A Few Quick Notes 151

-Today was another relatively standard winter day, not too far below zero, but with a little snow to remind people that it is definitely still winter.

-It seems that today is Stupor Bowl Sunday. I am surprised at how many of the people I know in Montreal have plans that related to watching this event. Particularly surprising is that I can’t see most of them as sports fan (but that may just be because I have a hard time understanding how anyone can be a sports fan).

-After completing a little work on campus I returned home. On my way back I stopped at a grocery store. Though I had originally intended to pick up one or two items, I eventually purchased almost $25.00 worth of goods (most of which were sale items). Unfortunately, I didn’t forget to buy a few cans of water chestnuts (as they will only be on sale until midnight tonight).

-Though I was a little worried about my shift last night, it turned out to be nothing to be scared of. We ended up with about 250 McGill residence dwellers for just over two hours. In part, that this party was tolerable may have been because of the brevity.

One of the more impressive sights at the party (which was to be a New Year’s Eve party) was a table covered in about 250 glasses of sparkling white wine. Not surprisingly, there was somewhat of a feeding frenzy type atmosphere surrounding the table. After talking with one of my co-workers who was more closely involved with the filling of the glasses, I am pretty sure that this was likely even truer that I was able to tell from my few quick glimpses of the scene.

In part because of the number of glasses used for the sparkling white wine, but also just generally it seemed as though it was a good night for stemmed glassware. We seemed to switch from our typical focus on pitchers of beer to glasses of wine.

The downside of the shift is that I didn’t make it back to the apartment until well after 3:00 AM.

-If people are interested, the recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in the Joy of Cooking is pretty good.

-About three different types of sirens are currently being used to alert car owners in my neighbourhood that snow ploughing is about to take place. After the siren phase, a team of tow-trucks removes any remaining cars and the ploughing begins.

As you may imagine, these are not ideal circumstances for studying or concentrating.

-I should eventually try to prepare some dinner this evening. It is likely that I will have something with a can or two of freshly purchased tuna.