12 posts tagged “plateau”
Quiet days. Mildly depressed as I always seem to be every November what with a long cold winter ahead of us.
Google maps finally available for Montreal and here's our place. Strange, though, in that the pics were all taken in probably early April so the trees are all naked and it looks so different than it does now with leaves and shrubbery and flowers everywhere.
Futzing around here this morning, looking at some friends' places, I saw our friend I&C's house and he is coming out of his front door, taking out the recycling.
So I was trolling around online and discovered this old photo of our street from 1948. It looked so familiar: I looked out the window. It's the view from my front balcony...cool!
Woke up this morning and took a long walk before my crazy hectic day of work and meetings...
Some pics:
I love walking around the Plateau when the weather's nice, the trees are green, everyone is smiling.
The sidewalk cafes are loaded with people drinking beers and eating salads.
On the streets, bicyclists flit by and people saunter past in shorts and tank tops.
Fresh fruit spills out of the small markets onto the sidewalk: pineapples and mangos and oranges and avocados and cherries. So colorful!
Couples walk around eating ice cream cones making googly eyes at one another.
People planting flowers or weeding their gardens look up and smile at the passersby.
Squirrels and cats make dangerous mad dashes across the side streets.
You hear a cacophony of languages: French, English, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Portuguese...
The first one, on a garage door around the corner from our front door, has been up since the winter.
I walked by this several times a week and often wondered WTF it was all about: is it a message to someone in the building? Or just some hipster trying to be clever? Or a message to the neighborhood? Is there some "environmental" message we're supposed to read into this?
Then, about a month ago, I noticed this, on a door to the left of the garage:
Unfortunately, this message has not answered any of my earlier questions.
Still hoping/expecting for a reply to the reply...
Hey with the winter's we've got around here, we have to take advantage of every single nice afternoon!
1) Gas prices. I am so so glad that this doesn't directly affect me. Every news program seems to have at least one story about how high prices have become (and they are much higher in Canada than the US, now and always), but since we walk or take metro everywhere, gas prices just don't figure into my daily life. Yeah, yeah, I know they're reflected in the cost of things generally, but yesterday I started thinking that the fact that I don't have a car, that I don't need to worry about auto insurance, gas prices, maintenance, parking means that I can spend that money traveling. Or on something I'd rather have.
I totally get the fact that in much of rural North America having a car is a must: I grew up in an area where every single person needed their own car: both parents and all teenagers in our house (at one point, we had five cars parked outside our house). But in a city, come on! Cars are ugly. Parking lots are really ugly (and actually decrease property values since no one wants to live next door to one). Cars kill people (some guy died the other day four blocks away, hit on his bike while riding down Mont-Royal). Why do people love them so much? Maybe it's just something I've never really understood: the love of the car, since while I do enjoy a road trip now and again, I never miss that day to day driving (to work, to the store).
2) House hunting. We found the coolest place a few blocks away. Price is OK. Amazing old building with wrought iron & wood staircase, on the second floor, two bedrooms and two balconies (one in front, one in back). Typical Montreal walk-up: long, skinny apartment with a front room, living room in the middle, bedrooms on either side, and kitchen in the back. It's cute, though. Best thing is location: literally two blocks from the metro station but on a quiet intersection lined with towering maple trees: a block from Avenue Mont-Royal, two blocks from Laurier and two big parks. But. But but but. It makes me nervous. We could afford it, but it'd mean seriously tightening for 6 months or a year. Maybe longer. It'd mean scraping the bottom of the barrel (and slightly scrambling) for the downpayment. I know it'd be worth it and there is no way from an investment point of view that this place wouldn't pay off. But. Why did I wake up and 3am this morning, my heart racing, thinking of all that debt hanging over me (just the IDEA of all that debt, to be precise)? Why did I put my tshirt and shoes and walk over there at 5.30, standing on the corner just looking at the place? Mmmmm. Not sure if we're ready for this...one more year would be ideal. But...does it really work that way? Don't people just "grab" a place when they see one they really really like, even if the timing's not 100% perfect?
