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Snap! Didn’t know that, as a cyclist, I’m supposed to have a light on me at all times. I only use my light at night, but carry it around in my bag during the day so I don’t forget to remove it, or be at risk of having it stolen.
Many cyclists and drivers received tickets for various infractions, according to this thestar.com article.
Word to the wise cyclists! BELL/HORN, REFLECTORS, HELMET, LIGHTS! A geek perhaps, but a safe one nonetheless. 
*thumbs up*
With the garbage strike well underway, I’m trying to find different ways to cut down on my waste.
I was dismayed to hear that the green bin program has been scrapped for now and people bringing their garbage to certain centers have been told to combine garbage and green bin in the same bag for now isntead of separating it.
Which is why I’ve started thinking about composting the majority of my green bin waste, and hopefully get some wonderful soil for next year’s plants perhaps!
Composting isn’t a foreign thing to me, since my family has a bin at home. But my family also lives on a farm, so having a composter in residence, or in an apartment, never appealed to me. Now I live in a house, albeit with a jungle for a backyard, but I figure now is the best time to start composting.
I assumed composters would be an easy find in the city…well, yes and no. I found one at Canadian Tire (online) but it’s a whopping $59.99 [11 cubic feet].
I live downtown, and unfortunately cannot think of any other gardening place to get this kind of thing but searching on the City of Toronto website, I found that they sell composters too [10 cubic feet]! Bravo Toronto! At a lovely $15.00/bin, adding $5.00 for delivery, it’s an awesome deal. You have to prove you’re a resident in order to get one, but that’s understandable.
However, because of the strike, I wonder if I could even get it delivered. And to pick it up, I’d need to cross the picket lines that mark every garbage station in this city. Is it worth it? Yes. Of course. But do I want to wait 45mins to get one. And would they even be offering this sale during a strike?
There’s only one way to find out! And so the adventure begins!
What was once imminent is now a reality, with Torontonians today waking up to a city-wide garbage strike. I can feel my anger growing already…and not because of the strike itself, but because you see immediately how careless people are with their waste. “It’s not my problem”. Isn’t it?
“We expect people to take it home or to their place of business” to dispose of litter, Rathbone said. “We expect most Torontonians will follow the plan.”
City manager Joe Pennachetti urged Toronto residents to cooperate: “These are not ordinary circumstances.” -thestar.com
I do expect that there will be many people doing nothing to try and cut down their garbage production, or who will be illegally dumping it. However, my challenge this strike period, however long it may be, is to not only cut down my garbage production (a.k.a. whatever I consume/purchase/etc.. that requires something to be placed in a garbage receptical, ie: packaging), and be conscious about the three R’s even more so than before.
It’s going to be tough I think. What’s going to be more frustrating though is watching the Toronto city streets quickly fill up with garbage from people who don’t care.
I found this photo series on thestar.com’s website regarding the 2002 garbage strike. While I don’t know the circumstances, this is exactly the kind of thing I think can be avoided…shouldn’t we be conscious of the garbage we produced especially in the midst of a garbage strike? On the one hand, it’s obvious someone wasn’t letting striking municipal workers from stopping their pizza party on the beach [scroll through the photos in the series to find it], but couldn’t they have postponed it, or taken the garbage with them? I can read it as a big FU to the city from residents/tourists, but more so as irresponsibility on behalf of those people. Aren’t we just a responsible for our garbage?
On that note, we’re also back to the pre-green bin era as residents are told to “consolidate” their waste if they’re to drop it off at any waste station since there will be no green bin service. TIME WARP!
Welcome to Toronto, summer! It’s gonna become extra smelly. Now to go to the LCBO before they possibly strike on Tuesday. Can’t wait for that stampede!
The Black Eyed Peas…they’re back, with all these singles and a new album on the way. Accompanying their songs are these awesome, “futuristic”-looking graphics and compositions (like a bee that has a circuit plug for a stinger).
The first single, “Boom Boom Pow”, really didn’t grab me–that is, until I saw the video. The music video and song work really well together and I think I appreciate the song a little more now.
But there’s something bugging me about this new branding. And I couldn’t put my finger on it until now. While the “look” of BEP is so fresh and futuristic, edgy and poppin’, their music sounds so “vintage”, or retro to me. And sometimes it really clashes. Completely.
“Boom Boom Pow” was a good clash of the futuristic graphics and the music, since the song itself (with the weird “Let the beat rock” inserts) totally reminds me of the kind of stuff we were seeing and hearing around the turn of the century like the “What’s It Gonna Be?” music video from Janet Jackson and Busta Rhymes. Metallic, futuristic, throwing stuff in audiences faces to say, “Look what we can do with computers now!”.
But then “Alive”, and now the latest single “Meet me 
Halfway”….Hm. “Alive” sounds like I’m hearing a mix of will.i.am’s solo album mixes with 90’s Elton John, and some Randy Bachman esque sounds but not even close to the awesomeness of those. Then it switches to the soundtrack from Disney World’s Tomorrowland–which isn’t horrible…it’s kinda catchy. “Meet me Halfway”…the chorus is great, and reminds me of the 80s (Like “Love is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar kind of stuff)…but everything else? Weird mixing in of low-sound voices. The jury’s out on this song. I like it. But it doesn’t sound like BEP at all. And perhaps it’s not supposed to.
