Ok, maybe that’s a lie. I don’t know what/who my #1 enemy is. But the sound of that alarm clock is definitely something I’m not crazy over. And it’s not just the siren-like sound of the alarm, but also the ticking… Oh my God, the ticking is BRUTAL!

D says that I have dwarves walking around in my head and they’re not letting me behave like a normal person in certain circumstances. I think that’s just a euphemism and what he’s really trying to say is I’ve got issues! Ok, so what else is new? Anyway, I’m divagating…

One of these brain-dwelling dwarves is prohibiting me from falling asleep with a ticking sound in the room. Wait! You’ve got the same problem? My dwarves and your dwarves could be cousins. All of us should have a tea party!

That’s why this newly-bought clock is not being wound anymore and is resting in front of my desk, being purely an ornamental piece.

I’ve never been a morning person. But I wish I were. I wish I could wake up early in the morning, go jogging, buy croissants and coffee and then go to work. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Yeah…

But what actually happens in the morning is, in this order, jump up at the sound of my phone alarm, realize that I am in my bedroom and not in the jungle/desert island/back in highschool, press the snooze button, wake up 15 min later, get out of bed, brush my teeth, yawn a few times and only then wake up for real. At this point it’s safe to talk to me - my neurons will actually connect and I’ll comprehend that the sounds coming out from your mouth are actually words!

Usually D comes in and gives me a kiss before he heads off to work, and depending on my mood I either want to give him a big, warm, “Oh, sweetie!” hug [which I don’t since my brain is in WILL NOT COMPUTE! WILL NOT COMPUTE mode and I literally can’t move] or find the closest pillow and smack him [when my brain is in I’M SLEEPING SO BUGGER OFF mode. I never do this though because he’s just too sweet]. My most common reaction is a big smile and then falling back to sleep. How’s that for a proof of affection?

Here are a few colorful examples, mainly from Old Montreal area.

The next one is actually a house number.

And don’t try to argue with me! We all know that asking a man to choose between “butter” and “champagne” as colors for wall paint is like asking them to say what came first - the chicken or the egg.

The other night D and I were talking about what colors we’d like for a couch. When I said I’d love a navy blue couch, D’s reaction was “BLEEAAAAH! Navy blue, that’s such an ugly color!” which really irritated me because navy blue is in fact one of my fave colors and I can’t have my boyfriend having his corneas burnt when he sees it. So I proceeded to investigate the matter and realized that D actually thinks that navy blue (bleumarin in French) is in fact the color of the sea, that grayish blue which obviously doesn’t speak to him chromatically

So in order to remove all uncertainties in our color-related conversation D had a brilliant idea: let’s talk about colors in RGB. At this point I was already like “dude, remind me to send you a picture of me yawning!”. But he’s a persistent fella’ so he got into this whole deal of saying numbers between 0 and 255 instead of hues. So instead of buying a navy blue couch I would buy a 3-12-55 one and I’d wear a 57-7-83 skirt. I just checked these in Photoshop so you can trust me! I guess the only thing at a higher level of geeky-ness would be to use hexadecimals!

Right… So we’re talking about this D is talking about this, explaining his ass off for 10 min and I’m struggling not to pass out from acute boredom. Finally he asks me “Now tell me…just so I can picture it in my head, approximately what values does your navy blue have?”. And I go “Remember those uniforms we used to wear in first grade? Those were navy blue! There you go!”.

Which practically drives D on the verge of insanity - “That’s why I explained for 10 min, so you can tell me it’s the color of the uniforms? ARGHHHHH!”

Disclaimer: I knew what RGB is before D so patiently explained, but I heard him out anyway…he’s just so sexy when he talks about technical stuff!

***

Speaking of colors how gorgeous is this sunset?
[Taken in Sherbrooke, last summer]

Well it seems now that the imaginary answering machine is not that imaginary. D has been working all weekend (while I was on a shopping spree at IKEA)on this little project and it’s starting to look very promising. I’m rather impressed and needless to say D never seizes to amaze me.

Leaving that aside, he just told me that he was calling the home server from his work phone today and he got the wrong number [why doesn’t that surprise me?]. Normally the server would “pick up” and say “Welcome to Microsoft Exchange”. But to D’s surprise what he heard from the other end of the line was a soft female voice saying “Oui, alo?”.

Naturally D got flustered and confused and hang up without saying anything. But how cool would it have been had he asked “Hello! Am I speaking to Microsoft Exchange?”.

