I was sorry to see the announcement by Danny O'Brien of among other things Need To Know that he's been doing poorly. Danny's a stand-up guy of the old school, and although we've never been hugging friends I consider him a pal of some sort.
So it's bad to hear that he's Down and Out. I hope that he gets back Up and In, and returns to his métier of stickin' it to the Man.
tags: danny obrien poorly get well soon
Aubanerie
Amita June and I took a walk up to the Aubanerie on Mont-Royal to get some winter accessories. Winter in a snowy country means that you have to have a large stock of the little bits of knitted cloth that keep the ambient air from freezing the skin off of your bones: hats, gloves, scarves, woolly socks, ear muffs, long underwear.
Our first winter in Montreal, I had like 1 hat, 1 pair of gloves, 1 scarf, etc. I spent maybe 30 minutes a day wandering around the house looking for one or the other of them before going outside. Given that when it's -20C outside, you just can't leave the house without any of these accessories, it was kind of a big waste of time.
So now we have a common pool of wintery clothes for the household. 5-6 toques, a few scarves, a vaguely sinister basket of gloves that look like severed hands, a ton of socks, etc. Sometimes I leave the house with two toques -- one in my pocket and one on my head -- Just In Case.
The Aubanerie up the street is pretty great for buying cheap-o accessories. They have some stuff at Dollarama and other $1 stores, but they tend to be either really thin, really small, or sold in separate chunks so each item costs only a dollar. The Aub has OK stuff that doesn't look too ridiculous.
Amita June is getting to be quite a walker -- we didn't bring the stroller for this trip. She just toddled up the street, and although we stopped and looked at a lot of sticks and pebbles and porches, we made pretty decent time for a 15-month-old and her papa. On the way home I wore a new toque and Amita June had a new pair of mittens linked with string, as if one were the astral projection of the other.
Now she's asleep -- shopping is hard work -- and papa gets to work a little more on trying to make Wikiwyg work.
tags: amitajune shopping montreal winter clothes aubanerie
Mon Québec
While searching for info on the Aubanerie on Google, I stumbled across Wiki Mon Québec, a Russian-language wiki about Montreal and Quebec. Fantastic.