(Belated) Kramerversary

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Just over a year ago I posted about Kramer, our adopted cat / companion / son. This is how I described him at the time:

He was a feral outside cat for over a year, so he’s still pretty wary of us — we can’t touch him, or even get near him. He usually sleeps under our bottom step where we can’t reach him. But he’s started spending a little more time with us, even playing with us a bit.

While he’s still far from being a lap cat, he’s made incredible progress. He hangs out with us far more often, rarely sleeping under the stairs anymore. We bought him a stand so he can stare out the window at birds and squirrels. He shows us his belly when he sleeps. He can’t quite meow, but he squeaks at us with enthusiasm. He demands to play with us on a regular basis, and will now even hang out and play when company is over vs. just hiding behind the bed.

In the past couple months he’s been rather at war with himself too: he’s become obsessed with rubbing his face and body on whatever toy we dangle in front of him. He arches his back and puffs his tail like he’s ready to be petted, but then just can’t quite get there. He’s desperate to feel some contact, but still runs away from (or hisses at) our hands if they come too close. In a few of his playtime fugue states I’ve managed to pet him briefly, and once he even let me scratch his little face with my fingers before running away.

So it’s slow, steady progress, but when I look back at what he was like when we first got him — hiding 99% of the time, hissing constantly, sometimes peeing on our stuff — he’s a different cat.

The category is: fuuuuuuurrrrrrrr!

Hot and Solid Meal

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I was in Montreal ever-so-briefly yesterday & today for work. Whilst there, however briefly, I managed to get to a restaurant I’d wanted to visit for ages: Le Club Chasse et Pêche. On top of being an absolutely stellar meal it was a good bit of fun with new work(ish) colleagues. I’ll happily go back again, but I might not eat lunch beforehand this time. Anyway, here’s what I had:

  • Braised piglet risotto w/ foie gras shavings (with a glass of Côtes de Beaune)
  • Duck magret w/ chanterelles, spelt, sea buckthorn, and hazelnuts (with a Montepulciano/Sangiovese blend)
  • A glass of Sauternes for dessert

I really thought “shavings” meant I’d have a bit of foie gras on the side. In fact, the whole dish was covered in it. It was so rich that at one point I said this:

I survived, though, and this morning ducked out of the hotel (Hotel Nelligan, again) to a second location of Tommy, one of my favourite Montreal coffee shops, just down the street.

This weekend really made me realize how much I miss visiting Montreal though. I’m glad I’ll be back again in October.

TIFF19 #1: The Friend

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Lindsay had (or was supposed to have) an all-day meeting yesterday, so I thought I’d try to catch a TIFF screening from the first weekend. I grabbed a ticket for The Friend (imdb | rotten tomatoes | tiff) at the Princess Of Wales theatre, a film based on an essay published in Esquire four years ago about cancer’s brutal toll on author Matthew Teague’s wife, and his friend who stayed to help through it all.

I’m honestly not sure yet how I feel about the movie version. It pushed every emotional button — I cried, as did pretty much the entire theatre — but I felt like the movie very much wanted us to cry. It focused on the hard parts of the story, but not the hardest parts of the story — it glossed over much of the physical trauma, and added a life-is-beautiful veneer missing from the essay. So maybe Teague wanted that version? He did, after all, option the story and consult on the screenplay, so it wasn’t ripped from his hands. And the essay was written in the raw months after the author’s wife passed — maybe he wanted to capture more of her vs. more of the cancer? I don’t know.

The director addressed the difference in tone during the post-screening Q&A, saying she had to find a balance between telling the story and traumatizing the audience. Which, fine.

But as I said, I felt emotionally drained — pushed, more like — by the end. And that seemed to me like the film’s intent. So while I had a very strong reaction, I’m having trouble sorting out whether it feels like an authentic one the day after.

Mindhunter season 2

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Season 1 of Mindhunter (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was one of my favourite shows of 2017. I reckon season 2 can count on a place in this year’s list. The subject matter was still fascinating, Wendy Carr is super bad-ass and interesting, and adding a racial element via the Atlanta child murders storyline gave it more depth.

