Ugh. Morning. Well, if you can call 1:02 pm "morning"...

Last night my friend C-Bird had a sort of going-away party ("Bird's last Tuesday"), before he takes off for Honduras. Good times. I hope he made it to his train this morning. I went for 3am Two-dollar Chow Mein with T-wiz before we cabbed home, it was awesome. It is hard to describe Two-dollar Chow Mein in any appealing terms. Basically, there is a hole in a window on St Laurent, you go up to the window and say "Two Dollar, Please" and you get handed a styrofoam container filled with slightly crunchy Chow Mein noodles slathered in "peanut sauce". The peanut sauce is widely suspected to just be watered down, heated up peanut butter. You can also ask for "Three Dollar", which is just Two Dollar with a spring roll. But the spring roll is pretty small, and for just another dollar you could get a second Two Dollar, and be the envy of all your friends. Two Dollar is possibly my favorite part of going out in Montreal, and I firmly believe that it has some sort of magical hangover-curing properties...

On New Years AC was sick so we watched videos until after midnight, then she went to bed and I went to T-wiz's loft party. (No, I did not abandon her - she told me to go). That was fun, although getting a taxi was a challenge. It was almost close enough that I could walk, but the areas you have to walk through are a bit sketchy, and mostly devoid of people at 4am on New Years Eve. Montreal more-or-less shuts down completely, so you can't buy groceries from after about 5pm on the 31st to noon-ish on the 2nd. So the most important thing to remember is to buy everything you are going to need before the 31st. Which, of course, I forgot, and AC was in Calgary so she couldn't do it. So the January 1st scene was one of trying to scrounge up edible things in our house. I think we had a cake for dinner...

How was your Christmas? Mine was fine. We watched lots of videos, mostly, and read books and went for walks. Although you can't go for walks on Christmas Eve, because it is just too creepy. Nobody is out on Christmas Eve except homeless and/or crazy people. So we didn't walk then. AC got me some sweet boots, so now I don't have to concentrate so much on navigating around the giant swamps that occur on every street corner in downtown Montreal once the snow starts to melt. Now I can just walk through them, and have dry socks but wet pants for the rest of the day. I fear no puddle...

A few days after Christmas, AC went back to Calgary to visit her mom. I stayed here because the flights were insanely expensive. Everyone I knew had gone home for the holidays, so I mostly just bummed around the house. Then I got a bit stir-crazy, so I went out for a walk, just to be out of the house. The Starbucks cashier was the first person I had spoken to in like 3 days. I did talk to AC on the phone, I mean the first live human being in front of my face. It kind of weirded me out. Then I started to think about it, and I realized something completely bizarre.

Ok, so in terms of talking to living beings, I talk to AC the most. But what about after her? I work from home, so I don't really need to leave the house except to do things like get groceries. I don't go out at nights very often, although the frequency has picked up lately. So, on a day-to-day basis, most of the non-AC people I talk to are cashiers. At least, that's what I initially thought. Until I realized two things. One, I often don't say anything to the cashiers. They usually speak in French, I don't really understand so I just hand them my debit card. Two, you can't really go anywhere downtown without being asked for change by at least one or two homeless people, sometimes quite a few more if you are going a long way. I try to not ignore them, usually I say something like "Sorry, I don't have any change, have a nice day" (AC taught me to add that last bit - the homeless people are much more friendly if you are pleasant). So I do actually speak to them. Then the majority of non-AC people that I speak to are in fact not cashiers, but homeless people. I talk to homeless people more often than I talk to anyone else (except AC). Weird, no? Well it totally weirded me out. Luckily Bird got back the next day and we went out to Bifteck for pitchers and free popcorn.

Oh, speaking of dirty Montreal bars, Miami Bar is closed again! Tragedy! Cruelty-of-life! Apparently Miami Bar only has a restaurant liquor license, which are way cheaper but mean that they have to serve food. But the owner doesn't want to pay for a cook, so he expects the bartenders to just "whip up a frozen pizza" when the inspector comes. At least, that's why it closed the last time. Hopefully it opens again...they built a new terrasse last year and everything. Even painted the ceiling! Oh Miami, where are you...

( You might not think it's that big of a deal, Miami Bar closing. But the last time I wrote about it, I received several e-mails from complete strangers expressing solidarity and concern that Miami Bar had been shut down, and wanting me to let them know if and when it re-opened. I was surprised...)

I'm getting tired of writing, so I will leave you with this final story. We have no freezer. Well, technically, we have a freezer, but for all intents-and-purposes we do not, because it currently looks like this:

Yes. Frosted over, solid. It seems that the previous tennants took the door off the freezer (we thought it was lost, but I found it a few days ago on the top shelf of a cupboard). With the door off, the freezer starts frosting up like crazy. Underneath the outer frost layer is solid ice, so you can't just scrape it off. You can go at the ice with a screwdriver for a while, but it is dangerous because it could puncture whatever it is that keeps the freezer cold and spray freon everywhere (at least, this is what the landlord told me). I have done it anyway, and got it about half-cleared, but within two weeks it was frozen solid again. And defrosting is such a huge pain - we don't have control over the heat in our house, so I think it will take forever. Hence, no freezer. (incidentally, that picture is a few days old, and the banana is now half-consumed by the ever-growing ice-maw).

Anyway, so we have no freezer. That means no ice-cream. We were out shopping (for my boots!) and AC wanted some ice cream. There are no cone places in the Alexis-Nihon shopping centre, but there is an IGA. I had a brainwave - we could buy ice cream and keep it on the fire escape! Nobody goes out there (we're on the top floor), and it was like -10C or something. Totally cold enough to keep the sandwiches frozen. So we did it, we bought ice cream sandwiches from the IGA, ate a few of them in the food court, and then I took them home and put them on the fire escape.

Of course, the next day it goes up to just below 0. The ice cream sandwiches were too soft to eat, although I had hope that they would re-freeze and be tasty. So, I waited. And then I forgot about them, until yesterday when it was down around -10 again. The ice-cream-sandwich craving hit, so I worked the window open (they are always freezing shut) and picked up the...box...but what is this? It is empty? The box is empty BECAUSE SQUIRRELS HAVE EATEN MY ICE CREAM SANDWICHES! See, there are these squirrels that come and hang out on our fire escape. I had even heard them out there, poking at the ice cream sandwich bag (the box was tied up inside a plastic bag). But either I tied a crappy knot, or these are super-intelligent squirrels, because the knot was undone. No hole in the bag. And an empty box of ice-cream sandwiches. So, the moral of this story is, don't think you can get away with leaving your ice-cream sandwiches out on the fire escape to keep them frozen, not if you've got super-intelligent squirrels running around.

And that's it. Happy New Year.

Buildings in downtown Montreal are old. Most of them, anyway. It's just the way it is - downtown Montreal was built a looong time ago. That's why our place has terrible water pressure on the fourth floor. Because it's old. That's why heating for the entire building only has one setting - essentially a valve on the boiler in the basement. In theory, we have control over the valves on the radiators in our apartment. In theory. But, in Montreal when an apartment has to be repainted, there is a legion of painter-guys who will come and paint the place. They always paint it white. And they paint everything. They paint over light fixtures. They paint over doors. They paint over phone jacks and power outlets and they paint over radiators too. And they paint it thick. Our last place here (before we moved to Calgary) was repainted before we moved in. There was a door to a closet that we couldn't open for two months. Finally one day I got fed up, put my foot up on the wall, and pulled as hard as I could. The door opened, but it also split a quarter of the way down. So, yeah, the paint is thick. On phone jacks it means that you can't get the phone cord into them. On radiators it means you can't adjust those valves even if you want to, not unless you spend a few hours chipping off the paint.

Hrm. Somehow I rambled on to radiators. Anyway, since I finished my paper last week, I have been doing some "home improvement", if you will. First up was the living room. See, we moved the bed from the bedroom into the living room, so that the bedroom could be an office. There were good reasons for this that I'm not going to get into. But, anyway, now the bed is in the living room. That's fine except that there is no door to the kitchen, so the light comes in at night. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal if you live in Calgary, but in Montreal it never really gets dark. There's just too many lights on in this city. And I can't sleep if it's not dark.

So, we needed curtains. Around the bed. Think four-poster, only without the posts, and walls on two sides. What to do? Well, IKEA sells something called DIGNITET, which is basically a piece of wire and two little things to stick onto the wall. Seems easy. Just stick the doo-hickeys onto the wall, string the wire between them, torque it up and you're golden. Right? Yea, right...

