Well, I’m exhausted, and tomorrow I’ll probably be even exhausteder.  In addition to being tired out by my campaign to add new words to the English dictionary, tomorrow is Science Fair!  My students, young and old, have all been working hard, or at least pretending to, in order to get ready for science fair tomorrow.  Although it is one of the funner events of the year (I know a couple individuals who are cringing right now), it’s a lot of hard work too.  But the best thing about science fair is this: the day after is Mid-Winter Break!  Yay!  I’m so glad my school made up a fake holiday to try to prevent the teachers and students from going loopy from science fair stress!  Well, it didn’t work, but I’m glad for the day off anyway.

P.S.  If you don’t already, you really should check out xkcd.com (the website whose author created the above pic, I think)  as it’s the most intelligent website on the internet.  You can only be considered smart if you get their comics.  I’m smart most days…

My pride at seeing my Mark’s team of Bloggers win CBC’s Test the Nation has inspired me to un-abandon my own blog! And here to kick it off are pictures of our trip to Toronto for the taping and live airing of the show. The above is him posing with a Paris Hilton impersonator from the Celebrity Look-a-like team that didn’t do so well. At least they did better than the Cab Drivers though, who came in last. One of the cabbies actually sat down with us in the hotel lounge after the show to try to explain to us why cabbies are so smart. He gave us some great business advice, like how you can get a 2km wireless laptop range by hooking it up to a cell phone, and why moving to Sudbury to start up a video game programming company would be a good idea. Let me emphasize that I have nothing against cab drivers in general - just that one in particular.

Wow, I am sorely unimpressed with what happened today in the mall. Mark & I were having lunch in the food court of Alexis Nihon Mall (at Atwater metro, for all you Montrealers). There were a couple of women eating at a table nearby us, and a man sitting alone at a table not eating. All of a sudden one of the women started making a commotion. The man had reached down into her bag, which was sitting on the floor, and had taken her wallet out! She hadn’t even seen that though, she had only noticed when he set the wallet back on the floor by her bag. She started yelling at him which attracted our attention. The thief ran away, and she called out for security. On the next floor down, a security guard stopped the guy, and had him by the arm. The woman caught up and explained to the guard what had happened, and that there were witnesses.

Now if you were the security guard, what do you think you would do? Well this security guard escorted the pickpocket of the mall.

…

That’s it.

He just asked the thief to leave.

Nothing more.

What the hell kind of security is that?! I know mall security guards aren’t exactly the SWAT team, and there’s no way they can be expected to control all the crime in a large public place like a mall, but this guy had the thief by the arm, and just let him go! He had more than enough reason to arrest him, and security guards DO have that authority - anyone does. We all have the power to make citizen’s arrests, according to section 494 of the Criminal Code of Canada, and sumamrized very well on Wikipedia.

“Paragraph two of the section permits a property owner, or a person authorized by the owner (e.g. a security guard), to make a citizen’s arrest of a person found committing a criminal offence (whether indictable or summary conviction) on or to that property.”

Some people mistakenly believe that citizen’s arrests won’t hold up in court, and are a thing of the past, but this is not true. Citizen’s arrests are perfectly acceptable as confirmed by a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada to uphold a citizen’s arrest as recently as in the 2003 case of R. v. Asante-Mensah.

Afterwards, Mark & I were talking with the woman who was victimized, since Mark witnessed the incident (I had my back to them at the time). She said that it didn’t seem like anything was missing from the wallet, but that’s even more strange. The thief was only caught in the act of dropping the wallet on the floor by the bag. Why was he putting it back on the floor? Was there no cash in it? Was he only after credit card numbers? If so, why did it appear to the woman that nothing was missing? It’s an odd case, and I am appalled that the mall security guard did absolutely nothing. I don’t know what I can do, other than write to the mall management (which I’ve already done), and avoid Alexis Nihon mall whenever I can now. If you’re pissed off about this event, why don’t you e-mail the mall management at info@alexisnihon.com, and rfortin.info@alexisnihon.com, and share your feelings with them?

