Corner of Bourbon & Division

 That's no mean feat. Mostly I feel like today was a lot of running around. I saw the paralegal this morning, and she is of the (professional) opinion that my landlady has no leg to stand on when it comes to this so-called eviction. I brought pictures of my floors, and she agrees that they're fine and in no way damaged by pets.

She'll be sending an official letter to my landlady and the lawyers detailing how we'd like things to go from here on out:

• I agree to move out by the end of three months
• Both my landlady and I sign a mutual release form (she doesn't seek to claim "damages" from me, I don't sue her for harassment and/or preventing my "reasonable enjoyment" of my place of residence)
• My landlady returns all my post-dated cheques to me, from the month of April onward, so that I don't have to pay a cancellation fee

If my landlady is reasonable, she will accept, and that will be the end of it. Of course, the minute we sign the release, she's allowed to show people my place from 08:00 to 20:00 every single day of the week without giving me any notice at all, so I anticipate many weeks of being awoken during night shifts, or having other activities interrupted. At least it'll make her look bad toward prospective tenants if she does that.

That, of course, is the best-case scenario, supposing she's reasonable. Given that she doesn't seem prone to making sane choices, I am half-expecting her to try to escalate this, at which point we will kick her ass in court in front of the Landlord and Tenant Board. My paralegal is going to recommend a flooring company to me to come in and do an evaluation of the floors, and we're going to see about getting in a different cleaning service (to honour my verbal agreement with my landlady that I'd have them in every two weeks). There will be extensive documentation, and it will all be a pain in my ass to deal with in terms of time, money, and emotional energy. I can't wait.

Anyway, the meeting went well, and I even remembered to pick up milk and tea on the way home, so I'm counting it as a win.

I ended up having to go back out in the late afternoon to meet with a coworker concerning a committee at work I'm supposed to start running. Nothing like having meetings two days in a row, both on my day off, let me tell you. Still, we met at a coffee shop and she brought her adorable dog for me to cuddle, so it wasn't all bad. I just would have preferred to stay cosily at home.

I tried stopping by U-Haul after that to pick up some of their smaller boxes so I could start packing my books (I used medium-sized boxes the last time, and concluded that the weight was not worth the saved space, unfortunately). I ended up not staying, because we've had another substantial snowfall (the second in three days), and the parking lot was packed with trucks, mountains of snow, and a snow removal truck, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where I should park. I'll try again tomorrow when the weather has improved and daylight is on my side.

I did manage to swing by Canadian Tire, which wasn't on my list of things to do today, but occurred to me to do while I was out. I'm looking for air vent filters so that my landlady can't complain about dog fur in the vents, but I didn't find any that were large enough for my wall vents, which is a bummer. I ended up buying a pack of smaller ones anyway, and I'll try to make them fit, maybe by cutting some of them and playing filter Tetris. We'll see how well I can MacGyver them, I guess.

And last but not least, I ended up back at the office anyway, in order to misappropriate some office supplies by printing an application for a place I'd like to stay in. My friend L. suggested I look into co-op housing, and I found what looks like a promising little community about twenty minutes away from here. It's far enough that I probably won't be able to go home for lunch anymore, but I'd be saving nearly $700 a month in rent and there's a big focus on community, which sounds right up my alley. I really enjoy having cordial relations with my neighbours, if not more, so this would be perfect.

The problem, of course, is that all prospective landlords want to talk to your current landlord for application purposes, and nothing turns them off faster than hearing you're having trouble with your landlord. They immediately (and understandably) assume that you are the problem, because of course there's no such thing as a dishonest or troublesome landlord. So I'm trying to get my ducks in a row in order to assuage any fears that they might have. Thank you, landlady, for ruining yet another part of my life (at least temporarily).

In other, completely unrelated news, my poor mother nearly got scammed today (again). She got an email supposedly from the Canada Revenue Agency saying she hadn't paid her 2015 taxes, and would she please and thank you click on this handy link in order to "confirm" her personal information? Luckily she contacted her accountant first and was waiting for him to call back when we spoke, so I was able to tell her it was a scam and not to click on anything. Her accountant called back while we were on the phone and confirmed what I'd told her, so we dodged that particular bullet. But seriously, fuck scammers in particular.