I needed the wire to "turn the corner", to create an L-shape around the bed, so I actually had a thingamajig that the wire would pass through. This corner thingamajig obviously needed to be attached to something, in my case the ceiling. The whole deal is up at ceiling height, with the curtains hanging down around the bed. So, doo-hickey number 1, and the corner thingamajig, go up no problem. Gravy. The second doo-hickey, though, that one is trouble. See, that one had to go on the wall that is also a side of the building, above the window. It seems like our apartment was actually formed out of a larger room, so most of the interior walls are newer-ish. But that outside wall - that wall is old. Old, old plaster. Oh, and I think it's been water damaged, too.

Have you ever tried to put screws into ancient water-damaged plaster walls?

Sure, the screws go in, sort of. But most of the time you can pull them back out with your fingers. Now, if you're hanging a picture, that might be fine. Even curtain rods are usually ok, as long as they are just pushing downwards. But, even if you took Science 15 you probably realize that hanging a curtain on that wire is going to pull the wire away from the wall. Which pulls the doo-hickey away from the wall. Which pulls on the screws which aren't really attached to the wall, in any sense of the word. Adjacent, perhaps, would be a better description. In this situation, those screws just come right out. BLAM! And then a flying doo-hickey of death swings across the room. Duck and cover!

So, the first time this happened, I thought "maybe that was just a bad spot". So I moved the doo-hickey over a bit and tried again. The screws felt like they were tight. I even risked pulling on the doo-hickey - it held. But, as soon as there was any load on that wire - BLAM! How about the ceiling, like the thingamajig? BLAM!

Ok, so the doo-hickey can't go into the wall. My MacGyver instinct takes over. What if I had a bigger piece of wood, I could screw the doo-hickey to it, and then put lots of screws into the wall? Spread out the load, bed-of-nails style. Genius. Only I don't have the right piece of wood. In fact, I don't have any wood, except some clementine boxes (think millimeter-thick balsa here, folks, with a few slices of particleboard on the bottom) and some pieces of our futon/couch frame that we don't use because it never needs to be a bed (I hope).

Not promising. But...Eureka! There is a window underneath where the doo-hickey has to go. The window has a frame. The frame is...wait for it...WOOD! Sweet, luscious wood. Wood that will hold a screw and never, ever let it go. Small problem - the window frame is a bit low. The wire won't be anywhere near level. The curtains will not be especially useful if they don't stay put. So, here's the plan - screw the futon frame piece to the window frame. Screw the doo-hickey to the futon frame piece. done.

If only it were that simple. First problem: my screws are only half an inch long. How the hell do I attach a 1.5 inch thick piece of futon frame to a window frame? Fsck. But, wait! Clementine-boxes-with-particleboard-bottoms to the rescue! Screw the particleboard strips to the window frame and the futon wood, and we're golden. Of course, they split when I put screws into them. So I use nails. Nothing like standing on a wobbly chair on top of a wobbly table reaching up as high as you can (did I mention we had high ceilings) trying to hammer nails exactly in the middle of little pieces of wood, hoping they don't split (guess what: they still do). Eventually I remember that I do in fact have a drill bit, and can drill holes in the wood first so that the screws won't split them. That is helpful. Soon the contraption is finished, and the doo-hickey in place:

This is the turning point. All the doo-hickeys are affixed to walls/ceilings/contraptions. Now just cut the wire to the right length, and...oh. No wire cutters. Well, old dull wire strippers might cut through it, right? Sure, eventually. There are little bits of wire everywhere, but the wire is cut to length. Now just torque it up, and it's done. And it only took all afternoon!

Now, it's only a matter of time until one of us pulls on a curtain by accident and tears the whole contraption off the wall. But instead of a flying doo-hickey of death, we will have an entire flying contraption. No matter. It works. It's dark. I can sleep the good sleep. Hallelujah!

Tommorrow I'll tell you about the counter I added to the kitchen...

*** BREAKING UPDATE ***

Shortly after I posted this entry, I sat down on the bed and caught some of the curtain. Basically this pulled the curtain down, and, well, something had to give. Much to my surprise, the doo-hickies on the wall and the contraption both held! Hurrah! Unfortunately the corner-thingamajig on the ceiling did not fare so well, leaving this gaping hole:

Things looked like this for a while (you can see the contraption in the top right):

But, I managed to re-attach the ceiling thingamajig. Since I put this curtain up the first time, I have discovered the wonderous world of gypsum screw anchors. The thingamajig is now attached to the ceiling using two very large gypsum anchors, so the next time I sit on the curtain, it's going to take a much larger piece of the ceiling with it...

Oh, and I got my $400 bribe from Ralph Klein today. Thank god for dinosaurs that died millions of years ago, leaving the region of the country where I was born blessed with large volumes of fossil fuel!

And, congratulations (or, ahem, "mad propz") to my friends Tyler and Rachelle - today they had a baby. Or maybe yesterday. Either way, baby! (Hi Abigail)

First and foremost, AC insists that I clearly note that we did not paint our walls that color. The apartment came that way. We had no say in it. Really.

Our apartment also came with a terrible fridge, as I mentioned a while ago (scroll down). It was small, had a tiny, completely frosted-over freezer, and also had broken feet so that it wobbled. This would have been less of a problem if the top of the fridge hadn't been one of our main counter-spaces. Because, of course, our kitchen is tiny. The only counter space is beside the sink, and it's about the size of the sink. Naturally that is where the dishes pile up (at first - then they pile up on the sink. Then on the stove. Etc.)

So we effectively had no counter space. We "created" some by putting a big wooden cutting board on top of one of those plastic drawers-on-wheels things (only we had to take the wheels off). That worked ok, but it wobbles quite a bit. But this quickly became the spot for the drying-dishes rack, leaving the top of the fridge as the primary space for buttering toast and...cheesing bagels (?). Yes, the fridge wobbled too, but this system worked (more or less).

Then, the landlord got us a new fridge. He knew we were not happy about the freezer. So it was a pretty nice thing for him to do. Only one problem - the new fridge was significantly bigger than the old one. It was about a foot and a half taller than the old one, so it wasn't going to be a counter anymore. Worse, it was about six inches deeper than the old fridge. This might not seem like a big deal, but the kitchen is small and the fridge essentially blocks off part of the doorway to the kitchen. An extra six inches meant that we had to squeeze past it, instead of just shuffling.

So, the fridge went into the living room. Ok. And now there was lots of space in the kitchen for a counter. Yay! Of course, we didn't have a counter. But IKEA might! I was hoping for a table that would be the right size (and not require any installation). Clearly that was a pipe dream. I took the bus out to IKEA (an hour-long journey) and wandered through the "showroom". There were tables, but none that weren't going to completely block off the kitchen. I did find a nice sort of wheeling-island thing, but it was $70 and very small. So we could either go too big, or too small. Or I could try to build something. But that was bound to be a disaster.

Enter the INGO Wall-mounted drop-leaf table. This thing was just the right dimensions, and only $30. Score. And the box was small, so it was going to be easy to take home on the bus. Even better! And it would even fold down out of the way if we needed it to. Dreamy! I should have bought the wheeling-island...

I didn't put it up right away. I had to get some drywall anchors first. See, since the curtain disaster I had learned about drywall anchors. You put the anchors in the plaster first, and then the screws go into the anchors. The anchors have enormous threads on them, so they have a much better hold on the crumbly walls. They are akin to magic, as far as I'm concerned.

So, I get the anchors. I open the box, take out the pieces, and look at the instructions. Problem. The instructions are misprinted. One side is just a warning to not sit on the table in about 20 different languages. The other side is blank:

Ok, no big deal. I'll figure it out. But first, I have to place the drywall anchors. That's the downside of drywall anchors - they have to go behind the thing you are screwing to the wall. This makes everything trickier. If you have something with three holes in it, you can't just put screws through the holes. You have to mark the wall where the holes are going to go, then put in the anchors. This is probably easier if your wall is flat. Unfortunately the part of the kitchen wall where the table had to go is not flat. It has a big bulge from water damage. The wood from IKEA that mounts to the wall is pre-drilled with holes, so I have to sort of roll the board along the bulge and mark the holes. Of course, the board is thick enough, and the holes small enough, that no normal pencil or pen will fit in them. I have to use a mechanical pencil with the lead sticking about an inch out of the end. Naturally it breaks almostly instantly when any pressure is applied. So I have to be very, very careful. Oh, and if I make a mistake, and get one of the anchors in the wrong spot, I'll have to start over entirely. The wall also has a giant hole (which was hidden by the fridge). Luckily the middle of the hole is at the exact height that the table has to be mounted at. So the board has to be placed precisely in the right spot, so that none of the screws have to go into the hole. Of course, I only notice this after I have marked off the first 3 holes, and have to start over.

It only took about half an hour to make some marks on the wall and screw in the anchors. Things were going well. I took a break, and then I started putting the table together. Not on the wall, because that would have been madness. No, I had to assemble the whole thing on the floor, and then mount it onto the wall. At least, that's what seemed like the best approach was, at the time. Hah!

