P. and I went north for Thanksgiving. Way way north. Specifically, to Montreal. I still can’t believe that neither of us had ever been. My question is, what the hell took us so long? One noticeable difference between NYC and Montreal is that the sidewalks there are caked with snow and ice, and walking becomes a little more treacherous as a result. Instead of taking pictures of all the great signage and architecture, I had my head down (not the entire time, just for this little stroll), making sure my every step landed where it should.

I like looking at the world from above. Happy Friday.

When we moved back to the Lower East Side back in July, this was one of the first photos I took. I saw this small-ish rodent (rat) on Division Street, on my way into the depths of Chinatown. He looked rather peaceful. And while I know this is a picture of a dead rodent, I love all the geometry going on here. I have had encounters of this sort before. See here.

My first foray into the world of selling art. Best guess is that I was 5 years old. In case you’re wondering, this is a drawing of a chef. If memory serves, the “cents” symbol in the upper right corner was supposed to be a “dollar” sign. Who was I kidding. But, if you can’t tell from the photo, I ran a tight operation.

I always eat breakfast at home (far less out of virtue and more out of the desire to have coffee in my pyjamas), so I don’t usually skimp on buying decent fruit or healthy homemade bread. Although I recognize that this eating and spending habit is a luxury, the total still couldn’t possibly rival a daily latte at Starbucks. Well, not so fast. Last night, at our fancy local grocer, I knew something was amiss when I paid up for a basket full of food. I was embarrassed at the total, but instead of being responsible and backing out of the purchase, I did a quick tally, amortized out the excess cost over the number of items in the cart, and figured that I should definitely shop more judiciously in the future lest we go broke. I tend to look at price tags on everything (habit picked up from my father!) and find myself returning products to the shelves – although not often enough – if they are too expensive. But I didn’t see an amount on the fruit. I know from experience what the normal price range is, so I blithely added both containers to my array. The tags were scrunched up and hidden, and now I can see why. $11.99 for the strawberries and $7.99 for the blueberries. You read that correctly. The perils of eating fruits and vegetables out of season are legend, but yikes. I am ashamed for so many reasons. The strawberries are a little more than .38¢ a pop and those pretty little blueberries top out at .11¢ each. I had 6 strawberries and 26 blueberries. $5.14 worth of fruit. This doesn’t even begin to take into account the rest of my meal: the piece of toast with almond butter or my coffee with milk. So very very wrong.