Isn't It a Shame?

Every day I bike to work along the exact same route -- through a nice neighbourhood, down past Casa Loma to Spadina Road, then straight down Spadina Road into Spadina Avenue and to work. Every day at the corner of Spadina and Bloor there's an older "santa claus", white bear, red clothes and red plastic "crocs". He has a funny little "The sleigh broke down" sign, and even though he doesn't say much, it usually puts a smile on my face. As expected, he's out asking for money, and as expected, most people walk by him in the morning without paying him much heed.

I've been tempted more than once to give him a buck or two, but can't bring myself to do it. Every so often I'll see him talking / texting on his cell phone... My current policy is not to give money to "homeless" people with cell phones and or those who smoke. My logic is that if they have money for those things, they don't need my money.

I think the principle holds true for the smoking...but maybe its not fair or a good idea to hold it against someone if they have a cellphone, particularly if they're homeless and without a landline. Arguably, if they were looking for a job, most would require or expect to be able to reach the candidate by phone...

What are other people's thoughts on the matter?

On a different note, I was out for work tonight at a sushi place. A cool dude with his blackberry got a call at his table, so stood up to go outside to take his call...and walked facefirst into the glass door...phone drops, dude kinda crumples...and recovers. As soon as he went through the door atleast 10 people (moi included) broke out laughing....I feel bad laughing at other people's expense, but sometimes it really just *is* funny.

Labels: Laughs, Santa, Sushi

I've been watching a lot of hockey on TV lately, and have seen lots of irratating ads - particularly those friggin subway monkey ads. Arg. However, sometimes I see ads on TV that genuinely make me belly laugh.



This one really cracked me up - particularly the dude doing the hair thing, and the guy at the very end with the bucket on his head. Solid gold.

Labels: Ads, Danger Danger

I've been getting letters in the mail for the past few months telling me I need to switch from the good ol' red and white OHIP card to their fancy new high tech cards. The letters have gotten increasingly insistent, even going as far as to tell me that I may no longer qualify for coverage if I don't upgrade.

According to the letters, you need to call and book and appointment, you can't just show up in person. So I called a few weeks ago, and got an appointment for first thing in the morning, 8:30 yesterday.

I got there right at 8:30, but there were already a dozen or so people there ahead of me (keeners!). I got a little number and sat to wait my turn....and waited...and waited...

There were only 3 people working, and by 8:45 there were 20+ people waiting. They use a convoluted system of letters and numbers (I was B9) so that you can't really tell who actually showed up before you and who didn't, making it hard to know if people were served in the order they arrived or not... so I waited.... J14, C3, D34, H2, B5, N87 ....I felt like I was at a bingo hall just waiting for them to call B9 so I could stand up and yell BINGO!!

I had to wait more than an hour and fifteen minutes - 9:45 before finally being served - and the whole process took < 2 minutes. What a friggin waste of time - what's the point of an appointment if you just have to wait and wait and wait anyways?

Grumble.

Anyways, I was talking to a coworker of mine the other day about books we read when we were kids. It made me think back to the good ol days when I'd go to the nepean public library to hear this one guy read stories out loud. I'd go see him at Centerpoint, Emerald Plaza, all over the place! I was like a reading roadie!

It also made me think back to my dad reading me night time stories - not the usual kid kinds, but things like Lord of the Rings, and this one short story "The Rocking Horse Winner" that I used to really love. I found it on the internet and read it yesterday...and remembered the punchline of the whole thing, my dad yelling "MALABAR!" in this trance-like voice. Ah, rock solid - if you haven't read it, give it a read, it'll only take 10 minutes and is pretty good.

Labels: Rants, Rocking Horse Winner

From all the emails flying around, it sounds like we're about to experience a collective rebirth of the blog, a blogging renaissance even.

To celebrate, I wanted to post a link to a site that truly made me gut-laugh, in all it's porta-potty-diving glory.

Flying Porta Potty Guy.

Labels: Blogging, Porta Potty

Just finished watching a movie with Laura called Into the Wild, the real life story of Alexander Supertramp.

In 30 seconds or less, it's about a regular middle class kid from a dysfunctional family who graduates college and decides he's not meant for "the grind" and sets out on a series of adventures that eventually lead him to the Alaskan wilderness.

It was a longer movie, almost 2 1/2 hours, but I really very much enjoyed it and connected with the story and the characters. The acting I thought was fantastic, and required some serious dedication to the realism of the part. The fact it is a true story really blew my socks off.

Definitely not for everyone, but would definitely put it in my personal top 25.

Labels: Into the Wild, Movies

Just as an FYI for anyone who loves coupons as much as Yonny, you can now get 2008 Entertainment Books for only $9.99 + $2.50 shipping and handling on entertainment.com if you think about it - basically so long as you use one or two coupons it's time and money well spent.

Too bad there isn't a magic oven coupon again this year, or I'd be ALL over that.

Labels: Entertainment Book

Wow -- I'd heard that the flooding along the Saint John River was quite bad this year, but I didn't really appreciate just how crazy it was until today. My dad sent along a few pictures that a neighbour took of our beach.

For anyone who hasn't been to my cottage, the house itself, named Top 'O Rock, is at the top of quite a tall and steep bank of the river, probably a good 100-130 feet above water. My dad and his family lived up the street at 'Ingleside', and my dad took care of the property at Top O Rock for the older lady who owned the place. When she was getting on in life she sold the place to my dad, and my dad's owned it and worked to maintain and improve the place over the years.

One of the things my dad did was put in a long winding very natural rock "staircase" down from the cottage through the trees down to the small beach we have at the waterfront. A number of years ago, in a controversial family move one of my uncles "upgraded" the waterfront by adding a large concrete patio thing, probably ~12-14 feet tall, with a number of wood / concrete steps down to the water.

The river is tidal, and the water usually goes up and down maybe 2 feet in height. Most springs during runoff the water levels are particularly high and may go up an extra 6 feet or so. This year, the entire concrete patio is totally underwater by several feet meaning the water level of the river itself is up probably as much as 13-16 feet above normal. And here's the thing -- the river is more than a mile wide, and forks off into another large river that's probably another 100km long. To raise the water level that much, across such a huge river would literally require enough water to fill thousands and thousands of olympic swimming pools....it really boggles the mind.

The pictures won't likely mean anything to anyone other than Richard and Laura, but here they are...

Labels: Cottage, Flood

Ah the glorious Tercel of Love, how she's treated me well over the years. With the parents doing the cottage thing, it's looking fairly certain like the Tercel Of Love will be in Toronto this summer, helping out with another leg of the cross country bike tour.

So far the plan is to do a number of weekend stints...sorta Ottawa -> Kingston, Kingston -> Toronto, Toronto -> Niagara, Niagara -> Stratford, Stratford -> Guelph, and then up towards Barrie and northward!

I'm very pleased that summer is in the air....hoping to get out on the trails for my first real ride of the season today. I've been biking to work for a few weeks now, but it's no substitute for some good ol' fashion trail riding!

Labels: Biking

After much waiting and anticipation, Laura's worked her way through our pictures and has photoshopped and organized her favourites! I'm not so savvy with all the latest and greatest web 2.0 technologies, so hopefully I've done this in an easy way for everyone to check things out! Please let me know if you can't access the pictures, or if you have suggestions for better ways to do this in the future....

Our Costa Rica pictures...on flickr!

Labels: Costa Rica