Wednesday...
Morning: I was at work. As so often happens, the unexpected kept happening. I think, I hope, I stayed on top of it all.
When I left work, I went to the Silver Snail and picked up my comics. It was one of those weeks where a bunch of comics I read came out all at once, including a hardcover graphic novel I'd pre-ordered, so it cost a bundle. There were comics by my three favourite writers in comics: Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, and Warren Ellis. I got:
- Astonishing C-Men #42
- Batman: The Dark Knight #1. This is the first Batman comic I've noticed since the DC reboot.
- Fantastic Four: Fifty Fantastic years. One of those encyclopaedic things about characters who've turned up in the FF over the years. I got this from a sense of childhood nostalgia; I discovered Marvel comics with the Fantastic Four #18 and it still feels life-changing.
- FF.
- Journey Into Mystery #618 - nice covers they're putting on this title.
- The Mighty Thor #6, by Matt Fraction.
- The New Avengers #16.1. I love this comic with a passion - and suddenly stopped buying it because I hated the bits of Howard Chaykin art. (When did I come to hate his work so much?) Happily, he is gone, so I can buy it again.
- Secret Avengers #17, because it's by Warren Ellis, and because it has a nice punchy action cover.
- Ultimate Comics - All-New Spiderman #2: I don't usually read any Ultimate comics, but I got curious about the New Spider-Man.
- Venom #7. This one is a bit of a guilty pleasure. I enjoy it, but it's not quite good enough for me to buy it when money is so tight. Except I'm buying it anyway. Maybe I'll stop getting it now; maybe not. We'll see what I think of the story this time.
- Wolverine #16
- X-Men Legacy #256
And the hardcover graphic novel: Castle: Deadly Storm, a Derrick Storm Mystery by Brian Michael Bendis and Kelly Sue Deconnick. I hope this is as good as I'm anticipating.
Then I met duncanmac for lunch, and we had a nice time chatting.
I had to meet maaseru on Eddy Street in Gatineau so we could go together to our chiropractor in Kanata. It's been years since I've been to Gatineau by bus (if ever) and I had to switch to the Outouais bus system. I asked the driver, in French, if we were at the right stop for where I wanted to be, and he said, not. He explained how I had to get off the bus and take a pedestrian overpass into one of the buildings on the big government complex there, then catch another bus behind the building, which would take me to Eddy. On the one hand, I was proud at my ability to handle this full complicated discussion in French. On the other hand, I was completely confused by his directions, and I'm sure hearing them in English wouldn't have made it any easier.
So I set off on foot through the government buildings there, and it's a maze of seemingly endless food courts, all closed up after 5 p.m. I couldn't even find an exit to get me back to ground level or out of doors. I tried phoning maaseru but got only her voicemail on both work and mobile numbers. So I wandered further. I found an exit and a stairway at last, that let me back onto the street at the junction of Laval and Portage, face to face with a statue of Samuel de Champlain.
My Blackberry rang. "Where are you?" asked maaseru.
"Lost!" I wailed. "At the corner of Portage and Laval."
"Where's that?" asked maaseru, as mystified as I was.
"I don't know!" I wailed. "I just hope it's close to Eddy! I'm standing beside Samuel de Champlain."
Luckily, she remembered the statue, and picked me up. Then after a traffic jam on the Queensway, which we avoided, and traffic lights on Carling Ave., which maaseru hates and complains about mightily, we got to the chiropracter absolutely spot on time to discovered they were in the middle of a power failure, total blackout. Well, intermittant blackout.
Then when the belated chiropractic treatment was over, we went to Panda Gardens for Chinese food, and met up with Marion and Vicky, and then went back to their place for presents and birthday cake - a candle each for maaseru and I, since they hadn't seen her since her birthday in August.
It was all quite wonderful. They do good birthdays. They gave me a book I've been seriously wanting: Shadowplay by Clare Asquith, about Shakespeare's hidden beliefs and how they are expressed in his plays. Will I be convinced? We shall see.
They also gave me a letter opener of incredibly beauty, which, without in any way being a real knife, has the heft and aura of a serious work of blademanship.