Oh Canada

So yesterday was Canada day and everyone was off hurrah. Jude and I headed down to the jazz festival site and drank wine while some middle eastern influenced Canadian jazz meandered along on a small side stage before heading home, jumping on our bikes and cycling along the canal for 10kms or so - stopping off for a bottle of water and a beer sampler at a local brewery. All very idyllic.

Today was Jude's first at work - cut short by the failure of a computer to arrive and the early arrival at home of the men who are employed to move her (boxes and boxes) of academic books to her office. It was also the day that the garbage disposal unit got lock in the 'On' position... noisily. We've asked that they remove it - as the only way to shut it off is to turn it off at the fuse and that takes out the dishwasher.

French lessons start Monday, we get driver's licenses tomorrow, friends heading over soon... all is well

Other than these nightmares... keep waking me up and carrying over to the next day. Hard not to carry over the awful things done to me at the hands of relatives and friends once I do wake up... which is hard for them to take... must try to sort THAT out....

STEVIE // LIVING FOR THE CITY

STEVIE // LIVING FOR THE CITY
Originally uploaded by DAN23-PHOTO

So as I write this a little over a mile and a half away Stevie Wonder is playing a free gig out in the open and in temperatures that are a perfect 20c... but we're at home because we're knackered from the unpacking, we've just gotten cable and because we know that living here means this is the kind of thing that you can skip and not regret forever. Should we be there, probably. Are we psyched to have the choice? absolutely

Almost unpacked

Well we're finally sitting on our own sofa, albeit surrounded by empty boxes, but happy just for the familiarity of the things around us. The furniture (finally) arrived today and things went pretty smoothly. At 8am a man in a Smart Car came and picked up Judith, whizzing her to customs, where they cleared in record time and raced back as fast as 600cc will let you.

The giganta van arrive minutes later and parked right outside the house... parking permits had been obtained, people had been moved, no parking signs had been be erected all over the curbs and things stated to move.

4 houses, 160 boxes and a lot of sweat later the boxes were in, the furniture was together and we started to unpack the bits and pieces that make life easier but moving harder (we don't use the lemon squeezer often - well for cocktails we do - but it takes the same time to unpack as the toaster.

Anyway things feeling good here.

Sunday saw me heading to the local camera store and boarding a bus with them, some Sony reps and a couple of events people for a photo tour of old Montreal. They brought drinks, sandwiches, camera bodies and a whole bunch of lenses for people to try out and much fun was had... I loved the fixed 300mm f2/8 that they handed me; but it was heavy and it was $7000; both of which made it seem less like something to splurge on. Enjoyed the 11-16 though it made me feel like a realtor and couldn't see much difference between the Zeiss and my old Minolta when it came to 28-70 (though the Zeiss was quieter)

Enough though - gonna watch a movie now. Have upstairs and the main bedroom to do tomorrow.

Should be fun