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
(Reminder! I'll be in Seattle July 20-30th. Please drop me a line if you want to hang out as my schedule is filling up quite fast) The government run French classes come in all shapes and sizes - fully remote, part time, night classes, and of course the
(Update: I'll be in Seattle from July 20-30. If you are reading this, there is a pretty good chance you have a means of getting hold of me and would love to hang out. If somehow you don't have a way to contact me, you can
(Note: trying out some new footnote hack, it works much better on the webpage, which is now, properly, https://garbage.today/) It's been too long since I have written but I have several good excuses! The first: the city really has come alive (prend de vie) now that
I generally don't write directly about current events and I expect most people don't read this blog for that kind of content. That said, the brutal police crackdown - 2300 arrests at the time of this post - of students protesting the US support of a
Le cours numéro 1 est terminé! The exams consisted of four parts: * Production orale (speaking): Randomly chosen partners have two conversations. I was most worried about this, but a little practice was allowed first and we could choose out of three topics so it was cool. * Compréhension lire/Production ecrit
The snow was gone for a whole day and like the entire city came out. This warm spell just so happened to coincide with my first foray into the tech scene in Montreal: a meetup ostensibly for people interested in the Python programming language. But really, the language choice serves
It has not been a terrifically busy week, but by far the highlight was Sashay, Oy Vey! A Drag Brunch Megillah Reading. Join Auntie Semitism and Femmeschewitz for a glamorous retelling of one of our classic problematic faves, the Book of Esther. The Book so messy you have to put
So if you can believe it, despite my last name I've never been to a Saint Patrick's Day parade. Seattle either has an insufficient quantity of people who purport to be Irish or it's just never been on my radar. But this part of
Spring break - semaine de relâche or maybe congé printemps - is weird as an adult but I really needed the break. The break coincides with Montréal en Lumiére, the big winter festival. We went out for Nuit Blanche specifically, an evening where the city stays open all night -
Learning a language is a funny thing for adults. It's hard to not occasionally have a moment which is slightly infantalizing. Sometimes this happens with the coursework itself, which is often dual use with children's education: Sometimes it's in the videos that we occasionally
I don't talk about games a lot here but I wanted to briefly talk about two fun new games I'm currently engaged with. Minesweeper: Cold and Flu Season Edition The first one is simple: a losing game of minesweeper; in the form of choosing where to
Apologies for the problems with the previous post - I've been trying to write these in Markdown and import them in, but the Ghost editor is a little wonky. You get what you pay for I guess. So what's new?! A metric fuckton of French! My