While walking a friend’s dog in the Swansea neighbourhood (that’s the residential area south of Bloor between Runnymede and Jane), the Ginger Ninja kept seeing these plants near the edges of many people’s lawns. She wanted to know what they were. Any gardeners or botanists out there care to help?
While the dog we were walking — Rufus — is an especially good and friendly dog, he was of no help whatever in identifying the plant:
Long-time readers of this blog will remember an article titled At Last, My Blog Lands Me in Hot Water!, in which local moving company Quick Boys attempted to threaten me into removing comments about their service. Those comments were in response to a one-line blog entry in which I asked the readers for recommendations about Toronto moving companies. The ensuing commentary across the blogosphere ended up giving the story a high Google ranking on searches for “Quick Boys”; even today, some of the posts about their thuggery are still on the first page of Google results.
(By the way, Quick Boys, I’m still waiting for my apology.)
What’s interesting is that the original blog entry, Anyone Know any Good Toronto Movers?, is still getting comments from readers relating their (mostly bad) experiences with moving companies. The last comment the article got came in yesterday, and it was about a bad experience with Yellow Moving Company. The resulting article about Quick Boys’ vaguely threatening phone call received comments as late as February of this year, the last comment being about how someone had to call the cops on Quick Boys.
It amazes me how moving companies can stay in business even though so many people have such bad experiences with them. Is it because people don’t use them very often? Is it because of the unfortunate collision of relatively unskilled labour meeting your prized possessions? Is it because it’s an attractive business for unscrupulous people? Or are they perceived as being bad simply because moving is a stressful experience for many people?
Let’s keep the conversation going, fellow Torontonians. Feel free to report any experiences and reviews of Toronto moving companies, good or bad, in the comments.
Photo by Will Pate. Click to see the original.
When I got onto the elevator in my building this morning, an older man and woman were already in the car, discussing the repair work being done on the building, which is showing its age. When the woman left at the ground floor, the man turned to me.
“Young man, when you’ve lived in this building for a while, you see the same people, year after year. They get older, and you see it — they’re going down, down, down.”
As he said “Down, down, down,” he pantomimed a falling leaf with his hand.
“Well,” I said as I shrugged, “it eventually happens to everyone.”
“That,” he said as he left, “is the only good thing about it.”
You know how to bring down a room, big guy.
I met Erin Judge through the Ginger Ninja, back when they both worked at Harvard. Erin’s very funny, a trait that comes in handy in her calling as a stand-up comedian. Being based in Boston, it’s hard for us to catch her gigs, but we lucked out this weekend because she was booked for a couple of gigs at The House of Comedy at Niagara Falls. It takes just over an hour to get there by car, so Wendy and I, along with Rannie and Jay motorbootied for the Falls on Saturday afternoon, did a quick walk up and down cheese-a-riffic Clifton Hill and then went to the House of Comedy to catch her show.
Even though the first act was at 9:00 p.m., Erin told us to make sure that we were there by 7:30. It was good advice — when we arrived at 7:25, the place was already packed. The House of Comedy is a “dinner and a show” kind of place; the cover charge includes a salad-and-pasta dinner. We got to hang out with Erin and her fiance Jesse on the patio before and after the show, which was nice, and the show itself was quite good. Erin’s was one of the opening acts and she was quite funny and in top form.
If you’re in the Boston area, you can catch Erin at a big gig tomorrow (Tuesday, July 10th): she’ll be in Comedy Central’s Open Mic Fight Contest, competing with other Boston comedians for a shot at the next round in Los Angeles. She says “No matter who wins, this will be a FANTASTIC comedy show. Get there early or buy tickets in advance!” The Open Mic Fight Contest takes place at the Comedy Connection, and the fun starts at 8:00 p.m.
In response to the article Where I Slept Tuesday Night,, my article about my night at the sleep lab at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, a “goatchowder” commented:
If you’d been living in the USA, that test would have cost you US$6000.
An anonymous commenter replied:
The flipside in Canada is that it takes about 6 months to get an appointment with a sleep specialist (and you need to see your GP first to get a referral) who can prescribe the sleep study.
That wasn’t the case for me.
I had an appointment with my GP on June 5th. She said she could book me into the sleep lab on the week of Monday, June 18th, a mere two weeks later. I told her that I couldn’t make it then, as I would be in Boston all that week. I asked for a later date, and the booking people at the lab suggested July 3rd, the Tuesday after the long weekend. So I took it.
Simply put, I could’ve had the sleep lab appointment in 2 weeks, but since my schedule didn’t allow me, I got it in 4 weeks. And with a referral from my GP, not a sleep specialist, with a single phone call and for no direct charge (universal health care comes from taxes).
While I’m on the topic, can anyone in the U.S. who’s had a sleep study done on them tell me how much it costs, and whether or not it was covered by your insurance?
The anonymous commenter also included quite a bit about auto-CPAP machines. Here’s an excerpt:
Once you’ve figured out what you need, the big expense is buying the machine. I’m not sure about the States but in Canada the government pays for half, and often your work insurance pays for the other half. If you don’t have insurance, you pay for it yourself (about $1000).
So the Canadian system stills finds a way to screw the under-privileged.
My belief is that the deal’s about the same in the U.S., especially if you’re living below the median. Can anyone with experience or data confirm or counter this belief?
That’s a mighty fine Unix beard, sir. Not a bad Unix gut either.
Last night, I attended a presentation by Mr. Free Software himself — Richard M. Stallman — titled Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks. I took photos and notes, and you can check them out at Global Nerdy.
While wandering around High Park on Monday — which was a holiday, thanks to the Canada Day long weekend — the Ginger Ninja and I stumbled across the “Hemp on Wheels” truck, pictured below.
Most stores that specialize in hemp products try to downplay the toking aspects of hemp and focus on the fact that it’s a pretty versatile plant that has a lot of non-drug-related uses, such as being a basis of a very durable kind of cloth. These guys just skip the pretense entirely. I didn’t see any hemp-based clothing or bags, but I did see an excellent collection of pipes and bongs, as well as a lot of pretty decent rock paraphernalia. The proprietor was a very friendly greybeard, but that’s too be expected — grouchy head shop owners don’t stay in the business very long.
I asked him if I could take a photo of his licence plate for the blog, and he said “Sure, maaaaan, take as many pictures as you like!”, so here it is…
For the curious, Hemp on Wheels has a website at HempOnWheels.com.