Ouch. That hurt.

Those two penalties by Begin and Koivu really stung.

Those are the kinds of penalties you take early in the season and they cost you the match and well, it’s not the end of the world.

But to take those two penalites at the end of the 2nd and at the start of the 3rd on the final game of the year which decides if your team
makes the playoffs ?

Ouch. That hurts.
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This just in, one of my favourite, favourite restaurants in this city has announced its closing in today’s Gazette. I am not happy about this.

The Greater Montreal Community Development Initiative Public Forum gives English-speaking Quebecers a voice. It will be held tonight from 6:30 to 9:30 pm on April 11 at the Verdun Room of the Hilton Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Montreal, located at 900 rue de la Gauchetière West. For more details, check out the Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) website.

Related: Social Media Support Communities

As this is my very first post to Metroblogging Montreal, I thought I’d leap right in and become one of the group with a traditional post about our Montreal weather.

It is April, now into the second week. The Canada geese have flown back (usually a surefire indicator that spring is finally here), so why on earth are we still having snow? We had some unpleasantly cold rain spells for a while and then the weather changed its mind and decided it wasn’t quite done with the snow yet. Why does it insist on toying with us so? Why do we Montrealers go on about it so? If we dislike it so much, then why don’t we move to a gentler clime? The answer may lie in the gorgeously sweltering summers we have, or on the slopes for the ski and snowboard enthusiasts, or in our general Montreal joie-de-vivre that we hold in such high esteem.

If there is one thing that unites Montrealers, it’s the general complaining or talking about the weather. It is no topic for smalltalk, we take our weather conversations seriously. Our winters can be brutal and overly long, but it makes for great conversation starters with strangers at busstops and whatnot. What with our language issues, the state of our local politics, the state of our roads, perhaps the weather conspires to make sure we stay strong and together. Have we needed an extra dose of unification this season? I wonder…

Howdy!

It appears that the all the fundraising has worked. To give you the back story, about a year ago, Dr. Robert J. Lang had a wicked cool exhibit of things he made at the Redpath Museum. They had so much fun with it, that they asked him back in order to get their own giant origami Pteranodon.

No, I’m not certain I know what it is either – but they will be constructing it next week, and if you can’t help, it definitely is worth at least a gander.

if you need help finding the Redpath Museum (it is a little tricky) click on this.

Got today off ?

Looking for something to do because the weather isn’t great for suntanning ?

Go skiing.

I went yesterday to Mont St-Sauveur and conditions were mid winter. The Laurentians received 25cm of snow on Thursday and skiing has never been better. Add in that there is NO ONE there and you can sleep in, arrive at the hill for 11, get a 4hr ticket and snowboard/ski until the end of the day and enjoy zero line ups and excellent conditions.

They only have 2 chairs open (3 if you count Avila). So not all the runs are open and it’s full ticket fare. Even with that, it’s worth it. The best skiing of the year, I’d say.

I’d go back today, but I gotta work.

After reading a restaurant review about a Chinese chain of restaurants called “Little Sheep” specializing in Mongolian hot pot, I decided to check out the first Montreal location . We arrived at the Chinatown eatery smack dab at the corner of de La Gauchetiere and Clark streets around 1:30 and the place was packed with the weekend lunchtime crowd. The upstairs locale appears to be completely renovated. It’s spacious, bright, and modern with plenty of comfortable seating. The difference from other restaurants is that set in the center of each table is a flat glass cook top with digital controls. All around the restaurant are nice touches of mongolian type decorations including a line of little sheep across the top of the refrigerated buffet. The staff appear to be all mandarin speaking and so do many of the customers but it is afterall, a global chain from China. We waited a bit for our table and soon we were seated and ready to get down to the hot potting.

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I finally got out to the West Island for a taste of Taco Bell. The only Taco Bell in Montreal is quite a trek, way out in Pierrefonds, at the corner of Boulevard des Sources and Pierrefonds. We arrived right when they opened at 11am as I had heard it gets quite crowded. The menu is rather limited but includes tacos and burritos. I requested a bean burrito which wasn’t on the menu, “No meat?” the clerk asked. I should have taken it with meat as the beans were funny tasting. Even spouse admitted that they had a “drôle” taste. The taco supremes were good, but it was served with a kind of Mexican take on poutine. French-fries with melted cheese sauce, a dab of taco meat, tomatoes and sour cream. It was pretty tasty actually, although I’m not a big fan of the cheese sauce. Another funny thing I noticed was that the hot sauce was carefully divvied out to customers. In most taco bells I’ve been to, the hot sauce packets are out on the counter, where customers can grab handfuls. Not here. Two per customer. I’m glad I went, but I’m in no hurry to go back.

Just a few pics from last night’s Nelly Furtado concert at the Bell Center. Fresh off her sweep from the Junos, Nelly brought her Get Loose tour to Montreal. Great concert, lots of fun and Nelly can definitely sing. Opening acts were the hyper Jon Levine Band and the too cool Saukrates. Had great seats on the floor about 20 rows from the stage but too bad my camera ran out of juice and couldn’t get any good shots. But it was a great night. I wasn’t a big fan of Nelly’s first CD but funny how everything sounds better when remixed and live in concert. I really like the hip hop influence on the current album Loose so I’m glad she performed a lot of tracks off the new CD. Of course, the crowd pleasers were big hits like the opening song Afraid and Say It Right or Promiscuous with Saukrates filling in for Timbaland. During a costume change, one of the backup singers performed a pretty good version of Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back that kept the crowd pumping. For the song Forca, Nelly appeared in a Habs jersey which sent the crowd cheering. She told the crowd that she doesn’t put on a different jersey in every city but that her father’s favourite team is the Montreal Canadiens so that’s the only one she’ll wear. What a girl. She knows just how to charm a crowd. Nelly’s dancers threw out soccer balls into the audience and Portuguese fans waved their flags like crazy. A lucky guy two rows up from me managed to catch one of the soccer balls. All in all, a pretty fun night with a packed house, great beats, and great Canadian talent.

So my passport expires soon. Having heard reports of long lineups and processing times of up to 10 weeks, I decided to use part of my vacation day today to get through the dreaded ordeal of getting a new passport. The passport office at Complexe Guy Favreau is open from 7:30 to 4:30. Part of me wanted to get there for 7:30 so that I’d be the first in line but who has the willpower to do that? Sleeping in on your day off is a duty anyway.

So I got to the CGF and entered the lineup for the elevators at 9:44 a.m. The lineup didn’t look too bad – 3 relatively short snakes around the ropes. At least I’d visited the ladies room before getting in line. Ipod fully charged, I settled in for the wait. The security guards let people through in groups to board the elevator up to the 8th floor passport office. I figured I would be part of the 4th group. When the guard stopped the line right when he got to me, I thought, “you’ve got to be kidding me”. But thankfully, he was just spacing out the group so that the elevator wouldn’t get too crowded. I was allowed through less than a minute later and was handed a numbered ticket which was a really good idea since some people in the elevator were already jockeying for position to get off first. But once you exit the elevator, the guard stationed at the passport office calls you by number to get in line. So take that, pushy people. The guard takes your number and then you wait a bit more to have your documents checked. If all is in order, and pray that they are, you are given another number. The clerk then tells you “it will be a 2 hour wait”. You look around the packed waiting room and you think to yourself “WHAT?!”. Or in my case, I said it out loud (oops) and the clerk just smiled. I have to say, those clerks at the front are really cheerful. I don’t know how they do it.

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