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Ah yes birthdays. They happen every year on the same day, and some years we want to celebrate them, while other times we don’t. This year I wanted to celebrate, especially because my beloved Montreal Canadiens were playing the dreaded Toronto Maple Leafs ON MY BIRTHDAY. Oh yes, I thought this was a perfect thing to celebrate. To make matters even more fun, the game was in la Belle Province (that’s Quebec for y’all non-Canadians), and as I hadn’t been to Montreal in over 8 years, I thought this was the perfect opportunity.

To start the celebrations off, I went to the Irish Embassy Pub in Toronto on Friday night for some drinks with some colleagues. Here’s me & Shannon at the beginning of the evening:

(That’s me on the right.)

 Next there’s Clint, Paul & Matt mugging for the camera:

I tried to be good and not drink too much that night, as the next morning I was off on the train to Montreal, but of course we all know that didn’t happen. Although I was good and drank vodka-based drinks, as I know they cause less of a hangover (and let me tell you that less is most definitely a relative term here), I still wasn’t feeling as fresh as I could have on Saturday morning. BUT, I made it to the train on time to meet up with the girls, and off we went.

Strangely enough, only Melanie was in full form, as I was battling the hangover, Jana was getting over a nasty cold and Christine was having some sympathy nausea for me, but we all managed to rest a little on the train, and we in decent form by the time we got to the hotel. Where we were greeted by this view from our 16th floor hotel room:

This is the view from the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel, one of the grand dames of Montreal.

The best part of this room and hotel is that the Queen Elizabeth is directly over top the train station. All we had to do is take an elevator, and we were in the hotel (or train station, depending on your perspective.) This was an important fact to us, since we were taking the 09:40 train Sunday morning, and we wanted to maximize our sleep time.

So now to the main attraction: the game. We walked over to the Bell Centre and purchased some scalpers tickets for the Molson Zone. We found these are at one end of the arena, and each section is assigned a player. If your player scores a goal, then one row is chosen to win free beers. Not bad at all.

Here are Jana & me at the game. 

You’ll note that Jana is still smiling even though she’s wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt…this was before the Leafs got trounced 4 - 1 by my Habs! YESSSSSSSS! She still had fun though, enjoying all the raucous fans and all.

Next we have some photographic proof of Christine’s fraud: she’s really a Senators fan, however in the spirit of the day, she wanted to wear one of my Habs jerseys. I told her she could wear her Sens jersey, and in fact her husband was going to lend her his, however she declined, much to Jana’s chagrin.

In the pre-game festivities, the Bell Centre people did a historical retrospective on the Canadiens teams of the past, flashing up some interesting pictures and stats  on the ice as they did.

So the game got underway, we had a few beers and pizza slices, and the chanting began “Let’s Go Habs! Let’s Go Habs!” Followed by the equally fun “Leafs Sucks, Leafs Sucks” (you have to remember we were in Montreal, and those francophones sometimes add extra s’s to words. ) There was an undercurrent of “Let’s Go Leafs” occasionally, but then we’d drown them out. See, Christine was right into it…

See the blonde in the referees shirt? She was handing out free beer tickets to fans who were wild & crazy, and Christine was wild & crazy enough to win!

By the third period, the score was:

The crowd started to get really rowdy, including a group of nasty Habs fans a few rows ahead of us. They were taunting a group of Leafs fans with some nasty, personal comments, which really wasn’t necessary. Security came up sometime in the 2nd period, but you knew something was brewing. These were the type of guys who go to bars looking for fights. Sure enough, at this point in the game, somebody stumbled while walking up the stairs to his chair, beer was spilled, words were exchanged, and then Hab Moron #1 lunged at Drunk Leafs Fan #1. DLF #1 threw his beer on HM#1, which pissed him off, and they started grappling as all of us ran for cover. Security was up there in no time and had separated everybody and diffused the situation.

But THEN, DLF#1’s friend (DLF#2), tried to climb over us girls to help his buddy. We were all concerned that he was going to dump his beer on us, so I pinned his right leg, Jana pinned his left, Melanie grabbed him by the waistband, and Christine, who was on the aisle, started yelling at him. She got right in his face and let him have it. While I appreciate his willingness to help his buddy, there was no point since Security was there and was going to toss everyone out anyways.

Finally the situation calmed down, all the DLFs left with their banished brothers, (and one sister), and then we watched the rest of the game. Jana left in disgust with a few minutes left in third, as she had to go buy some Habs paraphernailia for her father, who is a Habs fan (good man!), and she missed the lone Leafs goal! That was funny.

