33 posts tagged “downtown life”
(Posted from laptop in coffee shop, because I am on vacation!)
While running errands this morning (boxcar cat feeding, dropping off my tax stuff), I discovered that a great little novelty/gift/card store that's been in the neighborhood forever is going out of business, because this city is allowing another developer to tear down yet another older building to put up another nondescript condo tower. I hate our city council. In other cities, they talk about how old buildings are. In Toronto, they knock the old stuff down, brag about how much the new things cost, and then wonder why tourism is down.
The only up side to this is that everything but the cards in the shop is 50% off. And they have a little bit of souvenir stuff in there, so I was able to load up on the required cheap trinkety stuff representing my city to distribute at the Big Boston Peep-Meet in August.
Also acquired:
- Blackbeard action figure (to hang on the wall over my desk with my Anne Bonny one)
- skull and crossbones lunchbox (different shape than the one I already have)
- global warming mug for a friend (the coastlines recede when hot liquids are in it)
- miniature wine rack for my mom's dollhouse miniatures obsession
Okay, enough slacking. Now I have to get back to writing.
So I did a little more writing this afternoon and came up with this FSotD:
Walton’s crisis of confidence was pants-crappingly total.
Here's the little mystery patio on the penthouse level of my building. And part of the view from it (10 floors up).
I thought it would be bigger. I took this standing against one wall. That's my knapsack on the table, and my teeny laptop on the chair in the shade.
Here's the view straight south. That's Lake Ontario in the background, and the white domes in the middle distance are the tennis club where I go for Saturday yoga.
After writing, I went down to feed the boxcar cats, so that I don't have to go before work tomorrow morning. It's been a lovely day here and as I approached, I could see four of the cats out sunning themselves on the stairs of one of the boxcars, so I stopped and got a photo.
It was only after I downloaded the photos at home that I realized you can actually see FIVE cats in the photos. (I hadn't noticed the Blanca underneath in the shade when I was taking it.)
Now, having had dinner (and made more red velvet cupcakes -- normal style, not roses -- while it was cooking), I'm loafing for the rest of the evening.
So I lug the black cat to the vet to be neutered this a.m. Because he's a male, he got out the same day. I cut short my lunch so I could leave early (on a hectic day where I'm still doing two jobs because the person whose been off for eight weeks, and told me she'd be back today, decided to take just one more day off). I get to the animal hospital, lug the cat home (15-minute walk, heavy male cat), walk in the door to the phone ringing. It's the animal hospital. They forgot to give him his vaccines, can I bring him back. Fuck! Idiots!
Almost all the lift is out of my arms now, so I turn around and head for the streetcar. And for the first time, ever, a driver hassles me because there's some rule no driver I've encountered has ever enforced about not taking animals on the streetcar during rush hour. And I tell him that no other driver has ever been uptight about it. He hassles me after I pay my fare, so I took the ride anyway (only four stops), with him berating me half the way for trying to tell him how to do his job. Yeah, and thank YOU for the transit strike a week ago, dickweed.
So to go home, I was so upset and frustrated that I didn't even try to get on the streetcar going the other way. If that guy had hassled me, too, I would have totally lost it.
I have kitten pictures from this morning when I dropped him off, because I saw Honey's kittens, but I'm so not in the mood right now. My cats are pestering me to feed them and I've just about had it with cats right now.
A couple of shots I took in the past few days. Remenber my incredulous pigeon post about why they were hatching chicks in the dead of winter? A couple of different people set me straight. It's not a global warming thing, or because we've had up and down temperatures this winter (because really, we haven't, they've pretty much been down). It's just that pigeons don't have a particular mating/nesting season, they do it all year round. Say it with me: That's why there are so many of them.
More proof of it -- only inches away from where I saw the dead, frozen chick fallen from the nest, I saw a little, broken egg on the sidewalk.
And I looked up and saw pigeon mom sitting on the nest.
And Monday morning after the big storm this weekend, I went to check on the boxcar cats' food, and saw this curtain of icicles obscuring the food bowls.
Once I kicked it away, there was a film of ice on the top layer of kibble, so I cleared that off, too. It takes tough little critters to make it through the Toronto winter.
I just realized that the guy who stole my purse may as well have stolen hundreds in cash from me instead of the mere $70 in my wallet, because the cost of replacing things is starting to add up.
Birth certificate $65
Lock changes/new passcard $170
New passport ~ $100 (including new passport photos)
Registration to an ID alert service in case he sold or someone picked up my ID from the purse and applies for credit with it: $100
So we're up to almost $500 already and I haven't even bought a replacement purse or Filofax yet (they aren't cheap).
Bastard.
(on the up side, I have a nicer thing to post about later today)
The insanity of bank and police station visits, various government automated phone mazes and a ton of other administrivia. Yes, my purse was stolen last night. Yes, everything was in it: wallet, cellphone, credit cards (including business one), datebook/address book, ALL my ID including passport, keys (home, work and my friend's apartment), pass card (home, work, and my friend's building). It was not through any irresponsibility of my own, some asshole with the misdirection skills of Penn and Teller leaned over from the bar at the restaurant where my friend John and I were eating, and asked me some damn thing about napkins, while offering me one in his hand, as though I'd asked for extra. He was probably reaching behind me and taking my purse from the other side of my chair while doing this. (I thought I'd been safe putting the purse on the side of the chair between it and the wall.) So smooth that I didn't even notice it was gone until at least a half hour later when I went to pay my share, by which time he was long gone.
