This is my third attempt to post from my new computer - I downloaded LochJournal 2.2, which I used on my old machine, but it keeps telling me my password is invalid and it won't let me go online from that program, grrrr! Any clue what I should do to fix it?

For my American lj-friends (well, happy day to everyone else too), Happy T-Day! I hope you've all had wonderful food (not necessarily turkey) and even better company, and that none of you is planning a foray into Black Friday tomorrow {g}!

Just talked to my American family, and everyone is doing well there, although sis-in-law's health is day-to-day with the severe RA and Mom noted that she's having some problems with stiffness of late. She is 78, though - and already planning a big 80th birthday bash in 2011! along with coming to visit us again next October, which will be nice. They were all having a good Thanksgiving, having finished their meal (roast beast and Yorkshire pud, after all we're British - well, some of us are!) and just filling in the corners, foodwise (is that from Winnie the Pooh?) by the time we called....

Chris was off today, so we kept to our plan to go to the movies, and dashed off to see "Pirate Radio," a British film that came out in the UK last Spring (I think) but has only just hit our shores in the last week or two. Since there's no French-dubbed version of it (to my knowledge, anyway), it's not likely to stay in Montreal for very long, so we grabbed our chance when we had it.

The story is quite straightforward: in 1966 Britain, the staid BBC doesn't play rock'n'roll on its radio stations, so a bunch of maverick deejays set up "pirate radio," stations (some with quite a strong signal) that are based on ships just outside British waters, and broadcast rock'n'roll all day and, as the Kinks say, all of the night. The government of Britain doesn't like them and works to shut them down, which they eventually succeed in doing, but by the time they do the music has been heard all over the country, by all kinds and classes of people, and it's only a matter of time before the BBC itself caves in...."Pirate Radio," aka "The Boat That Rocked," is a fictionalized retelling of these actual events, and as far as I'm concerned, it just rocked! Great great music almost all the time throughout the movie (Chris thinks some anachronisms crept in, songs that were actually recorded after 1966, but that period was just so fecund with a huge amount of diverse music that I'm not entirely sure that's true), hung upon a rather thin storyline: young Carl (Tom Sturridge) is sent by his mother to stay with his godfather Quentin (the great Bill Nighy, once again channeling an aging dissolute dandy), who happens to own and operate Radio Rock, a pirate radio station based out in the North Sea. While aboard, Carl encounters The Count (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Dave (Nick Frost, of Simon-Pegg-sidekick fame), the gorgeous yet silent Mark (Tom Wisdom), the legendary Gavin (Rhys Ifans), early-morning deejay and Jerry Garcia lookalike Bob (Ralph Brown), slightly sad but endearing Simon (Chris O'Dowd) and the lone woman on the boat, Felicity the lesbian cook (Katherine Parkinson, who with O'Dowd has starred for three seasons in the brilliant British sitcom, "The I.T. Crowd"), among others. Of course his contact with these free-spirited people helps Carl to Grow Up. Ranged against these rebellious fun-loving pirates are the Prime Minister (Stephen Moore), member of cabinet Sir Alistair Dormandy (the deliciously evil Kenneth Branagh, wearing a hitler mustache) and his henchman Mr. Twatt (Jack Davenport). They scheme to find a way to shut the pirate radios down, although they're not actually doing anything illegal. Merry mayhem ensues, of course, including the quest by the whole ship in losing Carl his virginity, among other interpersonal activities.

Not the greatest movie ever, but I fell in love with it, at a very particular moment in the film: after being jilted by a girl named Marianne, the song "So Long, Marianne" by Leonard Cohen is playing on the soundtrack while a crushed Carl sits in the ship's lounge, brooding. In come News John (Will Adamsdale) and Harold (Ike Hamilton), who bring him a hot chocolate and some brownies, then sit at the same table. Carl ignores them, continues to brood, as first News John and then Harold pick up a brownie and start eating it, then taking the hot chocolate to dunk the brownies in....until finally, Carl grabs a brownie too and starts to relax. Not a word spoken, just Leonard singing on the soundtrack; I totally fell in love with it right then and there.

Probably won't end up on my Top 10 of the year, but I'm very glad to have seen it and can't wait for the DVD - with that energetic soundtrack, it'll be a perfect fit for working out on the treadmill!

Thankfully not insanely busy, but we did get some good stuff done this weekend. Well, starting with Friday - I finally had time to go over some of the material G gave me at our meeting last weekend, and emailed her about it. Essentially we're in agreement that I'll be ready to start at the beginning of December - the main "sticking point," if it is one, is that I'm expecting delivery of my new computer from Dell next week and I don't see the point in buying or downloading things to this computer when it'll just have to be transferred over within a week or so to the new machine. G actually is willing to wait longer, even until after the holidays, if it takes me that long to get everything together, but otoh she told me she's already setting work aside for me, ready for when I'm ready. Since I'd rather not start off my new job with a huge backlog to clean up (which happened when I first got into the Workers' Comp psychiatric evaluation game back in, oh, 1984 or so), I think sooner rather than later is best, although no doubt starting work in December will confuse my tax situation even more than it already is....

Yesterday was a very fine Saturday - we're basking in temperatures well above average for this time of the year, generally hitting around +8C (um, 46-47F? around there) and as of early last week we'd already broken all records for the amount of sunshine in the month of November in Montreal and the month's not nearly over yet. But my quest lately has been to find a new winter coat, as last winter I just used an old cloth one belonging to Chris's late mother, and I wanted something more lightweight than that. Luck was with me, as I found a cheap ($78 before taxes) knee-length coat made of rayon or polyester, something synthetic anyway but filled with down (i.e., goose feathers), which is about the lightest in weight but most insulating in the cold material that you can buy. Amusingly enough, later yesterday evening our friend Soumia, who works as an esthetician and is quite probably the most stylish woman I've ever known, told me that she had bought the exact same coat at the exact same store (Winners, of all places!) only hers was black and mine is bronze. Being the farthest thing from a fashionista that it is possible to get, I felt absurdly proud and flattered to realize I'd chosen something that this woman of immense taste and style chose too {g}.

