Summertime

I’ve been on vacation. Not just vacation from blogging and writing (although, yes, that, too), but from work and my regular life and home. Three weeks in the UK!

It was wonderful to have a day off yesterday to unpack, catch up on laundry, restock the fridge, and remind our place that people live in it. (Centipede hanging out in the sink: take note!!) I was even able to spend the whole morning writing, which was a relief. And I think now I have more of a handle on the story I’m working on.

Also, Montreal feels tropical compared to the Scottish Highlands. It is hot here. Shorts and popsicles weather.

While I was away, I took more photos than I know what to do with, so maybe I’ll post some here over the next few weeks. Get ready for an endless stream of scenic hills and ruined castles....

Holiday 2013 and the ice storm at Glen Villa

(A belated word on my holiday, as I wrote this last week but have only just now started looking at my photos.) 

A number of things on my holiday to-do list remained undone (going to the movies, various home improvements), but the important things got done, such as reading and writing. I read a LOT and started a new story. We even managed to be a little bit social with two birthday outings and a New Year’s Eve Party.  And we kicked off the break by hosting one teeny tiny holiday gathering where eggnog was consumed (and I learned again: never drink eggnog) where we truly got in the holiday spirit.

We also went snowshoeing once out in the Eastern Townships, where the ice storm had wrought its beautiful damage. It was hard to stop taking photos. These were all taken around 4 p.m., as the light was starting to fade.

Victoria: the rest

The day after the festival I lingered over my breakfast. One of my favourite things about my (admittedly limited) experience with British Columbia is the food.I love the health food obsession in that province. It's nice to know that anywhere I go, there will be an option with edamame or wheat germ.

The hotel had a continental breakfast that was kind of like my dream breakfast, with cottage cheese and fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, hard boiled eggs, and coffee with vanilla soy milk.   The muffin and yummy (and very helpfully wrapped) cereal bar were squirrelled away with me and eaten mid-morning.

First breakfast: consumed. Second breakfast: pictured.

Harbour breakfast view

Then I wandered around Victoria, where I was lucky enough to have two days free after the festival. This was exciting because a) I'd never been there before and b) my friend H. just moved there a few months ago. She kindly consented to playing tour guide and hanging out tons. I hope she doesn't mind starring in many of these photos! I took way too many one-handed cell phone photos,using my knuckle to click the shutter on the touchscreen, and unsurprisingly most of them are blurry. But I took a little more care when there was a person in the frame.

Major features included coffee (I also love B.C.'s coffee obsession and expertise), vintage clothing shopping and an amazing stationery store. We also tasted tons of fancy olive oil and vinegar at this neat place in the market. I would probably have been tempted to bring some home if it wasn't for the potential suitcase disaster involved.

Photos from our wandering:

There are bronies among us.

Victoria: looking pretty

I can really get behind this pie shop sign

Amazing fancy olive oil and vinegar place!

We went to Rebar for dinner, which I'd heard of thanks to the famous cookbook but somehow always thought was in NYC. It was yummy.
 

Rebar, lovely friend, and a bottle of Blue Buck!

Another thrill about my stay in Victoria was that my hotel room was also one of the most amazing hotel rooms I've ever stayed in. It was roughly the size of my old apartment, except with real furniture.

Oh hello, home-away-from-home

The best part was the fully equipped kitchen that made it perfect for saving and reheating leftovers. (Being without food and the fear of being without food is one of my major travelling paranoias.)

Precious, precious leftovers in my hotel fridge

My second day in Victoria was not unlike the first: long breakfast, wandering/shopping, meeting up with H for a movie and late drinks/food. Hurrah for true vacations.

Beautiful sky

More Victoria vintage heaven
 

A trip to Victoria would not have been complete without a visit to Munro's Books.

Munro's Books of Victoria has a surprisingly imposing street presence (former bank?)

At first I thought they didn't carry Bone & Bread and I was sad, but then I turned around and saw that they had a whole special section for Canadian Literature!

Beautiful CanLit shelves at Munro's Books

 (I love the proximity of Bone & Bread to Dear Life by Alice Munro)

The next morning I left to catch the ferry to Vancouver to attend the Vancouver International Writers Festival... To be continued...!

A writer to watch!

It made my Canada Day to be named one of CBC Books' 2013 Writers to Watch!  Along with a lot of writers whose books are in my TBR pile.

You can click through the full list here. 