Things went OK at first. It seemed easy. Some hinges here, a few brackets there. Voila!. Assembled. But, wait. Something is wrong, very wrong. The table cannot fold down. The top will not lift up, so the triangular piece does not swing out to the side, allowing the top to collapse down. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. So I take it apart, and try again. Still, no dice. There are pre-drilled holes for everything, so it doesn't make any sense. I have a few pieces of wood in which the holes are symmetric, so I can flip them around. But there are finite options. And none of them work. Instructions might be useful...

Eventually I give up on getting it to fold down. I am frustrated. It has been at least 3 hours. And I was going to buy a table anyway - who cares if it folds down? Stupid IKEA. (Or stupid operator...). Anyway I have it assembled. It's ready to go up. Only one problem. All the screws go under the table. And they all have to go in at the same time. Essentially, the table needs to float in mid-air while I crawl underneath it and screw it to the wall. No problem, if you can make a table float...

The smart thing to do would have been to wait for AC to come home and hold up the table. That would have been smart. But I was impatient. I was annoyed. I had been at this for hours. The table was going up. Now.

So, what if I held up the table while I put in the screws? I can't use my hands. But what if I lifted the table up on my back, to the right height, and then screwed it in? Genius! (Clearly not). So I get it into the kitchen and try to get it balanced on my back. Which isn't so hard, for a table with four legs. But a table with no legs, and a big piece of wood down the middle? Less easy. I fumble around for a while. I whack my head. I curse profusely. I smash the table into things. Rage. I give up after a few tries. Clearly this is not going to work. Clearly I am an idiot.

Still, I did not wait for AC. I went to Plan B. Remember the plastic drawer thing that we had the cutting board on? Well, we actually have two. If I balance the table on them, they are almost the right height. Almost. Just a few inches off. Just need to find something to fill the space. Books! Books will work, right? So I go through the bookshelf, trying to find books that are the right width. This takes a while, but it works. Between a few books, some little bits of wood, and my wallet, I manage to prop up the table to the right height. Now I just have to crawl under there, very very carefully, not bumping anything, and screw it to the wall. Done!

And it was that easy. There was a litlte bit of time where I thought that I was going to tear off half the wall, when I was tightening the screws and the bulge in the wall was getting compressed. It was tense. But nothing exploded or was significantly damaged. The wall does flex when you pull on the table, so we kept the plastic drawer things underneath it. The books were replaced with more long-term propping materials. Voila, more counter space.

It only took 5 or 6 hours for me to assemble a table and mount it to the wall. Only. I'm tempted to say that some day I will pay someone else to do this stuff, but I kind of enjoy it...

BTW, I hope you don't have that Kama Sutra virus that is going around. If you do, it may have started erasing your files 7 minutes ago (it starts on Feburary 3). I wonder if it uses your local computer time. West Coasters, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you might read this. (East Coasters are too late...)

Well, there hasn't been any crazy home renovation this week. We did have some dinner guests last night, which meant re-arranging the apartment. Since the living room became the bed room (so that the bedroom could become an office), we don't have room for a normal-sized table anywhere. This is fine when it's just the two of us (we rarely eat at the same time anyway), but not so good when there are guests. Hence, re-arranging.

Since the place is so small, moving furniture around is kind of tricky. Getting the new fridge into the right spot involved sliding a couch back and forth several times. It is like a video game. Last night I had to get the bed (futon) into the office, because the futon mattress is too thick to fold up into a futon-couch. But there wasn't room in the office until I got one of the desks out (which then became the table). But the desk can't come out of the office unless it is disassembled. Luckily, it's from IKEA.

So, basically, I re-arranged the entire apartment, we had people over, and then I put it back. I like to think that some day we will have an apartment that is big enough to not require a complete re-arrangement just to have people over for dinner. I like to think that. But somehow, it seems unlikely.

Other than moving furniture, I write my thesis. I try to go outside reasonably frequently, but it is very cold. We went out for breakfast this morning to an awesome place called Patati Patata, which had a total of 3 tables and a counter around the grill. It was absurdly cheap - $1 for a side of bacon. And it was good bacon. Also they apparently have some of the best burgers in Montreal, and they cost $2.50. I'm not sure, but I think this also includes a salad and a giant helping of fries. Unfortunately it's like a 30 minute walk from my house. Actually that might be a good thing, because I think $2.50 is cheaper than most of the stuff I make at home. My skewed financial logic might then result in my eating many more burgers than is probably healthy.

Oh, I am going to Toronto this weekend, for the UofT "grad student recruitment day". I have not been to one of these before. I'm a bit suspicous - it is a whole day, from like 8 am until 9pm. I do want to talk to the professors and students that I might work with, but I'm not super-keen on guided tours of the campus. Seems like wasted effort to me - I'm not going to pick a university to do my PhD at because it has a nice campus. I don't have my assigned schedule yet, so I'm not sure if there will be guided tours, but I suspect there might be. Anyway, they are paying for my travel and hotel. Free Toronto vacation - score! I have never been to "the T dot", and AC is coming (although I will probably hardly see her, what with the full day of university events). The group I'm going to visit is known for legendary parties, so I have high hopes for good times.

I'm also going to be heading west in March for a similar event at UBC. Depending on the flights, I might stop in Calgary. But Montreal-Calgary-Vancover is about an extra $100 over Montreal-Vancouver, so we'll see what the bank account says, and how much UBC will cover. Unfortunately my supervisor is not in Calgary, so I can't try to weasel it out of him...

Anyway, that is all for now. I leave you with this awesome spam I got yesterday. I think these people must be new at spam, because there were no links in the e-mail:

Er...I think they also may have missed the whole impeachment thing....

We are back from Toronto. The trip was very good. The university put us up in the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville, which is a nice hotel. Nice. And Expensive. Naturally, our jeans / hoodies / backpacks were a bit out of place, and we did get some odd looks. The room itself was pretty decadent, and even though it was on the first floor we had a reasonable view of a bunch of nondescript Toronto buildings and a Donut World. My only complaint would be that the shower was not very hot at night, which really sucked when I came home soaked to the bone from freezing rain.

Someone had told AC about a good sushi place called Sushi On Bloor, and I have to say that whoever tipped her off was right - it was great. But, getting there was tricky because of the FREEZING RAIN. Yes, good old freezing rain. We did have an umbrella, but AC and I are not good at sharing umbrellas, so I let her have it because my coat had a hood. My coat is also sort of waterproof, this is great because it means the water runs right off the coat and onto my pants. Which were not waterproof. Hence, by the time we got to sushi on bloor, the upper half of the thighs of my pants were soaked and freezing. The wet spots start just above crotch level, you can guess what this looks like.

We had to stand for a while in the sweet, sweet warmth of the Sushi On Bloor entrance while a table opened up, giving my pants a chance to dry out a little bit. The sushi was delicious. Compared to Calgary sushi, the pieces were enormous, but I didn't know this when I ordered. I got 4 different types of rolls, which at the places we went in Calgary would not be that much food. At Sushi On Bloor it was two large trays of sushi, and I am ashamed to admit that I could only finish 3/4 of what I ordered. It was pretty cheap, if I had ordered a reasonable amount it would have only been 10 bucks...

In the morning I met up with the rest of the UofT prospective students in the hotel lobby. Our entertaining DGP guide led us to the university through a bitter and cruel wind. It was almost as if the weather was trying to weed out those who would not survive the Canadian winters (or at least would whine about them to no end). They fed us a muffin & coffee breakfast and then, thankfully, didn't waste an hour on a pointless campus tour. After some short introductory talks, it was off to the labs.

My group was herded up to the DGP, and the professors introduced themselves and some of their projects. There is a lot of cool stuff happening in that lab. I talked to potential supervisors and quite a few students, which was very informative. I saw a lot of interesting demos, especially of display systems. They have a massive display wall (6x3 projectors), which has a much larger wow-factor then the display walls I built at Calgary (don't worry MAD Boxes, I still think you are easier to use...). They are using VICON installations in all sorts of interesting ways, and they had other neat toys like a few of those merl pocket projectors and a volumetric 3D display. They also have a 3D PRINTER!!! I have written about 3D printers before, basically I think 3D printers are awesome, because I have liked to make things since I was a little kid (as evidenced by this early bio from my kindergarden yearbook - Click to enlarge):

(Yes, I was a science nerd even before I started school. The construction worker thing never really panned out though...)

The DGP visit went from about 10 until 6, so I was beat by the end of it. There was a little reception, I downed some coffee to prep for the DGP party, then I wandered around the lab a bit and checked my e-mail. Finally 7:30 rolled around and we met up again to head to the party. Like I mentioned last week, DGP knows how to throw a party, and this was no exception. I had an awesome time, and met a bunch of people who I didn't get to talk to during the day. UofC alumnus Anand also showed up eventually, and we had an interesting discussion about some of his recent work on "alternative media" browsing interfaces, I will share the details with you when it is published.