But back even before then, we stopped in at an artist's studio at around noon yesterday. This woman, Linda Rutenberg (google her, or check her website at http://www.lindarutenberg.com), is a photographer who specializes in photographs of plants in public gardens taken at night. Absolutely stunning stuff, Chris had bought me one of her books, The Garden at Night: Private Views of Public Edens, for my b-day or Christmas a couple of years ago, and she had been on the radio on Friday afternoon talking about her most recent volume, The English Garden at Night. Turns out her studio is in our neighbourhood - actually, it's right across the street from the Home Depot, a 10-minute-walk at most from our house - and she was having an open studio yesterday afternoon for people to drop by and view her original prints (all for sale, the least expensive still in the hundreds of dollars) and meet her. I certainly wanted to see the new book, probably to buy it for us and maybe also for my mother, so we headed out at noon and found her easily. A warm and interesting person, she let us take our time wandering the warehouse-room that is her studio, and we talked quite a bit about gardens, photography and buying presents for people {g}. We ended up with a (personalized and signed) copy of the new book for us and a (personalized and signed) copy of an earlier book, about the Montreal Botanical Gardens at night through the four seasons (I can't give the exact name of it because I wrapped it today and now it's sealed in a box ready to be shipped to California) for my mother. Lovely, lovely stuff - do check the website, you'll be enchanted!

Speaking of books, one of my b-day presents from my brother and sis-in-law this year was The Annotated Wind in the Willows, by Annie Gauger, and I've been reading it over the past few days. I have a few annotated books, including The Annotated Mother Goose, The Annotated Alice in Wonderland, and The Annotated Shakespeare (3 huge volumes, edited by A.L. Rowse himself), and am pleased with this volume as well. Part of me sometimes thinks, well sure you can read anything you like into writing from an earlier era - for example, here the first sentence (which has Mole whitewashing his walls in a fit of spring cleaning) elicits the notation that this is a reference to Mole's lower class and lack of a wife, as if he'd been of a higher class he'd have had servants to do that work, and if he'd had a wife, she'd have done that work. I don't know that Kenneth Grahame consciously thought "must show Mole doing his own work, to show he has no wife or servants, to indicate his class status" when he wrote that sentence, and I don't think that anybody needs to understand such social background to enjoy the story begun with that sentence. But I love that someone (or many someones) has gone to the trouble to tease that social history out of one sentence, it just tickles me no end! (The Annotated Mother Goose, btw, is especially fun for this aspect, because a lot of the innocent-sounding nursery rhymes really were making sly comments about the rulers of the day, or the way the world was perceived). So I've been having a great deal of fun with this book over the weekend too.

Back on the shopping of yesterday - aside from the winter coat, we decided to pick up two Blu-Ray films because while the PS3 up-converts DVDs and makes them look even better (Friday's pick, from Chris, for a movie was "Shadow of the Vampire," which indeed looked crisper and more detailed in the PS3 player than on DVD alone), evidently purpose-made Blu-Ray versions are even more incredible. So we said we could each choose one film, to check it out. Our picks included "Pan's Labyrinth" and PJ's extended version of "King Kong" (weirdly, there will be no Blu-Ray LotR for some time to come). Both of these movies have very intense and dense imagery, multi-layered and highly stylized; should do well as Blu-Ray proper. I'll report back when we've had the chance to see them {g}.

Our other purchase on Saturday (beyond a stop at The Body Shop for shampoo and soap) was a birthday cake for me - in this instance, a strawberry cheesecake, with a lot of real strawberries on top. This because we decided at the last minute that we should invite everyone home for dessert after my friends b-day dinner last night. Usually I opt for a potluck or something here at home for my b-day, but for some reason this year I wanted to go out, so Chris organized the reservation at a Japanese restaurant that we like and for a wonder, everybody arrived almost exactly on time! (Believe me, this is little short of a miracle, as out of 16 people at least 6 are habitually late for everything, by as much as an hour or more, yet last night everybody was at the restaurant within 15 minutes of the time Chris cited for the reservation.) An excellent meal, and a fair amount of catching up, ensued, and everyone had a splendid time. After the meal, most of us decided to walk back to our house - about 20 minutes away - although some people had cars and necessarily needed to bring them to our place, which meant that there were a number of folks sitting in their cars and chatting away when the rest of us arrived, since it probably took the drivers not more than 5 minutes to get there. (Yes, either Chris or I should have gone with the cars to let everyone in, but dammit we both wanted to walk!) Good coffee and cheesecake and conversation for another couple of hours, and I got to open a number of very entertaining b-day cards (my favourite is probably the one that includes a tapeloop of the Jackson 5's "ABC," but then again all of the others were excellent too). Unfortunately, two people who'd been at the restaurant didn't get to the house, because both had been battling a lung infection - one almost done with it, the other not in very good shape, so the former drove the latter home instead. But the almost-recovered one, Anni, called today to apologize (because we didn't know they weren't coming to the house, and in fact we never got to talk to either of them at the restaurant because of the way the seating went) and we had a good talk with her. Loads of fun overall and we heard the latest gossip (and some old news that we'd never known, like B smokes!!!! never had a clue), and A Good Time Was Had By All.

Slept in this morning, not surprisingly, and it's been a quiet Sunday for the most part. A couple of errands done, and I wrapped and packed all of the presents we're sending to my California family for Christmas, which we'll mail off tomorrow (with a definite speed cost, as the usual supposedly fast delivery took 2 months for my mother's b-day in the summer and I don't want the same fate to befall this large parcel).

Best news today - the Canadian Football League's Eastern Final was held, and our very own Aluettes (sp?) won! The quarterback is Californian (Los Angeles) Anthony Cavillo, aka AC, which happen to be my initials too, so all season long I've been chanting "AC! AC! AC! AC!" loudly and often during games, even though I actually don't like football at all, and don't have the slightest clue as to what it's all about. (For Brits, this is the American-style football, not soccer, that I'm talking about - although Montreal's soccer team won its league's "world series" equivalent earlier this Fall, yay!) The Als are on to the Grey Cup, the CFL's equivalent of the Superbowl, so we're all happy about that, even those of us who don't actually care {g}.

And, best of all, Chris is off work tomorrow - and every Monday for the rest of the year - and I've got no work coming in tomorrow. So we're going to see "Pirate Radio" in the afternoon, a film to which I am most looking forward (check my excellent grammar there, heh!)....So the "weekend" isn't over for us, yet, and it's all been going swimmingly. Not least because Artemis seems, if anything, more perky, alert and healthy than she has in years....

Although I'll just mention that Artemis still seems to be okay - she's eating, she's purring, and she's even running around a bit. Some of this I attribute to the antibiotic that is clearing up her bladder infection, I'm sure she feels better just on that basis alone. Then again, she was apparently feeling well enough today for The Grey Mouser to attack her - TGM's been somewhat confused and a little solicitous even, which is not in her nature at all but I assume she can tell Arte's not well; in any event, she's been sleeping near but not too close to Artemis and not being mean to her, until today when she basically jumped poor Arte who was lying on the guest bed at the time. Fur flew and loud squawks were heard - I happened to be cleaning the first floor at the time and was able to intervene immediately and chase TGM up the stairs and out of the way. Artemis settled back down fairly easily, though, so I don't think she was hurt any....