My only gripe: why was everyone wearing so much yellow face makeup? I know David Fincher didn’t direct all the episodes, but his signature is on everything, and he’s so meticulous about detail (either while shooting or in post-production) that I find it hard to believe this wasn’t intentional.

Anyway. Still brilliant.

I mean, I doubt the Judds ever played that club

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Last week CBGB were in town, and we managed to catch up for a bit, despite Lindsay still being out of commission due to her ankle. I directed them to Wynona, near where their old house was. To be sure, this quality of restaurant was not in business at that corner when they lived there.

We shared grilled house focaccia, Albacore tuna crudo w/ mixed citrus + compressed melon + pine nuts, burrata w/ fig + ham + honey + almond + fennel pollen, a 25oz bone-in ribeye, and two desserts: a lemon posset and a meringue. All with a bottle of Fusco Mencia, and Stratus botrytis-affected Semillon for dessert. I also remember starting with a rather cloudy, tart Sperling skin contact Pinot Gris to start.

I miss them. I wish they still lived here, especially now that I’m nearby, but I’m glad they’re happy in Ottawa.

More Ketamine than a Montreal nightclub

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The ol’ blog has been relatively quiet lately. That’s because our summer took an abrupt shift when Lindsay tumbled down our stairs and broke her ankle in three places. That was a month ago today.

It involved surgery, several screws and plates, a lot of painkillers, and a lengthy (ongoing) convalescence wherein she can’t really leave the loft, but she’s on the mend. We’re hoping she gets the all-clear to start to put weight on it the same day she starts orientation for new PhD. [Side note: thankfully she picked U of T and not Cornell, because the logistics of that would have been brutal.]

Since flying is ruled out so soon after surgery we didn’t get home to Nova Scotia this summer, which means we didn’t get to see brother #2 before he decamped for another year. 😦

It also means we’ve been watching a lot of TV — some good, like Mindhunter season 2, and and some bad, like The Man In The High Castle, which has such an interesting premise but also such rubbish scripts and wooden acting. Shame.

Anyway, this too shall pass, but not before she gets sick of soup and crutches.

.:.

Cover photo from here, and not Lindsay’s actual x-ray

The Great Honourable Eve

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We’ve been watching a fair amount of TV lately vs. going out (more on that later) so have blitzed through a few seasons / series / documentaries. The ones I’ve watched (two with Lindsay, one without) have all focused on intriguing women.

The Great Hack (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was, apart from some annoying voiceover at the beginning and end, a pretty interesting look at Cambridge Analytica. I think it missed some context that Michael Lewis covers in his podcast, and was maybe a bit more favourable to Brittany Kaiser than seemed appropriate, but still good overall.

The Honourable Woman (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a BBC series from a few years back, eight episodes in all, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal who was — naturally — amazing. I love British spy shit. Love it. I’ll take all of that ye got, BBC.

Season 2 of Killing Eve (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was almost as good as the first, and the first was one of the best things I watched last year. Villanelle remains one of the most fun and well-written characters on TV — not surprising since the series was adapted for TV by the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

More. More like this please.

“Commence Operation Child Endangerment.”

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The amount of available excellent TV remains overwhelming, especially now that Amazon Prime Video can be cast to Google devices. As such, I’ve managed to get through a few more seasons of shows, betwixt all the half-finished shows on the go. To wit:

Billions (imdb | rotten tomatoes) remains pulp in season four, but it’s entertaining pulp about megalomaniac billionaires and politicians.

I thought Stranger Things (imdb | rotten tomatoes) season two was okay, but season three to me felt like a return to form. Lots of great jokes. Amazing new cast additions, mostly inside the mall. Nice through-line about kids growing up.

For some reason I’ve always had a weird soft spot for Tom Clancy stuff (The Hunt For Red October is, like, comfort food for me) so Jack Ryan (imdb | rotten tomatoes) starring John Krasinski seemed like a safe bet. And it was. Nothing special. Nothing groundbreaking. Just entertaining violent geopolitics, as The Clance intended.