Photo credit Flickr user LonePrimate

photo by arvin


A little harder this week. Clue: It’s indoors.

Bettter Clue: Books.

Sky Photo by Points North

Nothing but endless grey skies. This is not supposed to be Toronto. November used to be grey skies and the beginning of snow. December brought in a few blue skies and more snow falling. January froze us to the marrow and blinded our eyes with sun and deep blue skies and glistening snow. February continued the bright blue deep freeze. And greyness only returned with March.

Now it’s grey grey grey. More and more each winter. No wonder we elected the same stuck-in-the-dark-ages, get-nothing-revitalized cabal. We’ve lost all hope. We watch chunks of Gardiner drop, shrug our heads back into our coats, and carry on, knowing nothing will change. Toronto is doomed.

I hate you grey sky!

So one of my pet peeves is people abusing the apostrophe in every day grammar. Turns out there is an Apostrophe Protection Society, which claims to protect this much abused punctuation mark.

There’s a Flickr group, called Grocer’s Apostrophe which documents bad use of the punctuation mark at the grocery store, as well as several blogs like Apostrophe Catastrophe and Apostrophe Abuse.

Seems like last year, everyones favourite, evil, cable company, Rogers, made a mistake that cost them $2 Million due to bad grammar.

Now if only someone could fix the apostrophe on every goddamn Tim Hortons (save Quebec), I’d highly appreciate it. Seems like Tim’s started out its existence as Tim Horton’s. The apostrophe was lost to the language legislation in the Province of Quebec: unless a business name is simply a personal name, in Quebec the signage has to be translated into French: Tim Horton’s Donuts would have to become Les donuts de Tim Horton. Rather than producing entirely new signage for the Quebec market, Tim Horton’s became Tim Hortons from coast to coast to coast.

via Neatorama

An ad-hoc gathering at the Gladstone Hotel of designers, transit geeks, bloggers, visual artists, tech geeks and cultural creators passionate about transit in Toronto and the TTC. It is a platform for Toronto’s talented design community and enthusiastic transit users and fans to demonstrate their creativity and contribute to a better way for Toronto’s transit system. The content and ideas generated in this open unconference will be delivered to the TTC for their consideration in their work.

Date: Sunday, February 4th
Time: 9:30am to 5:00pm
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
Attendance: Maximum attendance – 100
Cost: FREE for participants!
Registration: See our page on the registration process.

It’s cold outside. What better time to curl up with a good book. This Sunday is the launch party for the PILOT BOOK PROJECT BOOK 2. A collection of works from Toronto’s Bryan Belanger, Rhya Tamasauskas and Lee Sheppard among others.

The Pilot Book 2
The Savannah Room
294 College Street in Toronto
January 28th

Shot this pic in between shivers on the Bruce Trail. Cold sombre solitude. Damn cold out but oh sooooo beautiful…

Squirrel Photo by Points North

I used to look at black squirrels as threadbare cousins of the lush-tailed grey squirrels whose sole purpose in life was to steal my bulbs and munch on my crocus flowers. They were the enemy.

Then a couple of English cousins came to visit, and they stood transfixed every morning, watching these never-before-seen black things bouncing around my yard, pausing only to dig up some tasty morsel…or hide one. Amazing how a creature we take so much for granted, even despise, because of its ubiquitousness, becomes an exotic in the eyes of another person.

I’m still not that keen on them, but now my camera shows me what my cousins saw, and I too can enjoy their cuteness.

Cardinal Photo by Points North

It’s rather unusual — for me anyway — to see Cardinals in Toronto in the middle of winter. Every fall, the birds all take off for points south. One hears the honking in the air, looks up, hand shading eyes, and follows the ducks and geese as they flock south. Slowly the variety of birds diminishes until only the sparrows and greedy pigeons remain. Robins go. Blue Jays go. And Cardinals go. That’s the way it’s been for decades. But Global Warming isn’t just changing the air temperature and creating wild weather, and Global Dimming isn’t just giving us endless depressing grey skies; they’re also changing animal behaviour, and I’m starting to notice.

This past summer, I rarely saw a Blue Jay; did catch a glimpse of a pair of Cardinals. But when winter came, the Cardinals came out. In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen a pair of Cardinals and today a loner. And they didn’t just zip by and hide behind a thick branch, like they do in summer. They hung out in full view, did a dance in the air, flew off, came back, and sat in the sun. How odd. Even odder now it’s so frigid.

I hope they survive the cold and grace the summer with their presence.

photo by arvin

Here’s another easy one. Enjoy!