It's been some time...

From time to time, I just drift off into another world and start neglecting my poor blog. I've been doing a lot of "free writing" and reading lately about possible research interests that don't require a laboratory...Which is all good for me, but that takes all my writing energy and time, and leaves me not wanting to write anything here on the blog. I have a lot of pictures to share from way back when but I need to re-size them and upload them, and that requires some amount of effort. Posting pictures on a public blog is not something to be taken lightly, so I have to sort through them to find ones that are not too revealing, re-size them, re-save them as something else, and then try to find them again and upload them. It's OK if it's just one or two pictures, but you really got to want to share the pics to go through with all that for anything more than two. To top it all, I was pretty sick for a while last week that I just didn't have the brain juice to come up with anything all that interesting. "I've been coughing like crazy and have green snot coming out of all orifices" is hardly anything worth writing about. So that's why things have been quiet here in blogland, but I thought I'd check in today and start writing with the hope that inspiration hits me at some point during the mindless typing. Unfortunately, so far, it's not working. For me to come up with something that I feel comfortable posting for the whole world to read, I need to feel good about what I've written. What I'm looking for, of course, is not the kind of good feeling I'd get if I'd created a masterpiece (having produced no real masterpieces in my life, I wouldn't know what that feels like, but I can guess it doesn't feel the same as finishing a half-assed blog post), but I aim for at least a decent attempt at proper spelling, and some amount of coherence rather than just blabbering. And as I am writing right now and waiting for that inspiration that is nowhere to be seen, I realize I AM blabbering...So, without further senseless rubbish, I am going to post some pictures while I have the time and shut up. These pictures are all from February, when we had the "High Lights Festival", Nuit Blanche (an all-night arts/fun festival), and M's birthday. When I took them, I had stories for all of them in my head, and each was going to be a separate post, but of course now that all of that seems to have disappeared in the vacuum that my brain creates every now and then, it's just a bunch of pictures...Blabbering in picture format if you will...

Blabber # 1: During the festival period, we had some cute bus stops and ad posts that were wearing hats...Here's the bus stop down the road from our place wearing a cute pink cap...


And here's an ad post in Old Montreal:

Blabber #2: There were also these around:



In case you haven't guessed, those are for cooking marshmallows and hot dogs (and also keeping warm I think)! Here's us roasting marshmallows (and someone a hot dog) on Nuit Blanche/M's birthday:


Blabber #3: One of the things I really like about Montreal is the fact that there's always something fun to do, and the city is very colorful and lively, even when it's freezing cold outside. There seems to be some kind of festival going on all the time.

Here's a picture I took at the "Place des Festivals" which lucky for us in only 2 blocks down the road from where we live...They were projecting the pictures of people who came here for the Jazz Festival on the windows of the building, which I thought was pretty neat.

Blabber #4: Finally, during my absence from the blog, I got to taste some cupcakes, although not at the place I was talking about before. The chocolate one on the left was pretty tasty, almost to the point that I changed my mind about frosting, but the carrot one on the right was too sweet and spicy for my taste...M really liked it though...

Blabber #5: It's quite possible to wonder if you've suddenly been transported back in time when you're walking around in Old Town one night and come across a shop window that looks like this...

You can also see here that not only have I not been inspired to write lately, but also my photographing skills haven't improved and are still as crappy as they've always been. For further justification, see pictures in Blabber #6...

Blabber #6: We finally went inside the Notre-Dame Basilica, watched the light show and got some pictures...Apparently, the basilica has a special place in the history of Montreal. From what I understood, the reason France sent the missionaries to Montreal when it was established as a city in the first place was to convert the natives as well as serve the community.

It is an impressive basilica, especially by "New World" standards...


OK, I think I will stop here for now and save some blabber material for later. I've also been realizing lately that I have some things that I'd like to write about but dare not, because "they" might be watching...Nothing too serious, or out there, just regular rant stuff, like me not being able to understand why people are so against the health care reform in the U.S., and why I can't see anything that groundbreaking about the health bill anyway, how much I dislike the idea of having to go through a full body scan at an airport (and not because I don't want people to see my body), etc. etc...But I find myself changing my mind and opting against writing all these things, because that's what it's come to, that we're not really that free to say what we think, and we're never as anonymous as we think we are. So, I write about things that are "safer", like my own life, no mundane how that might be for others. I feel comfortable critiquing things that are under my immediate control...That's all...