...Hello?....

Damn that was a crazy vacation. I don't even know where I went. Just kinda fell off the face of the earth...I mean blogosphere for awhile. But I'm back. At least in theory. Here's for making another effort....
Check out this photo of Ollie and his Uncle Wacky.

two shirts

This past weekend was the 1st annual Twelve Tavern Tour. The plan was to spend one hour at each bar to hang out, have a drink or two and get a feel for the place. This was organized among a small group of friends and anquantences for the purpose of finding new interesting local bars. Here's a few highlights The second place we went to, Zack's Place was on the North side of St.Louis city, in a pretty rough neighborhood. Zack's had some holes in the sagging tiled drop ceiling and some of the nastiest bathrooms I've ever seen, but they did have some mirror tile on the walls and some nasty beats on the juke box. Bar number five, Pooh's Corner was one of the coolest places we went to. It was a chill neighborhood bar with a warm atmosphere and a shuffle board table. They had TJ's pizza, which personally, I would have to say is the best frozen pizza in the world.

At some point drinking for twelve hours straight sounded like a riddiculous challenge, so we cut out for a bit to go to the Rock and Roll Craft Show and decided to catch up with the tour later. The craft show was smaller than expected, but it was a good start for the first annual. I picked up this I "arch" STL shirt there. My sentiments exactly.

Good movie

We had a guy's night out yesterday, myself and my two dads, one of them being my father-in-law... We went to go see "Good Night and Good Luck." I was looking forward to seeing a good movie and it fulfilled expectations. It definitely draws some parallels to our time without getting preachy. The insertion of the Eisenhower speech was particularly apt. They did a good job not to dumb it down too. They let McCarthy dig his own grave. Well done George.

Mont-real

So, this is the story of our honeymoon that I promised Ben would be all but inside the hotel room, which I have to say was very nice but a little small. We stayed right downtown so we were in the middle of it all. We were two blocks away from Rue St. Catherine which was something like the magnificent mile of Chicago except with a lot more restaurants, bars, and strip clubs. They were not shy about their sex industry. There were 3 foot posters of fully nude women in store front windows. Our hotel phone had speed dial buttons to different services in the hotel; room service, concierge, evening/massage...that last one had an icon of a woman next to it.
Montreal is the only city I've ever seen where homeless people had dogs. I don't understand how they can afford them, but I'm sure its nice to have a companion you can count on when the going is always rough.
The city had a series of underground passages focused around their light rail system (the trains had tires! like busses on tracks). The tunnels were like underground malls with fast food, restaurants, and stores throughout. It was pretty neat. I'm sure its a nice way to get to work when its -8 degrees Celsius outside. I didn't see many homeless people down there. I guess that's regulated.
Everything was really expensive there due to the free healthcare. 15% on everything!!! I think we could have gotten some of that back through customs...we just didn't know how and didn't have much time to find out.
Overall Montreal was a really neat city. I would definitely like to go back to visit again, though I'll have to checkout Vancouver first.

Montreal

Our honeymoon in Montreal. We spent most time relaxing and eating, and occasionally doing the tourist thing.























A colorful reflection of the Canadian flag.



















Us























The European-ish Old Montreal.