This is a small posting of thanks to the folks on the OCTranspo 95 Orleans bus who put up with my cluelessness and large luggage on the very busy rush hour transit. I got to Ottawa station quicker than any taxi, and for only $3. I’m a fairly seasoned TTC rider, and you wouldn’t see that kind of friendliness at this time of day in Toronto.
Tag: bus
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l’air du bus
An old open-top Routemaster tour bus turned past me onto Bay today. The diesel smell and the distinctive bogla bogla groom! as it pulled away reminded me of UK public transport.
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our robust power system
I’m writing this during a blackout. Our little enclave, just southeast of Kennedy and Eglinton, can have the power out when the nearby streets are fine. I can see that the (formerly derelict) Coffee Time has power, as has the block the other side of Kennedy. I wonder what makes us so special?
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prescient Upton
One of the baddies in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is a political henchman called Bush Harper. No further comment is required.
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all the stars came crashing down
Saw the Decemberists at the awful barn that is the Kool Haus last night. The place was fairly busy, but not full. A scalper offered me a derisory price for a spare ticket, so I don’t think they sold out.
They were pretty good; great in parts, kind of tired and meh in others. Naughty Chris Funk lit up on stage; that’ll mean a fine for the venue. That’ll teach him not to play banjo on stage.
Sensitive wee Scottish folkie Alasdair Roberts supported. He was good enough for me to buy the CD. -
pastry abuse
Excel can (but probably shouldn’t) be used to make charts like this:
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damp bandit
I was busy making Möbius strips out of till roll, when I became aware of a little face watching me at the window. A very damp raccoon had one paw up on the window sill, and was looking at me as if to ask, “What are you doing making single-sided paper figures on a night like this?”
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Goodbye, childhood
Goodbye:
- headache glue cracking from finger tips
- badly-painted pilot with obvious thumb-prints
- squint and/or torn decals
- undercarriage installed backwards, if at all
- spilled tin of Humbrol enamel
- leftover sprue rattling in cardboard box with an unidentified piece still attached
- curious v-shaped stand that never quite stood level
- hung squintly from bedroom light by white thread until dusty wing missing from too many runins with parental heads
- taken down for final flight whirled round head on string until dashed against clothespole or arcing up up into neighbour’s fir tree (it’s still there today)
- when older, packed with cotton balls nicked from sister, doused with turps, crashed flaming kamikaze onto the compost heap (sorry dad, your onions never did well on paint thinner and burnt plastic)
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when chitin isn’t enough
An interesting beetle, crushed by the wheel of a TTC bus.
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more fish
Got more fish from Finatics today: four high-fin platies, three algae-eaters, and three more threestrip corys. Our tank is busy!
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it’s over ….
AWEA 2006, that is. Best swag was probably the places that had USB keys; yeah, they’re only 64MB, but these are big enough for tiny Linuxes or restore tools.
Freebies aside, it was a great show, and I guess a few hundred thousand business cards changed hands.
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Victoria parkinglot
It’s quicker – a lot quicker – to walk south on Vic Park from Sheppard to Farm Greenway than to catch the bus and have it crawl south over the 401.
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now that’s what I call shoulder pads
Rather too busy gardening and stuff this weekend to blog. I did see this rather unusual flying thing in the garden; a T-shaped bug.
It’s a plume moth, say the good folks at What’s That Bug?
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misfiled, maybe
In the humour section at Chapters: George W Bush & his Family Paper Dolls book…
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In Edmonton, but no thanks to WorstJet
Jet lag, lack of sleep, and a whole day of company orientation isn’t doing much for my clarity of thought right now. What I need is steak and beer.
Last night’s flight was supposed to get in at 10:30, but what with WestJet‘s faffing around, we got in well after midnight. It was about 1am (or 03:00, Toronto time) before I got settled in the hotel room.
I’ve never been in a city with trolley buses before. Guess I can’t say that any more. It’s also the furthest west I’ve ever been.
I wonder if the snow drawing below (as seen from my hotel window) is supposed to be a hometown homage to Bob The Angry Flower?
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shaving on the go
Neat eBay find; an unused Gillette Travel razor:
It is absolutely tiny, and it looks as if it has never been opened, let alone used. The blades are still in their cellophane wrapping, and the razor has its cardboard “blade” in place. I wonder how old it is?
The case doesn’t look very robust (it’s that cardboard leatherette that falls apart at the slightest use) but I’ll be able to shave in style anywhere in the world. -
RIP, crunch, crunch
Golden Wonder Crisps are gone; and a large part of my childhood went with it.
That Walker’s should have stolen the crisp crown is terrible. They’re just rebadged PepsiCo Lays. Yuk.
(But I still think that Seabrook’s are the current best in the UK.)
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music of 2005
It’s getting towards the end of the year, so I’m thinking about what albums I enjoyed most. These are the 2005 albums I have in my collection:
- A Hawk And A Hacksaw — Darkness At Noon
- Aimee Mann — The Forgotten Arm
- Animal Collective — Feels
- Beck — Guero
- Bettye Lavette — I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise
- Bright Eyes — Digital Ash In a Digital Urn
- Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
- Calexico / Iron & Wine — In the Reins
- Caribou — Marino Audio
- Dan Jones — Get Sounds Now
- The Decemberists — Picaresque
- Deerhoof — The Runners Four
- Devendra Banhart — Cripple Crow
- Dressy Bessy — Electrified
- The Duhks — The Duhks
- Eels — Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
- Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine
- Gorillaz — Demon Days
- Grandaddy — Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla
- Jennifer Gentle — Valende
- John Parish — Once Upon a Little Time
- Kate Bush — Aerial
- Kate Rusby — The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly
- Kimberley Rew — Essex Hideaway
- Lazerlove5 — Flicker Mask
- Lemon Jelly — ‘64–‘95
- The Lollipop People — We Need a New F-Word
- Malcolm Middleton — Into The Woods
- Marbles — Expo
- The Mountain Goats — The Sunset Tree
- My Morning Jacket — Z
- Of Montreal — The Sunlandic Twins
- Sigur Rós — Takk …
- Sleater-Kinney — The Woods
- Sufjan Stevens — Illinois
- The Vanity Project
- Wolf Parade — Apologies to the Queen Mary
I know there are some that won’t make my list (Aerial, for one) but the rest of them all have their moments.