Master of Freezy-ness

Today I spent an hour and a quarter outside in -20F weather. And I wasn't even that cold! I woke up around 10 (when the sun came in my window - yay!) and after a leisurely breakfast headed out to town in search of a used bike store which was rumoured to be opening today. Well, after an hour of wandering without any luck, I met up with my French-Japanese friend Emilie for lunch at Soppa Baari. It was quite nice. I had a "Russion Fish Soup" which was tomato-based and contained pickles. A little weird, but really good. Emilie had a garlic-cream soup which was also really delicious. And only 6€ each! It sounds expensive by american standards, but it's quite cheap here. Anyway, we had what Emilie called a "Paris-style" lunch which lasted about 3 hours. It was clear that this was not a local tradition - the place cleared out three or four times while we there. The wait-staff didn't seem to mind though. The conversation was quite interesting - we discussed jazz, art, politics, her long distance relationship, and financial dependence on the 'rents. It was the first social contact I've had in a week! Mostly because I've been sick. Unfortunately, I'm not 100% better - I came home today with an aweful headache and still can't hear out of my left ear (it's been that way for 5 days now...). On the walk home I did end up seeing the bike store - but it wasn't actually open today anyway. 9:30 am on monday - I'll be their first customer.

The cold is actually really nice, I think, if you are properly dressed. I wore my boots today with relatively little pain, and was overall quite warm. It's kind of amusing to take off your coat and scarf and see a layer of ice on them from your breath. Emilie took the bus in to town and commented that there was ice on my eyelashes!

Dinner tonight was a really yummy chicken stir-fry with almost (but not) too much ginger. Since I haven't been able to take photos lately (I've been warned numerous times that digital cameras don't play happy with -20F weather), here is a photo of my dinner. For some reason the picture made the brocolli look really weird - I assure you it was a yummy stir-fry and not covered in strange whitish fungus goo.