In the morning, AC and I slept in. Then we met up with some of her friends for breakfast, and checked out Kensington Market. There were streets and streets of tiny little shops selling everything and anything. AC loved it, she wants to live there if we go to Toronto. I bought some awesome green tea and a bottle of Pocari Sweat, which seems to be something like Japanese Gatorade. I haven't consumed the liquid yet, I have to admit that I'm somewhat alarmed by the fact that it is only semi-translucent. The label says that it has the "appropriate density and electrolytes, close to that of human body fluid". You can also buy powdered pocari sweat, to make your own. It was not clear from the package whether this was a mix-with-water deal, or something else. The clerk was really pushing the powdered pocari sweat, but the bottle seemed more convenient...

Anyway, we're back in Montreal. Back to work, the thesis, and Half-Life 2...

Oh, and congratulations ("mad propz", even) to my brother Kyle and Rachel, they had a baby on Friday while I was at the U of T. Hi, Nora! I guess I'm an uncle now. Wild. Unfortunately we won't get to meet her until May...

So I didn't really mention anything about Valentine's Day in the last entry because we didn't do anything exciting. I bought AC some awesome chocolate from a chocolaterie on Sherbrooke, and some yellow flowers that are STILL ALIVE. Normally flowers last for about 3 days in our house. These ones - two weeks. Can I pick em, or what?

Anyway, AC got me some chocolate too (Lindt truffle balls...mmmnnmm), but no flowers. Apparently she felt like she still had to get me some kind of photosynthesis-based life form, because last night I discovered a TINY ORANGE TREE in the bathroom. She had mentioned this tiny orange tree to me earlier, and I said it sounded awesome, but I was totally surprised. Actually part of the awesomeness was that she said it was a Kumquat tree. How awesome is that? Completely awesome. It's actually not a Kumquat tree, it's a Calomondin tree. Calmondins, also known as Miniature Oranges, are a cross between Kumquats and Tangerines. So technically, it's still a Kumquat tree. There is a Kumquat tree growing on my desk. Kumquat Kumquat Kumquat. I hope I don't kill it...

Apparently miniature oranges are very sour, but according to this webpage they are good to use as ice cubes in water. The webpage also says that the juice can be used to bleach out stains and freckles, clear up acne, stop insect bites from itching, remedy coughs, expel phelgm, and shampo hair. It can also be used as a deoderant and a laxative. Which I guess is why people don't eat them. Anyway, apparently calomondins are the Macgyver of tiny citrus fruits.

It is snowing and very cold in Montreal. So going outside is not very fun. Also, working on my thesis is not very fun. So, I bought Half-Life 2. Fun. I bought it over Steam, which was pretty awesome, I didn't even have to leave my chair. Then I played it whenever AC left the house. Yes, I was slightly hooked. I finished it last night, which was kind of depressing because 1) now the game is over and what do I do with myself? The thesis, I guess, and 2) the ending was not very satisfying. I am tempted to try out Counter-Strike: Source, but the last time I played counter-strike was the summer of my first year in Calgary, and it turned into a 12-hour-a-day habit. At least Half-Life 2 ends. Maybe I'll go back and play it on 'Medium' difficulty...

In other geeky news, I found out yesterday that you can use gmail as a mail relay. This is awesome, as most mail relays only will let you send mail from inside their network. IE it only works when I'm at UofC, or at home. So then I'm stuck with stupid webmail all the time. But gmail - sweet stmp.gmail.com - will relay your mail, provided you use your gmail address as your username. Just don't forget to change your default "from" address in gmail to be whatever your real e-mail address is, or people are going to be replying to your gmail account (ick!).

While testing this gmail-mail-relay goodness, I happened to log in to my hotmail account, which I almost never use. On the left side of the window, underneath my list of folders, it seems that hotmail has placed some ads. Out of the 4 ads I get, 2 are for personals services. At least, I assume that the "sexy emails from singles" ad is a personals service. What sort of sexy e-mails are these, anyway, with that big bubbly heart on the envelope? I don't know if these ads are context-sensitive, or based on your previous e-mails, or what. But apparently Hotmail thinks that I am desperate for a date. Thanks, Hotmail.

Brandon and Chandra are off in Mexico getting married, which sounds pretty awesome, especially with the fantastic weather we are having here. Anyway, congratulations, mes amis. Enjoy your honeymoon in the paradise-like tropical climate.

(My jealousy is tangible).

And that is the extent of this update.

Well, lots of big-life-decision type stuff has happened in the last few days. It looks like I'm going to do an internship in Toronto this summer at Alias Research. That is pretty exciting. (that is an understatement). My PhD offers are all in, I'm going to visit UBC on the 17th and then the where-do-we-live-for-the-next-four-years decision will have to be made. We definitely aren't going to France (I had an offer to maybe do my PhD there, but I would have to move there and hope that the grant money materialized, which seemed a little too risky pour moi). So, Toronto for the summer, and then some non-Montreal city in September.

I'm a bit bummed about not having the summer here, I was looking forward to lounging on some terrasses. Although, given that my NSERC runs out at the end of April, I probably wouldn't be able to afford the terrasse-lounging anyway. So, we follow the work. AC will not follow immediately because she has summer courses, so I'm going to be doing some weekend commuting. Luckily, I have discovered podcasts on iTunes for learning japanese, spanish, french, german, chinese, and russian. So I'll have something to listen to on the bus / train rides.

Anyway, enough about me, now for a semi-regular and somewhat-loved feature here on unknownroad.com - Montreal Stories:

This afternoon, I went out to meet AC for a coffee / study / date type event. As I neared the Concordia metro station, I heard loud banging, crunching, etc - like multiple car accidents were occurring. But there was also cheering. Nearing the scene, I saw a small crowd of people (the weather was miserable) standing around a half-destroyed car in the empty lot across from the metro. The crowd was watching a few people trying to tear the door off the half-destroyed car. They had sledge-hammers. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera, and I was in a hurry so I only watched for a few seconds while the light was red. The car was spray-painted with words like 'Midterms', etc, so I assume this was some kind of post-midterm stress relief exercise. IE, excuse to do stupid shit. Looked like they were having a good time, anyway. AC and I walked past maybe an hour ago, they were loading the left-over hunk of steel onto a flatbed tow-truck. It vaguely resembled a car. The roof was not present. Hopefully, they have worked out the stress...

There is a restaurant on Sherbrooke near McGill called Garcon (there is supposed to be one of those little '5'-shaped accents on the 'c' - use your imagination). Garcon has this little patio out in front where they make all sorts of seasonal displays - they had a couple hundred pumpkins at halloween, and so on. Right now they have a sort of lounge, made entirely out of carved ice blocks. There is an ice wall around the patio, an ice bar, some ice stools, and a few ice-lounge-chairs. Pretty neat, I've been meaning to take a picture. Then one day earlier in the week, there was a bartender behind the ice bar, serving vodka martinis. And there was a line. This seemed pretty neat, and I was tempted to go in - it looked like maybe the martinis were free. Then I realized that it was like 11am, on a Tuesday. Do I really need a vodka martini at 11am on a Tuesday? Well, maybe. But I kept on walking...

Last night, coming out of the grocery store, the man in front of me suddenly shoved his fist up in the air. Like he was punching something, in the air. Then he just held it there. It wasn't clear to me if it was like, nazi salute, or just a fist-of-power type deal. Either way, crazy person, reduce walking speed. He carried on like that, fist in the air, for about half a block. Turns out he was just starting his car with his remote starter. After I passed him I was behind a girl carrying a big umbrella. Weird, I thought, since it was 1) cold enough that it was not going to rain, but 2) not snowing. Then I noticed that she also had a stuffed tail, poking out the back of her coat and almost dragging on the ground. Crazy person, reduce walking speed...

AC tells me that the French translation on my "extra raisin" raisin bran is "Raisin Madness". I think they should adopt that for the English side.

Cars reversing down major streets is nothing out-of-the-ordinary in Montreal. Many times we have had a taxi driver miss our street who will then stop, throw it in reverse, and back up a few blocks. One night I saw a guy with his door open driving in reverse down Sherbrooke. This is like the main street through Montreal, two lanes in each direction, traffic all times of day. It was 3am, and he was going pretty slow, but still - unexpected. At the time, that was the most impressive / insane reversing-into-traffic that I had seen. But no longer. A new champion is crowned. AC and I were out one day and we witnessed a novel take on the reversing-into-traffic maneuver. A guy in a BMW reversed back through an intersection and parallel parked in one smooth, flawless motion. No hesitation. No inching in or lining himself up with the car he was parking behind. Just straight back through the intersection (no hesitation there, either), and right into the spot. Maybe he was a stunt driver or something. We considered giving a round of applause.

