I even got my first bill, and it seems to be correct. It looks like it includes all the promotional and bundle discounts. The first bill is always a little weird with prorating, but nothing looked out of place. Yay for not having to call and fight for discounts!

Picture quality is pretty darn good, at least to my eyes. The standard definition content looks miles better than Dish or Comcast, and the high definition content even looks better than Comcast. I also like the set-top box interface much better than Comcast’s. I just which the hard drive in the DVR was bigger. C’mon, Fios! 160 GB is not enough. Tuning channels is super fast.

The internet service is pretty zippy, and we haven’t had any problems yet. So far, so good, Verizon!

Saturday, we started off with scrumptious pastries and coffee. It seems like all the food up there is good. After a slow start, we made our way into Montreal and checked in at the hotel my father got for us for the rest of the weekend. It was pretty nice. It looked like it had recently been redecorated, in a modern style.

After leaving the hotel we wandered over to the Beer Festival, which I enjoyed very much. There was no entrance fee, so we were free to wander around and check things out. We got some sausages for lunch. There were a lot of sausages there. Then, we bought some drink tickets and souvenir glasses, and it was off to the stalls. There were many beers represented, and they put a good amount in your glass. Each beer had an associated ticket cost, and all were quite yummy. We sampled quite a few and listened to the celtic band playing, but ultimately, it was too hot and crowded to hang around any longer.

After a stop back at the hotel to drop off a few things, we headed out into the city, and ended up in the section they call Vieux Montreal, the old area of the city. There were lots of cool buildings to admire. And lots of yummy food! We wandered the streets for a while. Some of the buildings are quite old and quaint looking, somewhat European. We had dinner at a restaurant, wine bar, and jazz club, Modavie. I had venison medallions, in a fruity sauce, accompanied by risotto and an unusual vegetable assortment, including some types of squash that are apparently common in Canada but not the US and beet puree. Later we had gelato at a cafe. Creamy and yummy!

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I caught breakfast at a chain cafe called Van Houtte, which looked like a safe bet to accept credit cards since we had no Canadian cash. Despite being a chain, the food was very tasty. They had yummy pressed sandwiches (mmm, ham & brie), and I had a salad that was kind of like coleslaw, but so much better, made with yet another special Canadian vegetable. My father met us there, and we spent some more time in Vieux Montreal. We saw some crazy street performers and some cute shops. We stopped at a church, which was apparently dedicated to sailors. It had many small boats holding candles hanging from the ceiling. There was a group singing classical songs acapella with some medieval instruments thrown in, so we listened to them for a while. Ultimately, we ended up in the Chinatown of Montreal, which was very small. We stopped at a Chinese pastry shop, which was self-serve, an interesting difference from those in Boston.

As it was Sunday, my father and his girlfriend left early to get home to her son. We were left to our own devices for dinner, and I had my eye on the crepe restaurant I had seen earlier. I had a chicken crepe with mushroom sauce. It was a little odd with the slight sweetness of the crepe. Maybe I’d try for a different filling next time. But dessert, oh dessert! It was chocolate fondue, with fruit, marshmallows, and little rolled up slices of crepes. The marshmallows were a bit too much sugar, but I loved the crepes and the fruit is, of course, a classic. Stuffed, we were happy to call it a night.

Monday was yet more food, with breakfast (at lunch time). Croque monsieur sandwiches at a “home made” shop. There’s a special word for “home made” in French, but I can’t remember it now. We also stopped in Burlington, VT on the way home and had a sandwich at a local cafe that my boyfriend’s sister recommended. The weather was beautiful, and Burlington is an adorable city.

It seems like we didn’t get around much in Montreal, but we didn’t really have any specific activities we wanted to do. It was nice to just hang out.

Still, I’m pretty impressed with the picture, and the interface on the set-top boxes is pretty slick. Hopefully it will be stable too. We had a little hiccup earlier with the DVR displaying little flickering lines all over the screen, which unplugging and replugging the power fixed. If recording dependability holds up, then the biggest drawback of the DVR becomes the relatively small amount of hard drive space to store HD material. Part of me still kinda wants a Tivo HD, but that’s still a fairly expensive option, and it seems like the future of cablecards is slightly murky.

Now gimme my HD, Verizon.

Saturday night we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which, while not the best Indiana Jones movie ever, was decent enough to be entertaining. I enjoyed it. We followed up with dinner at Not Your Average Joe’s.

