The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. After going to bed last night at 3 am, we wake up today at 11 am.

My girlfriend seems to put special effort into making breakfast, as if she's trying hard to make me happy. Meanwhile, I write up yesterday's events as a blog post.

It is -4^oC outside. However the sky is clear, so therefore the weather is nice. My girlfriend suggests we go to the vieux-port.

We take the metro. Like the rest of city, Old Montreal is covered in snow. There's an ice-skating rink for $4 (if you bring your own skates), but my girlfriend doesn't want to skate as she's too tired. The snow has been pushed from the walkways into huge, dirty-brown mounds. I carefully climb one, like climbing a mountain. My feeling of achievement is only slightly deflated by two toddlers scrambling up after me. I throw chunks of snow down at my girlfriend.

We walk to a cafe. I marvel at the menu. Chocolate crêpes, ham wraps, salmon salads, mushroom omelettes. I take pictures of everything. "There's going to a renaissance with my cooking", I say. "I'm gonna, like, cook this stuff, on this menu. Every day".

We talk about the number of flights each of us has taken in our lives. For me, it's twenty-one. I feel proud of this. My feeling of achievement is then deflated by my girlfriend's total of 88. Flights are cheap in Europe, she explains.

On the way home we stop at at a Japanese shop. I take photos of a box with an engaging kawaii design on it. "What do you think you're doing?" the shop owner cries. "You CAN'T take pictures here. NEVER pictures. If you like it then you buy it." I feel scolded like a school kid.

Back at home, we play three rounds of Sporcle. We have agreed that whoever loses has to wash the dishes for a week. To make things fair, we play random quizzes. The first quiz is to name Chelsea FC players from 1990 to present. After five minutes I give up. I can't name any.

The second quiz is to make words from the letters in SPORCLE. I laugh. "This is what I was born to do," I say, grinning. And indeed, I win.

The last quiz is to name cities and villages in the state of New York. I manage two - New York City, and Albany, and the latter I barely spell right. My tiny sense of achievement is further deflated as my girlfriend gets these as well as Buffalo too. My girlfriend wins.

I reel at city names I could never have guessed. Yonkers? Cheektowaga? Binghamton? Schenectady? They sound made up.

For exercise, I walk up the building's twenty two flights of stairs five times, getting the lift back down when I reach the top. It is exhausting. I love it.

For dinner we have chicken and potatoes. Last time I cooked chicken, it was too dry. This time, it's too dry.

I spend an hour looking at my shares. I decide I will have to sell my shares in "developing countries" as they've produced a loss of almost £300 so far.

We go to bed.