Maine

Right, Our trip to Maine. Our lovely friend Japan Andrew was home for Christmas and since his home is in Maine and therefore decently close to us, we decided to take him up on his invitation to go down and see him. It was somewhat unfortunate because his visit to the States was almost completely overlapping with Dylan's family's visit here. But they were understanding and entertained themselves for the day and a half we were gone. Dylan worked until midnight on the night of the 25/26th, so we got a few hours of sleep and left here around 3am on the 27th. Drove peacefully through lovely Quebec for a few hours, until we got pulled over for speeding in Ayer's Cliff, a tiny town near-ish to the Vermont boarder. The police officer didn't speak much English and didn't seem overlyimpressed with us when he first came up, but when he came back and I answered a few of his questions in french his english really seemed to improve. It was magical! Considering we were maybe going 12 km over the limit, he just gave us a warning and told us to "drive prudently."

Crossed over the boarder no prob once we told him we were visiting our friend Andrew in Maine (this seemed to reassure the guard greatly that we didn't have any ill intents, I'm guessing that it was since nothing involving Andrew could possibly be malicious in the slightest). So we went on our way and drove through Vermont and got into New Hampshire. Around then, we decided we were bored of this whole driving thing and though we'd take a break in a snowbank for about 4 hrs that involved taking an hour-long nap (we brought along some blankets for just such an event) and then spend some time with the local park ranger in his truck getting to know him and his heater. Did I mention that this trip had us heading straight into a pretty big north-eastern snow storm? After a spur of the moment, brief party on the side of the road with the park ranger, a state trooper and a couple guys with a tow truck, we figured we had had enough fun for one morning and continued on our way.



We eventually got to Maine without further incident. Spent the evening catching up with Andrew, plotting future adventures with him, meeting some of his friends (one of whom we got into a fairly interesting conversation with about the differences between canadians and americans), and having his adorable mother try and feed us until we burst.



After an (at this point) amazing 5 hour sleep, we got up around 6am, showered, ate some breakfast, spent a few last minutes with Andrew, took the lunch that Andrew's mom had gotten up to make us, and were on our way back up to Canada. This time, despite it not being the fastest route according to the GPS, we stuck to the nice, clear interstate and made it back just fine. Apparently the GPS didn't know that it was the middle of the winter and that the smaller highways don't always get the same number of snow plows frequenting them. The boarder guard had a few questions as to why our car had B.C. plates since we'd said we were living in Montreal but I think our story about the banana bread Andrew's mom had packed us really won him over. I think as we were turning onto our street, I realized that I had my keys in my coat pocket and had therefore failed yet again to leave any keys with Dylan's family. Oops.

Hmm, let's see. Where did I leave off. Ok, so, on the 21st we went to the market, picked up a Christmas tree that lucky Dylan got to carry back here, decorated it up and generally hung out. Dylan made soup. Then Dylan and I headed off to the airport yet again to pick up the in-laws! It was relatively uneventful (read: evil airport men didn't yell at us to move after 5 sec of sitting at the drop-off/pick-up area). After some late night chatting and catching up, we pretty much all crashed.


Oh, around then it hit Dylan and I that in all the excitement of people getting here, we had kinda forgotten about that whole Christmas thing. Oops. Cue next few days being spent with annoyingly large crowds of people searching for presents to put under our lovely tree. Side note: Dylan and I only brought a few strings of lights, a strand of garland, and 6 ornaments (5 of which were My Little Pony and all 6 had come from the lovely Em). Our tree was slightly bare, but people kept telling me that going out and buying ornaments for our first tree would ruin the progression and story of all our future trees. Anyway, all of a sudden it was Christmas Eve and we had all of our presents acquired except for something for Dylan's daddy. Now, we did have something for him theoretically, but we wouldn't have it physically for a few days. So, since he needed to have something to open on Christmas Day, we decided to make him something. It sounded like a good idea to us, especially since making presents is the sort of thing parents swear they like. This being said, starting to make a present the evening of Christmas Eve is NOT a good idea. Especially when you're me and refuse to use things like, I don't know, the copy and paste feature. Oh well, it got done, even if Dylan and I were responsible for Christmas morning being less Christmas morning and more Christmas mid-afternoon.

Other Christmas Eve events included my sister giving my father the present of a webcam and setting him up with Skype, so I got to call and talk with/see most of my family for the first time in forever. Talking to 6 people at the same time is quite a difficult feat, but it was nice none the less. Then Dylan, his family and I all took a speed-walk through the neighbourhood to go to midnight mass, only to find out that none of the million churches around us were having one. Weird.

