Yesterday was quite nice weather wise. It wasn’t that hot (I guess about 14 degrees when I went out) but it was dry and it was Easter Sunday so a large portion of the population of Montreal migrated to Mont Royal Park* to enjoy their strange hobbies. Meeka and I had a fascinating walk observing other people. We saw:

A group of twenty-something guys driving their gas-powered remote control cars over ramps designed to lauch the sputtering (and kinda stinky) cars over the top of picnic tables. They met with mixed success.

A small gathering of ‘hippy types’ who were practicing the little known art of swinging ropes with tennis balls on the end. The advanced practicioners had one tennis ball rope in each hand.

A giant mass of bongo drum players swaying in time to the cadence of the very, very, very, very loudly echoing drums.

A rather chaotic assemblage of people of all ages carrying swords, spears, battle-axes, maces and shields padded with foam and wrapped in duct tape throwing themselves at each other in mock battle. For me these were the most interesting because some of them wore costumes…although I’m not sure about the authenticity of the kilt wearer; when he fell backwards after a particularly heavy blow from a foam padded battle axe all spectators had a clear view of his Addidas soccer shorts…totally not period. Although, I guess if you’re being picky, the same could be said for the duct tape.

* For those of you not familiar with Montreal, Mont Royal is a big park downtown. Kinda like Central Park only more hilly and without the zoo.

I am a total Goldilocks sometimes…

Bagels are just a bit too big - the last three bites are more chore than enjoyment.

Dairy Queen Blizzards are also too big - why don’t they sell them by the tablespoon? I’d get four, all different flavours.

Twix bars, on the other hand, are too small - I know you get two in a pack but I’d really prefer three.

Glasses of Port are way too small - just as the sweet nectar goodness reaches my tummy the glass is empty.

Some things, though, are just the right size including: Snickers, small sized movie popcorn, the three piece chicken select meal from McDonalds (which is no longer being sold), cans of coke (not bottles though), Crispy Cream donuts, tomatoes, and eggs.

So you see, I’m not impossible to please…a lot of things are actually just right.

Ok, so we drained our hot tub completely last fall but somehow, over the course of the winter it filled up again. And so, when we first lifted the lid on the hot tub we were greeted by a giant block of ice. I’m talking Titanic sinking ice hunk here, there was no moving it.

We tried hitting it with a hammer…Bert broke the hammer (cheap piece of crap if you ask him, bulging shoulders of super-strength if you ask me).

We tried the passive approach, letting the sun do the work for us…the sun, it seems, works with a different sense of time than we do. I guess when you’re 4 billion years old rushing doesn’t fit into the usual vocabulary.

We tried putting the dog to work, slowly gnawing away at the corners. It was kinda like a rat gnawing on a brick, progress was made but not that quickly.

And so we fought ice with water…we created deep crevases which allowed us to break the ice into slightly smaller chunks and then we floated it out.

And so now our hut tub is gloriously ice free. Our deck, however, is like the ice garden in cronicles of Narnia, strange shaped chucks of ice are scattered about in a seeming haphazard statement of chaos…which the dog is still slowly gnawing away at.

Ok, so Montreal has pretty strict leash laws. As in, if you’re caught with your dog off-leash you get a $100 fine plus a bonus $41 ‘administration fee’.

Now I’m all for enforcing leash laws on a beautiful weekend days when the parks are busy and people want to be able to throw frisbees without some strange dog interrupting their fun. But…at 7:30am on a rainy weekday when the only people out and about are other dog owners trudging through the mud in hopes of giving little Spot a few moments of freedom…come on now.

Thus far I have eluded the dog police rather handily. I have had a run-in with the horse cops but they were sufficiently amused by the sheer whimpiness of Meeka to let me off with a warning. But I was thinking last night, what happens if Meeka gets a ticket for being off leash when the dog walker takes her.

We have never discussed this, nor have we discussed the on-leash, off-leash options. When I am out with the dog I make a judgement call as to whether I let her off or not….I’m not sure what he does. I don’t want to get hit with a $141 dog walking bill but neither do I want to tell him never to let Meeka off the leash.

Has anyone in blog land had any experience with this kind of thing?

Ok, so I’ve kinda always had this plan in the back of my mind. As soon as I got health insurance again I was going to start working on cold fusion. It’s quite a dangerous undertaking, thus the need for health insurance, but the rewards are great…ever since I first saw ‘The Saint’ I have imagined myself as Elizabeth Shue, standing in front of a room full of lab coat wearing scientists, wearing a short lab coat and knee high socks myself, proudly proaclaiming, like a perky cheerleading playing the role of a lifetime, ‘Cold Fusion!’

And so, when my job offer came through I immediately searched the depths of the contract looking for the health insurance information…and then, just like when Ms. Shue discovered that she was being betrayed, my heart broke a little for I have my own villans thwarting my plan. I quote…

“The insurance programme does not cover: The direct or indirect results of explosions, heat release or irradiation produced by transmutation of the atomic nucleus or by radioactivity or resulting from radiation produced by the artificial acceleration of nuclear particles;”