Over New Year's

[rushthatspeaks]

gaudior and weirdquark and Thrud and I went up to Montreal for New Year's, to stay with papersky and rysmiel and zorinth and Z.'s girlfriend. I was delighted at being able to go with the household, especially since Thrud enjoyed the most recent Farthing Party so, and we expect to be up in the summer for Worldcon but that is an entirely different animal as far as both socializing and seeing the city are concerned.

Upon telling my boss that I was going to Canada and when (and not taking off any work), he informed me that I was crazy and am clearly the sort of person who goes to Florida at the hottest time of the year, too. Well, yes. It was colder than here, and my Boots Of Awesome, which are my only winter boots, were designed by an Italian surrealist shoemaker, who clearly was not envisioning snow as one of the things with which his work might ever have to deal. Plenty warm and plenty dry they are, but not much traction. However I did not fall over on anyone even a little bit. The six-inch bruise on my hip is from the Greyhound seat and represents a new low in the art of furniture.

Apart from that, it was a comfortable and relaxing and delightful trip. papersky got me a Lioness necklace for Christmas, which is called 'Making Deals with Leprechauns' and which is all the right colors and looks good with my tattoo and has resonance with the Eavan novel-in-progress. I teared up, and am having to restrain myself from wearing it all the time.

We had a great deal of tea and a great deal of bread and pastry and farm butter and cheese, over conversation. You can't get bread like that here, and the conversation was the sort that ranges all over everything and never runs out of steam.

Thrud loaded up on French-language manga. I found Annette Lapointe's first novel, Stolen, she being a writer I have been acquainted with in other contexts for years; also Je ne verrai pas Okinawa by Aurelia Aurita. Aurita's piece in the graphic anthology Japan as Seen by 17 Creators was one of the great highlights of that magnificent collection for me, but she has nothing else in English, nor is likely to, so was first on my list of things to get in Canada. Je ne verrai pas Okinawa appears to be a memoir about what happens when you do not actually want to go to Okinawa but fate is against you. Upon first flip-through my French seems to be up to it, mirabile dictu. Nearly got Japan as Seen... in French but decided that though nice it is inessential; also nearly got Aurita's erotic memoir, Fraise et chocolat, but decided that it is nice to become rather more acquainted with an artist's work before seeing them draw pictures of their sex life, especially as on flip-through it looked very, very enthusiastically heterosexual. Also it was more expensive.

We went to the Biodome. It is clearly a close relative of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, except that the bits that aren't the jungle room aren't quite so resolutely fish. They have a batcave. I could have been in there for weeks. And we saw the sloth, which is clearly a sign of good luck as it happens so infrequently. The otters were asleep, which is expected in winter, and being black otters looked exactly like our cats do when they sleep. I was pleased to see that next to the otters' slide but outside the tank was a human-sized slide for the use of the small children who would otherwise consider the otters unduly privileged. Penguins. Golden lion tamarinds. A magnificent blackstone sculpture of a lion carrying a city on its back, which I am told is new, and is a gift of the city of Lyon and therefore a not-terribly-concealed pun. A perfectly reasonable postcard of architecture to send to Thrud's parents.

papersky is a magnificent cook, and someday I hope to have her knack for getting everything on the table at the same time at the right temperature. Goose for New Year's dinner; I have always loved goose, as it is like an extrapolation from duck in the direction of venison. Became aware over the course of time there that we really ought to upgrade the kinds of tea we keep in our house, as we have only one I like and there are many more than that in the world.

New Year's night is for reading things aloud. papersky did some of the new untitled thing (no titles seem readily apparent from listening, I must say), and rysmiel did some Neal Stephenson. I did the William Tenn about the alien pornography. embryomystic did a portion of The Lord of the Rings translated into Scots, which was indescribable. And the household sang: Thrud and weirdquark on 'Darling Eliza', all of us on first and second Enepet, Thrud and weirdquark on 'My Brother, My Enemy', which is more ridiculously good every time I hear it, although clearly still not done.

Ice cider for the first drink of the New Year. I think ice cider may be my idea of the perfect alcohol.

In short: it was a good trip, and I was very happy, for many, many reasons.