Pizza Abomination

The Tuna-Eater is a terrible cook.  Not because he sucks at cooking and always burns/ruins things, but because he concocts nightmarish foodstuffs.  Like hot-dog covered pizza.  

So unnatural.

First Snow

Yesterday night Ottawa got the first snow of the winter season.  Even though Halloween has not yet arrived.

No measly dusting of snow: This. Is. Canada.  The season's first snow is measured in inches.  Not as many inches at in Brockway, but this snow isn't Brockway's first.

Frozen ice drips on the awesome windows of the RCL prints/drawings/photographs lab.

Who Doesn't Love Singing Russians?

No matter your politics, I think we can all enjoy this. 

Montreal: the First Visit

Last Sunday my Hungarian flatmates, Andrea and Benjamin, and I went to Montreal for the day.  

Montreal is the second-largest French-speaking city in the world.  (Paris is number one.)  Samuel de Champlain founded the fur-trading post that eventually became Montreal in 1611.  It was a major French colony until 1760 when it was surrendered to the British.

Montreal was briefly captured by the Colonial Revolutionaries Who Would Shortly Become the United States in 1775 in the highly unsuccessful 1775 Invasion of Canada.  Good one Benedict Arnold.

The other day I was reading something written by a Canadian about the US.  The Canadian wrote something along the lines of, "Eventually Canada will be invaded: every nation gets invaded.  It's nice to be neighbors with the US.  We're friends: if we were invaded, they'd help us.  Unless they were the invaders.  They did invade us once before, but it didn't work out.  But as a Canadian, you have to wonder, why hasn't the US invaded Canada?  If they would benefit by invading Canada, they'd do it.  So the benefits of a free Canada must be greater than an invaded Canada."

As an American, I think one of the greatest benefits of Free Canada is that you always have someplace to threaten to run away to if the US makes you really mad.  A la 'I'm so sick of these taxes/politicians/green dollar bills, I'm freaking going to move to Canada!'

And back to the Topic of Montreal:

It was homecoming at McGill College.  McGill is one of the major Canadian universities and, despite being situated in the middle of Montreal, is a primarily English-language university.

Andrea and I decided to pretend that we were alumni.  It was so nice to be back on the campus where we had so many happy undergraduate memories.

A city campus with a strong divide between the city buildings and the trees and lawns of academia.

I'm so happy to be in Montreal on a beautiful day.  Even though I appear rather panicked in this photo.

Who doesn't love public art?  Benjamin has some help cleaning out his nose.

Cathedrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde.  Mary Queen of the World Cathedral.

Fun fact: I've noticed that all of the Canadian cathedrals are constructed mainly of wood.  The first yard of the structure of this cathedral is made of marble, but above that everything is wood which has been faux-finished to look like different types of marble or expensive tropical woods.  And the marble isn't solid, it looks like veneers.

I think it must have been much cheaper to build a wooden cathedral, give it some fancy paint, and put marble veneers on the first yard up the walls than to ship enough chunks of marble from where-ever in Europe to build the same structure.

This cathedral is a 1/4 scale copy of St. Peter's in Rome.  Baldachino and coffered ceiling included.

St.  Joseph.  Candles were really expensive here, so we'll just all have to settle for a photo.

Across from a park in the Downtown neighborhood.

I love these new red shoes.

I Make Hye-Sung Go to a Concert with Me

On Saturday I made Hye-Sung go to a concert with me.  Actually, I had been aware of this concert since early September, and thinking at that time that the As-Yet-Unknown-Hye-Sung might also like to attend, delayed a ticket purchase until early October.  The musician in question was Feist, and I really wanted to go to the concert.  What could be more appropriate than Canadian musician playing at the National Art Center in Ottawa?  Perhaps the Barenaked Ladies playing in the same venue... They're playing in December, and I think I might go - when in Canada, do as the Canucks.  Except the milk in bags.  That's just weird.

Anyway, asking Hye-Sung about going to the concert went something like this:

Me:  Hey Hye-Sung, do you want to go to a concert?

Hye-Sung:  What?

Me: October 25th, Feist in playing in Ottawa.  Want to go?

Hye-Sung: Hmmm...  (tips her head to one side, I realize she has no idea what musician I'm talking about)  Twenty-five October?  Okay!  Good good good!

Me: Great! 

Hye-Sung often repeats a word or simple phrase three times.  It's her style.

So I kind of made her go with me...  I did burn a CD and gave it to her, saying, "This is who we're going to see."  Happily, she really liked the music.  And the concert was spectacular. 

(This video is not from the Ottawa performance.  It's whatever the interwebs had to share.)

In Which the Babies' Hats are Finished Just in Time!

I am moderately notorious for waiting until the last possible minute to complete baby hats.  Though I was not sure it would be possible, the hats for Alpha & Omega (now known as Colin & Gillian) were completed before they even turned a day old!  Not too bad.

The little fruit-tart hats are currently being blocked on some baby-head-sized balloons.  The balloons did not come with Happy Sleeping Baby Faces (TM).  I added those.  Because sometimes I am a genius.

As per AIC guidelines for documentation, the colorchecker has been included.  They're not intended to be "girl is pink and boy is blue" hats; they're "somebody is a raspberry tart and somebody is a blueberry tart" because those are the best kind of tarts  (see The Best Part of Paris).  Bobble-icious!

Library and Archives Canada

Last Friday Hye-Sung and I went to the Gatineau Preservation Center of the Library and Archives Canada.  The Preservation Center is gigantic, and only houses a portion of the collection of the Library and Archives Canada.  Conservation of books, paper, and photographs is on the to floor, as are the film archiving, processing, and reformatting staff.

This is the Preservation Center.  Or at least the part of it that fit in the camera frame.

The foyer.

Conservation: paper conservation in the foreground and photograph conservation in the background.

Compactor storage.  Our hosts are pictured, with the pink scarf is Tania the photograph conservator and in the blue jacket is Janet the collections manager.

The place is so big that there are street signs.  The hallways have names.  This was the most straight forward sign in the building.