2013/01/23

• 
  2013.01.14
  Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes
  

  Note: this post was edited for the essential on Tuesday Jan 22.

  Above

  Friend works in that brown tower, the one with the pizza pie Radio-Canada logo. Place Émilie-Gamelin which I talked about many times is located at the foot of that other hotel tower with a red logo in the top portion and whose window side is used for light displays. That area is also where is the Gay Village.

  

  Family ties

  Sister returned home yesterday after passing four and a half days with me. She and my stepbrother picked me and my stuff at the hospital last Thursday morning. They had done the two-hour trip the day before and had slept in a hotel upon arrival. They live near Ottawa, but on the Québec side of the river (and possible future border ) . He returned home soon afterwards but Sister stayed to help me for a few days. Help here would be an understatement. She cleaned, dusted, wiped and washed what would have taken me weeks if not a month to do. Needless to say, it was immensely appreciated. Brother could have picked me up on Thursday but, lucky him, he left for Mexico last Monday, for maybe three months, which was also my intended plan, before…

  

  So, what’s new?

  We are in the midst of a polar spell this week, tomorrow being the coldest since 2005 and this week the coldest since 1996. We can expect -40°C temperatures, considering the wind chill factor, and we’re in this until next week, at the least. I’m supposed to take small daily walks for my recovery but under these conditions, I’ll have to settle with moving from one room to another in the apartment. Temperatures were nice, even above normal from the beginning of January to one day prior to my return home. Me being as lucky as a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, nothing of this really surprises me. Add-on: It was -26 when I got up this Wednesday morning and didn’t move much for the whole day. Same expected tomorrow.

  I don’t like it when it is very cold (besides my hating winter in general) because it puts stress on the electric systems, especially heating equipment. Electricity is used a lot for heating, here, because it is cheap. And that kind of stress is a fire hazard.

  Front page of my daily this morning, with the caption The intense and biting cold did not prevent this Montreal woman to walk one kilometer to get to work: all that’s needed is to be well wrapped ! A warming of the stratosphere would explain the prolonged cold spell hitting North America.

  
  Photo © Jacques Nadeau – Le Devoir

  

  Being clueless

  Should Republicans beware? That flaming red dress worn by Michelle Obama last night at the inauguration ball may be (in my dreams) an advance sign, along with what her husband said in his speech, that not having to bother with reelection, he will be out for the jugular. Like we say in French, «Ça va saigner!». Someone was saying on CNN this evening that the soft approach (trying to make sense with the Republicans) had been tried by Obama in the first mandate and they spat in his face. Too bad for them but that train left the station. They could have hopped in but they preferred to stay on the wharf. Dah-dee-dah!

  

  Duh!

  Microsoft sent me an email saying that they will kind of kill Messenger, and replace it with Skype. That news shook me about as much as I’ll be shaken when Georgr H. Bush will die.

  Skype was a simple tool to use. Now I’ll bet that when we connect to it, we’ll also connect to the WWE (World Wide Empire) of Microsoft and all which that implies. They call it live.com. What a misnomer! You can die and get entangled in a spider web before it loads all its Microsoft crap.

  

  Zzzzzzz

  M’y sister’s visit had its toll on my endurance it would seem. In the hospital, I would nap a lot: breakfast, nap, washing, physiotherapy, daily bandage replacement, nap, dinner, nap, ergotherapy, nap, supper, nap, reading, sleep. For four days, nap was impossible cause I had to answer all of my sister’s questions like where are this and that, or where they should be put. I don’t complain of course, just imagining what it would have been to do all this scares the hell out of me, but since she left, I just feel like sleeping all the time.

  Then again, maybe I’m simply a sore lazy ass, go figure!

  

  Leaving with style

  Hillary Clinton banged on the table today in Congress. It was refreshing to see those nit-picking Republicans be put in their place. Me thinks that, health providing, she may be back in 2016 for a third presidential term. Whether she does or not, she remains in my eyes an exceptional woman.

  

  • 18:05
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