My Dinner with Isabelle

If you know me, you know I have a great memory for people, faces and to a lesser extent, names. Its a gift. I can recognise people I met years prior and frequently, I can remember where I met them and under what circumstance. Once, I ran into a girl I knew in sixth grade at the McGill gym - we were 26 at the time. I like looking at people's faces anyway and for this part, I live in the right place. You get a lot more eye contact in Montreal than in places that are, how you say, WASPy? Perhaps this talent is a way to exercise control over my environment, perhaps its a way to envelope myself in it. I think it comes from being a total star-fucker.

Last week, however, I saw 2 people in two days that I simply did not recognise when I looked at them. This is really disturbing. This can only mean one of two things:

Thing 1: my eyes are failing me
Thing 2: my brain is failing me

Isabelle's eyes and brain remain sharp as she came right up to me opened up the conversation. I'm grateful to be able to make her reacquaintance. She's always been so very ambitious and driven, its like a fire that you can't help but want to stand next to just to enjoy its light and the warmth. Talking with her just made all I know to be right angles in this world a little more square. As an aside, she also set me up on my one and only blind date and it was awesome, not because it led to "something" but because I had an amazing time with an amazing person. I'm waiting for her to weave her magic again. Heh heh heh...

We went for dinner in Chinatown, drinks at Reservoir and indulged in a hell of a lot of catching up and girl-talk. More low key than Sex and the City - but just as many one-liners!

As we parted, we pledged to go to this restaurant called "Au Pied de Cochon" which is just around the corner from me. It seems to emanate from a french series of bistros run by the Brothers Blanc. They have a very decadent twist on a Quebecois delicacy, poutine that includes FOIS GRAS!

Anyone else interested?