Ass Kabobs

So, those are probably the last photos you will see of the apartment for a while. Now that we've moved all our stuff in, it's a mess. And it wasn't that clean to begin with, let me tell you. We emptied the uhaul & showered, then drove around aimlessly looking for a UHaul so we could drop off the trailer. When we didn't immediately find one, I made Gord call my go-to-guy, and Kelly mapquested UHaul locations for us. We finally found one, and dropped the damn trailer off...Oh, it's nice to drive the CRV without hauling anything. I can turn around, and back up and everything. Whee!

We're starving, so we stop at A&W for dinner before heading to get groceries and cleaning supplies. And rubber gloves. Thank god for those. We don't know much about the girl who lived here before except that she had long black hair - we found it on everything. And she probably wasn't a fan of Kim & Aggie's "How Clean is Your House?". Just guessing.

And we cleaned for a good 3 hours. Gord took the bedroom and I tackled the primordial ooze living in the fridge. If left alone for long enough, it would have evolved into something...not dinosaurs or anything good. Something with tentacles, and it would go "Glop".
But I killed it with a toothbrush and lots of bleach, so we'll never know for sure.

We put the bedframe together, realizing that we'd misplaced a few bolts, so we left the top of the headboard off. Who needs it?

There's a strange set up in the bedroom, as in there's no door closing it off from the kitchen. There are 2 doors to the storage room, though. So we've got a curtain for now, and we intend to move one of the extra doors to the bedroom before we have company. That's August 19th, Kel?

We also have the worlds smallest bathroom. It's 4.5 by 5.5. But it's got a great shower, so it's a fair trade. (For anyone who does intend to visit us.....here's a tip. It takes 2 flushes to get rid of the evidence. )

The neighborhood is great, mostly. The people on our street all seem to speak english, and are friendly enough to help me out with the parking situation. Oh, parking. I've never liked parallel parking, but I'm getting semi-competent at it, out of necessity.

We're on a street with a cul-de-sac, with buildings on one side, and trees on the other. There's a space of about 6 car lenghts in the middle of our street that is reserved for people with parking permits. These cost $50/year. There are spaces for another 8 cars on the street that don't require permits. If you're lucky, you can snag one of these spots and park from Wednesday night to Tuesday night. On Wednesdays, from 9 -5, everybody has to move to the other side of the street, and again, there's a space of 6 spots reserved for people with permits. The non permit spots go fast on a Wednesday morning, so you're better off to snag one Tuesday night. This has been explained to me by several neighbors, who saw us get parking tickets the first 2 days because we had no idea what was going on. What we still don't know is why we have to park on the other side of the street on Wednesdays. It's just one of those things, I guess.

Let me just say about the drivers in Montreal - sure, they have no concept of lanes. Sometimes there are 2, sometimes 1, sometimes 3. Depends who wants to go where, regardless of the painted lines. But after driving in Calgary, it's so relaxing. It really is. No one seems to be in a hurry in Montreal, as opposed to Calgary where everyone is in a hurry and ready to commit vehicular manslaughter if you don't GO ALREADY, GOD DAMMIT!!

I feel like a complete idiot when I don't turn right on a red light if there's no traffic, and I keep waiting for the guy behind me to have an attack of road rage and come at me with a crow bar, which is what would happen in Calgary. But they don't. I'll trade road rage for the casual insanity of Montreal drivers any day. It means I don't look out of place when I get lost.

We were also warned about the humidity, and that has been harder to take than the crazy parking, or the crazy driving. There are days when it feels like you're breathing soup. There are days when all you can do is sit in front of the air conditioner. But the upside is that you don't have to constantly apply lip balm and hand lotion. Every part of you is covered in a sticky film of sweat. It's a good thing we have that fabulous shower, or the ick would drive me crazy.

The french, so far, has not been an issue. From our experience, it seems entirely possible to live here and not speak a word of it. Unless you're looking for a job other than telemarketing...

Our apartment is 1 block from Vendome Metro, 1.5 blocks from the Japanese grocery store, which we've already scavenged.

Cucumber and avacado sushi we made ourselves.
It lasted about 3 minutes.
We were hungry.
Shortly after that,
we went for pizza.

A note about Pizza Pizza - they have actual strips of bacon as a topping. There's one 4 blocks from us, and they're open til 1AM. Ask us why we love this city.

Another reason to love it here - we get hilarious junk mail.

Ass Kabob, anyone?

Our first 2 weeks here have been spent sleeping, sweating, finding furniture, sleeping, watching terrible zombie movies, sleeping, eating, napping, showering, eating and wandering our neighborhood. We've discovered that you can, in 2 hours, and without traveling more than 5 blocks, have Crepes at a Russian cafe and get groceries at the Japanese grocery store where they're playing KD Lang, and where they have 12 flavours of Pocky sticks. So far, we've been out to the Jazz Festival and the Planetarium, and unfortunately, one Wal-mart. We would have done more, but really, what's the rush? We're going to be here for a while.