The rest of Christmas was good. Lots of puttering around while Dylan and his Dad somehow managed to cook an entire Christmas feast in our humble little kitchen. Dylan only almost lit the kitchen on fire once! That's an exaggeration; he just filled the house with smoke when he left his mulled wine unattended for too long. Good times.


Boxing Day, Dylan worked. So the rest of us split up. Us lady folk got dropped off downtown to do some shopping at Forever 21 (not my ideal way to spend the day, but I thought it'd beat sitting around at home alone and it turned out to be fun), while Dylan's dad and brother were going go to MEC and pick us up some more bagels. Except when we were leaving, Dylan's dad took the keys to start the car and then had to bring them back to me so that I could lock the door and I may have forgotten to give them back to him. Meaning that he couldn't turn off the car after dropping us off. Actually, any key can turn off the car, the turning it back on would have been the problem. And, on top of that, they drove all the way out to MEC (it's not amazingly far away, but it's hardly in the center of town) to find out that it was closed that day, then they drove back to the bagel store near our house to find that it was also closed (which is really weird, since they are normally open 24hrs). Needless to say, I felt a little guilty. They texted us just as we were finishing up, came and picked us up, and then we proceeded to get horribly lost. Not lost so much as led to the wrong place. There is a street way the heck in the middle of nowhere that has the same name as the street we live on. Guess which one the GPS decided to start giving us directions to? A little bit after we drove past a road that I was pretty sure was the last reasonable one to turn on to get home, I mentioned that I was pretty sure the GPS was leading us astray, that I thought we were getting close to the end of the island, and to be careful because it is fairly easy to be forced to leave the island without meaning to. More or less as soon as I said that, we saw the sign for the bridge and found ourselves taking a nice trip to Longueuil. It took a bit of work and a collective feeling of wanting to throw the GPS out the window, but we eventually made our way home.

This puts us right before Dylan and I took our trip to Maine, which is quite the story in and of itself, so I'll call it a night here. Sleep tight Internets!

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas.

So, it has been pointed out to me that I suck at updating. This may be true, since I think my last post was exactly a month ago. It is also highly unfortunate, since that means that I have all of December to update you on, which includes Hubby's family visiting, Christmas, a trip to Maine, and Dylan's staff party, and I'm sure a million less important things. I blame Clair. Her semi-regular updates normally shame me into at least say hi occasionally, but she's been dropping the ball lately. Ah, nerdy memories from the Great 8 Escape. Anyway, I guess I should get started! (Don't worry, I'm pretty sure that I'll have to break this down into a couple posts.)

Ok, early Dec. was fairly boring and consisted mostly of me trying to clean so that Dylan's mom wouldn't spend her whole time here 'just quickly wiping this' (which is exactly what she did when we moved into our sublet in June). And moving stuff around enough so that 6 people could function in our 2-bdr home somewhat successfully. Have I mentioned that the only seating we have is the futon, my computer chair, and Fredrick, the amoeba-shaped footstool Dylan rescued years ago? Luckily, Dylan's fantastically nice boss lent us some folding chairs so that people didn't have to eat Christmas dinner on the floor. Oh, yah, we also don't have a dining room table, so dinner was eaten around the coffee table in the front room/Dylan's brother's room. But I'm getting ahead of myself since they weren't even here yet. Before people arrived, (as in pretty much on the way to the airport) we also got Putt-Putt some new winter tires so that we won't die this winter. Part of this pre-family-arrival time, Dylan was off being poked with needles.

Then people arrived! Dylan's brother and his fiance got here on the 20th, and the four of us got a day to hang out before the in-laws (I say in-laws because it's the shortest way of referring to them, but know that I hate and in no way mean to call upon any negative stereotypes that are commonly associated with the term; writing Dylan's Mommy and Daddy just gets to be a bit much after a while) arrived. We went out for dinner and I admit, it was all my fault. We had been driving around looking for somewhere that had something other than sushi or really fancy looking french food, and we saw this noodle place and I made the decision to eat there. I think it was called Schezwan Noodles. My food, that was something, was good. Dylan had General Tao chicken and that was fine. His brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law ordered a combo thing that came with hot and sour soup. It was not good. It was, in fact, hilariously awful. It looked and tasted like watered down sweet and sour sauce (yes, it was VERY slimy) with whatever was in the back thrown in. It was special and probably not the best introduction into Montreal dining.

I would launch into the arrival of the in-laws, but it is late and this seems like a good place to stop. So I leave you with this. Dylan seems to think that there is some thing wrong with my iPod's scrobbling.