Cars and yes - more bagels!

So, I have to admit that every day is not all full of “fun” stuff.   No matter where you live, you still have to do all the regular tasks … laundry, clean house, grocery shop, walk the cats, etc.  (just kidding about the cats).   The past couple of weeks have involved at least 5 days focused just on cars. Two separate trips to the driver’s license place because we couldn’t get appointments on the same day. One trip to get the registration done, only to find out we still needed Quebec inspections (in addition to the Canadian inspection).   The Subaru passed on the first try.  Gibby needed a mud flap repair.  Quick trip to the auto parts store for a tube of glue, Dave repaired the mud flap, and then back to the inspection garage.  Back to the DL place with all our paper work – and now we have new plates AND new driver’s licenses.  Mission accomplished! 

I had to “surrender” my Texas DL when I got my Quebec DL.  That felt kind of strange, I admit.  I haven’t really been driving much here yet but we had a short time frame to get all that done.  Using public transportation is a totally different mindset, but it is really easy to hop on a bus or ride the metro, not to mention it is a lot less stressful and a lot greener in the long run.   We did use the car recently for our volunteer bread “pick-ups” for the neighbourhood Food Depot.  We went to five different bakeries (one was actually a facility run by nuns), picked up bread donations and then dropped them off at the Food Depot kitchen where other volunteers sorted it all and prepared meals and food baskets to hand out to people dealing with food insecurities. 

Last week in the garden we planted several things from seeds.  There are still a few cold nights predicted so we will do planting of seedlings next week.  We planted beets and something called tatsoi.  Tatsoi is an Asian green that kind of looks like spinach and is related to bok choy and belongs to the cabbage family.  I had never heard of it before so I’ll be curious to watch it grow and get to taste it (and add another thing to my list of “firsts”).  Most of us in this gardening collective are new to gardening or new to Montreal so we are going with a lot of our team leader’s suggestions.   Another woman is in charge of the compost pile so now I have a place to contribute my compostable items!  Yay!  Especially since there is no compost collection in my apartment building. 

Today we went for a bike ride and stopped at another bagel place. This one was called Dizz’s Bagel and Deli.  It is strictly a “take-out” location but they have a wonderful selection of stir fry fixing’s, homemade chicken salad, spicy tuna salad, all kinds of cheesecakes and desserts… oh – and bagels!  I had a sesame bagel with lox and cream cheese and David had a raisin bagel with birthday cake cream cheese.  We walked our bikes across the street and sat in a little park and ate them right away.  I was soooo hungry (either from the bike riding or from not having had much breakfast) that I can’t honestly say how good the bagel was – but it was gone in just minutes.  I do plan to go back there and try out some of the salads.   

I'll end this post with yet another cool wall mural that we walked past while waiting for the cars to get inspected.