So. That's the stuff about cats. Actually, everything else is kind of background at the moment, but let's see. I still haven't gone through the material G gave me on Saturday about the new job - well, it's not about the new job, it's a CD with mp3 files of depos, along with the typed manuscript of (hopefully) the same sessions, and she apparently wants me to listen and read along, to get an idea of what the job entails. But I already know what the job entails, I'm quite familiar with this context, and while she went to some trouble to select a case she thought would interest me (with my medical-legal background), given that I don't have WordPerfect yet, or the foot pedal, or anything that would enable me to actually start working, I just haven't felt too motivated to check it all out. Tomorrow, though, it looks like I've got no work coming in and all my chores except for grocery shopping done, so I intend to make myself go through the stuff, if only so I can email her and say everything's still great.

On the work front, a grand total of 4 hours this week. Jolly good - not.

I've been reading - about hedgehogs, for one thing, and continuing the Jack Vance novels for another; and I've been watching telly - "The Tudors" wrapped up its season last night, which surprised me. A fun show, albeit really silly in terms of tarting up the history when there's really no need for that at all, it's honestly tarty enough without messing with it! Although maybe by this time, historically, tarting up is needed - Henry VIII by the time he marries Anne of Cleves is no spring chicken anymore, he's got constant leg pain with gout (which, to the show's credit, is depicted albeit in rather gentile fashion) and he's gotten pretty fat and ugly. But making Jonathan Rhys Meyers look fat and ugly would be, I dunno, a sin against nature or something, so let's not quibble too much about that! But Anne of Cleves was quite plain - she looked like a horse, complained Henry, and it was indeed specifically her plain looks that caused him to reject her, no matter how lovely a person she might have been - and the British blues chanteuse Joss Stone just isn't that bad looking. Since his demand for an anullment is based entirely on her looks, having the character played by someone who is not ravishing but certainly not ugly is rather specious. OTOH, they introduce Catherine Howard at the end of the season, and she's quite pretty and very flirtatious, as in real life. Should be a fun season four next year!

Meantime, we've got all the XMas presents for family ready to send - yes, it's WayEarly, I know, but we need to get the package sent this weekend to ensure it arrives on time. See, we sent my mother's b-day present at the end of May this year - her b-day is at the end of June, plenty of time, right? Only it didn't arrive until, oh, mid-August or so, after Richard's visit here anyway! And when we sent presents to R&S for their respective b-days and anniversary, all from late March to mid-April, at the end of February we mailed stuff that we'd picked up in San Diego early in that month, but they didn't get any of it until sometime in May. This isn't Canada Post's screw-up, btw - I kept track via a tracking number and the packages all got to the States within a couple of days; then they languished in the USPS system for months. Seriously - US people, keep it in mind, your postal service is really getting screwed up! So we're going to mail XMas presents this weekend, using a more expensive delivery system (don't know what choices we have yet, but I'll find out) in order to make sure at least the big stuff arrives in good time.

Mind you, focusing on that has got me thinking about XMas cards and all that; isn't it still too early to be worrying?

Tomorrow evening is my b-day dinner with friends - my birthday was over a week ago now, but because of scheduling conflicts with friends who have parents or spouses with b-days around the same time as mine, we chose a slightly late date for this annual event. Most years here, I've had people over for my b-day, either with everyone bringing food for a potluck or with us providing food for everyone (via a catering company), but this year I decided I wanted a restaurant meal, so we're meeting at a Japanese restaurant we like where we've had group meals before so they know how to handle us reasonably well. There's lots of stuff going on with friends that we know about and want to know more about - one friend off work on stress leave and we want to know how she's doing, another who's just started a long-distance romance but doesn't want to tell us about it in that setting because her ex-husband will be there and doesn't know about this new relationship yet, another who is planning a big change in life what with selling the family home and moving into rental accommodations for a while....lots and lots going on amongst our friends and out in the Real World generally. I'm looking forward to connecting with some friends not seen for a while (others, we saw just last Saturday for our monthly "Get Smart" evening, when we open the house to anyone who wants to come and watch the original "Get Smart" series on DVD and eat popcorn and laugh a lot).

In general, though, I've been sewing and cleaning and running errands and reading and playing games and computing and writing and thinking; but still 90% of my mind, 90% of the time, is on Artemis. So perhaps my subject header is misleading after all.

After the drama of the weekend with respect to our vet, Dr. F, being so aggressive and nasty with Chris, the last thing I expected was a phone call today from Dr. F - sounding perfectly normal and pleasant!

On Saturday when Chris went to pick up the antibiotics (for Arte's bladder infection), the techie didn't even talk to him about how to administer the pills, how often, etc., and it was only by reading the printed label that we found she was supposed to have another culture done after taking the antibiotic course to determine if the infection was gone. This 'scrip was only for 6 pills, but evidently that was because it was a beginning course to see if it was right for her (huh?) because Dr. F called to say that the culture that had been done came back negative (a good thing) and Artemis could have the entire 21-day course of antibiotics, with ideally a urine culture 4 days after the end of that course (which would be around December 4 or 5, I figure). So I'm to go pick up the rest of the pills tomorrow.

Meantime, she asked me if I had any questions for her about Artemis's condition, etc., since she'd spoken just to my husband on the weekend; I told her we had decided not to treat the diabetes, and she was fine with that too. She said it was important to only feed her the canned m/d (which we'd started her on a year ago, as a weight-loss measure, but the formulation is actually made specifically for diabetic cats), although it was okay if I added a couple of t/d kibbles since she liked the taste of those and that prompted her to eat more of the wet food. I mentioned that Arte has been eating, moving around, acting pretty normally overall, and she said that often the m/d canned food made cats with diabetes feel better for a while.

The fact that she's got Arte on antibiotics for 3 weeks, to be followed by another check for infection, suggests to me that she's assuming Arte will still be alive in three weeks, a very far cry from the "you must put her in the ICU immediately!" talk she gave me over the phone last Thursday. But at least she seems to have gotten over her hissy fit - or maybe she and Chris just had an instant disconnect on Saturday (although they've met before and been fine) - which will make dealing with her with respect to Artemis' treatment that much easier. But I still plan to switch vet's after Artemis is gone as it's important for both of us to feel comfortable with our vet, not just me. In addition, it's always a source of anxiety going to that particular veterinary practice because we try hard to avoid the other vet in the clinic, Dr. B, the flaky and incompetent one who so badly fumbled Meip's death. So it'll be a relief to switch to someone else - although if it takes a year or 10 for Artemis to be sick enough to need euthanasia, I'll be happy with that!

