Strange Portugese men in my dream, A shift to the right & backyard Plane spotting

Last night Sheila & I headed out to Au Vieux Duluth in St-Laurent for supper. I have to admit I like Greek food even though they do pile on way too much. We both had the same thing, chicken brochette with garlic scampis. Yes it was delicious.. yes it was too much.. yes we had dessert and yeah we had cheap wine... so I guess it's understandable I slept lousy last night from feeling bloated and tired the rest of that evening. I had the strangest dream though... there were older Portuguese men sitting around talking in my living room.. I could clearly see their faces with one in particular remarking on how much he liked this country....!? weird.. he was wearing an orange shirt. I have no clue where that all came from but it seemed as real a if he was really sitting in my living room talking... accent and all..

Anyways, Sheila went up to see her brother in Ottawa today but I declined to go. They have a nice large pool and three pre teen kids and usually a load of neighbours and family coming over so it gets a little over whelming. Plus I have tons to do on the weekends to keep my house up.. cutting grass and doing laundry and so forth I did my thing and let her spend time with her family. Anyways her brother is a nice guy but a somewhat of a right wing redneck and I have to admit I feel a bit uncomfortable around him at times. I think if we ever sat down and seriously discussed anything political or touched on some of the social issues of the day we'd clash so seriously I might never go back... Once he has had a few beers and some wine he starts and some of the things he says is offensive to me. Sheila is no where near as opinionated but in the past few years I've seen a real right wing bend in her way of thinking and this starting to disturb me. There's good things in both the right and left way of seeing life but once you go beyond certain boundaries in either direction you start infringing on the other to a point where the balance of power starts to shift and that is where if gets dangerous. We're at that point in the world these days and look at the mess of divisions it's created all over the planet. I don't want to have the same sort of thing happen with the people in my life that I love so it becomes a delicate balancing act for both of us. Life can be so phoney once you become a working adult.... rarely does anyone sober tell you what they really think to your face. Everyone just smiles and changes the subject.

I did some arm chair plane spotting from my back yard this afternoon. First off, this plane flew over the city at I would guess around 35,000'... It's definately a blue finned 777-200. I think it's Continental but I don't see any of the gold in the tail.


It's really hard to tell since I've cropped the pic substantially and so it gets "noiser" and less sharp. I can't think of any other blue finned 777s that would be found in this part of the world. ANA would be darker with some white on it, United would have a blue underbelly and mostly white tail, Delta would have red and the tail cone would be painted, Varig would also have a blue underbelly and it wouldn't be over Montreal for any reason... so Continental would seem to fit the plane. The underbelly and engine colours also matches CO and it could have been an early flight off to Europe from Newark or maybe even Houston. It was travelling in an odd directon, NW which probably eliminates Newark.

For the rest.. well the only thing of significance heading into 24L was Air Canada's new Embraer 175 which I saw for the first time every today. It came in around 11am and I have to say caught me by surprise. I took a pic of it thinking it was an A319 in new colours then noticed the larger winglets. It was very quiet in comparison to other planes. The pics didn't turn out because I had a slow shutter speed and they blurred. It was quite nice and sleek. It will be a great addition to the mainline fleet. I'm sure in a year or so I'll be sick of seeing them LOL.

Air Transat was the most significant other however.. a lonely A310 coming up from the Caribbean this afternoon.







I wonder what Transat will eventually get to replace the A310 fleet? It's getting to be an old aircraft now. The 787 would be good for them but probably too expensive. Some older 767-200ERs might also do the trick but they too are about as old as their Airbuses. That will be a interesting order once it is made. There was rumor of them looking at 777s but personally I think that aircraft would be too big for Transat. Who knows, maybe A350s are in their future as they would be compatible to the A330s they fly now... but it's not really an A310 replacement.. only the 787 really fits that category at this point.

Some other shots that made my day.. My sun reflector and some bright flowers..





I wrote an e-mail to Clem this evening to see if he wanted to go out for supper but never heard back from him. So I'm all by myself.. I think I'll update my website. I need to completely redo it. Some of the pics on it are of such low quality it's embarassing. I can get away with the claim they were of old classic airliners though.. but I need a total revamp. So off I go..