Snakes on a Blog!

This guy lives twenty minutes away from my apartment... at the Montreal Biodome! If he ever escapes, Tycho's in trouble. Bronwyn and Adam and I went to visit him and his other zoo buddies last week... there were many screaming children... and many screaming birds! It was hard to tell who was who. There was also a bat cave (I steered clear).

We saw penguins!



And one of these!

And a couple of those!

We also saw some more uniquely Montreal sights during their visit... like horses with ear muffs...


And pretty parks...


And poutine...



And... repulsive plaster-of-paris statues of Habs fans?!

I even introduced B&A to the wonders of Brutopia and its raspberry beer!


To work off the threat of beer gut, we went on a military march up the mountain... which was amazingly cool (and we met lots of dogs!). Since when do big teeming cities have giant, preserved forests right in their middle? Answer: since MONTREAL!



So tomorrow night is the chapbook launch! I'm not sure why I'm so excited about it - maybe because I expect the readings to be really good - and also because I'm proud to have been a part of the whole chapbook-making process, albeit a small part in which I didn't really have any concept of what I was actually doing. The girls in charge were all, "Fold this, glue that, eat some soup!" and I was all, "Yes ma'am!" So it will be interesting to see the final product, and definitely beneficial to have a good Montreal night under my belt to kick off my return after the long weekend. So far, since I got back, it's been grind-grind-grind... and not in the clubby/dancey kind of way! Ew. More in the WRITE LIKE A MANIAC AND MEAN IT! kind of way. That's okay though, because I have a nice smattering of social events coming up to keep me from getting too pale and nervous in my own bubble. Example: faculty "wine from a box" shin-dig at the grad lounge next week. It's like speed dating, but instead of looking for men, I'm looking for thesis supervisors! Much safer, in my opinion.