This is spectacular:
The city of Montreal is about to adorn its streets with some literary graffiti.
Starting in September, the words of 10 Montreal writers will be painted on buildings, billboards and brick walls around town.
Lines from famous Montrealers such as Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Michel Tremblay and Monique Proulx will go up in places where the public can read them.
Full story here.
I am in complete and total gourmand heaven. Rajura introduced me to Juliette et Chocolat today at lunch, a creperie and chocolaterie on St-Denis street. My tomato-mushroom-Gruyere crepe was perfect, and the mi-amer chocolat noir to drink was literally like drinking thick, smooth, liquid chocolate. It took forever to pour into my cup!
We talked and talked and talked, and would probably still be there if I hadn’t realised that I had to get back to the public lot at the metro station to reclaim my car before my parking pass ran out. I made a quick stop at Archambault to pick up a CD but they didn’t have it. They did, however, have a big promotional display of francophone Quebecois(e) artists who record under the Tacca label, so I got the only Jorane CD I was missing for ten dollars. A good buy, and really what I was in the mood for, I discover now as I listen to it.
Now I’m going to log off and unplug the computer because we are having a delightful thunderstorm. Good thing the book’s at a point where I can work things out in my notebook.
Hermione as Lizzy? Sure. But hearing Matthew Macfadyen’s voice issue from Rupert Grint’s mouth is remarkably odd.
(Via AustenBlog!)
This is such a delightful idea:
RIP
Jane Austen
16 Dec 1775 – 18 Jul 1817
Goddess of Writers
Priestess of IronyIn memory of Rev. George Austen’s daughter, please leave condolences in the form of quotations &tc.
Don’t leave them here, though; or rather, you can if you like, but go to Peg Kerr’s journal and leave them there too, as that’s whence this was plucked.
The one I left was from the first chapter of Northanger Abbey:
[P]rovided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.
It’s always amused me.
I never knew that the author of the book upon which the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was based was Canadian. But then, I’d be willing to bet that most of you didn’t, either.
And now, having eaten two tomato melts on English muffins, I find that I am ravenous and must go make more.
Before I do, I will take the time to congratulate Talyesin on the hundredth and final serial installment of Squirrelman: Sins of the Past, his weekly serialized webnovel. Go read it.
I think the fourteenth month of Liam’s life is going to be referred to as the Month Of Alarming Lexical Leaps And Bounds. This morning he pointed to Cricket and said “Keh-cat.” Back at eleven months he started saying “Gee-cat” to Maggie-Cat, so this is evidently his new name for Cricket-Cat.
I had a quiet birthday. Liam and I took the bus to the mall where we bought a hand-held vacuum (not a birthday present to myself, simply something I’d been meaning to pick up for a while), and you would have thought the people on the bus, and the bus itself, existed simply to entertain Liam. I think early afternoon trips will become the rule rather than the exception, because he refused to nap after lunch and did rather well for the two hours we were out instead. He would have napped soundly once we’d gotten home, too, if I hadn’t turned the damn handheld on, expecting it to be quieter than our monster of an upright. It’s just as loud, so it woke the boy up after only ten minutes of napping. He proceeded to not go back to sleep, not with nursing, not with rocking, not with quiet time in the crib. Argh.
My birthday gift from Kino Kid was an evening of babysitting to allow HRH and I to go out and see Superman Returns. I had a coupon for free admission on my birthday as well as a ten dollar gift certificate to cover HRH’s ticket, so we ended up just paying for our snacks (and yikes, we do that so rarely that I’d forgotten how overpriced they are). The film was very good. I loved the design of it. I could have walked out completely satisfied after the opening credit sequence. And casting Frank Langella as Perry White was a stroke of genius.
Apart from my night outside the house, I got a book I’d wanted for a while (thank you, Jeff and Paze!), and flowers (thank you, HRH!), cheques from my parents and my grandmother (thank you!) and birthday greetings via phone and various online journals (thank you, everyone!). And if there’s a group gift in the works, would someone please tell HRH so that he can know if he’s allowed to go ahead and buy me the main gift that he wants to give me?
Today we have company this afternoon in the form of ai731. Then I think we’re going to invest in a second smaller air conditioner tonight so that we can have one in the front and one in the back of the house, because the humidex is going to push our temperatures above forty degrees this weekend. But my birthday money is my own, and some of it is going to go towards a new stick of RAM, because I’m tired of my computer thinking so hard when I open photo programs or have anything running simultaneously with Windows Media Player.