Montreal

Montreal (ahem: mon rayahl) is nice, but you really need to speak French to talk to most people.  Not all, but most of them.  (Though I did wonder sometimes if they just did it to giggle at my French!)  Having a good map of the Metro helps, too.   And don't assume (like we did) that oh, we won't need Canadian cash,  we'll just pay for everything with our non-chipped US credit cards.  Yeah, about that....

Observations

Montreal is a really pretty city with horrendous traffic.  Construction everywhere, and jammed highways.  Yesterday (and I think it was exceptional), we took 90 minutes to go about 5 kilometers, due to an accident.

It absolutely sucks when you find the need to hit the bathroom three times before you go out, then once again while you're waiting downstairs for your car, then again when you're walking casually through the city.  Holy hell, I just had a tiny bowl of cereal, some strawberries, and a glass of orange juice!  My wife says we need (she's nice and says we even though its clear that its me) to always get up and walk around aimlessly for at least twenty minutes, orbitting the bathroom location,  before we want to go out for real, because apparently the body only processes a bit of waste at a time, and takes its time, at that.  You okay?  Yeah, I'm....wait a minute, I need to hit the john again.

You can confuse people by answering in French if you don't actually understand their quick French response.

So Now....

I need something else to read.

The Jewels of Paradise, by Donna Leon, was about 99% good.  Not exactly sure that I'd say it was superior to the Brunetti novels, but it was a nice change of pace, and I liked that. The characters were believable, and I felt a little sad when I found out that one of the characters was not as he appeared to be -- and also a little irritated, when the why was he not as he appeared to be was never explained.

The Get Real comedy, by Donald Westlake, was surprisingly satisfying, because I kept expecting things to go wrong, but they usually did not, and when they did, Westlake handled it deftly - the sort of thing where you think well of course he can write it  so that whatever he wants to happen DOES happen  -- but somehow its okay, it doesn't feel like you're being manipulated.

I think I'm going to need to look for more of both authors' books.

Don't Lase Me, Bro!

Ever since my wife brought it home, I get an unholy amount of pleasure from tormeting the cat with the laser pointer.  I award myself bonus points when the cat essentially tries to pull itself forward using just its forepaws as it seeks to swat the annoying crimson dot.  Cheap thrills....

Books

It's always a pleasure to find that a book from which you expected little is instead a delight.  That happened with The Informationist (not great, but not at all bad; I liked the lead character a lot), and now it is happening again with The Jewels of Paradise, by Donna Leon, the author of the Guido Brunetti series (though this isn't one of them).  Both were on the discount table at Barnes and Noble, and both are a pleasure.  Well, the Informationist was, but the way Jewels is going, I think it will be, too.  The delight of Leon's writing style, very little of the frequent comments about political corruption that litter the landscape in the Brunetti novels.

Reading

Just read an adventure novel by Talor Stevens, and liked it enough to look for others that she had written.  Found her web site, and read the descriptions of her books.  Ugh, these sound stupid.  So I read the description of the book I liked . It sounds stupid.

There must be an art to writing these descriptions....

Watching Porn

...with the people who are actually in the porn.  It's..... interesting.   (And, yeah, NSFW!)