Well, Montreal is certainly the city of festivals! In the past couple of weeks, Mark & I went to see a few shows for the Just For Laughs, one of the world’s largest comedy festivals. We saw the Kids In The Hall perform a live comedy show, their first time performing together since their movie Brain Candy about a decade ago. We also saw a show called The Line Up, which was a sketch comedy show featuring many different comedians, and was hosted by David Cross and Bob Odenkirk. Lastly, we took in a Family Guy show, in which all the voice actors from the animated TV show did a live read-through, and a little improvisation, and answered questions. I wish I had more pictures of the events, but of course, photography is banned at most shows. The pictures I do have are here.

Also, this past weekend was Célébrations LGBTA, Montreal’s Gay pride parade, which thankfully went ahead amidst worries that it might be canceled due to idiotic political infighting and greed within Dives/Cité, the organization that runs the rest of the gay pride festival. Apparently they did some survey and found that not enough parade go-ers attended the other Divers/Cité events, so they wanted to move the parade a couple weeks before Divers/Cité, and when they couldn’t get approval from the city, the parade was simply canceled. Thankfully Célébrations was started up in order to organize the parade, and it was a great success. Parade pics are here.

Yes, I’m cat-sitting! Dani, a friend of mine, went to Halifax for a week and a half, so Mark & I offered to take care of her cat. I’ve always been more of a dog person, but taking care of Ampersand, (Dani is an English teacher) is showing me how they can grow on you. Unfortunately, Ampersand is the textbook definition of the term “fraidy-cat”. Even though we’ve met plenty of times at Dani’s place, Ampersand did everything she could to hide the moment Dani dropped her off. Above are a few pictures I’ve taken so far. There’s always an object in the way because she always hides behind things. Thankfully, now that she’s been here a full 24 hours, she’s starting to feel comfortable enough to emerge from her various lairs and explore the apartment and interact with Mark & me. Now I just hope it won’t be long before she’ll feel comfortable enough to start eating!

On Friday night, Mark & I went out for dinner with a couple of friends, Steph and Dani, and had the worst dining experience of my entire time in Montreal! We went strolling along in Le Plateau, an area that boasts a large selection of great little pubs & restaurants. We chose a nice-looking little Italian restaurant called Il Trullo with a patio. What a mistake! First of all, they were taking forever with our orders. They said it’s because they were busy, but the patio was only partly full, and the inside was deserted. Finally, they brought out our soups & salads, completely forgetting about the appetizer of bruschetta that we had ordered. When we asked about it, they assured us it was coming. I use the word “they”, because we had two servers which may have contributed to the confusion. Eventually, they brought out a plate to us, but it was full of ham! They must have mis-heard “bruschetta”, as “prosciutto”! Considering Dani’s a vegetarian, I’m pretty sure she didn’t order prosciutto. Finally the bruschetta came out, followed by our meals. The pasta they served us seemed like it came out of a box of President’s Choice no name pasta, and they even had one item on the menu that claimed to be “Ragu” sauce. I think I could have made the meal that they served us in less than 10 minutes for about 80 cents. Oh, and to top it all off, they got Mark’s order wrong. Remember Il Trullo. Never eat there. We should have been clued in by the fact that it wasn’t very busy on a Friday night.

Thankfully, the half-hearted meal didn’t fill me up, so we went to Rockaberry, the most fantabulous pie place in Montreal! That was followed up by a cool little jazz club that we discovered by accident called, Diese Onze, where we enjoyed the performance of a jazz quartet that had two autistic members, and they were really good! So the moral of this story is: pie, drinks and music can save any evening. But I’ll never go back to that restaurant again!

