Urban Wanderer

Parc Maisonneuve, a bike rack and the Giraffe

The first picture of him on the blog - May 17, 07:30, Parc Maisonneuve

And now we're off to England

Nighttime on Illinois St

Two more

Items I forgot (Facebook is for those with short attention spans)

1) Snow Freedom Day for our front 'garden' was April 23 - thanks to the warm weather mentioned earlier. The largest snow piles around the city are still there but they are shrinking rapidly

2) This will be an LTH Forum GNR weekend in Chicago - so yummy is the order of the days ahead

Off to Chicago

Well, my first my try at blogging to Urban Wanderer from Facebook - we are all off for a weekend trip to Chicago tomorrow and now that the Giraffe is talking so much we have some new words to teach him - corruption, Daley, Obama and any others you suggest.

Spring - Update 3

Before chilly weather returns next week, I thought I could make all of you who live elsewhere jealous by pointing out that this will be the 10th day in a row with sunny weather and daytime temperatures between 18C and 25C. 

And the Habs won a game last night without provoking rioting in the streets - it's better if la ville est hockey and la ville est tranquille and heureux.

Finally, Giraffe update - having spent last week saying lots of new words, this week he has discovered two tricks to make life more fun for K and I - shaking his head to indicate no (even if he means yes) and pointing at everything and saying that, knowing that we'll tell him what it is. The latter habit was cute for the first couple of days but... And last week he started daycare two days a week, which has not been the easiest transition for either him or us - lots of tears (some of them crocodile it seems) and stress, but he seems to be getting used to it and they do have lots more toys than we have at home.

Spring - the second instalment

Tonight has to start with a quick... Go Habs Go (and as I write it's 2-1).

Spring has arrived - and Montreal is such a great place at this time of year. There is certainly still snow on the ground (see below for tonight's state of our front yard) but the sun was out on Sunday and it was a balmy 7C and the streets of the Plateau were filled with people out walking and enjoying the end of the winter. The sidewalk cafe areas on Rue St. Denis were already set up and unlike many places, the population here was willing to sit outside enjoying a drink even though it was still chilly. And the better weather means the Giraffe is enjoying the chance to walk outside - Easter Sunday saw his first trip to the top of Mont Royal and he learned about walking (and of course slipping) on snow and ice. He also managed to flirt with plenty of undergraduates - thankfully he has no idea how cute girls think he is - we can save that trouble for a few years. Combined with the rapid increase in his vocabulary (as of this week, buses, which are probably his favorite object, have gone from being aaaaaahs to busss - and if you know me, you'll know how proud I am)

Spring in YUL

Well, it is spring, but March 21 dawned in Montreal with a temperature of -10C at 8:00 this morning and the promise of 5 nights of lows between -12 and -17 to follow...

And when we got back from our trip after missing two more snowstorms - this was what the front of our condo looked like...

From the road - Day 3 (and the rest)

So after a bad couple of months updating the blog for any of you who still read along, I am going to do better from the trip. And although flying is the primary mode of travel, we have rented a car here - and not just any car, but a Prius - so after 36 hours the gas gauge still shows full. Now highlights in Phoenix are not that exciting (at least not to me), so this will be pretty quick.

On Day 1, we flew a lot (Montreal to Phoenix via San Francisco is about 3100 miles) and the Giraffe did well for a boy who was up almost 16 hours with only a 25 minute nap.

That was what I managed on the trip...

So - a quick summary with some pictures for good measure:

Day 1 - Giraffe chundered on descent into Phoenix. He's showing some darn good sense about the attrctiveness of the city, but he was going to see both sets of grandparents, and he's already given the sit and Stroll the chance to be tested from a 'removing smells of bodily fluids' perspective.
Day 2 - Not too much - played in park and Giraffe overdoses on Trader Joes' Dried Montmorency Cherries. It's great that he likes most of what we like, but he doesn't have to deal with after effects on us, if any...Oh, and we went to Target
Day 3 - Coffee with CrankyFlier (I know at least one good blogger) and his wonderful fiance - we head our separate ways, so they can catch a spring training game and we can oversee the Giraffe's nap - anyone who's a recent parent who tells you they can't remember life before children is either lying or deluded - having the Giraffe is great but I would be happy to give up the nap oversight.
Dinner at a great Japanese restaurant near K's parents - we have been on both of our last two trips to Phoenix and it is definitely worth checking out if you are in the area. The restaurant is Hana and this time we went with my parents and had both great sushi and some other dishes - their cooked salmon was really good, and the Japanese pickled vegetables were the most delicate and refined I have ever experienced.