It's still all kinda weird, though.

When we moved in to this place, we found that there were three doorbells, one for each floor - reasonable, as it used to be a triplex with one apartment on each floor, but of course we wanted to consolidate to one doorbell ringing on all three floors. Unfortunately our handyman Kourosh was only able to wire floors 1 and 2 together; the third floor had an intercom and other extras added and for some reason couldn't be switched to match the other two floors. So, we have one doorbell that rings on the first and second floor, and another doorbell that rings on the third floor - but only if the buzzer for it at the front door is pushed.

Or so we thought. Most everyone we know knows to use the "387" doorbell so it's not generally a problem. Until about 2 weeks ago, when suddenly our third floor doorbell started ringing fairly often - but when I ran down the stairs to answer it, nobody was there. Weird.

We discovered the mechanism of this weirdness just this past weekend (yes, it's been even more fraught with stuff than I've mentioned before, and includes solving bizarre mysteries like this one). Turns out that when people going to visit an apartment in a six-plex across the street ring a particular doorbell, our third floor doorbell rings. And their whatever-floor doorbell doesn't, and after a few tries the person trying to visit goes away - or else knocks on the door and someone answers it.

Having figured this out by dint of looking our of our third floor window at a time when our doorbell suddenly rang, and seeing a person across the street ringing a doorbell over there whose action exactly coincided with our doorbell ringing, when it happened on Saturday afternoon, Chris ran across the street and explained to the visitor that he needed to knock because ringing that doorbell just caused ours to ring instead. We don't know if said visitor explained this to the actual occupant, but we haven't done so yet, although no doubt we should.

Thing is, apparently the occupant is a student - or knows students anyway, as it's student-types that show up at that door and cause our doorbell to ring. Students, as you know, can be quite sociable....

We're thinking of unplugging (yes, the ringer plugs in to a wall socket) our doorbell ringer; although when I did that briefly on the weekend when someone was ringing the doorbell across the street, it didn't result in their doorbell sounding, at least the individual wasn't buzzed in and instead eventually left, no doubt disappointed.

We've had this doorbell in place for, oh, 8 months or so, and it's only started doing this in the past couple of weeks. Are there any electronically minded folks who can tell me how to fix it? I don't really need to know more about what's causing it than the common-sense assumption that some wires have gotten crossed or frequencies co-opted, but it would be kind of nice to fix it, if possible....

Today's my birthday, so even though work (unexpectedly) arrived this morning, I didn't do any of it. Instead, I spent the day in leisurely fashion by watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (EE of course) through the new PS3, that up-converts DVDs to Blu-ray quality. And all I can say is, WOW!!!!!

I thought the film looked beautiful on DVD, but it's about a billion times more clear and crisp in Blu-ray form. I gather the trilogy is going to be released (again) in that format next year, but only the theatrical versions and not the Extended Editions, which is pretty silly of them. But the cool thing about this new technology is that it does up-convert your ordinary DVD to Blu-ray quality.

So get yourselves a Blu-ray (or PS3) today and see for yourself. You'll be impressed, believe me!

Chris had a furlough day today, so we decided to take in an afternoon movie. An Education is about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a bright 16-year-old schoolgirl in bleak, grey 1962 England; her parents (Cara Seymour and the wonderful Alfred Molina) are encouraging her to work hard at her Latin so that she can pass all of her A levels with flying colours and get a place at Oxford, where she will "read English" and, her father fondly hopes, find a nice man to marry. Her teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) thinks she's the brightest student she's taught in years, and wants to make sure she doesn't throw her life away by not going to Oxford, and the headmistress (Emma Thompson) is convinced she'll go far too. But then Jenny meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), a man more than twice her age, who takes a shine to her and charms her parents into letting her go out with him despite the age difference. David and his friends Danny (Dominic Cooper, who looks a little like Jude Law) and Helen (Rosamund Pike) take Jenny on trips out of town, even to Paris; they dine at fine restaurants, listen to amazing classical music, watch fascinating French films - everything an intelligent and interested young girl might find dazzling and wonderful. But David and his friends have some secrets of their own, and David himself is not what he says he is....

This is a wonderful small film, beautifully acted by everyone involved but especially by Carey Mulligan, whose luminous performance in this film has had critics comparing her, appropriately imho, with the young Audrey Hepburn. The screenplay is by Nick Hornby, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber, and the dialogue is precise and gorgeous in its own right. The director, Lone Scherfig, captures the bleak feel of early 1960s London, before everything breaks loose finally. Molina is absolutely wonderful as the grey and bleak father, Jack, who perfectly captures that same sense of fatalism - he finds no reason for things like "hobbies" except to be able to say on an application form to Oxford that one has a hobby, there's no reason to actually practice it, although it's important for Jenny to be a "joiner in" so that she can get ahead in life, and so her "hobby" of playing cello (which she need not practice) is also her "in" to the region's youth orchestra (which she can't quit because then she wouldn't be a "joiner in"). His convoluted and bleak worldview contrasts sharply with David's wide open and exciting world, and Jenny has no question about which world she prefers.

A great way to spend an hour and a half, very highly recommended!

Just sent off my order to Dell for a new computer, yay! I will be getting an Inspiron 537 Slim Tower w/Black Bezel, Windows 7 Ultimate (I wanted the middle one, Professional I think it's called, but Dell only offered the basic Windows 7 or the most advanced one; weird), with an Intell Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB dual channel DDR2 SDRAM memory, 23" full HD widescreen flat panel display monitor, ATi Radeon HD 4350 video card, 500GB Serial ATA hard drive, media card reader, Adobe reader 9.0, MS Office Basic 2007, integrated 10/100 ethernet network card, McAfee security, a high speed Av additional port and free Dell remote access.

If I knew what most of those things were, I'd probably be more excited - Chris says it's a WAY better computer than either of us have now! I'm getting a mouse and keyboard, but probably won't use them as I've got ergonomic ones that are much better; also didn't order any modem or speakers, etc., 'cause we already have them too. Still just under $2,000 Canadian, even with free shipping.

I just hope it all works! Ordering was a pain and took about 2 hours, when I'd expected to take maybe 30 minutes on it, but hopefully it'll be worth it when it arrives. Oh, Chris suggested I also get a Belkin Easy Transfer cable for Windows 7, which I did - evidently this permits you to connect the old and new 'puters to facilitate transferring stuff from one to the other. My first new computer for 6 years, it's probably going to be massively more powerful than what I'm used to....

