St. Paddy's Day!!!

St. Patrick's Day! Tjoho! This is the crazy celebrated Irish day, when everything goes in green, I even saw a poor dog who had his fur colored green, and everyone are covered in green costumes and crazy hats and bracelets and anything green they could find in the dollarama shop.

We celebrated this strange event during a Sunday around lunch , first watching the HUGE parade (apparently the St-Patricks Day-celebration in Montreal is the biggest outside Ireland itself!) - then drinking beer like crazy and the mood in the Irish bar was very, very high - and absolutely PACKED of people, we could hardly move. I felt like I was back in the student pub in Norrköping at some sort of an "pubtömmning". I mean - CRAAAAZZZYYYYYY!!! Everybody sang and screamed and danced and drank like maniacs.
This is the only day when Montrealers are aloud to drink alcohol out on the streets in the open, so I believe this might have added to the high spirit. Everybody had a brown paper bag with a little something inside, including me of course. Stand up for your right - to paaaaaarrrrrrtyyyy!!

America behind bars?

I read an astonishing article the other day, saying that "... more than one in 100 American adults now is incarcerated, according to a study released yesterday by the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project."

Wow, what are they doing over there? Could it be that Americans are more criminal than other countries population, or is the system just more likely to sentence people to prison, even for minor offenses? Well, I choose to believe the later.
The article goes on:

"... Texas' prison population -- 171,790 -- is the nation's highest, according to the study. The study concluded that much of the growth in prison populations has to do with "a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and, through popular 'three-strikes' measures and other sentencing enhancements, keeping them there longer."
"... Men are about 10 times more likely to be incarcerated, but the female population is growing at a faster rate. The study also found that age limits jail time. One in every 53 people in their 20s is in prison, but above age 55 that falls to one in 837. Even so, between 1992 and 2001, the number of state and federal inmates aged 50 and older rose from 41,586 to 113,358, a jump of 173 percent.

The racial disparity is stark: While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that same age group the figure is one in nine."

Yes, I'm amazed... This is crazy...

So happy I live in Canada, though, I haven't seen the figures here, yet...

Let me introduce...

Hi everyone,

I took a break from the blog, but now I'm back!

Let me present our new best friend - Theeeeeee ... *TAM-TAM-TA-TAAAM*
"No-Name" cat!!!

She came to live with us a week ago and we became best friends all three of us from the very fist moment. She's a loving purring-machine, full of energy and funfun! We are amazed. Didn't know how much I really missed having cat around, she really makes the home even more homey! Right now she's 4 months old, so bit too young to walk outside by her self, and there is amazing lot of snow too, so she would disappear, but as soon as spring is here she will be an outdoors cat for sure. She's already hunting down her toy mouse with precision and dedication.

So, she doesn't have a name yet, but it will come soon I think. Any suggestions?

Otherwise our life is good, M is working crazy and playing till I fear his fingers will fall of, he's good!, and I'm struggling with French and looking for jobs. So far I've applied for three really interesting ones I hope to get, but no news yet. I'll keep you posted.

Eastern is soon here, and then my best childhood friend C is coming, so I'm sooooo excited and happy about this.

Are you there? Let me know, fun to know if anyone is reading. Well, otherwise, at least I'm contributing to the information age.

Miss you all dearly!
Love/PluPlu