I dream of bears (the animal)

We were on a road. The flat part, a road that climbed a long mountain. Maybe 5 or 10 people behind us, another 20 or so ahead of us, up the road. Some family, strangers, on this road. Suddenly, a bear wanders across the road. My brother doesn't react, behind us. Krstn and I start to run up the hill. It is heavy running. Hard to run, uphill. We gain some high road. I look back down, to see the people, ants, and the bear. Something is happening, but we can't make out what.

Moving the spider to a better place

J and I have both had spider dreams in the past month. My last one featured large, scary spiders. In this one, though, the spider was cute like a plush toy.

Some of the details have faded, but I came upon a huge, very elaborate spider web. I remember marveling at the repetition of precise patterns, the intelligence behind the web. But... the web was in an inconvenient place... on a building or a doorway?

Then I saw the spider responsible. It was as large as a tarantula, and had black and white shaggy fur, like a stuffed animal. The spider was equal parts horrifying and cute.

I decided that this was no place for a spider... and decided to move it somewhere less public. First I destroyed the web, then I scooped up the spider and carried it down a country road. Then the dream gets kind of fuzzy... there were more webs... and I remember growing kind of fond of the spider...

Black Goat + bagels + lox = Magical Third Flavour

Just to get things straight: I really don't know what I'm doing. You know that, right?

This morning at the SAQ, I was looking at the 2006 Beaujolais and nothing really excited me. So I went a little downstream and found this saucy little bottle called Reserve de la Chevre Noire, Pinot Noir from Maison Boisseaux-Estivant. What the hell...

J and I opened it an hour ago and weren't all that impressed. It just... seemed one dimensional; a red wine for people who prefer white whine.

But here's the kicker: We toasted up a few Fairmount Bagels and topped them with cream cheese, lox, onions and capers and then tried the wine again. OMG... it was perfect.

We were experiencing, right there and then, The Magical Third Flavour. You know, when you put two things together and they make something else delightful [that could be a metaphor for life, or at least coupling... if only I could come up with something more profound to write here].

While it's all very well to fool around here, we realized, there and then that 2008 was the year that we should actually, truly learn about wine, pairings and all that.

lazee koala

Well, this is a little red wine.

We dined on spaghetti with meat sauce.

This one blasts through all the nonsense and delivers a packed, 5 sense assault on the body.

If this wine could talk, it would talk: Aramaic.

black underwear

In this dream, I am wearing one-piece black longjohns.
Some things happen that I can't tell you about.

I wake up.

Viejos Robles: easy like Sunday morning

We worked on this bottle over the past couple nights. Glasses just appeared here and there, like casual conversation. We like Viejos Robles just fine, like we'd like anything, anything at all that came all the way from Argentina.

What... you want more information?

Viejos Robles was like a tidy little chocolate truffle. One that doesn't leave any cocoa on your fingers.

Borsao takes the East Plateau by storm

I'm nosy. The kind of nosy that peeks into people's recycling boxes to see what they're drinking. And It's that orange label... I see it everywhere. People are drinking Borsao like it's goin' out of style...

Fine dining, a dental hygienist and a dirty toilet

I was at the dentist's (incidentally, the same dentist's office that J dreamed about recently) , on my way into his office when I need to use the toilet. I tell the dental hygienist and she takes me down a side set of stairs to a small bathroom next to a restaurant. It is the filthiest bathroom I have ever seen. Horrifying...

When I'm done, I tell the hygienist and she says that it belongs to the restaurant, not the dentist and there's nothing she can do. Instead of returning to the dentist's, I sit down in the restaurant, which is kitschy in a 1970s fine dining kind of way.

I order a meal and wait a long, long time. At the tables next to me, there are four men, clearly all friends but sitting at two separate tables. I realize they're on a double date. I sit quietly listening to their conversation.

I wait a long time for my meal. While I wait, I become less discrete in my observation of the four men. A couple of them are aware that I'm watching them; they think I'm flirting, and maybe I am. But I know they're gay. This becomes embarrassing for me. I decide to tell the waiter that my meal is taking too long and I prepare to leave.

Gretta Chambers?

I guess it must have been the English contributions to the debate on Reasonable Accomodation, live on CBC Radio.

Gretta Chambers is responsible for driving a large truck, in this totally pointless dream. I can't remember any details or context. But the truck kept changing. Sometimes a garbage truck. Sometimes a moving van.

Jean Coutu, the torturing dentist

So William Hurt is playing the role of a friendly pharmacist, in the daytime. Walking around in his white coat, all friendly, beaming. But I see him, in my camera-eye dream, going upstairs, in his white coat, into a room. There, three men in dentist chairs, in a variety of states. An assistant is cleaning the torture instruments. A dead body in the corner. I wake. Immy is screaming in the next room.

David Byrne impressionist

A friend of ours was doing a David Byrne impression in a small nightclub. We were watching him perform a song from "Stop Making Sense", in which he uses his hands as talking puppets.

Farm houses, cats and kittens

I was driving through a country village with large houses. Although I was alone, I was with someone else... we were talking about the farm houses. My companion pointed out a farm, and explained that there they performed medical tests on kittens.

A short while later, my companion pointed out another farm house where they bred cats and raised kittens for testing. I pulled over and sneaked into the house. It was messy and comfortable, full of heirlooms. I went upstairs to a room containing cages; each cage contained a cat and most cats had kittens.

