Stupid body...

Several years ago, I had an annoying experience: it was summer, and I was doing a long-distance, inter-city drive to a place that I no longer remember. Because it was summer, I was wearing a t-shirt. Unbeknownst to me, the lovely sun that shone through my window also shone on my exposed arm... for quite a number of hours. When I arrived at my destination, I discovered that my window-arm was completely red. Please note: my family is from Russia and Poland, which means I have pasty-white skin. When I'm in the sun, I don't tan; I develop freckles and burn as red as a lobster.

Since then, I have taken the precaution of wearing a light-coloured, long-sleeved shirt whenever I do long-distance driving in the summer. Well and good.

Today I drove home from Ottawa. It was summer. It was hot. I was sweating a lot in my t-shirt-and-white-overshirt get-up, but at least I knew that when I got home, my skin would be its usual gleaming white instead of a fire-engine red. And so it was, a lovely shade of pale beige.

Tonight, however, when I looked in the mirror, I realized that all that sweating gave me a heat rash on my chest and stomach. No, it isn't severe. No, this is not the first time such a thing has happened. No, I'm not particularly worried. If I keep cool and hydrated, it will go away by itself in a few days.

Still, it brings to mind the saying, "damned if you do, damned if you don't." Ugh.

Edited after getting off the phone with Marc: And now for a bit of perspective. On the Nevada-California border, in a place called South Tahoe, there is a very large fire burning. Marc was already committed to another fire and so didn't go to South Tahoe, but the fire is still burning and uncontained. To date, it seems to have consumed 150-200 homes. The people in those homes had about 3 hours' warning before they needed to leave. Beacuse it was the weekend, it was very hard to determine casualty / fatality counts, and the numbers likely won't be availble until later this week. Somehow, this makes my worries about heat rashes seem mind-bogglingly trivial. Something to think about for my gratitude journal tomorrow...

Pictures from the wedding weekend

Pictures from the weekend are now online on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31136&id=836905614

They should be visible even to people who don't have Facebook accounts. If they're not, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Montreal moments, part 1

(The following is the first instalment in what I hope will become an irregularly-updated series of tongue-in-cheek vignettes about living in Montreal.)

Early morning, a coffee shop. I reach the head of the line, put on a pleasant smile, and start my order: "Bonjour! Je prendrai une tisane au citron."

The barista smiles back, but something is amiss. Something in my accent must have revealed me for what I am: an anglophone. Though her own accent clearly marks her as a francophone, she is quick to show off her verbal virtuoso, "of course. Just a moment."

She brings me my tea. I refuse to let her get the upper hand in our dance of languages, "ça fait combien?"

"One-sixty-six," she says, barely pausing despite the challenging numbers.

I hunt through my change purse, "un-et-vignt-cinq, un-et-cinquante, un-et-soixante-quinze, un-et-soixante-seize!" Triumphant, I hand over my change. She takes it.

Finally, the numbers have vanquished her, and she reverts to her native tongue: "un-et-soixante-seize," she says, ringing open the cash register. "Et dix," she finishes, handing me a dime.

I smile broadly, "merci!" I take my tea and beat a hasty retreat, proud in the knowledge that my mastery of French is ever-so-slightly better than her mastery of English.

Montreal is hardly unique as a city with two primary languages. Many cities in Europe boast two or even three official languages, and many cities in the southern United States have unofficially adopted Spanish at least as much as Quebec has accepted English. What marks Montreal as special is the subtle games we play whenever we face a speaker of the opposite language.

In France, a visiting tourist who tries to speak in French will likely find the shop clerk switching to English, just like my barista this morning. The difference is that in France, the clerk almost always speaks better English than the tourist does French. In Montreal, the odds are good that both speakers are equally comfortable in their second language.

Why the verbal gymnastics, then? Why not stick to the inital language, instead of stubbornly keeping to the other person's tongue? One thing that gives Montrealers intense glee is demonstrating that they are "better" than the other side. Anglos want to be better than francos; francos insist that pure laine is best. Any demonstration that one camp is better than the other gets touted in one language's papers and dismissed in the other's. One area of potential one-upmanship is our ability to speak our second language. This leads to the ironic situation of an anglophone trying to champion the anglo cause by speaking French, while a francophone demonstrates their superiority by answering in English.

Most people don't think about these things when they subconsciously shift to another language, of course. They may think they're being helpful. But we know the real reason for Montreal's verbal Olympics: beating the competition at their own game will win you the gold.