Mitochondria’s Delight

Last night, Indie asked me to get a portable instrument so we could become street artists and travel all over the world. I joked and said I’d get a triangle. Then we blablaed about it and in the end, Indie said I had to get a triangle and those eggs that make noise (maracas, I guess)!

Of course, I went to get those, and of course, my egg had to be purple (they didn’t have pink )! But I decided to get something else, a darbouka! It’s kinda like a djembe, but it doesn’t come from Africa… it comes from whatever oriental place. I think I got the Turkish style, but I’m not sure! Anyway, I got it 1h ago and my hands are hurting! This thing is so fucking fun and totally addictive!! I know you’re all dying to hear me play, so I recorded something for you. *Warning: This was recorded about 5min after I got home… so… be nice and don’t complain if it sounds horrible!!!* I’m just randomly hitting the thing!

-Annick

The other day, I went to get wine… I was looking for my wallet in my purse and when I looked up, the dude was staring at me and not saying a word. I didn’t know what to think, I thought something was wrong or that he’d ask for my ID. So he finally said “Vous avez un look d’étudiante, vous le savez?!”. I wanted to laugh but didn’t (cause i’m sooo polite! ) and I finally said “hmmm”. Then he said “I think you look young but I guess you’re over 18”. I said “yeah, I am”. Then, just for fun, I asked “How old do you think I am?”. He said “19-20”. Then the other women waiting in line were like “Yeah, you look like 20-22”. I told them I’m 28 and they all started saying stuff like “This is great, later you’ll be happy to look young, blablabla”. Goddamn, one second you’re quietly buying wine and the next second, everyone in the store is blablaing about your babyface.. How did that happen?!

At the pool, my sauna-buddy and I were joking about being sooo old and not being able to do kids’ stuff anymore, like getting drunk and eating poutine at 4am (mmm, poutine!!). Our other sauna-buddy was looking at us weirdly and finally asked “How old are you girls?”. We answered and she was like “ah, ok, I thought you were like 20 and thinking you’re super old!!”.

Indie, this is scary, I’m starting to think I might actually be Babyface, loool! I don’t know if I have Leisha’s glow, but I do have Babyfaceish shoes!

So as I predicted, Boston is out and Montréal is moving on to next round. The Kostitsyn brothers were so great, as usual. And it was good to see Saku back (he was injured) and playing along with Higgins and Kovalev. Thanks to Indie, I now know how to say Kovi’s name => Kavaliof I read somewhere that “Belarusian: Андрэй Касьціцын, Andrej Kascicyn”… Indie, so does that mean I’m supposed to say Kas-blabla instead of Kos? For the rest, I guess it’s like kas-tsi-ts(weird sound I cant make, between ou and i!)n. Right?!

When watching the games, I’m usually quiet but on Monday night, I think I lost it! When Higgins scored the first goal, I screamed “et le buuuuuuut!”… It was so loud and high that it even surprised me! So, hmmm, I decided it would be better for my blood pressure if I’d go get a glass of wine I calmed down, but many “aaah, oooh, nooon, et le but, …” were heard in my living room Ça sent la coupe, doesn’t it?!

My team, the Montréal Canadiens, is the NHL Eastern Conference champion.  Woohoooo!

I’m really looking forward to the playoffs (starting this week). I have to say, I haven’t been this excited since the 2003-2004 playoffs. Do you remember?! It was right before the lockout. In the first round, Montréal was playing against Boston (our worst enemies!) and Boston was leading 3-1. Then Montréal came back and won the following games. Ryder & Ribeiro were just awesome and back then, Théodore was insanely good! Then… hmmm.. we lost to Tampa Bay… which isn’t so bad cause they won the Stanley Cup that year!

This year, Montréal will, once again, play against Boston in the first round. Who will win?! Montréal, of fucking course Go Habs, go!

Does someone remember the coca-cola ad with Saku Koivu?! It was like a cartoon and at the end, Saku was singing the “Halte là, les Canadiens sont là” song. Saku singing in French, aaaww, so cute!!

-Annick

It, very surprisingly, was snowing last Friday. Indie asked me some snow-related questions like “how does the sky look like when it’s snowing, does it look squeezable?!”. I thought those were cute questions, but my answers were extremely boring! So I decided to go out with my camera and take some snowy sky pictures. You can find them here. I didn’t take many pictures cause my camera was getting wet and I took many pictures of the same thing cause I was testing different camera settings. But anyway… the whole point was to get a good snowy sky pic and I think I succeeded!

That night, I had dinner with MP and Mel. We tried that cool Afghan restaurant and it was fucking delicious! We ate the lentils soup with coriander, Pumpkin Borani, Ashak, Kabuli Palaw, Mourg Chalaw and Korma Chalaw. The lamb was awesome but the Pumpkin Borani was definitely the star of the night!!! Some will be happy to know I found the recipe!

Current music: The Smashing Pumpkins, "1979"

-Annick

You probably already know that I have a gardenish last name, but I’m far from being a plant/flower expert! Well, I have 3 green plants at home and they’re doing fine… but yeah, I don’t have a super green thumb! Last week, I decided to start improving my gardening skills and pay a pseudo-homage to my last name.

A few months ago, I got something in the mail from a certain bank with a bright orange logo. They sent me info about one of their products, but there was something else in the envelope: a bright orange flower made with something that looked like cardboard. It was some weird paper with flowers seeds stuck inside! I kept it in the drawer and forgot about it… Last week, I decided to plant it. I didn’t think something would grow, but I was wrong! Look, I have lots of baby flowers now!

Happy with those results, I decided to start a new gardening project = herbs! I went to the store and bought seeds for basil, chives, rosemary and Italian flat leaf parsley (don’t get the curly leaf type, it’s tasteless!). I planted those on April 2^nd and I already have tiny basil seedlings. Isn’t that great?!

You might want to know what type of flowers I’ll get with the bank-flowers. Well, I have no clue. They just said that they are wildflowers. Do you remember your biology classes and the taxonomy stuff?! I thought it’d be fun to try to identify the flowers I have! As you can see on the pic, it seems like they’re almost all dicotyledons. There’s only one seedling that looks like a monocotyledon. I read that there are about 200 000 species in the dicots group and about 60 000 species in the monocots group… Who wanna guess and find the species I have?!

-Annick

This is where I first moved in when I moved to Montréal. As you can see, there’s not much left of it today . I liked my old apartment, it had French doors and other cool stuff! And it was in the trendy McGill ghetto, 2 blocks away from St-Laurent street (which is the coolest and busiest street of Montréal). It’s weird, when I was living there, we had many fire alarms but it was always for nothing…

Once, someone took a very warm shower in the middle of the night and we all had to evacuate the building and wait for the firefighters. I’m guessing she was trying to transform her bathroom into a sauna! Anyway, so thanks to those stupid neighbors, I became a “let’s get dressed in the middle of the night in 2 nanoseconds”-master!!!

One of my neighbors was an old lady and she never wanted to get out. She was like “it’s always a false alarm”. I told her “yeah, but one day it could be a real one” and she answered “ah, I’m old so it’s ok if I die in here”. Every time we had those alarms, I’d knock on her door and ask her if she was ok and wanted to come downstairs. She’d always say no and I’d always tell her that I’d go downstairs and check what’s going on and I’d come back to get her if it was a real fire! So when I saw the building burning today, I immediately thought of that old lady. I was afraid that she’d, once again, stay in her apartment. I was so happy when I saw her on tv! Well, I’m still a bit concerned cause she was being taken to the hospital by the paramedics, but still, she seemed ok.

Little video from the news…

-Annick