One cage contained a small, blackish cat. My companion explained that this was the male cat. I opened the cage and let him out into the room. Then I decided to leave the house via the window so no one would see me. But the window was too high, so I went back down the stairs.

Halfway down the stairs, I met up with a woman who asked me what I was doing in there. I told her I was there to visit someone, but realized that I was in the wrong house, that I was very embarrassed and was now leaving. I left the house, got into the car and drove away.

Bring on the dancing uncles

I dreamed that my uncle was the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen.

Borsao 2006

Nothing much to say on this one, that we haven't said before. Delightful.

Damn, that girl is fast. She already blog on dis.

Drinky spice: Borsao Campo de Borja

I don't usually trust what they put on sale at the SAQ. But today the stroller was wide and the babies were restless, so I just grabbed the first shiny bottle that stacked near the door [ a couple weeks ago I backed the monster stroller into a stack of bottles at the SAQ... heh heh heh...].

Well, damn, I came up with Borsao, Campo de Borja, 2006, a fresh 'n' tasty little bottle. It comes on all shy, and then, just when you think it's, oh, all right, she hits you with a little tickle of spice.

Burning down the house

So now that Krstn has mentioned it, I must respond.

All I remember is that my brother and I were going to try to burn down a house but try to hide the fact.

So he had put some firestarter in some...food? I can't remember. And as we were leaving the house, in the foyer, he put the bowl down and it was burning with a small blue flame.

And I took the bowl and turned it over on some catfood, so the two were burning. I lifted up the first bowl to make sure it was still burning. And it was. And we left. And I remember thinking that any good fireman would know that this was arson, because of the firestarter and the strange way the two bowls were lying together. Firemen have their special ways of knowing.

It is harder to keep track of dreams when you have to jump up and get a bobby for a crying baby, isn't it?

Speaking in tongues

Somewhere over the course of the last few nights, I dreamed that Imogen took out her tongue. She reached into her mouth and her tongue just came out in her hand. She wasn't alarmed... since there was another, perfectly fine tongue underneath. This kid talks a blue streak, which makes my dream a whole lot less surprising.

And while I'm at it, Jason finally stopped dreaming about work last night. When he woke up, he told me he dreamed that he and his brother burned down a house. I'll let him elaborate...

A white wine from Rioja

But how can that be, you think. Well, here is the photographic proof. You can see that we have not yet finished it, and krstn is having a glass right this instant in the bath, quiet time. This is how to drink this refreshing simple, but not simple minded, white wine: in the bath. With a dash of eucalyptus oil dribbled in, to clear your nostrils.

Enjoy!

Muga!

Domo arigato, mr. de Ibor

It's Friday night. Which means that mommy and daddy get their drink on. All I have to say is... thank you... Palacio de Ibor. You came on a little strong, but now we're getting to know your subtler charms.

Hello ooooo?

Wow. I lost my password and contact with this blog for several months, but 'MAN have I been having DREAMS. Every night, I wake up in a fog of unreal real woah what's happening man, dream world blending in with reality. And then I have to go give the baby a bottle--NO, not a wine bottle, silly. And the dream disappears into a cloud of sputtering neurons. But I digress. Wine: Palacio de Ibor, 2000. This one hits you across the head. At first, I am thinking: hey, this smells like my vermi-composter. Then, earth-filled nostrils, I fill the mouth, and hmm. This tastes like my composter. So we let it breath a bit and after a half hour...it is really quite drinkable. So our advice is: start your vermi-composter today!

My bad. Me forget wine.

Umm.... I can't remember the wine because I was preoccupied with the company.

I'm going to blame my two-months postpartum brain, because it gets the blame for everything else these days.

But, Jason remembered the Roches Neuves, and he said that it "tasted like home made wine." Which is generally not a good thing...

Hello, pink and delicious: Roches Neuves

The truth is, I have been drinking quite a lot of wine lately. But I forget how they tasted. Each one has come, been enjoyed, and then gone on its merry way.

This time, though, I got smart. I thought I'd blog a wine before drinking it. And then I'd be committed to remembering, and blogging it the next day. Let's see if it works.

Tonight: I'm going to say bon soiree to Thierry Germain's 2005 Domaine des Roches Neuves, a sexy little Samur Champigny. It's dressed up so smartly in a little pink tunic, ready to be undone. Stay tuned...

Following a pony up Groll Street

In real life, I read a blurb about Groll street, a kind of magical, cobblestoned alley in Mile End. This fed into a dream where I read that Groll St. was much longer.

I walked up Groll street and it turned into one of those hydro tower clearings, running through a forest. Ahead of me, an old man was leading a cart and pony up the clearing. I was curious about what a pony was doing in Montreal, so followed the old man towards a farm. When I got to the farm, the pony disappeared into or behind a barn. It was a kind of old fashioned farm, with children and chickens and other little creatures running around.

Then the dream morphed into some kind of shopping expedition with my mother. One-year-old Imogen was with us. We were in a kitschy Italian resto/shop, waiting for my mom to buy something. The store was cavernous and there were lots of stairs to navigate. I was cranky.

