Montreal: Weekend of Fun
I realized that having a posting that is really long doesn't work too well for this and I think I figured out how to use a "cut" thing. So.... click below if you want to read about what I did in Montreal. : )

My original plans for the weekend involved driving up to Ottawa, but a few days before we were supposed to leave the person who was going to drive with me cancelled out. This left me with the proposition of a boring 5 hour drive by myself each way which I really did not look forward to...

It seems that things that seem sucky at first can often be blessings in disguise though.

With the prospect of a lonely drive I looked for other alternatives and instead ended up getting a ride with another friend who was going to Ottawa. She was not just stopping in Ottawa though... she was just going there to pick up some people and to carry on to Montreal. This sounded good enough for me, so I went along, picked up a friend in Ottawa, and soon enough (if by soon enough you mean 7 hours or so ;) I found myself in Montreal.

Several friends of mine share the theory that the appropriate behavour while visiting Montreal is to walk and to eat. You eat some food and then walk to another food place in such a way that you've walked long enough that you're hungry again. This doesn't always work out perfectly... but can be quite an effective way to spend your time.

Arriving in Montreal, we decided to grab dinner at Smoked Meat Pete's. If you've never tried Montreal Smoked Meat you should: it's uber-delicious. Smoked Meat Pete's also featured servers wearing shirts with the slogan "You can't beat Pete's Meat," and a live blues band. The band was great... I've never really listened to blues, but the music they played was very jazzy and lots o' fun. It was a bit too insanely loud though.

I really should have brought out my camera to take a picture of the lead singer of this band. There were two spectacular things about this singer:

1) He had a harmonica holster that held about a dozen different harmonicas.
2) He was incredibly tall, but not in a proportinate way. He had a standard body size above the waste but his legs were just ridiculously long!

After dinner we finished our journey by making it to downtown Montreal. My friend and I would be staying at our old boss' place. Originally I had only called him to ask for someone else's phone number but that conversation went intestingly...

Me: "What's Coombs's phone number these days? Mag and I are coming to Montreal to visit and are hoping to camp out at his place."
Avery: "So, you don't even bother asking if you can stay at my place! You don't want to visit me!"
Me: "You have a one room place... at least that's what Coombs told me!"
Avery: "That's wrong! I have a couch and a futon... you guys can stay with me."
Me: "Well.. that works for me!"

We stayed up real late chatting about random stuff such as the 'Schedulator' which has taken over my old work. You will be schedulated... resistance is futile. Essentially, the schedulator is a sneaky way of playing psychological tricks with the schedule in order to make people work harder. I don't work there anymore... so I guess I'm safe from the hard work.

Eventually we went to sleep... or at least tried to. The problem with the apartment we were staying in were severalfold. Firstly, it was right over a restaurant which can be used as a clock in that they gradually turn the music louder and louder as the night progresses. Fortunately they closed at some time though and finally shut off the music. Then we reached the other problems: the neighbours and the street.

I suppose I'll start with the street. The street made me think comedic thoughts about one of those old fashioned cd commericals. You always see a guy sitting in a big comfy armchair in front of a fire wearing fancy clothing and smoking a pipe. Classic violin music comes on in the background as they talk about this recording and how it will change your life. I call the cd, "The Streets of Montreal."

So the guy sits there and says, "let me play a wonderful track for you. This one is guaranteed to get anyone a good night's sleep." Then you hear the sounds of heavy engine revving, tires squeeling, horns honking, and general car noisiness. Then it flashes back to him and he goes on with, "and just in case you need something exciting for the middle of the night, try this track out!" Then you see me having finally fallen asleep and hear from outside a loud crashing sound followed by, "Aaaaaaah! My Car!" (yes... we actually heard that during the night).

Then we move on to the second sound issue: the neighbours. It seems that the people who were living above us felt some undeniable urge to move all of their furniture at about 4 in the morning. Not only that, but the rules of the game indicate that you have to stomp around like an elephant while doing it and anyone ever caught lifting furniture instead of scraping it against the ground is severely penalized. The final rule of the game is that you need to have a piece of furniture in constant motion for at least half an hour.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that I didn't sleep very much that night.

We also woke up early the next morning for breakfast at Cosmo's. Cosmo's is a miniature establishment that happens to have really good (though really greasy) food. When we entered the restaurant (which was referred to by some as the size of a mid-sized car), I discovered that it was setup like a bar with stools and a counter to eat on. You stood waiting for someone to finish their meal and then quickly grabbed their stool before someone else did. Requiring a menu is also frowned upon at this establishment, and the two options you should really consider are either the "breakfast" or the "mish-mash."

I was obviously and irristably drawn to the mish-mash. The mish-mash, as I discovered, consists of a large helping of super-delicious potatoes (the best I've had I'd say!), and a really crazy omelette. The omelette consits of about 8 different types of meat, onions, tomates, and 4 eggs. It also came with 4 slices of marble toast. I did not quite manage to finish my breakfast, but I left happily stuffed.

Soon after leaving from breakfast, however, we realized the error in our ways. By eating such a large meal we had stuffed ourself and now had too much time to fill before we could eat again. To fill that time we went on a trek to have my Avery purchase an lcd projector. We started by moving his old stereo to the office where we would be setting it up, and then treking to Staples and a computer store to buy the parts. We had tried to buy this projector a year earlier but it had been sold out. Amazingly, they had it this time and after treking back and forth several times to retrieve missing parts, Avery's laptop, and to rent a movie we eventually got everything setup.

We played games on the laptop for a while, plugging three keyboards into it and using the projector as a screen until Pierre and Melanie arrived. Earlier that morning we had woken them up by accident when we called at 11:30 suggesting we meet up. When they did arrive it became time for more food. We went to a Crepe place that has the most amazingly good garlic bread anywhere. The crepes are pretty good too, and made for a delicioso dinner.

Dinner was followed up by movie watching (Following... pretty sweet movie), random cartoon watching (Harvey Birdman... pretty funny), random chatting (uh... we talked about stuff... the theory was put forward that guys are interested in lesbians because they have the fact that they like girls in common...), and other such randomness. Of course, eventually more food was required and we walked to China town for some bubble tea before bed. Before splitting up for the evening we arranged for a roast beef breakfast (well, it would be at 11:30, but none of us ate breakfast before it, so... ;) the next day at Magnan.

Magnan has the best roast beef ever. I have eaten a lot of roast beef in my life, and never have I had any that is nearly as good as theirs. Of course, on the way to Magnan we had to stop at the Phouberg to get bagels at one of the best bagel places in Montreal. Montreal has really incredible bagels. I used to like bagels, but when I moved to Montreal I discovered how much better Montreal bagels are than New York bagels. The difference is ridiculous!

The rest of the trip was not overly exciting. We left to head back to Ottawa to drop off Mag, went to visit my sister at Queens (which took a little while since she used the standard, "when I say to go North, what I mean is that you should be going South..."), and me taking over the driving. This was the first time that I'd ever driven a manual transmission car for more than 5 minutes, so made for a bit of excitement. Oddly enough, the first 3 hours of driving were great... it was only in the last 5 minutes that I managed to stall the car through foolishness.

But... this is getting really bloody long so I suppose I'll just wrap it up..... (mmm..... wraps...) with saying that you are not allowed to drag a dead horse down Yonge street on a Sunday. Important law that.