Sunday was a long day of sightseeing in Boston. We took the walking tour led by colonial figures that starts in the Boston Common. I’ve seen groups of this tour outside work for the past few weeks, so I was wondering about it. It’s a 90 minute tour of the sights of the Freedom Trail between the Boston Common and Faneuil Hall. (Wow, I spelled Faneuil right the first try.) The tour guides are dressed up as patriots from the colonial times. We had James Otis, whose name I vaguely recognized from school. He would ask the group questions at various points. Of course, the one who answered the most of them was a kid. Ah, I remember when I still knew that much stuff from my school lessons.

After the tour, we went back to the Common and the Public Gardens, areas I haven’t spent much time in, especially during nice weather. We wandered across the Common and into the Gardens. The swan boats were closed, but we got to see the last couple boats out on the pond, and we even got to see a swan or two. We laid on the grass for a while, resting in the cool breeze and watching the trees. When we finally roused ourselves we headed to Boston Beer Works for dinner (mmm, blueberry beer), then took the T back to our car, then home.

On Monday, my mother prepared a delicious picnic lunch, and we took it to the Harold Parker State Forest to grill. There was even an ice cream cake for an early celebration of my birthday. It was really nice just to relax in the beautiful weather.

All in all, it was a most excellent Memorial Day weekend, and it came to an end all too soon. (Don’t they always?)

After snacking on some fancy cheese and bread my father brought, we drove around town a bit, attempted to stop in some galleries, but things were pretty much closed at that point. We did drive through the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the college my brother attended. The country campus is a far cry from my alma mater, Drexel, in Philadelphia. Afterwards, we parked in Great Barrington and strolled around a little, then went to dinner at Bizen, a Japanese restaurant. I had some grilled tuna and sushi, including a fat roll called Kiss My Bass, which was quite good. On the way back to the car, we stopped to admire a recycling bin made from recycled street signs. Apparently it’s a series of bins made of various recycled materials. My brother made one, but his wasn’t out yet. Simon’s Rock is a rather artsy school, which definitely lends some atmosphere to area.

The next morning, my father took off early, so the three of us went out to breakfast after he left. Yummy fresh ingredients, and well-prepared to boot. Then we had to head back east.

It was a short weekend, but it was nice to visit with my family and see some more of the other half of the state.

My boyfriend received a call from Verizon at 8:30am. He says it was a very nice woman who apologized and said there had been a problem provisioning the order, and while she had been trying to push it through since she noticed it a few days ago, it was not done yet, and the install date had to be rescheduled. I really do appreciate the call, by the way. There are stories aplenty on the web of people who waited hours for a FIOS installer that never came. He picked a new day, since he’s the one staying home for it, and called to tell me. At this point, I begin to worry a little more. I notice that the confirmation e-mails I received refer to business FIOS internet service. Also, a page linked off the order status page, which says it will tell me what to do to prepare for my FIOS install, will not accept my order number, saying the page is not available for business service.

In light of the provisioning problem, these sorts of inaccuracies worry me even more, so I called Verizon to check. After being led through a merry chase on the phone tree, I finally got someone who can check my order status. I tell him about all these references to business service and how our install date was pushed back. He goes to check with someone else and returns, swearing that it was a problem in their system and it should be fine now. I ask him again about the business service references and he assures me it is not a concern at all, that everything looks residential on my order. With no further ammunition to argue with, I call it a day and hang up.

So, now we wait, and I have another week to worry. It could be nothing. Maybe the business service stuff is just a coincidence, and the provisioning problem had nothing to do with it, but I am still suspicious. Now I am left to stare at the order status page, with its mystical percentages of completeness. Here’s a clue, Verizon: Telling me my order is 75% complete does not tell me a heck of a lot about how close it is to being finished. Does it need to be 90% in order for the installer to do his work? 95? 100? I will definitely call again in a few days to see if the provisioning is ready, or something.

Bah, I say. Until next week, Verizon. Until next week.

I, and I hope most sensible people, would choose B. Apparently, the person I saw earlier disagrees with that assessment. WTF, indeed.

Probably, but I’ll take whatever gets the job done.

The same is true of all her fiction that I’ve read, for young and old. She manages to cut right to the heart of people and life. And even though some of her books take place in a slightly older time, they don’t feel dated. They just feel true.