Weekends are for fun

I had a nice and relaxing weekend...For the past week or so, I've been feeling a bit discouraged about this whole job search thing. There are absolutely no positions in academia or otherwise that match my qualifications...not even a little bit. The fact that I am limited to one city makes things a bit hard I guess, and one where the official language is French even more so (yes I can speak French, but I think it'd be in the best interest of students not to hear me trying to teach them in French :S, I really don't speak it THAT well. Although previous schooling experience also makes me think maybe good speaking skills are not really required to teach at the university level, especially in engineering :s). Anyway, I'm trying to keep my chin up, and trying to stay positive, which takes quite a bit of energy...But this weekend I made an even more conscious effort to stay positive and not sulk, since we only have the weekends to have some fun with Mariachi. Friday night we had some friends over for dinner, and we ended up drinking and playing Monopoly...The drinking part was of course really fun but Monopoly is a very dangerous game to play with good friends, we decided there'd be no hard feelings after the game. :) Saturday night we went to this little Italian restaurant just around the corner from our place with friends for dinner...It's one of those small family owned places, where you take your own wine and drink it from little water glasses Italian style . (The first time we were there we made the mistake of filling our water glasses-which look like wine glasses- with wine hehe.) We had to wait 40 minutes in line, but their pizzas are sooo good it was totally worth it. It's so hard to stay in shape here. But to deal with stress and also to stay in shape I've been doing yoga like crazy...It's been a month now that I do it every day (almost...I did miss a few days when we went skiing, but that was butt kicking exercise on it's own)...ughh...Well, yesterday we had a really lazy morning where Mariachi got to eat his first egg "à la coque"...


It's been a surprise to me to find out that he never tried it before...hmmm so everyday we learn something new, eh? Anyway, I don't think he's going to eat it again, the only kind of egg he likes is scrambled. The egg on the right there belongs to him. Can you tell he never ate one before?

In the afternoon, we decided to check out Parc Lafontaine, to watch people skating on the frozen pond but the pond was closed due to thin ice. That was a bit of a bummer, but instead we got to watch some kids (and grownups!) having fun tobogganing.

Later, we walked to Juliette & Chocolat, one of my favorite places to "visit" in Montréal. Hmm I had this drink made with creamy molten dark chocolate, cayenne, some other spices, orange peel and some type of alcohol, I want to say Cointreau, but I may be totally off base. It's served warm and it's soooo yummy and so good for warming up. Mariachi had his favorite--the chocolate fondant...Needless to say I ate half of that, too. Did I mention it's so hard to stay in shape in here??? It was cold outside and very cozy and warm inside that the lens of the camera got all hazy...And a rub with the back of my finger yielded these very crappy nostalgic looking pictures:



Today I am feeling somewhat recharged and happy (happier looking at those pictures above!). I got out of the house at 9 am and went to the library where I had a very productive 4 hours working on my papers, and then had a very nice meal for lunch with a friend and her friend, where they talked about European policy making and peace-making in the Middle East. Topics well over my head and outside my area of expertise, but it was interesting to listen to nonetheless.

Right now I am determined to kick this "blues" in the ass, once and for all. After all, something will eventually come up...Right? Right???