Organizing a giant garage sale

I was one of many people organizing a huge garage sale in a big old, wooden country house. My self-assigned task was to gather up all the plants and put them on a table outside. I went from room to room, gathering up plants and setting aside the ones I wanted for myself.

Eventually I took my plants downstairs to a room where Immy was playing. Then I went back upstairs and explored the rooms, which were full of old furniture and endless knickknacks. The house had an old-fashioned wraparound veranda, much like a famous, old house in Montreal that we visit once in a while.

Babies in mason jars -- pret a manger

A dream fragment: A chef had a bunch of small, newborn babies in mason jars. They were alive, but sleeping like fetuses. He was going to cook with them.

Later in the dream, he gave me a steak with sauce and I knew it was made with one of the babies. I took a bite and it tasted awful. When I told the chef, he said that he knew, that based on the steaks he just made the babies were no longer good for cooking with.

Smoke my Loon: Smoking Loon California Syrah

I'm originally from Vancouver Island. And it seems that every time I go back there, West Coast wines get richer. Like it isn't enough to have coffee that puts hair on your chest. And salsa that makes you burn in that special way. Now they have to kick you in the teeth with wine that tastes like chocolate and blackberries.

Not that I mind. Though last time I went west, I began thinking that rich wine was just another new angle on unoriginality. So you can make it richer.... whooowheee... What else can you do?

Okay -- I take it all back. Friday, I was airlifted to Montreal's Robin des Bois, a wicked little restaurant run largely by volunteers. Get this: not only does Robin have the culinary credentials, he also has a good heart [how often do you find that?]. Part of each bill and tip is donated to local community organizations.

Back on topic. The folks at Robin des Bois served me some kind of magic potion, a West Coast blast of fruity delish: Smoking Loon California Syrah. So rich, it was naughty. And perfect with my nearly raw venison. Say no more...

Don't give up on us!

Truth is, while we've swilled a few bottles and dreamed a few dreams lately... J and I are in heavy production mode, awaiting baby number two in just over a week. And while it makes sense that I would be tired, J seems to have caught sympathetic fatigue. We're just too damn tired to post.

I'm hoping... that this confession will put us back on track: blogging, dreaming and drinking. If the arrival of baby number one was any indication, the wine and dreams went into overdrive not long after. So... We'll be back...

Rescue mission gone waaay off track

We were with a bunch of friends at "the land", where Jason's family has a cabin. Everyone was spread out in different places, doing things. I was on the edge of a field, having some kind of picnic while getting ready to plant a garden.

Suddenly someone came running out of the woods carrying a child in her arms. She said that the little boy had been attacked by an animal in the cabin and was hurt. I ran for help, across the field to where I could see some buildings. The buildings were institutional -- small town schools and town hall-ish structures.

I finally found a woman who would help. She was middle-aged, with shoulder-length blonde hair. When I turned around to find the land, which was not far away, it had vanished. There was a strip mall in its place.

I was disoriented, and told her that we had to get back. We ended up traversing the edge of a swamp, along this man-made wooden ramp/fence thing. Then we got into a monorail-like train that went through the woods. She said she knew where to go, but it wasn't clear, since we were travelling awfully far. The train went faster and faster, over huge bridges high above the forest. It was exciting.

I remember thinking that someone had probably helped the little boy by then, but still felt some urgency to get back and make sure everything was okay.

Casillero del Diablo - fit for the devil

This one threw me for a loop. I dug in expecting the usual punchy Spanish wine, punchy even for a Cabernet Sauvignon. And then I realized it was from Chile... But still... Casillero del Diablo ended up tickling me in a kind of French way. I felt like I should be drinking it at L'Express, over delicious meaty, saucy things.
Castillo del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Concha y Toro, Chile

Royal pomp and an ancient stadium

This dream was so insistent, it would resume after each wake-up... taking on a new plot trajectory or new components.

I, Jason and other random people were getting ready to attend a royal ceremony. We lived somewhere else, where there was an old fashioned king and queen. The dream centered around preparing for and arriving at the ceremony; we never actually got to see the event.

The ceremony was happening in a huge stone amphitheater. It was a combination of the stone arena where they do the military tattoo in Edinburgh, and Montreal's Bell Centre (where, freakily, I recently went to a Christina Aguilera concert... long story...). In each version of the dream, we arrived from underneath the bleachers as if entering a soccer stadium. But everything was very old. Like hundreds of years old.

In one version, there was an attractive young prince and all the women were preening to catch his attention. He had greasy, brown and blonde spiked hair. Very tacky. But even I was caught up on the preening.

In another, we were lifted in moving bleachers nearly a mile high above the arena to watch the event from an ancient stone perch.

Early morning double header

This morning brought me a double feature of quickie dreams.

In dream number one, Jason & I were on vacation in some west coast city... probably Vancouver. I was taking him to all my favourite stores. Stores that don't actually exist (but could). We were in a kind of Pike Place Market neighbourhood, where we went to a chocolate shop and were then on our way to the "best place ever to buy coffee." The stores were an amalgam of places I've frequented in various cities. In my world, visiting chocolate and coffee shops with my man = happy dream, just one small notch below sex dream.