In short, a lot happened today, and yet I somehow still feel unproductive. I guess I'll call it an early-ish night, since I have a meeting in the morning at work, too. In the afternoon I'll be visiting my first potential rental (though not the one in the co-op). We shall see.

This time, it is I who am away from home, but the emails continue.

January 5th, 2013

Angel,

Happy, happy real birthday !

I am so pleased that your temporary abode is nice. The day you left, a Stygian cold -an acheronian gloom (how about THAT?!! ) descended on Montreal. At 20 below it was a perfect day for the city to cut our electricity. In no time flat, I had to put on thick wool socks and two sweaters and an eiderdown I wore like a cape (it made moving around a bit awkward but dusted the floor rather well). Thankfully it was only for a short while - but enough time to compose a scathing, inflamed missive - a sort of rant. I would send this blazing email forthwith to the Great Bozo of Montreal (the mayor). Lucky for him, the electricity returned after an hour.

So I wondered what kind of weather you had on arrival. Today, it's practically tropical weather. Zero degrees. Which has its own drawbacks: as I set out to Victoria ave. I was standing at the corner and as I waited for the light to change I was contemplating the geography of a rather large puddle of grey sludge that had a shape similar to that of the Mediterranean sea. Which led me to muse about deep sea-creatures, etc. etc. An evil gnome drove by at supersonic speed aiming carefully at my Mediterranean sea with the evident result. I was spattered from head to toe and swore I would leave for Hawaii that very day, that very hour - forever. However, I didn't leave after all. Even though the zipper of my boot jammed when I got home- nearly forever. Our neighbor chose that very moment to arrive with a friend, while I was sitting on the floor in the hallway, about to murder my boot with a bread-knife (I thought it might unjam the jammed zipper).

I think the friend may have found me a bit odd.

The perils of winter in Montreal.

So glad you sent me your address and stuff. We will try you on Skype - Is Sunday good? Around what time would be good for you ?

With tons and tons of love and I hope the doughnuts were appreciated.

Mim.


January 6th, 2013

... looked up your Creighton on the web: the flat
looks quite swish. By golly, by gum.
xo Mim

January 6th, 2013


... to remind you of us.
xo Mim

http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=33329


To which I responded:

January 6th, 2013

That is hilarious!

I am running off to work, but shall be home tomorrow evening. Shall we attempt Skype then?

Bizes!

Die Tochter

And finally:

January 7th, 2013

Absolutely !!! Dying to hear to your news. I shall arrange my
hair in consequence...

trillion xo's
Mim

Angel,

I must tell you about our film adventure.

Daddy decided we needed to familiarize ourselves with this new invention: a movie on a big screen.

After much agonizing I decided we should see a film by Lars Von Trier - the mad genius of films - showered with praise internationally and considered to be stunningly beautiful. It's a bizarre story about a planet about to cause a giant cosmic accident by colliding with earth as it meanders absent-mindedly around in space. The planet is called Melancholia (hence, the name of the film). In the meantime everyone has a wonderful time. So no bazookas, no one wrestles anyone to the ground, nobody gouges out eyeballs or explodes things.

A nice Friday afternoon movie, I assumed. Just one giant pouf! at the end.

NO MOVIE. It was Friday, the little boy said, movies change Friday. No, I said, you advertised in the paper it plays EVERY DAY OF THE WEEEK at 3 pm. No, he said, not Friday.

Well, last I checked, Friday was a day of the week. (It's been changed apparently)

We eventually rushed back to the Excentris for the next movie scheduled for a 6:30 performance.

NO MOVIE. (Power outage). I said I'm not leaving without a film. An hour later, YES, a film was being shown! L'exercice de l'État : a sublimely clever film said the critics, much praised - about politics in France.

Two hours later the film ended, and I still don't know what it was about.

Tomorrow we might see another film. A cowboy movie?

Love, Mim

Angel,

Today we went to a very yéyé resto for lunch.

It consisted of a fixed menu which started with 3 pea-sized grilled cheese balls levitating on froth (?). We had some difficulty locating the cheese balls on the plate.

Next entrée (there were three altogether), consisted of four pink marinated radish slices cut so thin they seemed
to be a mirage, and a drop of foie gras on a single cooked leaf that looked suspiciously like spinach. In fact it was a very rare plant. Every dish was preceded by a detailed explanation from a goateed young man from Tashkent or Mongolia (really) and on every dish, a minute leaf - grown in Mr. Yokoshimuto's very own garden (the French chef).

