2014 Posts
Let’s get physical
The other day I saw a woman with a brand new gym bag heading up the street in the general direction of our local exercise establishment. Then she crossed the street to the subway station, so I figured she was ...
Don’t sit under the apple tree
Apparently January 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Apple Macintosh computer. One thing that completely annoys me is the way the current day media talks at length about ‘digital natives’ and how much the millennials and ...
Hello, hello, is anybody out there?
I spend most of my day on the phone. I am not having conversations that are, like, awesome discussions about whether Justin Bieber is still hot or not. I am not texting my current whereabouts or dinner plans. I am ...
Please Mr. Postman
You probably know that Canada Post has decided to phase out the remaining bastions of door-to-door delivery. This would include me (the knowing part, as well as the soon to be without delivery part). The decline of mail delivery has ...
Plastic Ono Band
My favourite plastic food container died today. Actually, it wasn’t the container itself but the lid that bit the dust. Apparently plastic of a certain type is not destined to survive dishwasher treatment for more than 10 years or so. ...
The Taxman
I have recently become the object of some unwanted attention: I have a tax stalker. This is completely my fault because I made a very big mistake on my 2012 tax return. This mistake was so bad that a file ...
Private eyes are watching you
I now have my fingerprints on file. This might be a good thing in case something bad happens to me (and a note to all: if the basement floor looks recently enrobed in concrete, please ask some questions). On the ...
Here comes the sun
Spring is the time for cleaning. Or at least, the time when your windows shame you into cleaning. Or if you have no shame, the time when you avoid looking out the windows in the middle of the day if ...
Summer in the city
There is no better cross section of fashion than public transit. Or let me correct that, public transit in a large metropolitan centre. I have had the good fortune not to take the subway for a while, however recently it ...
Raising the bar
Last week many news outlets carried a story about the 40th anniversary of the creation of the bar code. I found this puzzling because I recalled that a couple of years ago there was a story about the 60th anniversary ...
The mosquito coast
The most annoying sound in the world is not a jackhammer crew at 6 am or fingernails on a blackboard or even thousands of vuvuzelas. No, the most annoying sound in the world is the hum of a mosquito somewhere ...
True Colours
Last night the setting sun was a perfect circle of DayGlo pink that slowly faded to a hue of orange, which if you didn’t know better, you would swear was not a colour found in nature. But are there really ...
57 channels and nothing on
There are lots of ways to get news on the internet. You can go to the newspaper sites, you can go sites for news outlets like the BBC, or you can hang around on aggregator sites like Yahoo. But it ...
One of these things is not like the other
John Venn of the eponymous diagram turned 180 this month, or at least reached the 180th anniversary of his existence. In case you were wondering, he didn’t call his diagram a ‘Venn diagram’ but Eulerian circles and that’s because he ...
Four in the morning
There is something about four in the morning for my cat, especially when he is at the cottage. His internal clock says, no matter how comfortable his sleep on my bed and no matter how dark it is outside, it’s ...
See you in September
How was your summer? That’s the question this time of year and perhaps the most telling part of the ‘how was your summer’ question is that it is never asked about any other season. I’m just never sure what the ...
We be jammin’
Last week I went down to the freezer in the basement to look for something to cook for dinner. It turns out I am more in the habit of putting things into the freezer than taking them out, since the ...
Train in vain
I rode on a berserk subway train the other day. At every stop the woman inside the PA machine issued a different Cassandra-like announcement: “this train is delayed due to weather” “this train is delayed due to mechanical difficulties” “this ...
I’m a Barbie girl
It wasn’t only bad news for oil on the Stock Markets this week, it was also very bad news for Barbie. Apparently retailers are still clearing out dusty Barbies from last year’s Christmas season, leading to a 21% drop in ...
We are the world
It seems like no one is ever happy these days. I think we can blame this on Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, although apparently he never depicted his theories in pyramid form. But I digress. Maslow theorized there are ...
Homeward Bound
I have not rented anything since about 1987, until now that is. I have discovered that re-entering the rental market in 2014 is kind of like re-entering the dating market if you have been off the shelf for a few ...
Breakin’ dishes
The one true way to figure out you have too much stuff is to pack up to move. All of those things stuck way in the back of the kitchen cupboards, in that place over the fridge or in the ...
Clearance sale
At the end of each season it’s time to clear out the old stock and bring in the new. This is especially annoying at this time of year when stores feel compelled to clear out the winter boots, which are ...
Predictions for 2015
In the grand tradition of looking forward into what the new year will bring, here are my predictions for 2015. 1. There will be no decisions about how to fix the transit situation in Toronto. Council will decide to swap ...