For another amazing list, check out Amanda Leduc's Up-and-Comers on her (lovely!) blog . This is a update on a group of writers she profiled a year ago...although if you are a writer be warned: it may make you feel insecure and unproductive or (better yet) inspired to to work harder.

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I started this post over three weeks ago now. Travel and vacation has kept me away from the internet a little more than I'd like. 

To celebrate our anniversary, D and I went on a weekend trip to Franconia Notch State Park, where we saw bears (in the backyard of our B&B!), hiked a gorge, had some amazing pizza (jalapeno-cream-cheese-stuffed crust....YUM), backed some plastic duckies in the town Lions' Club annual duck race fundraiser, caught the 4th of July "Home Day" parade, swam in the lake, visited Frost Place on Frost Day, and fulfilled a long-time yearning (er, of mine) to go to a drive-in movie, something I haven't done in almost twenty years. I am going to suggest you peruse the snack bar menu of the Northern Nights Drive-In because it is American thing of beauty. We took full advantage with chocolate milkshakes, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers...and even a meatball sub. When in New Hampshire... 

Pickup trucks are de rigeur at the drive-in

Small town drive-in

The Frost Place, one of Robert Frost's former homes

Walking the trails behind the Frost Place

Hilarious scrambling at the end of the duck race

We topped it off with an amazing meal at Manoir Hovey in North Hatley on way home. It was the kind of meal I can barely describe because it was so delicious and delightfully detailed on the menu.  Fine dining menus are a complex conceptual/literary/culinary art form, don't you think? Basically (in a prosaic, incomplete summary that does little justice to the meal), I had asparagus soup, halibut, cheese risotto, a bunch of amazing chanterelles (pilfered from D), and notably, as a pre-dessert, some apple-tarragon sorbet. Notable not only for the delicate and (at least to me) surprising combination of flavours, but also just for the concept of a pre-dessert, which strikes me as a useful one that might have almost as much mileage in it as second breakfast.  

A week after our return, we came back out to the country for a working vacation which has included lots of swimming (initially, during the heat wave), reading, writing, and napping. Just a few days left, but I hope to try and squeeze in the time to finish a second story...

something new

There has been such a flurry of activity in my little corner of the world that I can only conclude that some of the persistence has paid off.

There was packing (and now unpacking), moving, and of course this:

 

Then there was travelling and reading and relaxing, and now, now there is the editing.  I started working on the manuscript again this weekend, and I was encouraged by the fact that there was no cringing or recoiling from what I found on the page.  (Sometimes I find that when I work in great, deadline-induced bursts it is followed by some sort of amnesia…I am usually half-surprised to find just what it is I’ve written.)  Of course, I may start to feel differently as I move deeper into the novel, but just now I am encouraged, relieved, and excited to do the work. 

vacation satiation

Now that a week has passed since my vacation, I'm ready to look back on it with nostalgia, rather than as the source of dehydration (too much sun) and achy legs (too much walking) and sleep deprivation (too many late nights and early mornings). Actually, all that was a meagre price to pay for good times with good friends, outrageously good food, and a little time in one of the world's great cities (NYC, though Boston's no slouch either).

Boston's North End.

I walk more purposefully when carrying a box full of pastry (specifically, ricotta cannoli).

This time we skipped the Strand, since I have
too many books still unread, and hit up Williamsburg and Coney Island instead, which was just as fabulously weird as I had been led to expect. I'm not sure whether it was the recorded messages blaring invitations to the 50-cent freakshows or the disgusting corn dog I ate, but it was just seedy enough to make us want to leave in a hurry.

Sometimes I think that mostly the reason I leave home at all is so that I can be reminded all over again how lucky I am to live where I do. And there's something to be said, too, for enforced separation from a writing project -- such that you're daydreaming about it and longing to get back to work.

On Brighton Beach. Beaches are a novelty for this Montrealer.

laptop anxiety

I'm heading out this morning for four days to Boston and then New York City, leaving my laptop behind. These are my parting moments with the machine with which I spend, for better or worse, many of my waking and virtually all of my working hours. So it's a temporary goodbye to both work (completely) and the internet (mostly), and both prospects make me a little panicky. But it'll be good, right?? All my characters will be making the trip with me, anyway, at least in my mind.

Er, but I'll avoid mentioning that to the border guard.

Hope everyone makes it through the heatwave weekend without melting!