Back to work

Thanksgiving should last a whole week. Then I wouldn't have had to get home at 11 last night, and could have stayed in Quebec City longer.

I think that there is an entity somewhere that for some reason didn't want us to eat at St-Hubert, this weekend. When we were looking for one, we either saw none or saw one but had no exit ramp to get to it, and the rest of the time we saw plenty but didn't want to eat there. No matter, we ate at several much better little restaurants. Those fries at Le Bonnet d'ane were divine.

On Friday night, G missed an exit after Montreal and revealed his secret designs: if he wanted to go to Drummondville, all he had to do was say so! And on the way back, we took a scenic *cough* detour through Montreal with no map and without getting lost (still no St-Hubert) so that took longer than planned which is why we got back so late.

We had glorious weather on Saturday, and did the Old City-Citadel-Plains of Abraham-rue Cartier-rue St-Jean circuit, back to our charming little hotel on rue Ste-Anne. So charming, in fact, that they had umbrellas by the door for guests who, like us, had forgotten their own, and really needed one for Sunday's downpour. We spent the day indoors, shopping at Place Ste-Foy and Place Laurier. It pains me greatly to report that for the first time, Archambault did not receive any of my hard-earned cash; they didn't even have a single volume of Basara, much less #7! Neither did Renaud-Bray, so I had to settle for Fruits Basket (and Marmalade Boy for A-L!).

Yesterday, taken by a sudden flash of religious fervour, we drove out to Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré, which I'm pleased to report is quite pretty, mostly thanks to the tasteful colour scheme and the lovely stained glass windows. The building itself is huge, but I didn't find the facade particularly inspiring, but that may have been because the autumn leaves were much more beautiful than a heap of stones could ever be. L'Ile d'Orleans was also very nice, and we poked around the cemetery in St-Jean for a while, trying to find my dead relatives and laughing at the names on the stones. There are an awful lot of Gerards buried there...

[The lack of accents here is no fault of mine, this computer is being difficult.]

Plot? What plot? (just kidding...)

Mulling over what Bashy-O-Sama wrote today, I have to say that one of the things that I liked about the endings of Evangelion and Utena was that it's left up to the viewers to interpret what they see, to draw their own conclusions. It's like modern art (1850s onward) in that sense: yes, the creator had a purpose, but that's only part of the point. Without an audience, even if the creator himself comprises the whole of his audience, creation serves no purpose. If a story is good, no matter what it is, different people will interpret it differently, and the stories that only have one interpretation usually aren't that good, and won't hold anyone's attention for very long.

Speaking of "Spirited Away" in particular, I found it more challenging to watch than the other Miyazaki films I'd seen, and perhaps a little more delightful for that very reason. Sort of like Alice learning to just go with the flow and accept the ridiculous, even though she might like to know why. That's the reason I watched the endings of Evangelion and Utena several times each, and want to see both "Mullholland Drive" and "Spirited Away" again.