But the thing is we’d have to have to record a message for the answering machine. So here’s what D has in mind:

“Hello! You’ve reached Alexandra and D. If you want to contact D press 1…”

But he quickly gave up this idea - “Nooo, we’ll have speech recognition!”

“Hello! You’ve reached Alexandra and D. If you want to talk to Alexandra please say “Alexandra”. If you’re calling you probably want to talk to Alex because of her super cool blog. She’s not home right now, but you can leave a message which she’ll receive on her super pretty laptop. If however you want technical support because you cannot access Alex’s blog or you cannot leave comments, please say “D” and leave a message after the beep. Beeeeep!”

Do you think many people would venture to call us back?

***

Here are some pics of lilies I took several months ago near our lab.

It’s giving us Shakespeare, in the park, by the river, with amazingly good performers, for free!

We went to see a play by master Shakespeare last week. It was put together by these young actors from Repercussion Theatre. Although I would not mind to go to an old fashioned play in a theatre hall, the en air libre version of The Tempest was really delightful. It was breezy, it smelled like water (thanks to the St. Lawrence nearby) and the actors were brilliant!

I especially liked the way the actors themselves created all the background sounds(seagulls, ships crackling, wind blowing) without resorting to any “artificial” music.

The only thing I’m sorry about is the fact that I didn’t quite understand all the lines since I’m not very fluent in English from the 1500s.

- 500g of beef

- 1 medium onion

- 2-3 cloves of garlic

- 60g of butter or margarine

- 125 ml of sour cream

- 250g of mushrooms

- tomato paste

- beef/chicken broth

- chives

- 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika

- 4-5 tablespoons of flour

========================================================

Step 1: the onion and the garlic

Cut the onion and garlic in small pieces.

Let the butter melt in a pan at medium temperature.

Add the paprika, diced onion and garlic. You should get a yellow-looking mixture. Let this cook until the onion becomes a bit soft.

Step 2: the mushrooms

Chop the mushrooms like so

and boil them in a bit of water for 5-10 min in another pan. When they’ve become a bit tender, separate the water and put them aside.

Step 3: the meat

Cut the beef like so

in long pieces, about 1 cm thick. Next, cover them in flour like so

Step 4: adding everything together 

Add in a bigger pot the onion, the mushrooms and the meat. Let it cook for 1-2 min then add the tomato paste, the sour cream and the broth.

Let it boil for 5-10 min until the meat is done. You can add salt and pepper if you want to.

Before eating add some chopped chives on top.

Serve it with rice and steamed veggies.Serve it with rice and steamed veggies.

Bon appetit!

Plus, I don’t really like the aftertaste of regular milk and how I get thirsty right after I have a glass (it’s because I’m just weird that way!) so I’ve managed to substitute it with yummy vanilla-flavor soy milk. Which by the way has more calcium than regular milk! Just for spite!!!

A carnivore that he is, and thinking that soy is the public enemy number 1, D REFUSES to have his mouth less than 3 feet away from a soy milk source just in case the soy milk fumes might leak outside the bottle, penetrate his body through his skin pores and make his brain explode!!!

When I asked him why he so fervently objects to drinking any other kind of milk than that which comes from a moo-ing source, he replied:

“Hun, it’s psychologically impossible for me: it looks like milk, tastes like milk… and it’s made of a legume!”

Now if only it walked like milk and quacked like milk I’m sure I would convince him to have some…

“Yeah, sure” he said. “I know one in the Eaton centre!”

I was really surprised to hear that because while the Eaton shopping centre IS big, Walmart stores are not usually found in such shopping centres. But hey, D was staying in Montreal for 2 years now, so he must have known what he was saying, right?

Mind you, during these 2 years, D had never ventured into the midst of the aforementioned store, but he seemed quite confident about its whereabouts and he had me convinced!

So we went shopping, we bought some shoes for D, had some lunch and Walmart was our next stop.

We took the escalators, got down to the ground floor and all of a sudden D points to a small Hallmark store and proudly says “here it is, hunny, I told you I knew where it was!” while the look in his eye said “gimme a kiss or a snack or something!”

I rubbed my eyes, thinking “is this a mirage?”, I blinked a few times, and finally replied:

“Not HALLMARK hunny” I said not knowing what to do - laugh or get angry “WAL-MART! W A L M A R T!”

“Hallmark! Walmart! They all sound the same! Are you sure this is not what you’re looking for?”

Right then and there I laid on the Eaton centre floor, stood there, bewildered and pondered on how it is possible for someone to mistake the most known greeting card store with a place where you can buy furniture and toilet cleaning products from.