We next headed out to the Sir Winston Churchill pub up on Crescent street for a few drinks after the game. We met up with some funny guys who worked at Molson’s. Melanie was having quite a fun time with them. And then suddenly, it was past midnight, and my birthday was officially over for this year. It was time to get back on the train and head back to Toronto.

If you want to see more of my photos from the trip, go check out  my Flickr page. Melanie’s going to put her photos shortly, so I’ll be linking over to those too, so stay tuned for those too (Melanie’s much more of a shutterbug than I am.)

I am currently obsessed with my Nintendo DS and the game the Legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass. I play it every night when I get home from work, usually for about 90 minutes, and it’s just killing my wrist! This game uses the stylus, which means it’s not overtly painful (unlike my beloved Lego Star Wars 2, which kills my thumbs after about 30 minutes of play.) Except when I stop, or reach out to change the channel on the radio with the remote…my arm kills me! That would be the arm in which I’m holding the game. Thankfully it’s not a repetitive strain type of pain, but rather just a fixed position kind of pain. You know the kind I’m talking about. You’re reading your favourite book, and are so engrossed that you don’t move for an hour. Next thing you know your neck is hurting, your lower back is achy, and your foot has fallen asleep because you’ve had your legs crossed the entire time. That’s the kind of pain I’m talking about.

In the grand scheme of things that’s not a bad thing, of course, but I’m just always surprised. Guess I’ll enjoy my Xmas vacation a little more this time around. I thought I only had 3 vacation days available, considering I just started my new job in august, but it turns out that I actually have 6 days, and we can’t carry any over. So that means that I have to use them all now. Gosh darn it, that’s just too bad! hahaha. So starting Dec. 20th, I’m on vacation for the rest of the year.

Which is a good thing, as that will give me some time to go check out some apartments in the day time. This is the problem with house hunting in the winter, you are limited to the weekends or any days off you can get, otherwise you don’t get the full view of the property. So I’ll be checking out a few places before heading out to K-town for the holidays.

Okay, time to go ice my arm, as it’s a little too sore. (But I am heartened to see that my beloved Habs have won their game versus the Flyers tonight by a score of 4-1. Yes!)

Okay, so it wasn’t the photos themselves that took me back, but rather their content: my beloved old, used audio cassettes! You remember them, we used them before CDs and mp3s. In preparation for my move, I’m starting to go through my stuff and purging the unwanted, as there’s no sense in bringing along stuff that’s not needed. At any rate, I had a blast going through these boxes (there were 2). I salvaged all the mixed tapes I made (I was a big fan of the mixed tape, mostly for me, but I had ‘mood’ ones that I’d pull out depending on what mood I was in.) You know those days where you were sad because the boy (or girl) you liked didn’t talk to you in between classes? You’d pull out the good old boot tape. On those days where things were going well, you might pull out the dance tape, or the rock tape.

You’ll see by the pictures that my tastes were a-l-l over the place, and they still are, which I like. That means I’m never bored of my collection, and there’s always something interesting to listen to. One day I’m sure I’ll get rid of the mixed tapes too, but for now, I’ll keep them safe, as they’re still filled with lots of memories, you know? Although I did salvage a few of my retail tapes too, like the very first one I ever bought (Platinum Blonde’s Alien Shores — great album!), and a few of my foreign language ones I haven’t yet replaced in CD. And I even rescued one particular one that I have to send to a friend as a joke, because it’s just too funny (I can’t tell you what it is just now, because he reads this blog too, and I don’t want him to see what it is before he gets it in the mail! I’ll edit the post after he gets it so you can get in on the joke too.)

Definitely a nice way to spend part of the evening, reminiscing and having fun.

And I’ve disappeared. I know. NaNoBloMo is over and I haven’t written a single post since the start of December. But I’ve been busy! No, not with knitting, in fact I’ve been trying to get to some, but just can’t get moving on that. Especially because I found out last week that my landlord is kicking me out of my apartment because she wants to use it for her own “personal use”. Don’t worry dear readers, that’s not entirely bad news, because I had already decided to move out in the spring, this just moves my timetable up a couple of months. Of course the month of December is almost entirely written off, what with all the holiday festivities going on, but we’ll see what we can come up with.

In the meantime I’ve been amusing myself with my Nintendo DS, specifically working the Lego Star Wars II, as well as the Legend of Zelda: the Phantom Hourglass. I’m having lots of fun with that.

Oh, and getting excited for my birthday trip next week, when I head out to Montreal with the girls to watch a little hockey! Should be fun. I’ll be sure to post all sorts of photos n’ such from that excursion. We’re all looking forward to it, that’s for sure. Okay, time to get back to some pre-moving sorting and decluttering.

I actually have nothing to report here, just making my post for NaNoBloMo. Cheesy I know, but that’s what you get tonight.