And there you have it. Montreal Stories.

We ate one of the tiny oranges from the calomondin tree. Turns out the are insanely sour, just like all the websites said. How about that. Also very hard to peel. But they might be good as tequila chasers...

So, additional life decisions have been made. In addition to going to Toronto for the summer (for the Alias internship), I will be staying for another 3 or 4 years, to do a PhD at the University of Toronto. Wild. Also, I will not be going on my aforementioned trip to UBC. Turns out it was a really inconvenient weekend to spend on the other side of the country. Also, AC is going to have to stay at McGill for the fall semester.The Toronto/Montreal commute is reasonable for weekend visits. The Vancouver/Montreal commute, less so. The decision sort of made itself, although I have to say I was leaning towards Toronto anyway. Although I didn't know it at the time (only got the deets after I accepted), the funding offer from Toronto is better too. So we'll be less poor. Fingers crossed for NSERC CGS (although I'd settle for a PGS...).

AC also scored us a place to live for the summer, in a house with a friend of hers. I have been having a miserable time trying to find a place for the summer (since AC is moving back to Montreal, it doesn't make sense to sign a lease yet...). Nobody would mail me back once they found out I was trying to rent from out of town. I was angsting and starting to wonder if I was going to have to go down there and sleep on Anand's floor until I found a place. Not my idea of a good time (because of the desparate house-hunting, not because Anand isn't a totally fun and exciting person with an excellent floor). But, AC hooked us up - she is the apartment-finding champion. I don't even know why I bothered. We also found someone to take our Montreal place. So the summer housing situation is totally settled. Ahem..."w00t".

(Now we just have to pack and move - good times....)

Friday is St. Patrick's Day. Which is not that exciting - I'm not huge on the bar partying right now, and I have a thing on Saturday morning. But Sunday is the Montreal St. Patrick's Day Parade. That is exciting. The parade was awesome the last time I saw it. I can't wait.

My Saturday morning thing is a visit to the SAT building (the Society for Arts and Technology or someting - the acronym is French...). This Alias internship is technically a joint project with Carleton University - officially I am working for Carleton, but I will be working at Alias. Anyway the Carleton people are in league with the SAT-ers, and will be here on Saturday, so I get to go check out the SAT facilities. Exciting! I have been to the SAT a few times for talks, etc, but this sounds way cooler. They also want me to give some sort of presentation...they are architecture people, so I don't think they are terribly interested in implicit surfaces. I'm not sure what I'm going to talk about. Hey, maybe I should figure that out...soon...

Er, that's it for "current RMS events", I think. I re-potted the Kumquat tree, which I thought might become a disaster-type event, but it turns out it was pretty easy. At least, it seemed easy, and the plant hasn't died yet. I do have a lot of dirt left, though. I had to buy 3 kinds and mix them together (that's what the internet told me to do...). I thought it was going to be expensive, but it turns out that dirt is pretty cheap....

The SIGGRAPH reviews come back on Monday. I have been concertedly not thinking about it, but I got an e-mail today about the rebuttal process. Now I'm all nervous. I alternate between being certain that it will get in, and being certain that we are going to get a bunch of 1's (the lowest score). I guess if the rebuttal seems hopeless, we can try sending it to UIST. Hey maybe I should just stop thinking about it, eh?

Funny Montreal story time. So I'm sitting at my desk working, and AC is sitting at her desk reading something for school, and then we have this bizarre conversation:

<AC> Hey, don't kill me, ok?
<Me> What?!??!
<AC> Don't kill me
<Me> Um...I wasn't planning on it....
<AC> Ok. Just reminding you.

Turns out she was reading some stuff about murdered spouses for her women's studies courses. Apparently, you are like 60% more likely to be murdered once you get married, and statistically most likely to be murdered by your spouse. So, she was just making sure I had the "no murdering" thing down. I guess we should have put that in the vows, just to be clear.

Another AC conversation, this one with a Second Cup barrista guy:

<Barrista> Want to try our new latte!?
<AC> What's new about it?
<Barrista> Well.....now we use 2% milk
<AC> I see. No thanks.

Brilliant. New and improved - now with slightly more fat! (Apparently the "old" latte was made with 1% milk).

It's AC's birthday on Monday. You know what that means...floppy cake!

So, despite the fact that I went to an awesome St. Patrick's Day parade last weekend, I still haven't updated. I have a bunch of pictures and I'm working on an "album with commentary". It would be up by now, but my SIGGRAPH reviews came back on Sunday at midnight, and then there was a rebuttal period until Thursday. We did OK on the reviews, but we thought a few of the reviewers missed the mark, so we had to do a pretty long rebuttal. I kind of enjoy arguing my points, so I didn't mind doing it, but it took a lot out of me. So, please forgive the delay.

Since I have spent the week holed up in my house / office, I didn't really have any adventures. Until today - I went for a wander today with AC, and I finally managed to take my camera with me. I always mean to take it, but then forget it at home. Not today. So, picture time.

Montreal has a huge mix of new and old buildings, which makes for some interesting architectural juxtapositions. But perhaps more interesting is that sometimes when they build a new building, they don't leave any space between it and the old one beside it. For example, my apartment building is physically connected to the one next to it, although there is no doorway between them. I do mean physically connected - they use mortar or something between the bricks, they aren't just stacked side-by-side. This isn't really all that noticeable, though, until the old building gets torn down. Then you end up with the adjoining wall from the old building left stuck to the new one. AC calls them "ghost buildings". Below are pictures of two we found today (click to get a bigger picture). Usually they look like the one on the left, where it's just the discolored shadow of the old building that remains. But if you look at the chimney of the one on the right, you can see that there is still a layer of bricks hanging off the newer concrete wall. If you keep an eye out, you can see these ghost buildings all over downtown...

Naturally, Montreal also has a lot of awesome graffitti. Here are two of the best ones we found today. I'm not sure if you can actually call this graffitti - they are more like public murals.

Finally, you see some bizarre things. Look at the leftmost picture below. That is a parking meter (they have these fancy electronic meters now, instead of taking change). Tied to the parking meter is a bunch of steel cable. The cable goes up into the sky. I walk past this at least once a day, right beside the meter. Looking up, the cables seem to just go into the sky, as far as you can see. Today we walked on the other side of the street, and discovered that the cables go up to the window-washer platform. It's not clear, but they might go up all the way to the roof. Is it just me, or is this completely bizarre? Those cables have been tied to that parking meter for at least 3 months. I wonder what would happen if someone untied them...

After the Montreal exploratory expedition, we went out to somewhere-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, Quebec, to a Caban a Sucre. What is a Caban a Sucre? First of all, in English it would be a "Sugar Shack" (Yes, mon freres - a Sugar Shack). A Sugar Shack is kind of like an all-you-can-eat restaurant that serves only Maple-Syrup-Based products in a 6 course meal. I had no idea what to expect. We took the train out to Deux Montagnes to meet up with AC's friend, who drove us out into the woods, to the Arthur Raymond Sugar Shack. We went in and were presented with this scene:

Yes, that's right. A few tables, a window for buying tickets, and a wall. The Maple Syrup Gorging does not happen in this room. It happens behind the wall. This room is for waiting. I took this picture on the way out - when we got there, this room was packed and we waited for an hour. To keep people from getting hungry / angry, they sell beer, and a little old man comes around with a bowl of FREE BACON. Yes, you heard me. Beer and Free Bacon. I wasn't really convinced that going through the little door into the Maple Syrup Gorging Area was such a good idea. I think I would have been fine with the beer and free bacon. Unfortunately my companions did not agree.

I found out later that it was not, technically, free bacon. It was free. But not bacon. Technically. See, the Quebecers, they call it "Pigs Ears". They were concerned that this might put me off. But, see, it tasted like bacon. Like awesome bacon (although I think all free bacon is awesome, by fiat). They weren't sure if it was just called that, or if it really was pigs ears. It didn't really matter to me. One guy said later that he thought it might actually be pigs cheeks. Whatever. It smelled like bacon, it tasted like bacon, it felt like bacon in my mouth, and it was free. Call it what you want. I say, FREE BACON.

Anyway, through the door they sat us down at an enormously-long picnic table. This was no fancy white-linen-tablecloth type affair (in case the picture hadn't tipped you off). No, this was rustic rural Quebec at it's finest. They packed us in next to a huge group, and then packed a huge group next to us. The first course was some kind of weird maple-meat spread that you put on warm bread. It tasted OK. Then some kind of maple soup, which was pretty good.

And then they brought the omelette.

