La Gigue du Mont-Royal

I'm back from vacation with Brad in Montreal. I had a good time-- pretty low key, lots of walking, lots (and lots) of time spent reading and thinking on trains. It was definitely a boon to SAMETIME and was a lot of fun in that respect.

For me to get to Montreal it's a 16 hour train ride. For Brad it's 4 hours less. I did pretty well sitting still on the train. Those who know me, know that I'm no fan of sitting still and the first few hours were tough but I resigned to teach myself to read something other than the New Yorker (which I still read every word of) and take advantage of the situation by doing some much needed catching up on the written word

Those who know me also know that I'm no fan of fiction (these days) so I hunkered down with one of my favorite writers, Michael Pollan and consumed large chunks of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" while on the train, finishing it this past Friday in a northside coffee shop pretending that I didn't notice that compared to Montreal, Richmond is the sticks. The book is an excellent, smart, sobering read that has given me a much greater appreciation for grasslands, and a much more skeptical view of corn- which despite being a grass appears to be taking over our lands and our bodies. This is no book review so let's move on...

I saw a few movies during the past week: Eastern Promises (which I keep wanting to call Eastern Express, the name of a Chinese restaurant in Frostburg) which was pretty poopy despite that Viggio guy killing people while he was naked in a bath house; "Two Days in Paris" which I thought was brilliant despite there not being a scene where some naked guy kills people in a bath house. Julie Delpy is brilliant; Kim and I just saw "In the Valley of Elah" on Friday night and it was pretty terrific despite the terrible Annie Lennox song, and over done final scene (think the Nick Cave song at the end of "Winged Migration" and you've got the idea).

I'm going to spend the next week (or so) posting a chronology of images from the trip and writing short captions. Overall, the trip was good-- good for my body and brain to not be in the facilities management business for a week and good to have the time to be able to reflect on what my life (when not on a train) looks like, and realize that I need to make some fundamental changes to ensure a life that I'd be interested in even if I wasn't the one living it.

Of course The Kim stays in the picture. It's some of the other stuff that's got to go.