Mr. L. Jacques Ménard, O.C., Leaders’ Circle President

is pleased to invite you to a cocktail in honour of your contribution to the success of Centraide of Greater Montreal’s Campaign 2009 and in recognition of your title of Leaders’ Circle Partner.

This event will also be an opportunity for you to meet with volunteers responsible for allocating funds to agencies.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
BMO Financial Group, Bank of Montreal
___ St-Jacques Street, Montreal

And here’s the best part:

Invitation valid for two people.

Let me know if you want to be my date. If you’re interested in how charity works, as a donor or most especially as a recipient or interested bystander, this is an opportunity to watch the benevolent wealthy schmooze and to talk to the people who take their money. It’s also an opportunity to drink free wine. Both donors and volunteers will be dressed like donors (i.e. like rich people) and last time I went there were also representatives of agencies who were dressed like funding recipients (i.e. like grad students).

I’m not rich, but I donate because I’m not an artist or a parent or activist or even a particularly good friend — any of the many ways that people normally contribute to their communities. I try to go to as many Centraide events as I can because I’m curious about this whole charity/philanthropy thing that I participate in while philosophically objecting to.

If you’re curious too, please come with!

Hee! We’re going to pick her up tomorrow morning. She still has a cough and she hasn’t been dewormed, so we’ll have to keep her somewhat separate from Poupoune for a week or so. I called our vet and confirmed that Poupoune’s bordetella vaccine is up to date, and scheduled Plume for a general physical and deworming on Monday.

I haven’t had to live with a bouncy young animal in about twelve years. Back then it was Poupoune, who was a quarter of the size of Plume. It’s going to be disruptive.

Good.

We saw her on petfinder.com yesterday, filled out the form online and got an appointment this morning. We took her for a walk, she’s a real sweetheart. (And a puller.) Trouble is she has kennel cough, and she needs to be spayed before they can let her go, and the vet doesn’t want to spay her until she’s over her cough. So the rescue is going to keep her another couple of weeks until they can tidy everything up to their satisfaction.

Now we’re trying to figure out what to call her. So far we are considering “Online” (because that’s where we found her, and because that’s where we are about to be spending much less time), “Plume” (because she has feathery ears), “G7″ (because yesterday they pledged to cancel Haiti’s debt) and “Paysanne” (because she’s a country girl).

ADDENDUM:
Plume it is. (Thank you Martine! Your enthusiastic vote assured us it wouldn’t be kétaine, like, say, Princesse.) We’ve contacted the rescue and they have started to call her Plume already, in anticipation.

Me: I have the thermostat set at 15°, and I took a shower this morning so my hair is wet, so I’m wearing a hat and fall jacket and fingerless gloves inside the house.
Vivian: Is that for budgetary considerations, or… ?
Me: Preparation for the apocalypse.
Vivian: Oh, like those russian revolutionaries who poured hot oil in their ears to prepare for being tortured.
Me: Exactly. Except that I’m actually quite comfy.

Immediately my feverish little mind set itself to inventing a context for this to make sense, and succeeded. I pointed out that the usual way of making dogs look human is through breeding for brachycephaly (round foreheads and bulgy eyes), squashed faces and floppy ears that look like long human hair. Putting a hairpiece on your dog has a similar effect, but at least the hairpiece doesn’t obstruct breathing or cause ear infections.

“Yes,” said my companion. “Or make their eyes fall out when you whack them on the head!” Apparently boston terriers have very shallow orbits, and being very active are always getting whacked on the head. And then their eyes fall out. She says it’s very gross.

See also: kitty wigs.

*** *** ***

A day late and a dollar short, but the apartment will be ready for occupancy December 15th. Pass it on.

4 1/2 metro Beaubien
available December 15

Google Map of the neighbourhood.

• One double bedroom and an open living room & kitchen. About 55 m2/600 sqft
• Very bright 3rd floor of a triplex.
• Balcony in front and back.
• Very spiffy new kitchen and bathroom with lots of storage.
• New front-loading washer and dryer.
• Stove and fridge.
• Newly varnished hardwood floors and lots of original 1929 details.
• Quiet street with big trees and non-metred parking
• Six minutes on foot from Metro Beaubien and 3 minutes from Parc Marquette.
• Grocery stores, pharmacy and a bakery with good bread around the corner.

Please, no smokers.

kitchen - yes, those are solid wood cabinet doors

to make room for more storage, we replaced the tub with a glass shower

that's a full cabinet over the sink; more hardwood doors

original 1929 china cabinet in the corner of the salon

might be the bedroom

might be the office

new front-loading washer and dryer

Mark wandered by, complaining that having diabetes is very boring because you can’t eat cake and cookies. It’s true, and I can’t do anything about it, but I can make an alternate rich baked treat. Quiche to the rescue of both the leeks and my beloved! To be accompanied by watercress soup!