First of all, the omelette was cooked in the bacon. So, naturally, it tasted like awesome. But that's not all. The omelette had an interesting presentation - it was covered in bacon. That's right. An omelette. Cooked in bacon. Covered with bacon. Presumably they slathered the whole thing with maple syrup some time during the cooking process. But, in true Quebec style, the proper procedure for eating your bacon omelette is to douse it with maple syrup. These people don't mess around with salt or pepper - they go straight for the maple syrup.There is a word for this..I think it is...utopia.

After the omelette they brought some other food, I think. Potatoes or something. That was the closest to vegetables that we came in the entire evening (unless you count sweet pickles as vegetables...). But honestly I couldn't get past the bacon. They just kept bringing more. What does one do when confronted with unlimited bacon? Before this evening, I would have liked to think that I would be capable of some self-restraint. That I would enjoy the bacon, but not succumb to it's delicious charms. Those hopes were dashed this evening. The bacon owned me. The bacon was "my daddy". I simply couldn't help myself. I ate bacon until I couldn't eat anymore.

Then, they brought the sugar pie.

The sugar pie was just like a regular pie...crust. Inside the crust, though, was a mixture of MAPLE SYRUP AND SUGAR. Who are these people, who come up with such food-stuffs? I can only say, they are giants in their field. The word "genius" would not be unsuitable. The sugar pie wasn't enough dessert, though. They brought crepes, too, which naturally had to be slathered in maple syrup. By this point I the excess of bacon and maple was getting to me. I had to give one of my crepes to AC. I was defeated.

After the crepes, it seemed we were finished. We collected our coats, and additional bacon-related girth. We went down a hallway, through a door, and through a revolving security grate. This might seem excessive, but given the abundance of free bacon, I could see myself trying to sneak back in. And past the security grate was....more maple! Pure maple syrup, poured in strips into a trough of snow. Popsicle sticks were distributed, and we were instructed to insert the stick at one end of a maple-syrup-strip, and roll it up, making our very own maple syrup popsicles. ( Yes, you can try this at home...). Sticky and delicious! ( AC got some in her hair! )

Finally, we escaped. Back to the real world, where bacon costs money and maple syrup is not a standard dinner condiment. Our guide told us that she can only really take one Cabane a Sucre a year. Now I understand why...

So, my SIGGRAPH paper that I worked on like a maniac for all of January got in. It is pretty exciting. Actually that's a huge understatement. But I don't think I can convey the excitement in words, exactly. Maybe if I just filled this entry up like "I GOT A PAPER INTO SIGGRAPH WOOHOO!!!!!" (repeat many times). My paper is about super-easy-to-use texture mapping, I have a pretty exciting video that I will post here. Even AC thought it was neat, despite the fact that I more-or-less ignored her for a month to write the software and paper. Anyway if you are interested, these pictures might give you an idea. On the left is a clay statue AC gave me for christmas, on the right is a 3D model I made that is textured using photographs of the statue.

A SIGGRAPH paper wasn't enough, though. Oh no. I had to go and get myself involved in a SIGGRAPH sketch, too. A sketch is a very short (1-page) sort of mini-paper, with accompanying video, for presenting work-in-progress. In theory, sketches don't take long to write. But the video...right now I am very frustrated with the video. The video encoder keeps crashing because the screen-captures have too many dropped frames. In other words, my computer is too slow. Of course. I think I might have figured out how to get around it - surprisingly, Microsoft's WMV encoder handles dropped frames no problem, so I have to convert from DivX to WMV and then back to DivX (SIGGRAPH does not accept WMV).

( Did that make sense to you? If not, lucky you! )

Not much else going on here. The people who are funding my internship have managed to get me access to their workroom in the basement of the SAT building, so I don't have to work in my bedroom anymore. But the SAT doesn't like to give out too many keys to the front door, so I have to buzz to get in. That's annoying, especially because right now there is construction going on outside, so the people inside usually can't hear the buzzer. They also forgot to tell me some of the door codes, so today I was trapped in a stairwell for a while. I finally just tried "1234" and it worked on one of the doors. It wasn't the door I wanted to open, but at least it got me out of the stairwell...

I'm going to Ottawa next Tuesday to visit the internship people from Carleton, then we fly down to Toronto on Wednesday to meet with Alias to talk about the project. It's kind of crazy to think that this time next month I will be living in Toronto, going to Alias every day. And then the UofT in September!?!? Wild...

We had to cancel our home phone. Our line was crossed with someone elses, so it was basically useless. We called Bell and they wanted a bunch of money to fix it. Since we're moving in a month, and we both have cell phones anyway, we cancelled it. But then on Tuesday AC lost her cell phone. It wasn't a huge deal - she was pretty sure it was somewhere in the house. I found it while I was doing laundry. At the bottom of a washing machine.

Yes, I washed her phone. I was sitting there, thinking "this spin cycle is really loud". Yea, it was loud - because there was a CELL PHONE IN THERE! So, AC gets a new phone, but it won't show up here for a week or so. That sucks because *her* phone is the one with free incoming calls - mine is a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go. So the Fido guy mentions that they have a 15-day money-back guarantee on all phones. He hints that if she bought one of the phones they have in stock, she could use it until her new phone shows up, and then return it. She didn't hear it from him, though.

That's customer service, right there....now I just have to keep it out of the washing machine...

The Weather Network's scale for pollen concentration is as follows. 1-20 grains/m^3 is Low, 21-80 is Moderate, and 80+ is High. The concentration for Poplar in Montreal is currently 250. Birch is 150. What does this mean? It means I want to scratch my eyeballs out with a fork, that's what. When I wake up in the morning, I try to not open my eyes until I have popped a few Claritin and waited 10-20 minutes (well, actually just Loratadine tablets, they are way cheaper). Basically, it means my life has become a living hell. Since Tuesday. The only respite is when I go somewhere with air conditioning and decent air filters. I'm considering building an otherwise-sealed helmet with HEPA filters. I will wear it all the time, even to bed. That might make the outdoors bearable. I'm sure I will acclimate over the next few weeks, but I would kill for some -20 pollen-free winter weather right now...

I signed up for a new cellphone plan, which included a fancy Motorola RAZR V3 phone. I am very impressed. It is super-thin, like less than half the thickness of the Nokia I had from Virgin Mobile. But it's not ridiculously tiny, actually it's wide and tall enough that it almost feels like talking on a real phone. Just skinny. Works well with my "10-different-things-in-my-pockets" system. It has a camera, too, but so far I am not impressed - t he pictures are generally just blurry blobs. Of course, I had to sell my soul for 2 years to get a decent price on it. But since we cancelled our home phone, Virgin Mobile has stopped being a good deal. I got the Fido-to-Fido plan so calls to AC are always free. That will be handy when she is in Montreal in the Fall semester.

Last weekend when AC was away in Nelson, my friend T-Wiz called and invited me out to a party. I hadn't really interacted with humans in a few days, so it seemed like a good idea. It was close enough for me to walk, but not him, so he called me when his ride showed up and I started walking. It was about a 45 minute walk, I get to this apartment building and there doesn't really sound like any parties happening. So I call T-Wiz, but he doesn't answer. Ok. Whatever. I go up and walk into this apartment. Clearly there is a party in development. There is a DJ, but he's just sort of warming up. And there are two couches, with about 8 people on them. None of the people are T-Wiz.

They are all looking at me. I'm looking at them. I don't know any of them. Clearly a weird situation. A guy says "hey". I say "Hi, is....um...T-Wiz here?". He doesn't know who T-Wiz is. "How about Jennifer XYZ" (T-Wiz's ride, who was the only one actually invited in the first place). They don't know her either. Brilliant! We check the address, just in case I stumbled into the wrong party. I have the right address. I try calling T-Wiz a few times, but he is not answering. The guy (who is the host of the party, and was pretty friendly) tells me I am welcome to stay. But it is too weird. Just these 8 people and a DJ, all watching me. So I leave.

I made it about half way home before I realized that I hadn't set up the voicemail on my new phone, and that the ringer was turned off (It was the first day I had it). So I sat down on a stoop and set up my voicemail, which was an incredibly aggravating 15 minutes. 15 minutes to have it record my name and my PIN. There should be a "quick-setup" option for people who have used voicemail before, and don't need a 5-minute walkthrough on how to enter their PINs. Anyway, voicemail is set up, I check the messages, and lo-and-behold, there is a message from T-Wiz. 3 messages, actually:

Message 1: "Hey Ryan, um, so my ride just got here and they want to go to a different party first. Sorry. Hopefully you get this."

Message 2: "Hey Ryan, so we're going to do a drive-by of that other party to see if you are there yet".

Message 3: "Hey Ryan, um, we drove past that party but didn't see you. So we're at the other party now. It's by Home Depot (another 30 minute walk). Call this number if you want to come..."

