Full day

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I’m going to ignore my splitting headache long enough to tell you about our last ~18 hours.

After we arrived last night the staff recommended a place just around the corner where we could find something to eat. It was a great recommendation, too: a resto-bar (a concept that Toronto really needs more of) called Holder. We had some good food, a nice cold bottle of pinot gris (Nellie’s first wine in almost a month) and some crème brûlée, all in a pretty cool setting…great architecture, lots of energy, and so many young gorgeous women that it was like we’d strolled into a set piece for The O.C.. Ony downside: you can still smoke everywhere in Quebec, so we get a bit smoky. But that’s to be expected.
By the time we got back to the hotel it was after midnight; a few minutes into one of the DVDs we brought with us we both zonked in the king bed.

This morning we got up around 9:00 for some simple breakfast downstairs before heading out to explore Vieux Montreal. It’s beautiful down here, something we could tell last night in the dark but confirmed today in the light, and we walked down rue Notre-Dame for a bit…past Place D’Armes, down to the park along the river, back up, along St. Paul and then turned north. Since we were now comprehending the scale of the city (small, compared to Toronto and New York) we realized we could walk around a lot more before lunch. He wandered north up St. Denis toward the Quartier Latin, stopped at a cafe to warm up a bit (it was freezing!), and checked an email from Nellie’s friend JR. JR had lived in Montreal for some time and recommended a place for the best poutine in the world, a greasy little diner called Chez Claudette. It was quite a bit north, near the north end of the Plateau Mont-Royal, but Nellie claims it was worth it.

Along the way we also stopped at this beautiful little chocolate lounge (seriously) called Suite88…and ohmygod. First of all, I would like to live there. Second, they had just about every kind of interesting flavoured chocolate you could imagine, in a ton of forms (like cone-shaped chocolate shooters with different liquor/liqueurs in them). We bought a dozen small bars of chocolate, some for us and some for friends and family.

Finally, after all this decadent eating, we walked back down St. Denis and cut across St. Catherine toward the hotel. We got back here around 2:00 to relax for a bit, and get rid of this headache (possibly by consuming some chocolate), before the hockey game ce soir. And trust me, relaxing in this room is like a vacation all by itself.

Breaking news

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I just saw the headline from today’s National Post: “Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?”

I hear tomorrow’s headline will be “Did the Jedi council ask Anakin Skywalker to betray them?”

Gripping stuff. Stay tuned.

Hoping for a tagalong

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The schedule is up for the mesh conference. Interesting people and topics; I’m hoping Andrew Baron convinces Amanda Congdon to come along. So that I may drool upon her.

.:.

Another game, another win for the Canadiens. That puts the streak at eight wins in a row. Last night they beat up on the first-placed Senators (who, admittedly, are pretty short-handed right now) to keep pace with Jersey in the east. Tomorrow night’s game: looking bigger and bigger.

.:.

Anybody have any suggestions about what to do in Montreal? We’re staying in Vieux Montreal and are sans auto. We’re getting in too late to do much tonight, and we have the game tomorrow evening…other than that, we’re free.

Unique in his recollection

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From the BBC: Bush ‘ordered intelligence leak’.

“US President George W Bush authorised the leak of secret intelligence to a newspaper to help defend the Iraq war, a former White House aide has said.”

Seriously. If you can’t impeach him for that, what can you impeach him for?

.:.

We’re off to Montreal tomorrow evening. I’ve only been there once before, about 13 years ago. My brother and I drove in, ate dinner, watched Montreal play Hartford (!) and left the city…thus, I do not remember a bit of it (short of Turner Stevenson’s wicked goal flying down the wing). We decided to take this weekend away before the New York trip came to be, but since we already had our flights and tickets for the Canadiens-Devils game this Saturday, we kept these plans as well. We’re staying at a very cool-looking boutique hotel in Vieux Montreal, and planning to just enjoy a city that is, by all reports, quite beautiful. Looking forward to it.

But first…another day of work. Rawk.

In which I contemplate my own navel

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I saw a preview of Brick (imdb | rotten tomatoes) tonight at the Varsity. I really, really, really liked it. About the only way to describe it is a juxtaposition of noir and high school styles…like an episode of Veronica Mars starring Bogart and Lorre, written by Mamet as he wrestles Hammett to the floor.* Dialogue so dense and fast that you have to work to keep up at first, a plot that expects you to pay attention, a staggering main role played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt…yup, the kid from Third Rock From The Sun who’s become an indie hero. If you like good movies, you’ll like this. At least, you should. Get thee to a cinema.

* side note: Mamet vs. Hammett is a play just waiting to happen. You heard it here first.

.:.

I’ve heard about this before but it’s the first time I’ve seen detail on it: NBC will be releasing 10 internet-only episodes of The Office this summer that’ll feature more of the background characters. More Kelly & Ryan!!

.:.

Scientists claim that “Jesus may have appeared to be walking on water when he was actually floating on a thin layer of ice, formed by a rare combination of weather and water conditions on the Sea of Galilee.” Why would they bother pointing this out? People that actually believe a bearded dude named Jesus walked on water aren’t going to suddenly believe it wasn’t a miracle just because you say so, no matter how sound a theory you throw at them. You can’t reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into.

[via]

.:.

Sometimes I wonder why I blog. I’m not like most people who have a specific topic for their blog; I throw pretty much everything that enters my mind up here. I’ve owned single-purpose blogs before — radioDan (music & movies), skirl (general stuff that eventually became this blog), and Girlfriend Du Jour (my future wives) — but it gets to be a pain in the ass and so I consolidated the first two into this one. I still post to Girlfriend Du Jour ’cause it’s so much fun. I think being a generalist is more important, or at least more interesting, to me than going in-depth on a topic like music or movies or technology or…I don’t know, maple syrup. Whatever.

I think it has to do with how we were raised. None of my brothers or I focused on any one thing, though we were usually pretty good at a few; we were encouraged to play more than one sport, or learn more than one instrument, or read from a variety of sources. We all seemed to fit in a couple of social worlds as teenagers (at least, that’s what I remember; my brothers were basically out of high school by the time I arrived), so I could hang out with the skids or the jocks or the smart kids. I was on the basketball team, but I was also in the jazz band. I had long hair and played in a bad rock band, but I also knew more about computers than anyone in my school. I grew up on a farm but I feel at home in a city. And so on.

I think I’m still the same now. I feel like I have so many interests that I can’t keep up the way I’d like to, and it comes across in my blogging: scattershot, brief summaries of thoughts that whip through my brain. The categories over on the right are pretty much the breakdown of any given moment inside my head: music, movies, sports and the news are constants, and the hundreds of news feeds I read every day give me plenty of content. Books, food, my friends’ blogs, politics, Toronto goings-on and whatever subject I’m studying for the MBA right now are usually top of mind as well. Work keeps my mind focused on technology, especially developments in how people — the general population, not just geeks — will be using it in the next few years.

And in true Dan form I’ve forgotten why I even started writing this post. Arrrgghhhhuiworuowytwhgkfdnkf. Oop, wait, I’ve got it now: would this blog be better off if I just picked a particular topic and went with it? Or is it ok the way it is? I can tell by the stats that more than half the readers are not friends and family who just want to know what I did last night, but I wonder if my attention span could fuel (tolerate?) a single-topic blog…

OK. Bed now.