Day 4 - Some more shops, and a Giraffe with a diminished appetite. This became a recurring theme of the trip along with  some bad nights for sleep - we started to try harder to feed him but he didn't want to eat much until dinner time. We both know that it's not that serious initially, but when the normally voracious appetite of our child disappeared it created rather more worry than we wanted for our trip.

Day 5 - Off to San Antonio and we enjoyed a quiet flight and then some terrible Mexican food at San Antonio airport. But the time we took for the questionable gastronomic experience got us as close as we have ever been to a presidential election as we followed and eventually passed Michele Obama's motorcade on I37.

Day 6 - Saw all of San Antonio we wanted to (the Alamo, the Riverwalk, South Alamo St) and discovered that the nearest substantial supermarket to downtown San Antonio is 4 miles out of the centre. As a result, the Giraffe got the highlight of his trip - riding the #9 VIA bus to and from Central Market

Day 7 - We flew to Chicago and back into winter temperatures (it didn't make it above freezing in our three days there). The Girafffe napped badly on the plane and so K gallantly stayed behind at the hotel while I went with David U. to see a live taping of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. We listen most weeks to this show (thanks to the modern miracle of podcasts), and it was great to see it live. It wasn't the greatest week ever, but Carl Kasell is pretty spry for a 73-year old, Peter Sagal was great, and of the panelists, I was underwhelmed with Roy Blount Jr, but Paul Provenza was great.

Day 8 - The Giraffe got to ride more buses, and he had his first visit to an aquarium, the Shedd specifically. With a 17-month old, we took the cheapest package possible (to see what might be viewed as traditional aquarium exhibits - no fancy shark and dolphin shows) and the Giraffe took some interest in the marine creatures and a lot more interest in running around. And, we got a Thai delivery dinner that was pretty good (Ma and I) and surpassed anything we can get here.

Day 9 - The Giraffe caught up with his 4.5 month old cousin M and once again ate very little - but this time he rode on trains. The afternoon included a long walk down Grand Avenue in a damp, cold wind with snow gently falling. We were planning on an early dinner at Coalfire but we had a meltdown from the Giraffe - so we took a bus back to the hotel and then I headed back out into the cold night for two takeout pizzas. As LTHForum had promised, Coalfire is great - the crusts are wonderful and the toppings are good - again better pizza than we can find here in Montreal.

Day 10 - Once again, we were thwarted in plans to see Ailani and her parents - this time a snowstorm in Montreal forced us to leave two hours earlier but we were lucky to get home.

February

Well, I suppose that it should be titled January as that was the month that passed with no posts. Having failed to predict the results of the Iowa caucuses I did bow out of political projections for a while, though I should have bet on Rudy not winning Florida..

We did get our absentee ballots for the Illinois primary, and both K and I mailed them in ten days before the primary - and I thought it might be worth getting them registered so we could ensure that nothing untoward happened to them (we did live in Cook County, IL after all). And they made it to Chicago in time for a lopsided Democratic primary  (there's not much chance that the endorsed candidate of RM Daley fails to do well in Chicago and when that candidate happens to be a US Senator for Illinois, well...).  Quite obviously, it's been an interesting primary season - watching from outside

The biggest change of the last six weeks has been with the Giraffe. Then he was a crawling powerhouse. Now he's walking everywhere and having a lot of fun chasing and being chased. He went to a gym class last Monday at Centre Marcel de la Sabloniere and it was so much fun for him and for me. He's also beginning to pick up a ot of words - some are unintentionally funny. At the gym class, the second half featured balls - which he calls a bolll, with the longest l in any word I know.

And we have been remarkably good at staying home so we can enjoy this snowy, snowy winter. We have managed to go for 6 weeks without family air travel (we did have a day trip to Burlington, Vermont for our necessary butter and cheese run - and a return through the smallest border crossing we have seen - US Route 11/Quebec 223 at Rouses Point, NY. The best part was getting to the Canadian border and having a sign at the immigration window asking us to wait until an officer came - and of course, we did).