So I call. But, of course, nobody answers. So I went home. About half an hour later, T-Wiz called again. I think he was expecting me to be pissed off, but I thought the whole event was hilarious. More entertaining than sitting at home, anyway. They were heading out to St. Laurent, so they picked me up on the way, and we cruised up "The Main". I have never cruised The Main. I'm not sure we did it right. The girls in the front were singing along with the 80's pop music they had cranked up. We got a lot of looks. Not the good kind.

After the cruise, we went to a trendy-ish bar, the kind of place I never go. There was cover, for cryin out loud! But it was only 5 bucks, they didn't care that I was wearing sneakers, and highballs were "only" $4.75. Good times. The place had some neat murals, but it could have used some grime. Then I scored some 2-dollar on the walk home, which made everything all-right.

While AC was gone, I watched a lot of movies. There are two movie stores nearby, a BlockBuster and a "Movieland", which is a local chain that has a bigger selection of old movies and less-popular stuff. Anyway I was there renting, the clerk asked my name, and after I said "Ryan Schmidt" he says, "Oh yea, I know a guy named Ryan Schmidt". I don't know exactly what compelled me, but I know another Ryan Schmidt too. So I asked, "Is he an artist?". "Yup". "Does he have a website?". "Yup". "Is it ryanschmidt.com?". "Yup". Super-bizarre. What are the odds. Anyway I told him I was somewhat annoyed when I found out that domain was taken, but the clerk assured me that he was a "super-cool guy". So it's all good.

Not much else going on here. The SIGGRAPH Sketch is submitted, and I have done the changes the reviewers requested for the SIGGRAPH paper. Basically, I re-wrote every sentence to use less words. Man, that was exciting. All to save a single page, because the reviewers decided that 10 pages was too long. I don't really get what the big deal between 9 and 10 pages is (except reducing it from 10 to 9 is a ton of extra work for me). But, it's done. Only a week of my life I'll never get back.

We are moving next Thursday. I really ought to start to pack...

Hey, now I live in Toronto. Crazy. I moved two days ago, AC came with but she is back in Montreal now. She'll be here at the end of May, if all goes according to plan (hey, cross your fingers...)

The move was insane, as all moves are. We were pretty well-packed by moving day. But U-Haul has an insanely stupid system for long-distance moves, which caused no end of problems. I booked a 14-foot truck, since more then half of our stuff was staying with Ailidh in Montreal. I was taking a bit of furniture and maybe 10 boxes. A 14 foot truck was overkill. But, U-Haul reserves the right to give you a bigger truck, at "no extra charge", if it's convenient for them. IE, someone in the destination city wants a bigger truck. Oh, but they won't actually tell you 1) how big your truck is going to be or 2) what time you can pick it up at, or 3) where to pick it up at, until 5pm the day before you move. This is bad.

We moved on a Thursday, when most of the people we could tap for help were busy working. It was $100 cheaper to get a U-Haul on that day. We also lived on the 4th floor of a 4-floor walk-up. IE no elevator. It seemed cruel to inflict that on our friends. So we hired some manual labour. Or tried to. Guess what - manual labourers like to know what time you want them to show up. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, unless you were booking a one-way U-Haul truck, where they don't tell you your pick-up time until 5pm the day before. We tried calling the Quebec U-Haul office, the national office, and the 1-800 hotline. Nobody could tell us when our truck would be available. We were "guaranteed" a truck, but this was apparently a magic truck which would fall from the sky into a random U-Haul location at a random time. At least, I assume this is the only plausiblle explanation, as no one else in North America had any way of determining even an estimate of a possible pick-up time.

Since we couldn't give a time, our manual labor options were severely diminished. Once we found out the U-Haul time ("as early as you want" - surprise!), only one set of movers were willing to load the truck, at 2pm. This essentially killed the "get out of Montreal before rush hour" plan, given that after the truck was loaded we had to drive across downtown and unload AC's stuff on St. Laurent (one of the busiest streets in Montreal - not called "The Main" for nothing...).

But, things still would have gone smoothly, IF THE MOVERS HAD SHOWN UP. At about 2:30pm, AC gave them a call, to see where they were. Oh, they were still busy. They would be at our place in an hour or so. In an hour, they were dealing with a "very particular client" and would be with us soon. In the end, we canceled them, because we had already loaded 1/3 of the truck while we were waiting. AC also had the foresight to call up some friends, who came and helped us out with the rest of the load, and then with un-loading her on St. Laurent. Awesome, awesome people, who after being subjected to 4 flights of stairs followed by 2 flights of stairs at the next place, turned down almost all the money we offered them (the movers were going to charge $80 for 2 hours, and these guys helped us for at least 4 hours). They took enough for a case of beer. That's it. Saints, these gentlemen. I am forever in their debt.

Oh, one other glitch. About the 14-foot truck. Turns out that someone in Toronto needed something a bit larger, and U-Haul wanted me to drive it there for them. A bit larger as in a 24-foot truck. Yes, an extra 10 feet of truck. It might not seem like much, but trust me, it is. The largest I had driven before was a 17 foot truck, and that was enormous. At 24 feet, you have to be driving out into the other lane when you make a turn, so that the back-end doesn't hit the cars you are turning around. I spent about 15 minutes in the U-Haul parking lot, just trying to figure out how to drive the bloody thing without killing anyone. Luckily traffic was light after I picked it up, so I didn't have to worry too much about hiltting other cars when I turned, and when I was jumping curbs I wasn't squashing pedestrians. Well, there was one elderly woman who I assume I didn't squash, because I haven't heard about any police bulletins for a crazed U-Haul driver. But I had to look away from the mirror to watch traffic...

Anyway, getting back to the first apartment was OK. Parking was pretty easy, I just pulled up and put on the 4-ways. This is standard practice in Montreal - there are two lanes, it is completely acceptable to block one of them. After a while some spots cleared so moved the truck over to the curb (in a no-parking zone) and blocked the alley. But the 4-ways were on, so it was all good.

The second apartment was trickier. Because it was past 4pm, IE well into after-work traffic. In this traffic, I drove a 24 foot truck down Sherbrooke from du Fort to St Urbain. During this drive I discovered that when you are a 24 foot truck, you are a formidable driving force. If you want to accelerate slowly, you do so. If you want to roll through a yellow, you can. The other cars will wait. After driving an Echo in Alberta for so long, this was a revelation. If I wanted to change lanes, I just started doing it. Slowly of course - you've got to give the little cars a chance to move. But move they will. So we did that, in slow-moving traffic, all the way to AC's new apartment. Where I again pulled into a no-parking zone, flipped on the flashers, and we un-loaded for a grueling hour. A horse had thoughtfully deposited a huge manure pile right in front of the apartment door, which made carrying large boxes that blocked your view of the ground especially adventuresome. It was a fun game of "try not to step in the horseshit". Oh, and it was exhausting, after the 4-flight move down.

After the un-load, I was wasted. I wanted to shower, but since my clothes were all packed, I would have to have put the damp, sweaty stuff back on. I almost when for it until I took off my shoes. There was no way I was going to put those socks back on after I peeled them off. So I left the socks on, skipped the shower, and we went back to the truck. We really should have just stopped there for the day. But the show had to go on. At least, it seemed like a good idea at the time. So, circa 7 pm (3 hours later than our initial planned departure time), we rolled back onto Sherbrooke and headed for the highway. And that is a story for next time...

So, at 7pm, when we should have been over half-way to Toronto, we rolled out of Montreal and right into rush-hour traffic on the 20. At 7pm! We crawled along for probably half an hour, straight into the sun. And me with no sunglasses. And the U-Haul with useless sun-visors. Fun stuff. Traffic was just letting up as the sun went down and we drove out of Quebec and into Ontario.

Shortly after crossing the provincial border, we stopped for our first break and fill-up (the truck had half a tank when I picked it up). And that's when I discovered the hidden U-Haul tax that they don't tell you about. The tank was at about 1/4 when I stopped, and only filled up to 3/4 afterwards, even though the pump insisted that the tank was full. For that half tank of gas I paid 80 dollars.

That's right. 80 dollars.

In fact, over the course of the trip, we put 250 bucks worth of gas into that stupid truck. Now, if I had been given a 14 foot truck like I asked for, rather then at 24 foot truck, would it have cost $250 for gas? I suspect not. Sure, they "let me" have a bigger truck at no extra cost, which I didn't need and was nearly empty. Because they needed the truck in Toronto. But who paid for the cost of getting it there? Me, that's who. Bonus for them. Stupid U-Haul...

I also discovered that U-Hauls have a regulator or something that doesn't let you go faster than about 110 km/hr. Which is reasonable, I guess - they probably don't want you speeding on their insurance. The truck got miserable gas mileage over 100 km/hr anyway. This was fine until we got closer to Toronto, and the Semi convoys started showing up.