Sheesh. What a week, eh? First applying for a job for the first time since September of 2004; then seeing a great band playing live; then having a telephone interview about the job that makes it seem quite likely that it's mine for the taking; then picking up the PS3 with BluRay (we watched an episode of "Planet Earth" on it last night and omg - not a phrase I use - it looked totally gorgeous, like you could just step into the picture and be there!); and today ordering a new computer. That's a lot of stuff all at once; I just hope my head doesn't explode from it all!

Just got back from my weekly grocery shopping, which took longer than usual because of having to wait in line longer than usual. Aside from the clerk at the 6 items or less counter (who also deals with returned bottles, lottery tickets, etc.), there was only one checker working during the time I was there. When I had my shopping done and went to check out, the line-up included one customer whose groceries were in the process of being rung up, a man behind that person with a medium-sized batch of groceries, and a completely full cart with no person attached. I pulled my cart up behind the latter, and a moment later a woman stepped by me and put one item in the loaded cart. And then wandered off again....

She was gone a long time, too; the first person was finished up, the man with the medium-sized load was being served and almost done, and I was just about to shove the loaded cart to the side since the woman hadn't come back, when she did come back, adding more items to her cart.

I really wanted to yell at her, and say, "Lady, you DON'T get in line to pay for your groceries when you HAVEN'T FINISHED SHOPPING YET!!!!!!"

I'm getting less and less tolerant of this kind of behaviour, I tell you. The woman looked to be in her 30s, so she certainly should have known better, too.

Back in June of 2007, I posted ( this ) about a wonderful little Irish movie called Once; I hope that everybody saw it (you can get it on DVD now if you missed it) because it's an entirely charming and heart-warming movie. And it gets the details about being a musician right, which is amazing in and of itself.

One of the things I most loved about the film was that the two protagonists, Guy (Glen Hansard) and Girl (Marketa Irglova), don't end up as lovers, a refreshing change from Hollywood-style movie endings; I was a bit miffed, actually, when I found out that Glen and Mar did become lovers in real life, at least for a time. They teamed up with Glen's long-time band The Frames, and they have been recording and touring as The Swell Season for the past couple of years. During that time, Glen and Mar's romance came to an end, but their musical partnership has continued, and last night they came to L'Olympia, a 2,000-seat venue used for live theatre and musical events. I expected a smaller space and a smaller crowd, figuring that not a lot of people would remember the movie after 2 1/2 years, especially as it wasn't a cross-over hit in the French population, as far as I knew. So imagine my surprise to find that when we arrived, 45 minutes before the opening act (Doveman) was scheduled to start, most of the middle section of the theatre was already full!

We were lucky, actually, because we were early enough to get seats only about 8 or 10 rows back, on the left-hand side but not too far from the middle aisle, so we ended up having a good view of the stage. I was particularly pleased because by about 7:45, the management had opened the balcony to audience members, and it got completely filled in too. The audience (around us anyway) was largely young and francophone, which also surprised me.

Maybe everybody was in on the secret we knew; that the music these people make is so filled with emotion and heart that it's impossible not to be moved. Certainly by the time the band took the stage, just after 9 PM (following an okay 45-minute set by the lead singer/songwriter of Doveman, playing piano on his own without a band backing him - but he has one of those breathy whispery vocal styles that basically inhibits any emotional expression other than depression, and his lyrics weren't good enough to make him stand out from a zillion others like him these days - he told funny stories between songs, though), the crowd was already half in love with just seeing Glen and Mar - and the rest of the band! - so when the pair of them came out alone, sat on the floor of the stage and played "Lies" (if I remember right) from the film, with her playing a small Casio and him on guitar, well, the audience was already with them heart and soul.

And it stayed that way for the rest of the 2 1/2 hour long (!) set, which included the two of them singing alone together, Glen doing some solo stuff, the full band playing and singing, and even a solo violin piece by Colm Mac Con Iomaire which was quite amazing. Even more incredible was Glen doing a couple of numbers not only by himself, but by himself after unplugging his guitar and turning off the microphone, singing and playing just as if he were busking in the street with no amplification whatsoever - and you could hear every note, he's that powerful a singer and player. (The acoustics of the place are so-so, certainly not good enough to create that effect if he wasn't able to do it on his own.) Just stunning!

They went through about 2/3 of the songs from Once, and half a dozen from their new album, Strict Joy (btw, GET IT NOW!!!!!), not to mention covering Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" (they "larned themselves" that song when they realized they'd be coming to Montreal, Leonard's home town). Of course the first encore of the evening was "Falling Slowly," the song from Once that won the Oscar; but they also sang an old Clancy Brothers song after noting the remaining Clancy brother is on his deathbed in Ireland now. Because that was a bit of a downer, they ended the evening doing an a capella rendition, audience singing along, of a Dylan tune (which escapes me at the moment, but I always think it's a Grateful Dead song 'cause they covered it but it wasn't "Cripple Creek").

With various songs throughout the evening, Glen schooled the audience in choruses he wanted us all to sing, particularly on "High Horses" and "Back Broke" from the new album. Now I don't know if it was an auditory illusion brought upon by sheer joy of the energy feedback between band and audience, the absolute lovefest going on all night, but I swear I have never heard an audience sing along and sound as good as we did last night. Sure, Glen as a seasoned performer could have just been saying it when he thanked the audience for how amazing we sounded, but I don't think so - he's the sort of person who wears his heart on his sleeve (and in his voice, how that man can sing full-out the way he does night after night and not lose his voice entirely is beyond me) and I think he said it because it was true. It was obvious how much the audience loved the band and how much the band appreciated and returned that love, and the whole evening was warmer and more full of joy than I can remember experiencing at a concert in a very long time.

If they come anywhere near your town (and ms_alis, they're doing dates in the UK and Europe in the New Year), you really owe it to yourself to see them. These folks are just wonderful and even though I'm totally dead today from lack of sleep, I'm incredibly glad we went.

My favourite time of the year, Autumn, has arrived, and so have many new books!

( Footprints of the Devil, by Olive Etchells. )

( Two of the Deadliest, edited by Elizabeth George. )

( Memoirs of a Master Forger, by William Heaney. )

( The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance. )

( The Eyes of the Overworld, by Jack Vance. )

( Cugel's Saga, by Jack Vance. )

( The Monster In the Box, by Ruth Rendell. )

I look at the Saturday job listings every week, in the faint hope that there might be something suitable for me - I've lived here 13 1/2 years now, and can cite, oh, 6 possible jobs listed in the newspaper throughout that whole time. There was one today, though:

"Typist/dictaphonist needed. Work from home. WordPerfect. Flawless English required. Legal experience, French assets. Send Cv to...."


