe 4 hours, it was good-bye, dear ol' Pathfinder which we've had for 7 years with a wham-bam-thank-y' ma'am! send-off (study the photo, you'll see what I mean, and just for the record, I was nowhere nearby when it happened)...

well done, thou good and faithful servant
1999-2008

...and hello, Altima. It's the car in the forefront--the other cars belong to other people. People have nicknamed the region where we live "Barbecue-haven," but I sometimes think it should be "Cars-by-you-haven." No getting away from them. You should see the streets on weekends, when everybody on the block except us invites friends and family over.

Not that I don't like the new car--I do--but I was a bit sorry at leaving the Pathfinder behind, since it's been the one thing that we've owned for a substantial period of time, and it provided a sense of consistency or continuity during our transitions. And it proved itself especially handy for carting things home from IKEA. Still, as James reminded me, the Pathfinder returned to Tony Graham's, the dealership from whence it originally came.

I like to tell the story of how we acquired the Pathfinder in the first place. It happened when we lived in Ottawa the first time around. It was sometime in 2001, about a year and a half since we'd moved, and we were finding it a bit of a challenge to coordinate our commutes to what amounted to opposite ends of the city. We were having a conversation about what to do about our vehicle situation over dinner at Kelsey's (back in the days when I still ate at that restaurant). I half-flippantly, half-seriously interjected, "Let's pray about it!" So we did. (It wasn't a gimme-gimme prayer; it was a "God, here's our situation, we're not sure what to do, so can you help us figure it out?") As we drove around the corner of our street in our little Pontiac Sunbird LE, we saw the Pathfinder with a for sale sign in its window. I rarely receive such instantaneous answers to prayers, but this was too serendipitous to be coincidence alone. Roger, the Pathfinder's original owner, had taken very good care of it for two years. I can't remember what other vehicles Roger said he owned, but the one car in his garage was obviously an expensive one, because he kept a tarp over it. We caught an impressive glimpse of gleaming metal though.

That was the beginning of the Pathfinder era to which we now bid a fond farewell. Thus begins a new era. Or as Robert Jordan would say, "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend."