Weekend Round Up: Meetings, JP & Markets

Sorry this is way later than usual, but working two jobs is really starting to kick my ass...

Friday:Since we had another colleague leaving our little translation family, another 5 a 7 was organized for our department. Lucky for me, everyone loved my suggestion of Vices & Versa for the last two 5 a 7s, so we opted to there this time too. However, even though I arranged everything, I had to leave early for a meeting with MJ. Got a little annoyed when she almost stood me up, but luckily we were able to connect and I was actually rather grateful for what ended up being an early, quiet night. Went home after my meeting and watched the penultimate episode of Season 4 of Weeds, which I had been saving for just such an occasion, then nearly pissed myself watching The Angry Video Game Nerd before falling into bed around midnight.

Saturday: In an effort to me more productive, I actually set my alarm for 8 AM, and managed to get-up before 9 AM. Gobbled some soy yogurt and walked down to St. Viateur for my weekly bagel run. I'm surprised they don't just hand me my half-dozen flax seed w/ smoked salmon spread when I arrive I go there so often. But I guess they get a lot of regular customers...

Since my back had been bothering me something fierce this week I forced myself to do some pilates, which actually seemed to do the trick. Then I finally got around to tidying my office and did a quick grocery trip. By about 3 PM I was finally ready to get down to business. Worked on the media package a bit before heading off to yet another meeting with MJ.

After my meeting I was able to hook-up with an old karaoke pal from Vancouver, JP, who was in town impromptu from Toronto. We got dinner in the Village and talked about lives on the Eastern side of the country. We both agreed that it was hard to compare our lives here to our lives there, but it was very nice for me to spend time with someone who'd known me in my former life. After dinner I went home, goofed on the internet a bit and called it a night.

Sunday: Another bright and bushy day, I managed to get showered and dressed in time to meet Rachael and Ben and their baby at the Jean-Talon Market. Got home in time to make up a big batch of potato leek soup with my freshly purchased veggies & finish off a bit of work before my previously scheduled dinner plans. Sadly, those were canceled at the last minute so I consoled myself with some instant ramen (chow mein style!) and Christian Bale & Alan Tudyk (3:10 to Yuma). Called a few peeps out West and tucked myself snugly into bed at a respectable 11 PM.

Weekend Round Up: Improv, Opera and Walking. Lots of Walking.

Friday: Got charmed into going to another All Stars! improv show with Alain and MC at Theatre St-Catherine, which was sadly rather disappointing. The crazy homeless man who kept interjecting/playing with crinkly plastic bags didn't help much, but luckily he left half-way through. It was an intriguing format, but like with most improv it really depends on the players and the night and it just kinda felt like things were a little "off". Also, I was exhausted and nodded off a couple of times. Never a good sign.

Yet, despite my weariness I was determined not to be a complete wimp and so we joined Alain and MC on a walk up St-Laurent to take in some of the F-1 street sale action. Had fun laughing at the Eurotrash and L coveted the twice baked potatoes. Ended up walking all the way home from St-Catherines street, which didn't quite take as long as you'd think, and passed out almost immediately.

Saturday: We were supposed to go L's friends cottage just outside of Ottawa so L could get some practice driving, but I was having a very bad day so we opted to stay home. Called Alain and MC to see what they were up to and after a quick breakfast at a cute little cafe in Mile End we walked down to Mont-Royal to meet them. Turns out Mont-Royal was also closed for street-sale action so I loaded up on cheap cotton undies, half-priced organic cosmetics, not to mention free yogurt (yum!).

After a couple of hours of that we went back to Alain and MC's place to have a sit and Alain whipped up some coffee smoothies for everybody, although I had to abstain for the good of my digestive system. While sitting on the patio L thought better of his baked potato for dinner plan and we opted to go to the awesome Mexican place Alain had mentioned the night before. I got a veggie burrito and horchata, which was a little grainier than I was used to, but still super yummy.

Post dinner we continued down St-Laurent towards St-Catherines so that we could take in a little Crescent St action before hitting Place-des-Arts for Madame Butterfly Under the Stars. However, once we got downtown we realized we didn't have as much time as we'd thought so we decided to just grab a beer at Benelux before the opera. I grabbed an apricot cream ale, while L was seduced by the gold medal winning rye beer.

Being that the boys were a)slow drinkers, b)trying to find reasons to procrastinate, MC and I headed off to PDA alone. It wasn't 'till we got there and saw the sea of lawn chairs that we realized how ill prepared we were. We had a mere 5 minutes to find a spot on the concrete by the far right side of the stage to park our bums. Luckily I had a sweater to sit on for a bit of tail bone cushioning, other were not as lucky.

Despite a restless first act, L did manage to get into it. I was impressed by the fact that they'd managed to find a Japanese soprano to play Cio-Cio San, not just the usual white chick with too much eye make-up. When it was all over I asked L what he thought of his first opera, and his response was, "they were all such jerks, except Mme. Butterfly," which, in my opinion sums things up quite nicely.

After the opera we wandered up towards Crescent, but things were starting to wind down and I was getting super tired so we walked to the Metro and called it a night.

Sunday: L had tried to find us a pool, being that it was yet again, crazy hot; but sadly was unsuccessful. We almost ended up at Parc Jean-Drapeau, but at the last minute I convinced him that we should to to the Tam-Tam. He called our friends Andrea and Mark and they agreed to meet us there. We opted to walk the 20 mins to Mont-Royal park through Mile End so we could grab some fancy groceries for a picnic, a concept L seemed to be having quite a bit of difficulty grasping as it had obviously been a while since he had just hung out in a park.

After our mini-feast of sparking blueberry lemonade, whole wheat baguette, guyere chese, summer sausage and hummus I took L on a tour of the sites. In addition to the drumming hippies and the guys (and girls this time) beating each other with swords there were circus arts and capoera and a girl swinging from a giant sheet tied to a tree. L. was also shocked at the number of people drinking in public, but as usual everyone was so chill about it it wasn't a big deal.

On our way home we got caught in a sudden deluge, and while it was still very warm I cannot say I was all that comfortable being that soggy. Luckily it let up enough for us to grab some Portuguese chicken in Mile End which we happily scarfed while watching yet another installment of Buffy. Since L had to be on set quite early the next day we called it an early night, but not before switching our duvet for our summer quilt.

Weekend Round Up: Birthday, Beerfest and Bad Movies

We were a man down at work this week and it was super busy, so I'm afraid I'm only posting this just as I am about to begin collecting adventures for my next installment... sigh.

Friday: It was my co-worker Gaëlle's B-day on Tuesday so she was hosting a little BBQ party at her place. Luckily she lives quite nearby so L and I were able to walk there, although we did get caught in the rain during the walk back at 1:30 AM. The party itself was quite lively, most of my coworkers showed and we even managed to make some new friends. We were planning on leaving much sooner than we did, but the appearance of SingStar 90's meant that I lost L for close to an hour. Needless to say, he was a hit.

Saturday: Didn't get up nearly as early as we would have liked due to the previous night's hijinks, but still managed to get down to Mile End for breakky before noon. Because they were also running behind we even had a little time to kill before meeting up with Alain & MC to go to the Puces Pop Printemps craft fair, so I decided we needed to get some bagels at St-Viateur Bagel and man am I glad we did. SO DELICIOUS! SO CRISPY... SO CHEWY... SO... drool...

At the craft fair I coveted many things and spent $15 on handmade soap. Rosemary and coffee?! Yum! MC got a super cool silver anatomical heart pendant and some hand cream. Alain and L managed not to whine too much.

Afterwards we rewarded the men for their patience and headed down to the Mondial de la bière (International Beer Festival). Being that they had an extra tasting mug, we stopped by Alain and MC's on our way down to pick them up and had an impromptu Apple Trailers party while drinking delicious roasted Japanese green tea. Then Alain introduced L to GTA and I thanked my lucky stars that we don't have a gaming system that would support such a game (for the record we have a Sega Genesis and an N64), otherwise I would probably also be a gaming widow.

While the threat of rain did seem to keep some people away, the beer fest was quite busy as it generally is on the Saturday.

As MC pointed out, the fest has a genius profit scheme: entrance is free, but tickets are $1 a piece. Each tasting is anywhere from 2 - 8 tickets (usually in the 3 - 5 range) and is equal to about half a pint. So you go in thinking you'll stay on a budget and only get $20 worth of tickets, but by the time you've ingested 20 tickets worth of beer you decided you need "lots more ticketsh!" and end up leaving with a pocketful to scrounge a poutine somewhere.

I started off with a trio of stouts, including one with hints of raspberry, then moved on to a lighter, super refreshing ginger beer. In addition to beer I also had delicious Belgian fries, wild deer sausage on a stick and I had a wild boar & field mushroom hot dog on ciabatta bun with homemade sauerkraut.

While in the men's room, L learned of a tent providing 16% golden ale for a mere 3 tickets so we all decided to make that our last stop (like there would have been a choice after 16% beers), since I'd already made reservations for us at the Comedy Nest to watch my friend Christophe headline his first stand-up gig.

By the time we showed up at the comedy club, we were admitted a little on the rowdy side so we were prompted seated right in the first row. I, in particular, heckled and was heckled by the host (all in a supportive, non show ruining way) and MC was the subject of Christophe's serenading, not once, but twice. All in all the show was quite successful, although I'm sure the fact that we were, in a word, loaded, that much funnier.

After some minor Metro mischief I managed to steer L home and we both passed right out.

Sunday: Being that we were in bed by 11:30 PM, neither L nor I were particularly hung-over, but that didn't stop us from being totally lazy house-bums. We watched some more Buffy the Vampire Slayer (finally on to Season 2!) and L decided to finish watching Dead Silence while I did sudoku and snarked at the badness of the movie. Make that deep and painful badness. I cannot express how bad this movie is. Do not bother, even out of curiosity. It is a train wreck and dumber than a tree stump. A retarded tree stump.

After dinner we popped on Valentine, and I'm still not sure why L rented it. I guess he was on a David Boreanaz kick. Also bad, but in a fun, sarcastic late 90's way. But mostly it is bad. And also REALLY stupid.

Microbrasseries & Brew Pubs I Have Been To

In an attempt to refine L.'s pallet in preparation for The Great Home Brew Adventure, Alain has been dragging us all over Montreal to experience some of the many Microbraseries and Brew Pubs. People in Quebec take their native beers very seriously, and they should given the consistently high quality on offer. Below is a list of the establishments we have visited so far with mini-reviews and my favourite brews when applicable.

1) Dieu Du Ciel
Alain's favourite and everyone else's considering the place is jam-packed every time we've tried to go. They have a rotating selection of uniformly delicious beers, including a coffee stout called Peche Mortel (Mortal Sin) and everything else from Scotch Ales, to Porters, to Barley Wine to European varieties you've never heard of. Worth the effort to get a table, you can also find their brews in certain specialty shops (like our favourite Delires Du Terroir). Added bonus: the nachos are insanely good, more like fresh bruchetta on top of chips topped with broiled Quebec cheese. Nom nom!

2) L'amère à boire
Where we end up most often due to it's proximity to the Cartier Latin and Scotiabank Theatres. Also featuring a rotating selection of beers & an upstairs and downstairs bar (more selection downstairs). My current fav is the Odense Porter, although I'll settle for Drak when it's not available. The Odense Porter is very rich with a caramel top note and a smoky full body. The Drak tastes kinda like warm honey toast and has a satisfying, dry finish. The Imperial Stout is also very tasty, but a little dangerous at 7.5%. They also serve food of the upscale tapas variety, and while not cheap it is super delicious. I highly recommend the Kielbasa & Portobello Salad for
$6.

3) Saint-Bock
Just a couple doors down from L'amère à boire, Saint-Bock is similar to Vices & Versa in that they sell all sorts of different beers, not just ones produced on site. They also have one of the most comprehensive menus of any of the microbrasseries we've been to, even if they didn't have any deserts available when we were there. The selection is revolving with about 20 different beers to choose from on any given day. I decided to be adventurous and tried a carrot beer, which would normally be lighter than I prefer, but really hit the spot with just a hint of spice. I followed that up with an Omega 3 Brown Ale made with roasted flax seed that was also not too heavy, but with a full, nutty/roasted flavour. They also have giant TV screens if you wanna catch a game.

4) Sergeant Recruiter
Located in the Plateau, its proximity to Dieu Du Ciel makes it a good back-up if we can't get a table. My favourite so far is the Nessy Scotch Ale, which is rich but not heavy and very drinkable. They also do wood fired pizza's which are very yummy and made with local ingredients and they have a sister store (Saum Mom) next door specializing in smoked salmon (& gravalox etc.) And, on Sundays they have French raconteurs (story tellers)!

5) Vices & Versa
Not a brewpub per se, this bistro style bar does carry a couple exclusive brews which is enough for me to include it. Located across the park from us, it is also usually packed beyond belief. The rotating selection again means it can be hit and miss, but the staff is more than happy to help out and you usually have upwards of 15 brews to choose from. And the nachos are tasty and full of olives. They also boast a lunch menu and wireless internet access.

6) Benelux
Cafe by day, pub by night, one of the definite highlights is the back room built into the vault of this converted bank. A good place to catch a game, their American Brown Ale was a little hoppy for me, but I'm dying to try their 9% Russian Imperial Stout. They also offer cheese and olive plates as well as European sausages.

7) Brutopia
Often crowded and loud due to bands playing. First time I went I got the Nut Brown Ale which sounds good, but is actually pretty disappointing. The seasonal offerings like the Maple Stout are much safer options and I have it on good authority that their Honey Beer is tasty and refreshing. They stop serving food at 11 PM, and it's of the very greasy pub-food variety. That said, it's probably the only place on Crescent I can see myself going to.

8) 3 Brasseurs
Like the McDonald's of microbrasseries, this chain is especially popular with tourists and frat boys. Only been in once and after waiting 20 minutes for someone to take a drink order that never arrived, we opted to leave and never come back. Ever.