Well. I know WordPerfect - haven't used it in years, and don't have the program itself anymore, and I don't even know if it's possible to buy it now - but I do know how to use it. My English is pretty damned flawless, and I've had medical-legal experience over a very long period of time, which includes a lot of legalese (albeit Californian, not Quebecois). The French, well...but they only want it as a positive asset, not a requirement. So.

Here's a rundown of my work hours since April, citing hours per 2-week pay period: 23.75 hours (my highest in ages, from April 1 - 15); 11.00 hours; 20.50 hours (but that's the ENTIRE month of May!); 10.75 hours; 14.75 hours; 18.25 hours; 18.00 hours (the latter two all of July, a better month than June obviously); 14.75 hours (ALL of August!); 10.25 hours; 15.50 hours; 17.75 hours; and, just billed for the latter half of October, 16.00 hours.

I don't know if the ad today represents a full-time or part-time job - frankly, I don't want a full time job anymore, and with Chris's income I don't need one either. But part time? Well, I'd say I've got time to horn in another part-time job on top of the one I'm already doing, don't you think?

I've just got to work up the confidence to apply, keeping in mind that not having the WordPerfect program myself anymore could be a deal-breaker....

ETA: Just sent off my resume, along with a cover email, for this job. Ack!

Yesterday our street was partially blocked at the intersection with Notre Dame while City workers ("les cols bleu" in French, or "blue collars" - the manual laborers employed by the city; I like the French term, it sounds far more dignified than "laborers" or "blue collars" even) started work on repaving our block. This is work that has been going on around us since, oh, April I think, but this is the first time it's come to our actual street instead of the surrounding streets.

As far as I can tell, there seems to be no great need to repave our road, although since I'm not a driver, I'm hardly a good judge of that. But certainly there are none of the potholes and slip'n'sliding cover-overs of potholes that were rampant in our old neighbourhood in NDG. In fact, all the City services here in St. Henri are about a zillion times better and more efficient than in our old neighbourhood of NDG. This despite the fact that St. Henri is a much poorer neighbourhood than our part of NDG, Monkland Village, which paid much higher taxes to the City. I hesitate to say that this is because St. Henri is more francophone and Monkland Village (NDG as a whole) is much more anglophone, but you know. Just sayin'.

Thing is, Montreal is notorious - in its own mind anyway - for incredibly bad roadwork; not just concrete overpasses collapsing suddenly as happened a few years back, but in terms of very modest and ordinary work such as paving the road. Now it's definitely true that the climate here is tough on any kind of road-surfacing materials, both because of the extreme fluctuation in temperature between summer and winter, and because of the periodic freeze-thaw-freeze cycle that happens at least a couple of times each winter; as a result of both, the road materials tend to expand and contract with a far greater frequency than happens in more even-tempered climates. But that's not the whole of it; the City is rife with corruption in most contracts, and it's long been known that it tends to buy cheap materials at inflated prices from contractors. So you've generally got really bad road-paving materials, stuff that's going to warp and cave very quickly, and you pile it onto roads in a climate almost designed to cause problems with the roads. The result is horrendous potholes and patchwork all over the place and just bad roads. But I thought the road here looked just fine....

Then again, I lived in San Francisco for 16 years, and it was always a source of quiet amusement to note that the road repair cycle in that City was to start at the foot of Market Street, at the Embarcadero, and repave Market all the way to its conjunction with Castro Street, a movement of repair that would take a year or so (since workers could do the work all year round, not like here where outdoor work is suspended from the end of November until April, at best); after which they would start back at the Embarcadero again, going up Market Street on the way back to Castro. I never heard a good explanation for this pretty much constant work on that particular street, and I can't say that I noticed a ton of roadwork being done on other streets in the City over the years.

Which just goes to show, every city has its own special quirks, particularly as regards road repair {g}.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate, hate, HATE my current computer? It has been giving me the Blue Screen of Death periodically for the past few months, and it's gotten incredibly slow in execution and constantly tells me I've got something wrong (which the programs then tell me can't be fixed), and I've just had it up to HERE with the damned thing. I decided some time back that I've got to get a new machine, but Chris and I figured we'd wait until Windows 7 was out and enough feedback had occurred to determine that it was reasonably stable before getting the new machine.

I'm not interested in upgrading, especially because I use Windows XP and I've heard that upgrading from that system to Windows 7 is pretty rough, but also because I hate hate HATE my computer! It was the best thing since sliced bread back when I bought it, almost exactly 6 years ago now (November 2003), but 6 years in computer terms is, what, 150 in human years? A lot, anyway, and my machine is clearly corrupt and decrepit by now, despite various anti-virus, firewalls, etc. etc. etc. stuff that's on it.

Thus far, I've heard reasonably good things about Windows 7, but I thought I'd post here to see if anybody has any stories, positive or negative, about the new system.

In a related development, I got an email from McAfee the other day telling me my "subscription" with them was automatically renewed, unless I canceled within 60 days. Well, my understanding is that the latest McAfee will be bundled with either the computer itself (probably from Dell, they've been reliable in the past) or with Windows 7, so obviously I don't want to renew my current version - plus, evidently they've been charging almost half of the total cost (US$30 out of $US80 per year) for some "parental control" feature, and since I'm not a parent I clearly don't need that feature (and didn't know until this current email that I was being charged for it).

I think I'll be getting the Windows 7 Professional version - I think that's the name, it's the middle one of the three versions, more powerful than the basic home version but less so than some ultimate one that sounds like only NASA programmers and super-geek gamers need; since I do work at home, the $100 or so more that the Pro one costs is likely to be worth it to me. Plus there are some networking features that Chris says are good. (BTW, he may well upgrade too in the near future, but I suspect he'll just do an upgrade versus buying an entirely new machine, as his is newer than mine and he's added upgrades as needed.)

Speaking of which, I'm not sure of exactly what hardware I need; I use an MS ergonomic keyboard (which is silver and black, WayCool) and a Logitech ergonomic mouse (which has a single button on the side that automatically double-clicks on items instead of forcing you to click twice). These both work well and are, in fact, necessary for me, but both are quite old (not as old as 2003, but I'd say at least from 2005 or 2006 at latest) and I don't know how they'll work with new-generation PCs. Anyone with knowledge or advice on that count would be helpful too! (Particularly on the keyboard as, not surprisingly, it's quite difficult to find an English-language ergonomic keyboard in the stores here in Quebec - I eventually found this one at Bureau en Gros {Staples in the US and ROC}, but it was the only model in the store, and there were none at all at places like Future Shop. Having the French keyboard {with accented vowels and consonants, that is} could be kind of interesting, but probably would fuck up my typing skills in no time at all! So I'd rather know beforehand if I should order a new ergonomic keyboard from abroad or just keep my old one.)