The next update will be from the US - we are off tomorrow morning for 9 days split between Phoenix, San Antonio and Chicago, and the Giraffe will add 2 more states to his current list of 6 visited, with some airport time in California, and a true visit to the Lone Star State. A bientot.

Reading and watching

As I watch the results of the Iowa caucuses come in on this bitterly cold Montreal evening (and wait to see if the city of Montreal can manage to clear the side of the street that they failed to get to last night), I wanted to share a film and a book recommendation.

K and I went out on one of our Saturday night dates last weekend  (sorry that would be three weekends ago) and this movie proved to be an excellent choice. Juno is perfect proof that you don't need to see multi-million over-produced and under-developed films. This is a well-written and extremely well-acted story. Ellen Page and Michael Cera are both excellent (and Ellen Page thoroughly deserves her Oscar nomination). The supporting cast is also great, notably Michael Bateman, Alison Janney and J.K. Simmons. As the film has become so successful in the last few weeks, I need explain no more about the plot than to say that Ellen Page becomes pregnant at 16 unexpectedly and she has to figure out what to do.

And the book is the Omnivore's Dilemma. Food is one of the issues I have become increasingly interested in over the last few years, in particular since we moved to Montreal. A portion of my increased interest stems from having a child. It's natural to worry more about what your child eats than what you eat and we have been mindful about where his food comes from (without becoming too rigid about it), and I have read scientific papers (I never said I wasn't a nerd and so I can explain the apparent effect of blackcurrants fed to children before 18 months on the taste preferences at age 3...) to understand what research says on food rather than what food companies want to tell us. But  this book was a fascinating overview of modern North American food and I discovered a much bigger picture that I knew little about. I was familiar with some of the book as Michael Pollan writes for the New York Times magazine, but even if you have read his stories there, the book is interesting and his writing is engaging even on topics that most would make dull. And much to my surprise, the last section of the book on foraging is in many ways the most entertaining.

So - go watch and read.

Absentee voting

As a dual national, I have the opportunity to vote in two countries in which I don't live, the United Kingdom and the United States. The one and only time I took advantage of this for the UK was in the 1997 general election that saw the end of 18 years of Conservative government and the start of Tony Blair's government. It was an exciting change and it was less than a year after I had left the UK. But I am not a big believer in representation without taxation and I don't pay taxes to the UK government, so no more voting there is coming any time soon.

But the US engages in worldwide taxation and so I am happy to participate in US elections. 2008 marks the first presidential election since we left the United States (in case you hadn't been paying attention) and tomorrow marks the start of the  nominating season with the Iowa caucuses. This is definitely the most interesting election season  that I can remember in the US (and certainly the most interesting since I was first eligible to vote in 1996). Illinois has traditionally held its primary in mid-March and been somewhat irrelevant to the presidential nominating process in recent years but this year it has joined the new Super Tuesday date of February 5th, and at least as of today. it seems that there will still be competition for both parties' nominations on that date. We hope to be voting in that primary - we mailed our absentee registration in on December 21 to meet the January 5th deadline and we'll find out if we succeeded if we receive some ballot papers.

Those of you who know me will know which party's primary I've registered for. In Illinois, the Democrat primary is likely to have a strong showing for the junior United States senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, given that he is perceived as the hometown boy (though Hillary grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois), and it is likely that the Republican primary will be more open. I don't yet know who I'll be voting for on February 5th, but on the Republican side, the only candidate who doesn't provoke significant fear in me is John McCain and I  hope he manages to stay in the running longer this year than he did in 2000. And my predictions for Iowa - Obama wins for the Democrats by 5 points and Romney by 6 on the Republican side. We'll see how wrong I can be.

New Year's Day Images

This will be the first time the Giraffe has appeared on the main blog (he has his own invitation only photo page - if we want to invited, leave me a comment or send me an email). We had a snowy day today (only fitting for this winter) and the Giraffe now has his own sled (and he went tobogganing for the first time in his life today - thanks Kate). The images are all Montreal - the first on rue Duluth around 11:30, the second from the 97 bus around 16:30 and the third from our front window at around 17:30.