It was very weird driving in to Toronto at one in the morning. Like Vancouver, there is about an hour-long "approach" from the outlying suburbs which is clearly very busy most of the time. But at 1 am it was completely dead except for convoys of about 10-15 Semis, which would come up very fast, pass me, and cut me off. Every time, like clockwork. There were a few which actually almost side-swiped me as they were merging back into my lane. Good times. The U-Haul steering wheel was also not very responsive, so staying in my lane during sharper turns in the highway was kind of tricky. I spent a lot of time slowly rolling back from the rumble strips. It was windy too, and with a basically empty 24-foot truck, the wind tends to blow you around. Not like in a car though - the whole truck would start to sway very subtly, and I would have to slow down to stabilize it. Oh, did I mention that I was basically a zombie, running solely on coffee and sugar? I was. Luckily AC had taken a nap earlier, so she kept me awake. My eyes were like burning pits of unpleasantness.

Closer to Toronto the highway turned into the Express freeway, which is this convoluted set of separated highways, where you have to merge onto the other highways to get to the off-ramps. Luckily Google Maps had given us pretty good directions, and there was not a lot of traffic. In fact, there was hardly any traffic - they were ghost freeways. Bizarre. I guess it was a Thursday. Anyway, we made it to Bloor West, and slowly cruised to our new address. On a very skinny street. And the question of parking arose.

See, it was at least 2 am. The downstairs neighbours were sleeping, so moving in then wasn't really an option. We were exhausted anyway. So I had to park the truck. But there was nowhere on the street - you could only park on one side, and the truck was so long that it was impossible to park it so that it wouldn't block someones driveway. I considerd just double-parking and throwing on the flashers, which would have completely blocked the street. I suspect that someone would have called the cops before long. But, miracle of miracles, there was a municipal pay-parking lot at the end of the block. We could even drive out the other side, so I didn't have to back in. It was empty, so I took up 4 spots (yes, I paid for them all). We un-loaded the futon mattress and clothes with some help from my new room-mate and her somewhat-inebriated friend, and went to bed.

I wasn't really clear on the legality of the parking situation, and I had no desire to be towed, so I wanted to get up at 7 am and unload the truck. Everyone agreed, when it was 3 am. But at 7 am when the alarms went off, the room-mate who offered a wake-up call came down and said "It's 7 am. Good luck." AC also rolled over and went back to sleep. "We'll do it later". But I was awake. I had already showered, and I hadn't really slept because my eyes were so painful from a combination of allergies and staring at the road for 7 hours, so I was kind of wired. I went out and unloaded the truck myself. I used the hand-cart, which had been useless so far, and it only took maybe 30 minutes to empty the truck onto the porch, and another hour to carefully carry everything inside. Nobody even realized what I was up to, until I woke up AC and told her it was done.

I had to go out again to find a map, so I could figure out where to take the truck to return it. By this time I was crashing hard, but I got AC up and she navigated. I did make a few, shall we say, "illegal left hand turns on red lights". And I did block a few intersections until the other drivers realized that I wasn't somehow going to magically get out of their way until they gave me space to turln. But we got the truck back without hitting any other vehicles or pedestrians. And IKEA was across the street, so I had hot-dogs and a cinnamon bun for breakfast. By this time the allergies had really kicked in and my eyes were burning (I forgot to take any medication in the morning! argh!). I thought IKEA would be a safe haven from the pollen gremlins, but I forgot that they sell flowers and plants. So it was not. We caught the subway home, I put together the bed, and then I crashed for about 4 hours.

Eventually, AC and I made it out of the house and we got some food at one of the many local restaurants. The neighbourhood I live in is pretty cool. It is pretty far from work though. After I dropped AC off at Union Station yesterday (which is right by my work), I walked home. It took an hour. Ouch. I have figured out a suitable self-medication regime that seems to be controllilng my allergies, so maybe I'll ride a bike. Scary.

And that's the story. Tommorrow is my first day at the company formerly known as Alias. A new adventure begins...

Long time, no update. Turns out that Toronto is not nearly as interesting as Montreal. Really. I have walked home from work twice (an hour-and-a-half walk), and haven't seen anything post-worthy. Sure, lots of cars, stores, etc. But nothing interesting.

I went back to Medicine Hat on the weekend, for my brother's wedding (Congrats Kyle & Rachel (and Nora)). I had a pretty good time, although the travel was not so great. My flight out of Toronto was so early that I couldn't take transit and had to catch a cab - which cost $50. From Calgary I drove down to Medicine Hat in the Echo, but it had just been re-insured and about half an hour outside of Calgary I discovered that there was no insurance slip in the glove box. So I had to be super law-abiding (Not that I'm not always law-abiding. Really...). On the way back I just barely left enough time to make it to Calgary in time for my flight. Then I was delayed for half an hour leaving Medicine Hat. So I was really late. Visions of missing my flight played in my head the whole drive back (which by this point had cost about $500 with all the changes). There was definitely not enough time to take transit, and then the first three taxi numbers that I tried were busy (!). I managed to get through on the fourth one, and made it to the airport with minutes to spare.

When I landed I discovered that Toronto had become hot. Very hot. Oh, and humid. Disgustingly humid. I was already all sticky from the flight, because I had (stupidly) worn a hoodie on the plane, and spilt most of a Tim Horton's triple-triple on myself. I wanted to shower when I got home, until I realized that it takes over an hour for my hair to dry in this humidity (I hate sleeping on wet hair). So it was straight to bed, slept through my alarm, and woke up to discover that the TTC (transit) union was on strike.

Those (insert copious swear words here)...

I listened to the radio for about an hour, waiting to hear if the subway was going to start up again. The mayor said the union had been ordered back to work, but they weren't sure if it would actually happen today. Eventually I gave up hope and filled the tires on a bike that AC's brother donated to us when we moved back from Calgary. Since I hadn't ridden a bike in many, many years (and never on city streets outside of Medicine Hat), I went for a practice run around the block. Didn't fall, wasn't hit by any cars - so far, so good. My roommate had filled me in on the bike lanes that Toronto has on certain streets, which made the whole event somewhat pleasant (except for the heat, humidity, and my slightly bad knee which I only discovered today). Of course, it was all kind of downhill on the way in to work...

Since I only got in around noon, my plan was to work until the sun went down and it coolled off. That was the plan. But it seems like the air conditioning at my work gets turned off at 5pm or so, because by 7 it was getting uncomfortably warm. So, reluctantly, I headed out to my bike and it's nearly flat tire.

Oh, right. The back tire leaks. It leaks kind of slowly, so when I filled it up in the morning it lasted for a little while. I guess I hadn't noticed it when everything was downhill, but it was hell on the way back. I stopped to fill it up at a gas station, but within a couple blocks most of it had leaked out. It doesn't go totally flat, so the bike was still rideable, but harder to pedal (which didn't help the sore knee).

I made it, eventually. It was kind of fun. Way too hot, of course, but not bad. I'm sure I'll be sore in the morning. But the real pain is in the region where the seat makes contact with the me. That area...well...'taint very pleasant right now...maybe I'll get a new bike seat...

So I have been having this weird thing happen, where when I eat fruits or vegetables, I get a weird lump in my throat. And sometimes a headache. Somewhat worrying, yes, but I was ignoring it and hoping it would go away. Usually that works pretty well for me, vis-a-vis health issues. But then last week I ate a nectarine and spent half an hour kneeling in front of the toilet, on the verge of expelling my gastro-intestinal contents. Clearly, something was wrong, and it wasn't the nectarine. Normal people would probably seek out professional doctor-type attention, but not me. I've got the internet...

It seems highly likely that my "seasonal allergies" (AKA insane eye itchiness and general oozing of fluids from places on my head where I don't usually ooze fluids all that often...) have developed into this. Yes. That's right. Oral Allergy Syndrome.

That's quite enough snickering.

If you bothered to click on the link, you might have learned that seasonal allergies can cause people to react badly to some fresh fruit and vegetables. People like me. People like me no longer get to eat things like apples. Or peaches. Even sweet nectarines are harbingers of vile throat lumps / headache / nausea. On my walk to the subway I pass three separate shops that seem to sell only fruit, their peaches and nectarines heaped into storefront bins that taunt me. Crisp...delicious...cheap...

No strawberries, either. No raspberries. Oh, cruel world! Vegetables are out too, tomatos seem to be particularly nasty. What's a sandwich without a tomato? It's just cheese, meat, bread, mayonnaise-like substances.....I might as well eat dirt!

The internet says that with allergy immuno-therapy, I might eventually be able to eat fresh fruit again. Maybe. Hey, it's only a shot every week for 2-5 years...

At least I'm not allergic to air.....yet.

"World Cup Fever" has hit Toronto. Luckily, I live in a neighbourhood with lots of fans, who like to drive up and down Bloor at all hours of the day, honking their horns. You'd think they would get tired of it. But they don't. Ever.

...and I just checked the hockey game, and Edmonton lost. Things just keep getting better...