Dream number two found me at my first day of work at Jason's office. It seemed that I didn't really have any work to do, nor any specific role there. But Jason's boss constructed a very fancy modular desk for me. Various female colleagues would come over and chit chat with me. They had a lot of expensive art coffee table books that were there for the employees' enjoyment. His boss climbed a ladder and began to meticulously arrange a display of the art books, up high where visitors could see but no one could reach.

Separating the Lego from the chaff

I was at some kind of family gathering. We were all staying in a small house. Not my grandparents' house, but very similar. I had some boxes of miscellaneous junk that I was sorting, taking out Lego pieces before discarding the rest of the stuff in the boxes. I also had some freelance work to do, but couldn't go into my room to do it. Everyone in the house was on their worst behaviour. I tried to explain why I wanted the Lego and why I wasn't wasting my time sorting through the boxes, but no one understood.

the other Three...

We also enjoyed a 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 (R.H. Phillips) and two other bottles, but I can't find them in all the mess. But I should also mention the DEEElicious Jumilla (Panarroz 2005) that we had last Wednesday, courtesy of Zack Taylor. His website is down, so I have to substitute this character for the real McKoy. Also this week was a Shiraz-Malbec 2006, fuZion, a very nice wine at 8,20$, definitely one to buy again.

the Four Tops

I think we all liked the Pinot Noir best of all, perhaps because that was the first one we opened, so I will start with that one. Clear, delicate, highly drinkable, this 2006 Argentine beauty came in a sparkling clean bottle with a real cork. Our wine book says that the 2006 Argentine vintage (as of early 2007) was looking to be one of the best of the last 100 years, so we were expecting a lot from it, perhaps, especially at 14,90$ a bottle for this Trapiche from Mendoza. Who the hell writes the copy for their label, though? "La majesteuse silhouette du condor planant au dessus des hauts sommets des Andes represente l'oiseau symbolique qui protege notre vaste vignoble" (sans accents). I dunno. Just bring me another bottle.

David Bowie singing Video Killed the Radio Star

Man, what stuff the Imagination comes up with! Last night around 4am, after lots of rich Italian food and wine and thick (i.e. complex and layered) conversation with delightful dinner guests, I wake up to a dream of men in penguin suits (formal black and white attire) singing in lounge style, Video Killed the Radio Star. The dream appeared like a rock video. David Bowie was the lead, and had with him a dozen men arranged in a triangle composition, each playing his instrument. Each player had whiteface makeup on and bright red lipstick, Cabaret style. You may remember the tune includes some robot voices doing back up, and so when one of these parts comes up, the piano player turns to the camera (my inner camera) and sings that bit, close up, with his weird face and lips. And then he turns back to his piano. All the faces were very strange looking: high high foreheads, eyes with heavy lines under them or crinkled foreheads, huge ears, etc. Not all that interesting as a dream, really. Maybe that's what you get for mixing vodka and red wine (see other entry for details).

Bad behaviour and subsequent guilt

Some friends came over to invite me to a party. Jason wasn't home yet and the baby was asleep, but I really wanted to go. So I just left, and left the baby sleeping at home.

We drove through a suburban area to a hotel/apartment building and went through an unmarked door on the ground floor. Inside was a clandestine gay bar, with a lot of cool people drinking and having fun.

I hung out there for a few hours, and then started to worry about whether Jason came home and was taking care of the baby. I called home and nobody answered. Suddenly I felt very guilty, irresponsible and concerned about Imogen.

I left the party and wandered down the road, an almost rural highway. Occasionally I had to go through a building in order to continue along the side of the road. I'd walk through a diner or supermarket and then continue along the road.

It became apparent that I had a long way to go to get home. I began to look for taxis and finally flagged one. It took me home. Jason was there and everything was okay after all.

big storm coming

we were at the Land: krstn, johnny, my mum others. There was a horse tied up outside the house, which was bigger in my dream than the real one. There was snow on the ground, but it was warm and the lake wasn't frozen anymore. Two women came to tell us that a huge storm was blowing in from Montreal and they were evacuating everyone. We had just arrived and mum had no intention of going back. So we decided to weather the storm, which was to be the worst in history. We had to bring the horse indoors, and lots of wood and water.

harvesting earth honey

I was leading in the hunt for earth honey, which is formed by intense heat caused by lightening strikes, volcanoes or meteor impacts. In such circumstances, a natural sweetness sometimes found in the earth, in underground streams or in little pockets, is concentrated, away from the blast, and reaches a boiling point, causing little tiny "lava bombs" of honey that boil up out of the hot earth, and then drop, just a few feet away, to form special little lumps. I was able to identify this rare phenomenon, and in my dream, we found some. You could see where the earth had swirled in the heat, and the little pock marks where the honey had popped out, and then, a few feet away, these little mounds. We picked them and ate the sweet earth honey.

Summer camp gone very weird

I was back at this summer camp that I went to when I was a pre-teen. In this case, it was more chaotic, and there were girls and boys sleeping in lofts or dorms. Also, we were older. Camp was winding up, or maybe I was just visiting.

There was a room with a cooler of food -- meat pies and pork. I felt guilt around the pork... I think that we had killed it ourselves. There was kind of a feeling of cannibalism around it. Also weird was that several of us had multiple syringes in our pockets that we were using occasionally to surreptitiously inject drugs.

Weirdly, the camp was religious. And the drugs were very contraband but readily available.