Well, my parents just flew home after a week-long visit to Montreal. It was great having them visit here, and they picked an excellent time to come. The week before they were here was absolutely scorching, and the week after has been rainy. Of course, it rained a bit while they were here too, but not too much to ruin our plans. The Jazz Festival was on, so we took in a bunch of shows, including the Cowboy Junkies. Of course we also saw a lot of the usual tourist things like the Old Port, the Biodome, Parc Jean-Drapeau, and we walked up Mont Royal. See the photo page for all the pics of what we did during their visit, as well as a couple of pics from when Mark’s parents were here a few months ago in March.

Well, I was warned about how teachers always get sick at the very end of the school year. You’ve been insanely busy, working hard, your body’s been fighting off all the microbes that exist in a school, and then when you’re done, your immune system lets its guard down, and you get sick within the first week of your summer break. Well, this year I took this to a whole new level; not only did I get sick, but I passed out and nearly gave myself a concussion!

On the very last day in school for the teachers there was a BBQ, (or more accurately, a 3-hour-long retirement ceremony with speeches and tears disguised as a casual BBQ) and I was already feeling a little like I was coming down with something. That evening, I was feeling a bit feverish - too hot one minute, too cold the next. Then that night, I had woken up because I was burning up - the sweat was literally dripping off me. So I went into the bathroom, but when I stood up too fast, I passed out, and fell over, bumping my head on the bathtub! Thankfully Mark heard the “thud”, and came to see what the matter was, and found me unconscious lying half inside the bathtub, and half outside of it! He woke me up quickly, and got me sitting upright. I was feeling woozy, lightheaded, and nauseous. We were both worried about the possibility of a concussion, (We had just recently seen that episode of “The Office” when Dwight gets a concussion) and after much convincing from Mark, my saviour, I agreed that we should probably go to a hospital just to be on the safe side.

So, after only about an hour of sitting on the gross cushions of the relatively empty emergency room of Montreal General Hospital’s McGill Medical Center, I was able to see a doctor who ran a bunch of tests on me and and said that I was fine, and that I didn’t have a concussion, but that I should take it easy for a few days.

What a great way to start off the summer!

What do you get when you combine a drag queen, a beatboxer, two lesbians, bagpipes, a microphone, and a bunch of fire? Montreal’s Fringe Festival, of course! Many cities have Fringe Festivals, but as Montreal is the most open-minded, left-wing, European city in Canada, it attracts some of the world’s most unique talent.

So, last night Mark & I were convinced by our friend Dani to go see something that could very well be the textbook definition of the word “unique”. We went to see an outdoor show that started off with two young women who were fire-dancers and fire-eaters. From the fire dancing they were doing, you could obviously tell that they were a couple. They even offered to do part of their dangerous act blind-folded. The only problem with that was that one girl couldn’t tell when the wind blew out her flaming staff, so she did the rest of the dance without re-lighting it.

But they weren’t even the main attraction, we had gone there specifically to see Miss Gina, the drag piper (top left, the only actual picture up there from the Fringe), a drag queen who plays the bagpipes. I guess it makes sense that in a culture that proudly wears kilts, putting on a dress would be a natural progression. Then as if that wasn’t enough, a beatboxer who had been performing on his own earlier in the Fringe put on a dress, got up on stage, and provided some vocal percussion accompaniment for Miss Gina. I don’t think I ever would have thought of combining bagpipes, and well… anything, let alone beatboxing, but the pairing worked, strangely enough.

So it was an interesting evening of watching a guy in drag play the bagpipes, while another guy in a dress produced the percussion with his mouth, all opened by a lesbian couple who danced with, and ate, fire.

So what did you do on Saturday night?

I know that Terry Pratchett says using multiple exclamation marks is a sign of an unstable mind, but this situation seems to warrant it: SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER!!!  Friday was my last day with students, and even though I still have to go in for a few days next week and put the finishing touches on report cards, I feel so liberated knowing that summer is here! I really enjoyed teaching this year, and don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to the fall already, but a well deserved break will be very much appreciated.

Today I hope to do a little shopping for summer clothes and possibly go see a dragpiper - more on that once I figure out what it is…

Happy summer everyone!