I didn't freak out and panic (my reaction has been a big "Well, fuck!" since it happened), and just getting on with what needs to be done now, but even so, it was a blessing to have John around. He used to be an Assistant Director on films and has the mad organization skillz of a field marshall. He went straight to a bank machine (after paying for dinner) and took out $200 for me for walking-around money, and then back at my place, he looked up numbers on the internet and I started making calls to report and cancel things.
I won't bore you with the details of trying to replace ID, I'm sure many of you will have gone through it. He only got $70 in cash, which won't break the bank. The sad part of it is, the stuff that I'll miss more is the stuff that he won't or can't use. But to be on the safe side, I'm having my lock on my apartment changed. And John and I did go back to the area around the restaurant to check garbage bins, in case he ditched any of it. No dice.
That's all. I'm exhausted because I didn't get to bed till 1 last night, and had to get up and running around early to start looking after more of this stuff.
In the continuing saga of my post office complaint, from a week and a half ago, I finally got a callback from the Customer Service person who had the file. (That in itself was a mini-saga since I was supposed to hear within 48 hours, then they said five days, then I had to call myself to check up and then today I was two seconds from calling again to ask "What the hell?" and go a little postal myself when the phone rang and it was Canada Post, doing the right thing.)
So, Mr. Nosy Postie is off today, but as soon as he's back in, this Customer Service person (I suspect she's somewhat supervisory) says he's going to be sat down and have a talking to because what he did is absolutely not right. And he will face disciplinary action. She couldn't tell me what type, citing confidentiality, but she did say "This guy's been on my radar for a long time, I have to follow a lot of official steps to deal with him, but you did me a favor by filing your complaint." Oh, and "I've had to do a lot of apologizing for this guy's actions." I mentioned the other guy who was at the counter that day egging him on to know what was in my package, and she said, "The woman who works there is very nice."
Anyway, I gather he won't lose his job this time, but it sounds like it won't be long now if he keeps this crap up.
And let me just beat any commenters to it: Yes, if you hear about a fired postal worker going, well, postal in a concourse in downtown Toronto, they can look for my ketchup packets mentioned in the crayoned note he leaves behind in his apartment (with a closet full of stolen mail, too, no doubt).
This morning, it was still Really Fucking Cold (-28 C windchill), with a little blowing snow and I set out walking to work. I pass the St. Lawrence Market (an historic covered market still in operation, but not on Mondays) to get a little shelter from the overhang over the sidewalk on one side of it. In this kind of weather, a waist-high ledge under there is always crowded with grumped-out pigeons. I like pigeons. I feel sorry for the pigeons in Toronto, because you often see them with missing toes, or a missing foot from frostbite. As I passed the pigeons, I realized I had a couple of oatmeal cookies in my pocket from Saturday night cat trapping (Susan was good enough to have a Thermos of hot chocolate and cookies in the car while we watched the trap). I crumbled them up and scattered them for the pigeons. After an initial flurry when I got too close, they hopped down to eat.
What are these pigeons doing nesting in the dead of winter? Global warming aside, it hasn't been unusually warm here this winter. Poor little thing.
It was too cold and windy to try cat trapping again tonight for that black and white cat in the empty building (he didn't come to the window at all for us), but we may be on track to get let into the building another day. I hope he's warm enough. He seems to have pretty good shelter.
Last night, I went to the public square in front of Toronto City Hall, where they're doing "WinterCity" events for two weeks (to try and liven up January/February, I guess). I wanted to see a display put on by a French outfit called Cie Carabosse, which I had read about in the paper. They do a "fire installation" described like this on the WinterCity website:
"The gentle illumination of the entire square will unfold over three hours as clay pots are individually lit until 1500 burn in unison, radiating heat and reflective beauty across the urban landscape."
I arrived at six, just as they were starting to light everything, and could only stay for a half hour because I had to meet a friend, but there was no way I was going to miss this. It was magical. Of course I took photos:
They had strung pots all around the perimeter of the square.
And planted them through the snow-covered garden.
Created their own trees of fire all over the square...
And the best of all, the globe of fire.
As you can see from the photos, somehow, in this safety-obsessed society where a handrail has to be provided if there's one shallow step anywhere, there were no cordons, no barriers, no security to keep anyone from getting right up close. I watched one guy put a cigarette in his mouth to try to light it off one of the pots. I had just put my camera away, and took it right out again. I wanted it ready to catch the shot of this guy lighting himself on fire when the synthetic fur trim on his parka hood touched the flames. He gave up, though, because it was too hot up close. It was wonderfully warm, standing near these things. And up close, you could hear squelching and slurping, like something eating. It was the fire, consuming the lighter fluid. But it sounded like something truly alive.
It was so hard to tear myself away to go to dinner and leave this landscape behind.
It's becoming clear to me that between my attraction to things like this and the Chinese lantern festival, I must be part moth, since I'm so drawn to the lights.
We had a big dump of snow today in Toronto.
And I would just like to say that sprinkling blue salt on your business' piece of sidewalk in the busy downtown core during an all-day snowstorm does not constitute snow clearing.