At one point, we went outside to ride horses. They gave me a horse that wasn't trained. It bucked every time I tried to get on it. They said I had that horse because it needed an experienced rider. I liked the horse and wanted to ride it but was a little bit afraid of it.

A tidy little French wine, made from the mystery grape

Mmmm... now it's my turn to talk about the wine with the chickens on the label... La Vieille Ferme, no date and made from the grape which has no name. The verdict: a tidy, sweet little French wine. One that keeps quiet, tidies up after itself and always has something pleasant to say.

Escaping the underground city

I was in the underground city, in downtown Montreal and it became apparent that at least one of the office towers connected to the underground was on fire. The fire spread quickly and, one by one, the exits (many of which go through the ground floor of the towers) were being closed. I and a handful of people were heading west, building by building, trying to get out.

We finally ended up in a weird, open-concept 1980's building where we could go above ground and even onto the roof. There were authorities in the building who were trying to contain and control us, telling us we should stay put and everything would be all right. By this point many buildings were on fire, September 11 style, billowing smoke up into the sky.

I joined a group of younger people and went up on the roof. From the roof we took a staircase to the sidewalk and then each of us started to run in a different direction.

Warming up for Krsna Das

It is Friday night, and Krstn and Jason had tickets to a concert/kirtan with Krsna Das. For those who don't know Krsna Das: wellllll, you have a treat in store for you. If you like dreams and wine, chances are you'll like Krsna Das. Please note that the similarity in spelling (Krstn and Krsna) is completely coincidental. And wrong, as I found out when I went to his website. So we were warming up for Krsna Das and popped the cork on a little bottle of La Vieille Ferme, from the Cotes du Ventoux. Funny label, but a fine little wine.

Would we drink it again? Chances are pretty good.

Summertime and the living will be easy

Okay, you win. Bodega Jacques & Francois Lurton, Pinot Gris 2006 set me daydreaming about summer afternoons, eating delicate summery things in the park under a shady tree.

I can't wait... to drink more of this, when the time is right. It's a clean little pinot gris that deserves every ounce of your respect. Even if it slowly makes you drunk and belligerent (it didn't mean to).

Diving for crustacaens

We were staying at some kind of holiday place, with the ocean off in the distance. Jason & I met a man who told us that he would show Jason how to dive for the best shellfish. He said that not only were the shellfish delicious, but they weren't contaminated.

He was very persistent, so we followed him to the shore and watched him dive into the ocean and bring back a big crab. The crab looked kind of crappy and maybe dead.

We didn't really want any shellfish, but decided that we would humour the man because we liked him and didn't have anything better to do. Jason followed the man around to the edge of a small bay, where they were going to go into the water to find more crabs.

cutting stone and finding aluminum

In this dream, actually in the middle of last night, I was in my father's office, which had been carved out of stone in the side of a mountain. The furniture was partly wood, partly stone, with a stone desk. There were other people hanging about, like goats, here and there on the side of the mountain. My dad was trying to remember where he put his papers. Somebody (I think it was my brother-in-law) showed me this slab of stone, like a countertop, that he had cut out of the side of the mountain, and it had a large shiny piece of aluminum embedded in it (I know, but this is a dream!). And so I was keenly interested in getting more of the same, and we went to look where this piece had been cut to see if there was more like it.

Charles Taylor

It was some special celebration of the work of Charles Taylor, on the roof of some big hotel. People were milling around, it was still early. I saw Mr. Taylor crouching under a table, wearing white running shoes and a kind of jogging suit. I went over to him to congratulate him on winning the big prize. He said he had hurt his ankles running, perhaps snapped some strings in his ankles. I realised he was in great pain. I wondered if I should get him some help. Then I had to go and check on the baby.

Triple feature: Tuesday night special

It was a busy night in dreamland.

One:
I dreamed that I had a job at Starbuck's, a night shift from midnight to 4 a.m. The cafe was vast and it was just my friend and I who were working in it. I had no idea what I was doing, and kept getting confused. The cafe was on the ground floor of a huge office building where there were a lot of people working at night. They would all come down at once and politely stand in line a few times each night. The rest of the time the massive Starbuck's was empty.

Two:
Then the Starbuck's was situated above or below an airport. I walked around the airport and ran into my brother, who was just about to catch a flight. I knew I was supposed to be working, but instead tried to convince my brother to catch a later flight so that we could hang out for a while.

Three:
I was with some friends and strangers. We were dressed up in circus clothes, doing some kind of acrobatics. I took a series of pictures of people upside down, dancing & performing, dressed in exotic silks and jewels. The photos appeared immediately as prints and turned out really well. Then we were in some kind of class, in a loading bay about to participate in a yoga class/performance. We sat in a series of summer camp style bunk beds to watch. I fell out of a top bunk. It hurt but I started to laugh and then climbed back to my vantage point on the bunk.

Sweet and Sunny... Norton Malbec 2003

This one was pleasant, like a warm spring day that you enjoy well enough, but as the weeks go by it blurs and gets forgotten, in favour of warmer, sweeter spring days. I knew I was drinking good wine, but after the first sip, it was just wine. Bodega Norton Barrel Select, Malbec 2003, Argentina.