Watercress Soup
2 large bunches of watercress
3 small potatoes
(other vegetables you might have on hand: spinach, carrots, celery, parsley, zucchini, rutabaga)
garlic and a little fat for heating it
2 or more cups vegetable stock (I use vegetable bouillon cubes)
1 or more cups soy milk

Cut the bunches of watercress in half at the elastic, separating the stems from the leaves. Chop the stems small, chop the leaves big. Prepare all the other vegetables. You  can leave the skins on the potatoes. Divide them into soft (watercress leaves, spinach, zucchini) and hard (watercress stems, potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, parsley).

Heat the garlic in a little oil or butter. Before it browns, add all the hard vegetables and cover with stock. Cook until soft. Add the soft vegetables and cook a little more. Spoon most of the vegetables into the food processor or blender. Process or blend. Put back in the pot. Add the soy milk. Thin with more water and soy milk as desired. Heat through.

Eat.

Basic Quiche
1 10-inch uncooked pie crust in a flat-bottomed pie dish
As much grated cheese as you think is nice (I seem to think about 7 oz is nice) (for the leek quiche I used cheddar and mozzarella, but whatever you like and have on hand will work)
Vegetable filling
4 eggs
1 cup  milk

Sprinkle a little more than half the grated cheese on the bottom of the pie crust. Fill with vegetables. Mix the eggs and milk and pour over the vegetables. Sprinkle the whole with the remaining cheese and bake at 375 for 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, let rest 5-10 minutes and enjoy.

Leek Filling
5 leeks
8 oz mushrooms
Dill
Olive oil

Trim off the toughest, darkest green ends of the leeks. Wash the leeks by cutting down through the leaves towards (but not through) the bulb and root, exposing the insides of the leaves so you can rinse them under the tap.

Slice the leeks thin. Slice the mushrooms thin. Chop the dill fine. Heat everything in a little oil until soft.

(You really can use anything for the vegetable filling. Another great version is fresh sliced tomatoes sprinkled with basil and black olives. The same formula but completely different, especially if you use feta or goat cheese for the cheese.)

Pie Crust
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup butter
3 T ice water
1/2 t salt

Make the pastry dough the usual way: stir the salt into the flour, cut in the butter (I use a food processor, but a pastry cutter is better), stir in the ice water, form into a ball and refrigerate. If you’ve thought ahead, wait four hours. Otherwise use it whenever you need to.

Try rolling it out, but whole wheat pastry dough doesn’t roll out as well as white flour pastry dough. Rather than working the pastry dough with a rolling pin forever and making it tough and getting frustrated, content yourself with rolling out smaller pieces and patching them together in your pie dish. It’s fine.

I still had to think about whether protecting myself against a deadly strain of influenza virus was really something I wanted to do. A likely outcome is that I will have a longer old age, which is not something I necessarily want. (Healthy but not particularly long would really be the ideal for me.) But another likely outcome is that I will not be a vector transmitting H1N1 to other people who might actually be gunning for that long, productive life but who might not be in a condition right now to be vaccinated: small babies, for instance, can’t be effectively immunized against influenza. My friend with cancer, who most definitely wants to live, may get only limited protection from a vaccine and is largely dependent on the people around him to not transmit it to him. The girlfriend of the woman who is dying of lung cancer in the apartment upstairs will not be able to point the finger at me as being the one who infected her with her final illness. And I will not interrupt the old ages, happily surrounded by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of my old relatives.

So I got the H1N1 vaccine and will get the seasonal flu vaccine when it becomes available. If I ever decide my old age is dragging on too long there are ways around that that do not involve making other people sick.

This morning Poupoune and I dressed up in our winter clothes and went to pick up my suits at the dry cleaners, partly as an exercise to see how cold it was before going out for a longer walk this afternoon. The weather was really quite warm and beautiful, so when I got back I traded my coat for sunglasses, and the dog for Mark, and we headed out to the local school to cast our ballots.

As we left the house, Mark locked the door but didn’t set the alarm. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen him demonstrate this level of trust in his neighbours. Chalk one up for becoming Canadian!

Then Mark cast his first Canadian vote at the gym of the local high school.

Outside the local high school gym, about to cast his first Canadian vote

Then… oops, I had left my wallet in my coat after coming back from the dry cleaner’s. No ID? No problem. Mark has ID, and he’s a citizen, and we both have our voting cards proving that there’s someone with my name living at Mark’s address, so all he had to do was swear that that someone was me, and voilà, I voted too. He’s so Canadian, he can even secure voting rights for other people!