What I've done This year started with finishing the first of four French courses, moving on from Substack [[1]], and wistfully considering alternative futures. As spring rolled in, we started going out a little more - the highlights being a drag brunch Megillah reading (Purim), the first heatwave
A key activity in the final 8 weeks of my french course is improv. The Quebecois fucking love improv and, admittedly, it's a pretty good way to move from "think something, translate it in your head, and then speak" to "just say what you are
While the inclination to keep this blog more of a personal thing - for letting friends know how we are doing, experiences foreign and familiar, etc - remains strong, unfortunately the United States is very important and powerful and unreasonably close geographically to Canada, so there is no avoiding talking
Montreal autumn is a strong contender for "best season in the world" next to Seattle summers. It's beautiful and, occasionally, warm as heck. As opposed to the summer - which I frankly found a bit too hot for my liking - and winter, the variability of
So Canada has a different day for Thanksgiving, or L'action de grâce. And also they kinda don't. You could rack it up with like President's Day or MLK Day in the sense that there isn't like a bunch of decorations or major
So, against my general intentions with this blog as a fun way to keep in touch with folks and have something nice to look back on every once in a while, I feel it is necessary to address an issue I've been asked about a couple of times
This post is quite late! In the last few weeks I have encountered a series of maladies. I won't tire folks with a lot of details, since none of it ended up being serious, but the first thing had the semblance of being serious which means I was
I have not posted in a while! French classes started back up and I've been quite occupied with it. One big change in the last month or so is that I can finally really understand (some) television/comedy. Not all of it, not all the time, but actually
In Montreal, Pride (or Fierté) falls on the first week of August and was, like Pride in the United States, originally inspired by a violent police raid and subsequent cop riots. While in the 1970s, violent raids and harassment by vice squads - including outing people by publishing their names
The start of my trip back to visit Seattle did not start off well! Half way through a painfully long drive to the airport I realized I had forgotten my passport. My partner had to take another car to drop it off to me. The trip was a whirlwind of
The last bit of class was a rush. I was considerably more worried about this, the second of four sessions [[1]], than the first one. A metric fuckton more grammar and there was less oral practice than the first session. You are expected to be competent at passé composé ("
It's been a hot minute since I posted, and I mean that both figuratively and literally: But let's start at the top. My partner is back finally from their long trip to Peru and that is among the reasons I haven't posted recently. They