The Great War

Thursday night, we went to the gala launch of the epic documentary, The Great War. At intermission, we drank L' Orangerie de Pennautier 2005 and chomped on squares of cheese. The director and crew mingled with some of the professional actors and some of the descendants who had volunteered to be brutalised during two weeks of the longest and hottest heatwave in Montreal history, to film reenactments of the key battles in World War One. The wine was delicious, even served in little plastic glasses.

A flood in the library

I was heading to a part of the library where they had old books. I was looking for a specific book on a conspiracy theory. I can't remember which conspiracy theory. Suddenly, an alarm starting ringing and huge separators started to descend from the ceiling. My section of the library was being sealed off. Water started flooding into the section. I realised they were going to flood it, to put out a fire and protect the rest of the library. Luckily, as I found the edge of the separator, I found the seal was bad and I could slip around it. I was joined on the other side by a librarian who appeared to be helpful at first, but I realised had been sent to stop me from finding the book. I started running through the library and she stared pulling some Crouching Tiger shit on me. The dream trickled away into nonsense and then I had to jump up and change the diapers.

New York, New York, big city of dreams

A village side street, in bustling Manhattan. I was hungry, but had no cash, just 2.05$ in my pocketses, and a bank card. But this place had lovely sandwiches, a little sandwich shop. But they would't take bank cards. So I crossed the street to a bakery. It was nearly closing time, a tiny place, with one glass display case behind which was the last of a loaf of bread. There were a couple of other customers standing around, undecided. I motioned to the little old lady that I would have a sandwich, which she started to make for me. Taking two slices from the last of the loaf, she started to fill it with delicious things: slices of meat, green leafy lettuce, sauces, more meats, cheeses, until it was stuffed full and thick and almost too big to eat. I asked if she accepted bank cards and she said no. I dashed out of the store and up to the main avenue, looking for a bank. The street was crowded with people and huge towering buildings. I woke up.

Transfixed by a china shop

Funnily, both Jason & I had dreams about buying things and making choices last night. Maybe because we're broke, but really wanted to go shopping for books yesterday.

For my part, I was on vacation with a family... maybe one of Jason's sisters and her kids... not sure. We were in Ontario and stopped at this shop full of enticing little china things. Harkening back to an earlier version of myself (who liked to shop), I spend an irrational amount of time in the shop, hemming and hawing over things like salt and pepper shakers and weird little invented German mustard/bread baking pots.

Everyone else was out in the car waiting for me. I felt a lot of pressure to finish what I was doing and leave, but I was transfixed by all the shiny objects. Then Jason came in and was very impatient. He didn't understand or know that I was trying to decide on a gift for him, and that's why I was taking so long.

Prado Rey - Roble

I need to backtrack a little bit to last week to talk about the strange and delicious wine we shared with friends on Thursday.

Sometimes a bottle of wine arrives heavy with potential. You have ideas about how it will be good, but then it just blows all your preconceived notions out of the water.

Prado Rey Roble, from Spain's Ribera Del Duero, delivers a delicious, no-holds-barred, sucker punch of flavour right up front. Ka-boom! And that was it! Rather than drawing out its rich hues, like a Rioja would, this one delivered the goods with confidence, no subtlety, no shame. And I can appreciate a wine like that.

Visiting an older version of the Old Country

Jason and I were visiting Leuven, the Belgian university town where I lived for two years. But the town, as always, was completely different. Everything was very, very old. We went to a pub that had funny, bonsai-like formations growing all over its walls. I said, "This pub is older than Canada."

We drank very strange beers, even stranger than real Belgian beers. Later we walked through a field with four or five ancient oak trees in it. They were all contorted and twisted in thousands of layers. And they had all been cut down, as a kind of art project commemorating the second world war. Relics from WWII were strewn along the road beside the field.

high school

(And again, much of this dream is lost to the ether.) My friend Emily had to stop by her school to pick something up. (Actually in her late 20s and not in high school at all) she was attending an all-girl boarding school, but the school was empty when we went in. We entered the one story building, full of work spaces; under a massive central table were hundreds of used paperback books. I fell to checking the titles. Emily said she had read "The Catcher in the Rye" but didn't like *her* writing much. I responded that that J.D. Salinger is a man. I found a copy in amongst the books, to prove it, but suddenly the title changed: it was a collection of short stories that I hadn't read yet, by Salinger. And then the cover changed again, and it wasn't Salinger at all.

impromptu dinner party...with 3 reds...!

I mean, c'mon. Not three bottles of red, on a Thursday night? No no no, children, do not worry. One we had started last night, a Chateau Potensac (Medoc, 2003), to get Krstn warmed up to see Christina Aguilera at the Bell Centre. After she left, I nearly polished it off, but we still had a glass left over for the next day. The second bottle was a full-bodied Spanish Roble, PradoRey 2004, rich, robust, blackberry overtones, a bit corse, tannins, bouquet...all the good stuff, and brought by our dinner guest, Harris Newman (with whom I made a contract that night). And finally, when all that was done, we opened the mini-bottle of Italian Valpolicella 2005: light and delicious (I must say that these small bottles were a present for Krstn, who turned thirty a couple of weeks ago. She got presents on the theme of 1/3. So these are 1/3 bottles of wine...clever, no?) Anyway, I drank more than anyone else and woke up with a hangover.