Anyway. We're looking at replacing this crusty rusty machine within, oh, the next 3-4 weeks, so any advice is welcome!

Aside from going to the movie yesterday evening (reviewed in my last post), we spent yesterday going to the Atwater Market for fruits and veggies (esp. stuff for making fajitas, meaning avocados in particular, and for doing up a potato-leek soup base that I'll make and freeze sometime this week), and then heading off downtown. We like eating at a restaurant called Lesvos and the people there know and like us because we've been there so often (and we're good tippers and not-difficult customers); the parents of the family-run resto recently bought an auberge in Ste. Agathe in the Laurentians, the Auberge du lac des Sables, right on the lake front, and as one of their best customers, we just received an email invitation for a special offer at the hotel - 2 nights, with two breakfasts and one 5-course dinner at their new Lesvos restaurant in the auberge for $92 per person, which is actually less than half price. The rooms look lovely, we know the dining room is gorgeous and the food will be terrific (it being the same menu as the Lesvos here in town), and the setting could be quite stunning, depending on the weather. The offer is only open until the end of November, but since my b-day is coming up....Well, our immediate goal in going downtown yesterday was to check at the bus station if there's a bus to Ste. Agathe from Montreal. Turns out there is, but it lets passengers off about 3 1/2 kilometers from the hotel, so we'll have to inquire at the hotel about having a cab sent to pick us up. We need to see if a friend can feed the cats for two days, but if so, hopefully we'll get to spend a couple of days in the Laurentians before it gets too cold!

To check the place out, see http://www.aubergedulac.com and click on the photos!

Ran some other errands downtown too (books and DVDs needed to be bought, after all), and had coffee and a muffin in the train station food court, which is on our way from downtown to the Orange metro line, which takes us home directly; there's a lovely eating area at the train station, where all the walls are painted as if library shelves, with the titles of books written in English or French on the spines of painted books, just a very pleasant place to have a coffee. After a bit of time at home following that, we headed out again to the movie and dinner at another restaurant and after-dinner "refreshments" at the nearby apartment of one of our friends who came to the movie - we didn't get home until after midnight and not to sleep until after 1 AM. Hence no surprise that we slept in past 10 AM this morning!

Which is why it's surprising we got as much done today as we did, given our late start! I managed to rake up a lot of the leaves that fell last week, removing enough of them that Chris was finally able to mow the lawn as well. I deadheaded the roses and trimmed back the rose bushes - I don't know if I cut them back enough, but I cut them back some at least - and did some other tidying up around the garden. Then to the balconies, where I cleaned the balcony furniture and between us we moved table and umbrella and chairs to the basement, and the woven hammock to its indoor resting spot for the winter. We've left out the first floor bistro table and 2 chairs for the moment, as we might still have occasion to sit out there before it gets too cold, but our second and third floor balconies are now bare, well, except for the remaining few plants on the third floor (gazanias, petunias and dwarf snapdragons are still producing, everything else is done and gone) and the refilled bird feeder on the second floor. I also swept the second floor balcony quite thoroughly, haven't gotten to the third floor yet for that as there are still too many planters in the way. I spent an inordinate amount of time simmering black beans that I'd soaked overnight in water, and chopping up veggies and making guacamole for dinner tonight; took quite a bit longer than my usual prep times for cooking, but it all tasted quite yummy, so that's okay! Add in email and bill paying and bankbook balancing, and, well, I'm only just now (at around 8 PM) getting the time to start reading, before "Bored to Death" comes on at 9:30 PM.

Shouldn't have any trouble sleeping tonight, despite not getting up 'til 10 AM; all that outdoor activity is enough to make anyone sleepy!

"A Serious Man" is the latest Coen Brothers movie and, as is their practice, it's completely different from their most recent couple of movies, "Burn After Reading" and "No Country for Old Men." This is perhaps more like some of their earlier films like "Fargo," in the sense that it's set in small-town middle America (in this case in Minnesota) and features the small stories of the people living there. Our focus here is on Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg), an associate mathematics professor at a small university in the mid-1960s who's up for tenure and uncertain whether he'll get it. As a Jew, he's surrounded by a small but complete community of Jewish doctors, lawyers, fellow professors, rabbis, etc., within the larger goyish world. Early in the film, his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) informs him that she wants a divorce as she's developed an attachment to family friend, 3-year widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); his unemployed brother Arthur (Richard Kind) has been living for an unspecified period of time with the family, sleeping on the couch and hogging the bathroom at all hours while he develops his very cryptic, yet apparently workable, theory of probability; his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) is especially frustrated by Uncle Arthur's behaviour with the bathroom as she's a typical mid-1960s teenaged girl and needs to wash her hair a lot {g}; and son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is about to be bar-mitzvah'ed if only he can manage to study his recitation of the Torah in-between moments when he's not running away from local tough-guy/pot dealer Mike Fagle (Jon Kaminski Jr.) to whom he owes $20, or getting high with his "Reefer Buddy" (the nameless character is played by Benjamin Portnoe). Unfortunately for Larry, a South Korean student (played by David Kang) who has failed Larry's midterm is desparate to get a passing grade in order to continue on to study physics, and that student leaves a packet of money on Larry's desk in an attempt to bribe him; and the young man's father (Steve Park) subsequently turns up to threaten him with a lawsuit for defamation of character because Larry has accused the young man of attempted bribery. In addition, his wife and her lover have convinced/forced him to go live in a motel while trying to juggle all these matters; he's tring to sort out legal issues concerning the divorce, which is complicated by the fact that Sy wants Judith to obtain a get, a religious divorce ceremony, not to mention that Arthur is facing criminal charges for a variety of offenses and of course has no money to pay for a lawyer. He is being pressured to get advice from local rabbis, but his attempts to do so result in no help, particularly when he is unable to obtain an appointment with the wisest of them all, Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell). On top of that, a sales rep from Columbia House is harassing him by phone because he's behind on payments for records shipped, even though he never signed up for that sales deal.

And these are only the beginning of Larry's troubles....

This is a wonderful movie, full of deft and terrific performances by a cast of people of whom most will have never heard - according to our friend Marguerite, one actor (I think it's Simon Helberg?) is on "The Big Bang Theory," and Alan Arkin's son Adam has a role as Larry's divorce lawyer, but that's about it for recognizable names or faces. Definitely a latter-day woeful tale of Job-ian proportions, but it's all handled so deftly that it is pretty much hilarious all the way through; yes, Larry's got problems piled on problems and they're just getting bigger and bigger as life goes on, but the way these problems are depicted by others to him and the way he handles them - well, can you say black comedy? Absolutely priceless!