I just find BEP’s musical styles to be all over the place so far, and I’m thinking that the visual branding of the band was never intended to sync up with what we end up hearing from them. It just leaves me confused, as my expectations are smashed to the ground and slight disappointment comes through. “Alive”? COME ON. Maybe this is all the record label’s fault, and BEP is merely smiling through their own confusion and disappointment.
This listener is confuzzled, and is double-clicking on that new Royksopp track for now. And like Fergie tells me…”DRANK!”
If you’ve ever wandered down the corridor of Ryerson’s library building, you may have been stopped by people wanting to sign you up for a Ryerson University MBNA Canada credit card.
I was stopped one day and told that if I signed up I could get a nifty Ryerson bag with the Ryerson logo on it. COOL. Well, the bag got a hole in it, and here I am with no Ryerson bag. But it’s three years later…what happened to that credit card?
Anyone who visits my house would see the card cut in two and displayed on my bookshelf–I thought the Ryerson logo on the card was kinda cool, so I wanted to keep it, but cut it to ensure I’d never use it. That kind of debt scares the hell out of me, to be honest. Stacked credit cards—aiyeee!! So I promised myself I’d never use the card, or the personal cheques MBNA would send to me every month. Double aiyee.
But then a friend was talking about difficulties applying to credit cards, which led to credit rating and she told me that if you have a credit card and let it go dormant, that can negatively affect your credit rating. Suddenly my mind raced back to that credit card, attached to my shelf, and I realized that I had never actually cancelled it. I mean, it would make sense right? To cancel it if I never plan to use it. But the thought never crossed my mind. And to make matters worse, I started thinking, “What if someone jacked my account, and now I had this impossible new debt that MBNA would make me pay off???”
With incredible new internet technologies that enable us to bank online, I quickly signed in to my account for the first time, and breathed a huge sigh of relief to see the “innocence” of the account was still intact. No activity. *sigh* Then I looked at the limit….$1500. Perhaps a paltry number to some, but to me that was exactly what a student could use. I couldn’t believe that a credit card would give me that much to start, especially when my CIBC Visa hasn’t increased my limit for 5 years (not that I want them to).
I remembered my promise and knew that I didn’t need the extra hassle that the MBNA credit card might bring with it, promptly calling MBNA to hear the customer services reps say they were sorry to cancel the account. Perhaps they were sorry, but I know that in the end of it all, I certainly am not.
The Cake Show in Toronto just happened, and the winner is from Roxy Cakes. They have a website and blog with INCREDIBLE photos of their cakes, and featured on their blog is the winner of the show–a cheese platter, with four stacked wheels of cheese and adornments….ALL EDIBLE!
[Roxy Cake pics are copyright, so I won't post them here, but definitely check out the sites...the above pic is from an this blog--I love Back to the Future!!!]
What is with people and their ability to make fabulous cakes?! Cake Boss is a new show on TLC that features one family-run cake business, with all the trials and tribulations that go with baking/designing cakes, or rather works of art because they really are amazing. Mondays 10pm, TLC.
Like BlogTO said…and I think everyone else…they’re actually freakin’ winning! GO JAYS!
Vintage Baby Birds
And how awesome is the one pictured above, from The Wedding Cake Shoppe?
BlogTO just posted “The Best Custom (and Wedding) Cakes in Toronto” and some of the designs just blow me away. I already know what kind of wedding cake I want (sad?) but the decoration is up in the air. Sheesh how would anyone be able to choose just one?! Can I have 50 cakes?
…in Toronto finally and it seems like things are warming up. Speaking of, I saw Sunny Fong entering a Starbucks and couldn’t help feeling a bit starstruck. He’s the frickin’ winner of Project Runway: Canada 2, and a deserving one at that. Congratulations Sunny! 
…the commenters at BlogTO seem to hate them. Especially Dan Cooper. I’m wondering how much of the interview was left out, and whether what was left in was the whole story.
Yeah I wish these hipsters would go home with their hipster hangouts (pretty much every place reviewed by this site).
Americans have a wannabe ghetto problem. Toronto has a wannabe hipster problem. I am not sure which is worse.
I am creating a charity called “Move Hipsters Out” that helps hipster adjust to normal life and into the tax system along with their hangouts and heavens. So far I have got McDonald’s, Walmart, Tim Horton’s as donors. Starbucks denied the donation request.
I want to license the following as a mission statement:
“This douche bag is a run of the mill Hipster. The beard, the keffiyeh, the unbearable self importance. And of course, like all Hipsters, he comes to the big city from some shitty town on the outskirts of nowhere, looking to make his ” artistic socially responsible ” statement. Oi Vay. I’m sure Mom and Dad are paying for the loft and the Liberal Arts Degree.I’m so sick of Hipsters vomiting all over Kensington Market and Ossington every weekend. I can’t be the only person tired of these douche bags and their pillow fights, subway dances, yard sales and cans of PBR.
Please Hipsters, pack up your American Apparel, vintage bullshit and buy a one way ticket home. Or move to ” Billy-burg ” and get it over with.
You don’t bring anything to the city. “
I’m just so surprised how angry some of the commenters seem to be. Sheesh, I wouldn’t be surprised if, by definition, they were hipsters themselves. Just interesting.
From The Fed
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