Thursday comfort food

Trans-Europe smuggling adventure

I was on a covert and possibly criminal journey in Europe. It started out at a place resembling my parents' house, where we were hiding the body of a dead man. He was Eastern European. We were trying to honour him according to his tradition, but were afraid that his family would find out where he was because of the candles.

Then I was given tickets and a fake passport, with the plan of setting off on a possibly risky journey... I and this guy, a stranger, were smuggling or stealing something, it wasn't clear. He and I rode on a series of trains that ended up in Amsterdam. We were sneaking around in a warehouse at the Amsterdam train station. My companion was caught, and hung on a noose. I rescued him by undoing the noose. We got back on a train. Then I seduced him.

I never loved Eva Peron...

Tonight, I warmed up a delicious dinner from a couple of nights ago: exotic French mushrooms (Russelo, maybe?) sauted with onions and garlic, heavy cream and a little of this Reserva de Peron 2006 added to make a lovely sauce, and then you get the chicken breasts stirred in? (locally farmed, from the butcher, and supposedly "happy" chickens)...you get the picture. A delicious dinner the first time around, and even better rewarmed. We finally polished off the 250ml bottle of white. (Another white?)

So who would have thought that a Montreal paper maker, Kruger owns Reserva de Peron, thanks to an investment by the FTQs Fonds de solidarite?

Kirsten didn't know what to make of it. I said it was like drinking a bottle of perfume.

With hints of blackberry and... ladybug

According to the The American Chemical Society, ladybugs make a bad stink that can wreck wine. What's more, this smell comes about when ladybugs inadvertently get mixed in with the juice during the winemaking process. Mmmmm....

fragment: living in New York City

a lot had already happened in this dream, lost to the ether. I am someplace in Manhattan, with elevated highways flashing around me in concrete swirls, and I am trying to get home. Home is off island, somewhere in New Jersey, North West. I am looking at a map of the neighbourhoods up there, mine included. Each neighbourhood has its own distinctive road pattern, with a central square (actually, a circle). Mine is hardwood: and indeed, not only the map looks like hardwood, but the central square itself is made of hardwood, like a huge dancefloor. The buses don't go to the central square, but park and wait on side streets just off the central square. My map shows the bus 66 stops just near where I live. And (in my dream) the 66 leaves from the Plateau (!). So all I have to do is find out where the 66 stops here on the Plateau (in Manhattan?)... (hey, it's a dream. Leave me alone.)

Visit to the scary house

For years now I've had a recurring dream about a big, old scary house. The house sits just on the edge of my childhood home, visible but not always accessible to me. Earlier versions of the dream featured the house with a scary, very small attic compartment that my brother and I would climb into sometimes.

But lately, I've been going into the house and hanging out in its rooms. Various people live/stay there at various times. This time, a friend of mine is living in the attic. She is staying there with a bunch of her friends who I don't know. I go upstairs to visit. It's rickety and a bit scary. But she seems happy there, living like a student with several people camped out on the bare floors, sleeping in sleeping bags.

another sex dream

Sorry, I can't share the details on this one either, but it was hot.

Pint-sized delicious.

Oh yeaaaaahhh... this one is pint-sized. And with the little, shiny red screw top, I just want to rip it off and guzzle it down. Tout de sweet.

But I didn't. And besides, I had to share. My impression: smelled comforting. A sweet, little quickie, but ultimately, unmemorable.

a little bottle, a lot of punch

So, we are just back from the Secret Store, where we bought a bunch of great things. Myself, I got some black shoes and a green shirt, like new. Krstn bought a bunch of new clothes, including a sexy top. But I digress. While I tended to the little morsel's every need, Krstn whipped up a little tortellini: something with garlic and fresh baby spinach, tomatoes, garlic, oil and some beet greens doused with butter, on the side. We cracked open a 250ml bottle of J.P. Chenet's Cabernet Syrah (Pays d'oc). No date. There is a warning on the bottle: Contains Sulphates. Also, you cannot access their top secret website. Hmmm. Mysterious, isn't it? Still, the little stumpy was quite delicious.

Speedy, speedy turtle, speedy turtle...

Ahhh... the white wine. You know a red wine drinker is broke when she digs into the back of the fridge and pulls out that bottle of white that someone left behind at a party. Well, we did it (much like we drank the leftover sake earlier this week). And ended up with Speedy Turtle, a wine that claims to be good with "sushis".

At first sip, Speedy Turtle tasted like those little flower-flavoured jelly candies that old ladies like: a bit rosy, a bit like lavender. Curious. It was a wine that spoke one syllable at a time, like Yertle the turtle. Speedy Turtle, Argentina, no year, no specific grape.

Suckling a pet rat

I dreamed that I was breastfeeding my six-month-old daughter and then she turned into a rat. [Now I must qualify this, because I used to have pet rats and they're really very sweet and cuddly...] Anyway, the rat bit me on the nipple and made it bleed. A lot. After I buttoned up, the blood continued coming through the front of my shirt.

White wine?

It is a rare day that we will drink a white wine. I am not sure why that is, because white is really quite delicious. Maybe we know that are distinct health benefits to red wine, that we don't associate with white. And the only reason we drink wine is for its health benefits. But last night, after a whole week of the gastro, and with only a bottle of white in the whole house, we opted for sacraficing our delicious Argentine white: The Savage Dog. I will let krstn describe its delicate talents.