Then, a variety of dishes flavoured with M. Yokoshimuto's extremely rare green leaves. Of course, you couldn't miss the very large plates; it was finding the food I had trouble with.

It really was divine.

Nearby, in a taxidermist's shop, an ostrich egg I have grown very fond of. For a very large omlette.

Heapfuls of love, Mim

Hi new folk to this LJ!

Ever wonder why Phnee is the way she is? Wonder no more! If you look up the word "eccentric" in the dictionary, there is a picture of my mother. She is also way awesome.

In short, I come by all my crazy honestly, as well as how I write, why I write, and why most of my opinions are the way they are. I am nothing if not my parents' daughter.

Sent February 24th:

Angel,

Can't resist telling you about my visit to Kim Phat today.

A Cambodian (?) marché on a discreet side-street off Cote des Neiges. I was looking for a vulgar celery when I was confronted with rows and rows of strange veggies (that might actually have been fruits) I have never seen before. Some looked like bundles of long green rope, some like glass beads, some fermented black beans... (I was told). I discreetly poked and smelled and wound up with a small shriveled cucumber-like object with a skin like an armadillo - all it needed was four little feet and two beady eyes to take off.

I was so fascinated with its bumpy skin covered with weird extrusions that I bought it. I forgot the celery.

Daddy was not impressed.

But I hope it won't evaporate so you can eventually see it.

Tons of love, Mim


Sent February 28th:

Angel,

A brief word to advise you NOT to buy tickets for "Les Essais, d'après Montaigne". Daddy wanted to walk out halfway before the end of the play. It was turned into a Québécois burlesque farce, dans le genre of Juste Pour Rire. Appalling. The Molière was apparently in the same vein.

Mim

A/N: Too bad. I usually love the stuff produced by Le Théatre du Sous-marin Jaune," but I am inclined to believe my mother on this one, and so I gave it a miss. The last production had me in stitches.


Sent the same day, titled "A small rant about Greece & art."

Angel, re the finacial débâcle in Greece:

I understand virtually nothing about derivatives or currency trades - but I do love the new phrase, "creative accounting". Actually, I didn't even know that a country could be a client of a particular bank & its accountants.

I read in the Financial Post that Goldman Sachs creates "custom-made financial instruments" for countries on the Continent. What are those things? Do I not understand English any longer? Why can't my accountant create these lovely things for me? I will definitely suggest it to him.

And I thought the art world was dead! (Note the Whitney Biennial in NY). The art critic of the NYTimes writes it:

"... reflects the retrenched art-about-art spirit of the day". What in the world is this man saying? About the Boltansky exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris - the one made up of old clothes. It inspires me to lay out all my old clothes on the living-room floor, making sure they point in the same direction, and presto! ART for posterity. Whoever would have thought my old underwear was worth millions.

Are all the latent Tiepolos now working for banks?

A/N: Be it known that my mother actually has a MFA, and not only is a painter, but was trained by Arthur Lismer (part of the "Group of Seven") and actually studied art history among other things. She knows whereof she speaks, in this case, and isn't just spouting off randomly.


Sent March 18th:

Angel, thought you might want to know this:


There was a very successful Tarzan exhibition at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in autumn last year.

Apparently the curator of the exhibition has a sense of humour. His comment on the law passed in France during the 30's banning the Tarzan movies:

"For the Catholics, it was the nudity, for the Communists, it was the fact that he was a violent, unemployed aristocrat who ate bananas."

So much for pure cartesian logic.

Trillion bises, Mim

So I picked up the phone today, and it was my mother on the other end, sounding breathless and agitated.

Mim: "Daphné, Daphné, help! S.O.S.!"

Me: "What's going on?" (I can tell by her tone that it's not life or death, luckily)

Mim: "My new stove is electronic and I can't make it work and it's SPEAKING to me in THREE LANGUAGES!"

Me: *dies laughing*

Mim: "It's not funny!"

Me: "Are you kidding me? That's hilarious! Didn't it come with a friendly manual?"

Mim: "Yes, but I can't understand it. Besides, they shipped the wrong parts so I can't even cook with it yet."

Me: "Ah. So what's the trouble? Apart from that?"

Mim: "The oven locks automatically and won't let me open it. It's telling me the temperature outside, and I DON'T CARE. I just want to know the time!"

