Sono uno zio! (sort of)

I'm an uncle! (sort of)

My roommates back in Montreal had their baby! Yay! She's happy and healthy and as yet without a first name. Her middle name will be Alessina, thus satisfying the Italian side of the family. There's still the Irish side to satisfy. So, if anyone can think of some really rockin' Irish girls names, post them in the comments and I'll send them along. They have to be rockin', though, because this girl is going to be one cool lass if she's anything like her parents.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

For the record, not only was the film fabulous and definitely worth seeing, it's perhaps the gayest thing I've ever seen. Gayer even than gay porn.

Whew

According to Google Earth, I biked 13 miles on Sunday. And I didn't die. And I didn't even hurt that much from doing it.

Go me!

Yeah, there's probably a bunch of other stuff I should update about right now, but I'm not going to. I'll just leave you all in suspense. I've got shit to do. Like go watch 'Les Parapluies de Cherbourg' which was due back yesterday. And drink coffee. And eat breakfast. And go to work, which has been rather blech this week. I have tomorrow off at least. Then working Saturday and off Sunday. Meh. I hate divided weekends. Saturday is a training day, at least, not a full shift. Though I do still have to go in to close the store that night.

Weekend Update

The yacht search on Friday was fun. Except for the whole getting up at 4 in the morning thing. My friend was a bit excited about getting up to where we were headed to find the yacht. I had suggested leaving at a more godly hour, like 8 or 9. Even 7 would have been okay. I managed the 5, but barely.

So, we left Portland at 5, me half asleep, he giddy with excitement (and only two hours of sleep) and drove up the coast for a little under two hours. We found the yacht fairly easily. It wasn't hard to spot in a rather small town with few sites to moor. Of course, we found it at about 7.30 and had no way to get out to it and, pretty clearly, no one was awake aboard (or, if they were, they certainly weren't on deck). We drove back into town and found some yummy breakfast and then headed back out to the yacht where we were greeted with signs of life on board (it was about 9.30 by now). We stood around on the dock and after a bit, someone happened by in a skiff who gave us a ride out.

There was the odd moment of introduction since they hadn't known we were coming and only vaguely knew that their friends had a friend who lived in Maine. But after it was sorted out how everyone knew everyone (me, I was just along for the adventure) we sat down and chatted and had coffee. The husband and wife who are sailing half way around the world (New Zealand to Europe via the Panama Canal) are quite lovely people, very interesting and full of stories to tell. They were gearing up to finish their provisioning and were scheduled to leave Sunday across the Atlantic, London-bound. We went back into town with them and all had lunch together before saying goodbye and good luck and heading back into Portland. I had the day off, but my friend had to work at 5.

Now, who is this crazy friend who has friends who have friends from New Zealand who are sailing half-way round the world? Ah, good question, by faithful blog-readers. He's a new friend. A new special friend, perhaps. It's all still very new and undetermined. But it's something with potential. I'll leave it at that for now, I think. I'm doing my best not to get too excited about it before it actually matures into something. We've only seen each other a couple of times but he asked me yesterday if I had plans yet for Hallowe'en. I told him I didn't think I did. So maybe now I do?

And here's the irony of it all: he also makes coffee for a living and has an interest in it approaching mine...he just happens to work for Starbucks.

What was I thinking?

I just agreed to leave in four and a half hours to drive up the coast to look for a yacht with some New Zealanders on board.

What was I thinking?

Never let me say my life is boring.

Hott

Gee, I wonder why...

No customers had complained or returned a doctored version, [a spokesman for HMV] said.

Self-described guerilla artist Banksy has replaced approximately 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut album in stores across the UK with an album of his own with remixes with titles such as 'Why Am I Famous?', 'What Have I Done?' and 'What Am I For?'

Sort of kind of almost moved in.

I've been in this apartment almost a year. The last apartment I was in long-term was for three years, and even there I still had stuff in boxes the day I moved out.

One of my major problems with all the stuff I have--and I do my best to cull my pack rat tendencies--is that I don't have drawers or shelves to put it on. I haven't had a proper desk since 2001 when I moved out of rez. Until now.

A friend of mine had a going-away party on Wednesday. Her going away makes me sad. However, I acquired her quite nice roll-top desk, which makes me happy. I think it's going finally to pull my room together and make it something more than a sleeping chamber filled with crap.

Forthwith, pictures...



This is facing the wall opposite the closet. The door leads out into the dining room and that little blue blob in the lower right corner is my bed. On the left, obviously, are my windows. Stylin' desk, eh? Already stacked with clutter. I haven't sorted anything into the drawers of the desk yet, so a lot of that clutter will disappear eventually. Hiding behind the open door is my dresser.



This is taken from the opposite corner. My bed. My closet. My poster of Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog', something I bought before heading off to university. It seemed appropriate then and still seems to apply now. Also, between the window and closet, above the heater, a drawing of the corner of St-Laurent and Des Pins. A christmas gift last year. :-)



This is the boring side of the room. Just my Canadian flag, a plant, and a Russian icon of John the Baptist, which was a birthday gift (I had originally planned to have my birthday party on St-Jean because it was the Saturday before, which is why my friend bought me the icon, but then I never had the party so the original intent of the gift was kind of moot. It's still pretty nifty, though. I think it came with a certificate of authenticity about it being hand-painted. But I'm not sure. It was written in Russian.) Hopefully, I'll soon have a night stand so that my alarm clock doesn't have to live on the floor (those plugs in the outlet are for my alarm clock and my phone charger). Your coffee trivia for today: Jamaican coffee does not ship in burlap bags like coffee from everywhere else does. It ships in barrels. Full barrels and half barrels. Generally, we buy our Jamaican coffee by the half barrel. There's not reason to hang on to the barrels after we've emptied them of the beans so I'm hoping to score one soon. There's one at the roastery right now, actually, but our roaster wasn't sure if it had already been promised to one of our wholesale customers who has been wanting one for a while. If not, it's mine. Wee. It'll make a rocking night stand.

Hiding in the dining room in that picture is the bike that I've been test-riding for the past couple of days that I'm probably going to buy. The guy I'm buying it from is cool like that. It'll be so nice to have my own bike, I just have to get used to biking again. My legs haven't been to happy with me the past couple of days (have I ever mentioned that I live at the top of a not insignificant hill?) but I'll get used to it. I'm doing my best not to over-extend myself.

That's all for now. I'm going to go read a bit more of 'Heat' by Bill Buford, which I just got from the library yesterday and am quite enjoying. Almost a hundred pages in. An easy read but quite enjoyable. I think it's about time for a nap too, though, so I'm not sure how much reading I'll actually get done.

Oh, and have I mentioned how much I love farmers' markets? I bought THE BEST peaches Wednesday at the market. Honestly, probably the best peaches I've had in years. And they were grown in Maine of all places. Georgia ain't got nothing on these peaches.

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?

My McGill alumni email has a built-in spam filter and every couple of days I get an email of messages that it has quarantined as possible spam so I can make sure that nothing important has been flagged.

My mail program just flagged the quarantine message as potential spam.