Evidently some of this material is based on the Coen brothers' own experience of growing up Jewish in Minnesota in the 1960s (although presumably their family didn't suffer quite the extent of traumas piled onto the Gopnik tribe), and certainly much of the dialogue and, especially, the relationships between the various people all ring true. Add in some vintage Airplane use to great effect both on the soundtrack and as part of the story itself, and you've got a wonderful small film that deserves a lot of attention. Highly recommended!

We've got municipal elections coming up here on November 1st, and the race is getting uglier and more disgusting by the day. The current Mayor, who is looking for a third term, is contending with something like half a dozen investigations into various corruption charges within his administration; he defends himself by saying that whenever he's heard of any such allegations, he orders an immediate investigation, but the implication is that either he's corrupt himself and looking the other way (until the corruption comes out another way) or he's so incompetent that he has no idea what's going on in his own administration.

Then the chief contender is a former provincial minister under the PQ and a fierce separatist; she decided to take over the main opposition party in Montreal politics, shoving aside the previous leader who went from last Friday denying any contact with a suspected organized crime figure who is implicated in some of the current Mayor's investigations to on Sunday abruptly resigning from the party and his City Council seat (leaving no one in his riding to take over for his party; the voters in that riding are simply deprived of voting for a candidate in that party) and all this week making accusations of further widespread corruption involving political party fundraising in the city, including bribes given to members of his own former party. (BTW, he used to be a member of the current Mayor's party and after a falling out with him, joined the opposition.) The current head of the opposition refuses to respond to his allegations of corruption in her own party; but easily the biggest obstacle she has to overcome with respect to the Anglo community is the fact that she doesn't speak English and, even worse, when a minister in the provincial legislature, she is the one who drafted and created the forced mergers of several years ago, wherein outlying municipalities - suburbs, basically - of Montreal, Quebec City and the primary city on the South Shore, Longuieiul (I can't spell it OR pronounce it, but Chris works there!) were forcibly merged into the larger cities, thereby losing their autonomy (and a good deal of municipal funding). These forced mergers were at least partially undone after the Liberals came to power in provincial politics, but many people are still furious with this candidate over that.

There are two other contenders for Mayor - one is a female city councilor who has the advantage of good English along with her French (though to be fair, 3 of the 4 candidates speak English well or pretty well), but her main claim to fame is an attempt she made a couple of years ago to pass a bylaw that would prohibit one particular street musician, "the Spoon Man," from plying his trade at his spot of choice, in front of Ogilvy's, a high-end department store. People found her very mean-spirited in that attempt, and she eventually gave it up, but that didn't leave her bathed in a golden light, shall we say.

Finally, there's the party I most likely will vote for, Projet Montreal, whose leader is a separatist but states specifically that he's not interested in bringing nationalist politics into the administration of city. He has the advantage of having a trusted ex-judge, Gomery (who led the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal that so damaged the federal Liberals), keeping tabs on the party's behaviour and fundraising, to make sure it's all above-board and honest, and I believe this candidate is honest and, if not incorruptible, at least not corrupted yet. But he's not a politician, he's an academic, and while some of his ideas sound great (especially in terms of working on environmental issues), they might be more flights of fancy than realistic proposals. And, a few years ago when he was in academia, he published a book in which he stated his belief that the 9/11 attacks were organized or somehow sponsored by the Bush Administration. He says he wrote that because he wanted to be provocative in order to boost sales of his book, but he's never actually stated that he doesn't believe that particular conspiracy theory anymore. So he's a bit of a nutcase. But as far as I can tell, he's the best of a poor batch of candidates to choose from, sigh....

Ack! I never remember from one year to the next, but I think October 22 is pretty early for snow to be falling in Montreal - yes, it's melting on contact with the ground, but it's definitely not one or two little flakes, we're talking fat globules of snowflakes in large numbers....It's been way below normal temperature-wise for a couple of weeks now (with the odd day at a normal temp), but this is the first actual snowfall. Well. Also the first actual rainfall in some days too.

I haven't covered up my primrose lilac with burlap yet, hope this snow doesn't freak it out! And it's definitely time to cut back the rose shrubs for winter (I'm still undecided about covering them - it seems like a good idea, but friends who have rose bushes never bother and the roses are fine the next year; I don't know if covering them would do them more harm than good, as presumably they get less moisture under burlap all winter long).

Also last night must have been very windy, because when I opened the curtains this morning I found that TONS of leaves had fallen on our yard; I actually raked some leaves just on Monday, but this is really like a blanket of them, almost every segment of the yard is covered. Unfortunately Chris hasn't had time to mow the lawn in a while, so the grass is very long, and I found it very difficult to try to rake leaves with the grass that high; he can't mow it until it's dryer and rain is due off and on for the next few days. So maybe the leaves will just remain on the ground over the winter and emerge from the snow as mulch next Spring.

I started a Gardening Journal today, taking an old 10" x 8" notebook and, first listing all of our plants (but I forgot to list the ferns and grasses, dammit!) and their positions more or less in the garden, and then I added some general notes (i.e., that I don't know precisely where each variety of Spring flowers are in the three beds by the fence). We've got like 46 separate plants now, some of them in multiple amounts! My plan is to just jot down stuff as I do it - when I trim the rose shrubs, for example, or when I cover the primrose lilac - with the date noted. Dunno if it will grow and grow, this journal, or just fizzle out altogether, but I figured having a place where I keep all the info together is a good idea. I'm fairly methodical that way anyhow; I like making lists....

In other news, my bro Rich emailed me yesterday to let me know I could expect a box from Amazon.ca containing my b-day presents; amazingly, said box arrived today! And my mother let me know the other day that she'd sent my b-day presents earlier this week too, so I'm on the look-out for that one as well....My b-day is still, oh, just under 3 weeks away, and I've only just started to think about it. I nudged Chris today about getting in touch with certain friends who have a mother with a b-day close to mine; they always have a family do for that, and we try to organize it so that my b-day do doesn't clash with their mother's. Seems to me that we're leaving it kind of late this year, though....OTOH, usually I just have a potluck type thing at home, 'cause I like doing that, but I don't feel like preparing anything in particular myself this year and instead I've decided on a Japanese restaurant we all like - we've had New Year's Eve dinners there with the whole gang, so I know everyone else likes it and doesn't find it too expensive, which is of course always a consideration. But Chris needs to get on the ball about this pronto, because it's his job to set it all up. And he's kind of fixated these days on getting a PS3, partly for games but mostly because it includes a BluRay function which plays DVDs as well as the new technology only makes the DVDs look better than before. He just got both a raise and a bonus for some overnight work he and his group did the other week; the first after-tax increase in his paycheque happens to be just about the cost of a PS3. So can you blame him for being distracted {g}?