...robbing a bank...

there had been much dream before this point, but I remember I was part of a team that was going up in several elevators to the 14th floor, which was entirely taken up with the offices of a bank or something like that. Some people were going to cause a diversion while others were going to rob certain things. As I was going up in the elevator, there were a couple of guys, maybe American tourists, with a handheld video camera, and I invited them to make a documentary of the event that was about to take place. So the elevator doors open, and we are on the 14th floor
(elevators in the middle, all offices have windows facing out from the elevator stacks). I am walking along the hallway, and I see that the diversion has started. So I dash into an office and hide behind the door. A man who seems to be the bank manager, hardly older than 25, looks up from his desk and asks me what I am doing. I motion out in the hallway, he sees the disturbance, and then dashes to the front of his desk and starts to roll up these Arctic prints, some of which are no larger than a bumber sticker. I am helping him, and get to look at one or two in detail. One I remember is a simple style, a few figures on a plain background in two or three colours: shades of orange and blue-green (unusual colours for an arctic print, I remember thinking). The figure is of a man or a dog on an ice flow and a simple house in the corner. The banker is desperate to hide the prints. There is some very very small writing on the prints, careful small letters written in sharp pencil. The town it came from was Pond Inlet. I knew that the person who wrote this was a woman. I wake up.

a little sake on a Wednesday night...

Krstn and I have been sick as dogs with the gastro since Tuesday, two days after little Jello-belly got it. Her little football tummy convulsed as one muscle, throwing the contents of her bottle across the hardwood floor. But by last night, I was ready for a tiny tiny little bit of something. We had had white spaghetti with oil and parmesan for late lunch, around 430pm. Later in the evening, I warmed up the last inch of a bottle of Shobu Gekkeikan Sake (a "good sake", the kind you normally drink cold) that has been taking up space in the door of the fridge since Christmas. It was nice, but my stomach wouldn't let me finish even a half of a half of a glass. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one.

Skiing on dirt -- a.k.a. the pear dream

I dreamed that I was skiing at Whistler. I was waiting for my friends/family to show up at the lodge and decided to do a couple runs in the meantime. So I went up the lift on my own, skied down a short run and got back on the lift and went up again. This time there were big patches of well-groomed grass in the snow. I skied over it and went back down to the lift.

The third time up, I skied over to the side and there was a bridge, leading to an orchard where earthy types were grooming trees ripe with pears. This was a side project at Whistler to accommodate the resort to global warming. I went over the bridge on my skis and looked at the trees. Then I skied back to the hill, which no longer had grass nor snow, just dirt. I knew that this was the fast effect of global warming. I skied, with difficulty, over the dirt on my way back to the lodge.

Chat with Jason's dad in the 1970s

I had a mid-afternoon dream where I chatted with Jason's dad when he was young. He was about 35, had a beard and was wearing soft, floppy 1970s clothes. I think I was in the 1970s too. We talked about the stuff he's interested in: consciousness, altered states, adventures. I had the impression that, although he was a nerdy, scholarly type, he could relate to anyone -- the establishment and the counter culture of the time.

A dirty dream...

I had a dirty dream. I can't write about it here, you know, because it's private.

Writing a dirt clump and telephone essay

I was writing an essay in front of my professor, who was a kind of Boris Ustinov character. The essay was about how war is a class struggle against the poor, the solder being the victim. Suddenly I was using organic matter to create my words on a big sheet of paper. I knew what I was writing, but I was using green and brown pieces of dirt and plants as my letters. When I was done and ready to hand it in, the essay turned into a black telephone with little words all over it, like an art project. Suddenly what I was doing made sense. My professor seemed pleased.

The birthday bottle: vielles vignes 2004

And I thought that Anjou was a suburb in Montreal. Apparently not, as it seems to be a place in France where they make wine. And so, on the coldest night of the year, we cracked open the birthday wine Chateau de Fesles, Anjou, Vielles Vignes 2004. Hmmm... kind of dainty. Not knowing what to expect from this wine, maybe we're not subtle enough to get it. Maybe we're too used to big, bold South American wines. It was good, but it didn't blow me out of the water.

Burning Man dream, variation #184

I had another of my recurring Burning Man dreams. In this one, we were there with a ragtag bunch of old friends, strangers and family. None of whom seemed to know anything about where they were. We were setting up camp, and it became apparent that members of my family didn't bring any food or water, because they thought they could buy it on the playa. So I found a car and took one of them to a store, which turned out to be huge and rambling. I wandered off in one direction, he in another. Then I lost him in the store.

Ahhhhhh.... Errazuriz

We slummed it a bit with this wine... and she didn't deserve it. We guzzled her on the couch, with pizza. And for that I apologize, because she was oh so sweet and fresh... like the almost spring feeling right around the corner. Shiraz, 2005, Chile: Errazuriz Estate.

The first dream...

it was supposed to be proof of levitation, but i could see that the man was being held up by people holding sticks. set in india, a hippie was going into trance and started to levitate. he was naked and as he started to rise in the air, i could see that he had female genitalia. the lips of the vagina were singing and chanting. i woke up.

The first wine...

A delicious little red, with hints of blackberry and a hammer after 5 glasses. Shiraz, 2005, Chile: Errazuriz Estate.