Month: June 2012

by

Windshield Wiper Blade Treasure Hunt

Yesterday, somewhere between the sushi place and my mother’s house, Moya mysteriously lost a windshield wiper blade. I discovered this just as I pulled in last night. It was pouring rain by this point and getting dark, so I was not going back out for it.

It poured hard again today, but finally cleared after dinner. I decided to go for a walk to retrace my route last night to see if I could find the darn wiper. I did!!! And then I had to install it. What a learning curve all over again!

Tomorrow, I have to see about changing that burnt out bulb, if I can find one in Chambly. I haven’t been able to locate an auto parts place in less than a 10KM radius, which is way further than I want to drive with a burnt out headlight, especially on major roads.

Research tells me that the switch out of a headlight bulb in a Ranger is easy peasy, but I had a look under the hood tonight and, um, no. My assembly looks nothing like those in the videos I’ve seen. This could get interesting…

by

Entering a Dreary Stretch

The heat wave didn’t last long. It’s been a little cooler every day. I awoke to a very damp world yesterday but the daytime rain held off till tonight. Blech. But it’s not like I could be out enjoying the sun anyway; I have way too much work to do!

I did make a brief escape tonight to grab some more sushi from Hiro. Parking there, I discovered that Moya has a burnt out headlight! I hope that putting in a new one is easy and that I can find one here in town. I don’t want to drive anywhere but a place that sells automotive lights next time I get in the truck, and I am going to have to wait for full sun to do so. I’m just lucky I didn’t get pulled over this evening.

As for dinner, I decided to be lazy and cheap and order a special where the chef makes the choices. I did ask them for no tempura, no cream cheese, and no avocado and was told that was fine.

Behold dinner:

This was a pretty good selection! That said, I’m ordering à la carte again next time. For one thing, I would rather have had octopus than shrimp and the dark red fish.

I have no idea what that dark red fish is. By process of elimination on the menu, it is izumidai, which is tilapia and not red, but the translation the restaurant gives is rouget, which is goatfish or red mullet, which makes more sense. So colour me confused except for the fact that I didn’t like it; it just didn’t taste as fresh as the lovely salmon next to it.

There is also kappa maki, which are cucumber rolls. Nice and crunchy! Finally, the big rolls or futomaki, don’t appear on the menu and were absurdly delicious in that they featured lettuce and red pepper! Very nice, I’ll admit, but they seem like a slippery slope to eating cream cheese with my rice and nori! 🙂

For $13, this was an impressive spread and Hiro has lived up to its first impression.

I’m off to spend some time in the garage with my cats.

by

A Colourful Hibiscus and an Extra Helping of Toes

I have two important jobs this week while my mother is on vacation. The first is to keep the garden watered. I think I’m doing okay since this beautiful hibiscus bloomed overnight!

The second job is to take care of Boris, the polydactyl wonder:

Can you see his giant mitts?

Boris is just about 99% an outdoor cat. He comes in between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. for food and cuddles, then goes back outside. I was surprised to find him on the porch at 9 this morning when I went to the garage to check up on Bitha and Nee, and even more surprised that he was still there at noon. It is pretty damp out today, so maybe the porch was the one dry lounging spot he could find. Boris is incredibly affectionate and will seek cuddles from anyone; he was just as happy to see me the first night I was in charge as he would have been to see my mother. Boris kept my dad company when he was dying and spent hours and hours in dad’s room providing much needed comfort. So I have a soft spot for this lovely and gentle cat.

by

A Date With Grand-Maman

It was coming on noon today and I was thinking that I really should call my grand-mother to plan an outing when the phone rang. Of course, it was her. I think we’re psychically connected!

My grand-mother lives in a seniors’ complex where she has her own independent apartment, but there is also a dining hall, hair salon, chapel, games room, and more. She was calling to invite me to eat dinner with her at the dining hall tonight. She has 10 meals there a month. I’ve been curious to see what sort of food she gets there, so I agreed to meet her at her place at 5PM.

Well… we kind of got our wires crossed. I walked over and went up to her place at the stroke of 5:00 just as she was heading down to the lobby to meet me. It took almost a full half hour before we found each other! I hadn’t wanted to go down in fear that I would miss her and she had actually gone out on the street to see if I was coming. I told her everything was good at my end and that, hey, it made a funny story to blog about tonight. *petit clin d’oeil*/*winks*

We were late for dinner (boy, seniors eat early!), but there was still food. We started off with some nice salads, skipped the soup, and opted for the fish as main course. We were served a really nice rice with sole stuffed with minced shrimp and a side of a really yummy butter and wine sauce. We agreed that it was a shame that such a lovely meal was served with mushy asparagus. Grand-maman says the food is usually very ‘ordinaire’ (eg. they had hot chicken sandwiches last night), but that they know what to do with fish.

There was no choice left for dessert and we were served bagatelle, something I had never encountered before even though it is apparently a traditional French-Canadian trifle (bagatelle literally means trifle, as in a little something that’s nothing as well as the dessert). I can’t even describe the dessert it was so odd. There was a white part that looked like a custard, but was rather solid, closer to cranberry jelly than Jello-O but not quite, and the topping seemed to be a soft apple crumble. Grand-maman wasn’t impressed, but I liked it! The coffee was excellent. So a nice dinner and now I know my grand-mother isn’t being poisoned 10 times a month. 🙂

We went back to her place after, opened a bottle of white wine, and took out the dominoes. I beat her 99 to 256! 🙂

It’s lovely having her walking distance away and we look forward to catching up this summer since I will be here long enough for us to have a few more meals and maybe go out to a movie or museum at some point, too. Je t’aimes, grand-maman!

by

Heat Wave

The big news in these parts at the moment is the heat wave. Thankfully, the house has AC, I sleep in the very cool basement, and there is a small pool in the yard.

This cartoon from today’s Journal de Chambly made me laugh:

Prepare for the next heat wave: “Honey, would you pass me a little beer?!”