I keep telling people that it is not easy to get jobs in Montreal if you don’t speak French.
I think I lied.
I’ve got three in three months of living here, and I didn’t look very hard. Two of the jobs called me, and one I didn’t really interview for. But last night after the Habs won game four of round two and I went to the Bell Centre to join in on the party, I was pretty damn glad that I no longer worked at the place that didn’t really interview me. There would have been more than a few ceramic cups with chicken sauce stained in them than I would want to deal with. But I did work for the Montreal Canadiens during the season of their twenty-fifth Stanley Cup.

Starting a new call centre today, I am also pretty glad I no longer work at the one I did before, because any day now the RCMP should be kicking down the doors and breaking some ribs.

It is good to be in Montreal, for more than one sport-related reason.

I got by in Jean Talon Market using French, including proper phrases. Bought more fresh vegetables than my body has seen in several weeks.
I cruised the longboard everywhere; in between cars on busy streets, downtown in the middle of St. Cath’s past cops and high fiving passing cars.
I rode the best metro system there is.
I got lost twice finding the new home.
I made a peanut butter and spinach sandwich. Desperate hunger.

There are days that I feel like I am in the wrong city completely. Surrounded by multilingual artists and students and people that dress well, as I hunch in the corner under a bare bulb of some cheap hardwood apartment and write bitter articles of resentment towards anything that fronts me. But yesterday felt like a day that I was in a city that might want to have me around.

Good to be home.