Me: "You can't set the clock?"

Mim: "No. It gives me the choice between twelve hours and twenty-four hours, and I can't change it to twelve hours. It also keeps saying SABBATH at me in blinking lights. Sabbath-Sabbath-Sabbath."

Me: *dies some more* "Maybe your stove is possessed!"

Mim: "It's NOT funny! Daddy refuses to touch it, and you know how he is with electronics anyway."

Me: "God, yes. Don't let him near it! I'll come by this afternoon."

Mim: "THANK YOU. I bought these lovely tournedos yesterday, and now they're sitting forlornly in the frigidaire because I can't cook them."

Me: "All right. I'll be there in the afternoon."

My parents' condo is undergoing renovations. My mother wrote to me this weekend, and the first email is here in case you missed it.

And now, the saga continues.

Angel,

Phase II of the Great Kitchen Chaos.
I'm sure I will never ever find anything again.

I've always found it rather daunting to find things that have disappeared - large or small -
and I am aware they have a way of vanishing because there is a Great Conspiracy
afoot to prevent my retrieving the lost thing. However, by mobilizing everyone around me to
join in my quest for the lost thing, the drama takes on friendlier dimensions.
Substantive Indiana Jones: "The Quest For the Lost ....(fill in name of object here)"

On the positive side though, in the frantic search for the lost article, I do find other
things that disappeared months or years ago. Which is encouraging because it makes you
immediately forget what it is you're actually looking for. So you feel much better.
"Empowered" is the current buzzword describing the situation, I think, although I prefer
"triumphant" which describes the heady feeling more explicitly. The question that arises though, is:
in finding what you haven't lost at the moment, are you thus "empowered" to lose more things?
C'est difficile. It's an existential problem.

I am presently in triumph mode since I've found my computer under the bed this morning and
I have carefully stored the address books in a frying pan in the living-room, and filed
important messages for daddy somewhere in the bathroom where I'm sure to find them.

It is pouring rain out. Good thing I didn't water the garden when I came in, eh?

The Parental Units dropped by yesterday afternoon to help me put up some pictures on the wall. They enjoy being helpful that way, and now I have several frames up where before there were bare walls. Shiny.

I spent a good part of the two and a half hours they were here trying to keep tabs on my mother, who, while my father and I were fussing with frames, decided to re-organize my broom closet. No, I didn't ask her to. So she rummaged, fussed, and got really annoyed with me every time I tried to intervene. She decided she didn't like the way the paint cans were still in the basement (despite the fact that my place isn't finished yet), and schlepped them up the stairs and put them in the back of the closet. I practically had to hold her down so she wouldn't throw away the paint pans, which don't belong to me.

"But you don't have room for all this!"

"Mother, I cannot throw away something that doesn't belong to me."

"Why don't you put them in the shed, then?"

"Because we're going to be using them soon, and I don't want ashforestwalker to have to go on a treasure hunt for his own stuff."

My mother hasn't glared at me this much in the last year combined. I'm not sure what frustrated her so much about that broom closet, but she re-organized it to within an inch of its life, complete with loud banging and clattering as she dropped/shoved/tipped over various large things. I think I aged a year.

Overall, though, things are progressing. I still have things to hang, including one frame that I want to put over the staircase, except that I don't have a ladder that will reach that high.

I got another repeat done on the baby blanket, which is really starting to take shape now. I think it will be very pretty indeed once it's done. I'm going to take another photo and put it on Ravelry when I'm 50% done. Right now I'm about 30% done, 25% if you don't count the border.

I am a little appalled at how fast this week went by. I am never going to get everything done in time, so I guess it's time to start prioritizing. Oy. I am very excited at the prospect of WorldCon, but I think I may well be a wreck by the time it's over. I haven't had nearly enough sleep this past week, and I don't foresee that changing at all in the next seven to ten days or so. :P

In the interests of keeping up with my oh-so-exciting daily life, my Maternal Unit has started an LJ. Everyone say hi to mousmes_mim. The Maternal Unit is not exactly LJ-savvy. Don't expect her to friend anyone, or even to comment, since she has already stated unequivocally that she doesn't want to do any of that. She's just in it for me.

Still, it's the top of a slippery slope. I figure it's only a matter of time before she's buying extra icon slots. ;)