Why Don't We Turn This Whole Place Into a Roundabout?

Apparently the Region of Waterloo Council is still under the impression that the area is located smack dab in the middle of France. Another roundabout has been informally approved, this time much closer to the core of the city than any of the previous efforts.

Just down the street from me, the new installation at Union St. and Margaret Ave. apparently will serve the maybe 2 hours a day it is at all difficult to get through the intersection, and at that, the only real problem posed is a little bit of a wait to turn left from Union onto Margaret.

Again those in favour tout the slowing of traffic, and the diminished severity of accidents. But they are still neglecting the fact that this is not Europe, and drivers around here have not grown up with roundabouts, and that we here in North America still tend to follow a persuasion of driving over-sized vehicles. Combine that with a relatively poor explanation on the MTO website of how to properly navigate the intersection, and you've created an intersection that many older drivers are going to avoid, funneling more traffic down side-streets like the gonged up Ellis Cres. project of last year.

On top of this, the roundabout is immediately adjacent to one of the larger bush lot park and trail areas in the region, and that it is frequently used by pedestrians, including children. As soon as a steady flow of traffic is created through that corridor, the park will become much more inaccessible to people living nearby on the west side of the park.

The severity of accidents may decrease, but I guarantee there will be a higher incidence. Hopefully council does the right thing and does not formally pass the installation of this roundabout. Give it time at least and let people better acclimate to the slew of roundabouts already constructed at just about every boundary of the Region.

Pave Over Paradise, Put Up a Parking Lot

When it comes to making a buck, greenbacks come before greenspace. The City of Waterloo has approved selling space for advertising on a number of trails around the city. As it is, its been a disappointment in the past few years to see many natural trails dug up and paved over with asphalt in the first place, the only benefit really being to a small fraction of rollerbladers that I ever see on those trails.

Particularly astounding was when the City of Kitchener decided to tear up some perfectly adequate trail in the Huron Park area to make some 'Eco Learning Center' deal, and then went and paved half the trails with asphalt, obliterating a series of nice biking trails in the process.

But back to the City of Waterloo pimping itself out, and ruining the retreat aspect of the local trails. The question is appropriately asked by Councilor d'Ailly, at what point do we draw the line on advertising once its started? Every time a new proposal comes along, a higher price can be asked, and the income for the City will again be used as justification for tarnishing the already rapidly diminishing natural areas within the entire Region.

And then what happens when companies want small 'inconspicuous' sign spaces at a price? If the price is right does the City give in again? I have no problem with putting advertising around the trail map kiosks, and encouraging advertised sponsorship on those signs, but the trails themselves need to be left untouched.

Just yesterday I went for a walk along the RIM Park trail and caught a glimpse of a doe and its fawn just off the trail in an otherwise natural marsh environment. If Disney were to come along and want to advertise the newest remake of Bambi on a sign along that stretch of trail, does the City give in so that it has money to pay its councilors the next time they vote a pay raise for themselves? I'd like to think not, and clearly there are some of those councilors who agree that this is a very bad precedent to be setting.

The Last Hurrah?

This needs to be the last snow storm of the winter. I don't think I can handle another without a heavy dose of summer first. Enough of the bloody noses from the dryness. Enough of the shoveling. Enough of the scraping off the van every time I want to go out. Enough of the no sandals, shorts and t-shirts.

The plan is/was to go out for dinner and drinks for Carolyn's birthday tonight, but if the snow doesn't stop dropping soon I doubt there will be much of a turnout, us being the only one's really within walking distance of Uptown. I don't mind driving around town in this weather, but then not everyone can be as cool as me driving around a soccer mom mini-van that sits out of the snow at least a little bit more.

Hopefully things shape up for St. Patty's next Saturday. The luck of the Irish has to be better than my own right?

The Duke

After going out for a public skate last night with a loop of hits from the 70's and 80's or something, and dodging little kids zig zagging all over the place, we went out to the Duke of Wellington, usually a good enough little pub, for a few drinks. By the time we were done, I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

I understand that when you have live music acts at your bar, you tend to feature them. But having them so loud that the waitress won't even go through a few beers on the beer list is ridiculous. Especially when its a cover band. If I wanted to hear Honky Tonk Women rocked out, I'd go to the next Stones farewell tour.

Now, I know they are one of the hosts of the Go Festival next week. I understand that people will be filing in simply because of the local indie original talent, that's fine, play the music loud. Hell I even hope to catch an act or two at one of the venues. But lets not have cover bands jacked up so loud that people, apparently including the waitress can't hear themselves think.

When a waitress forgets an order of fries that she even asks whether you'd like gravy or curry sauce with, and then forgets again when you openly ask her if your fries are coming, you either need new serving staff, or to turn that shit down. And how about, instead of having the waitress try to yell out to the table what items are no longer available on their menu that's changing, you take a sharpie and cross out those items for the time being.

I can tell you I won't be back to see the new menus any time soon.

Spring Training

I wish I could get invited to take part in a spring training camp. Not with the hopes of making the team, or even for the chance to toss a ball with the pros, but simply to get the hell out of this cold weather.

Cleaning the car off at 3 in the morning when taking Carolyn home has lost all of its novelty. As have the snow covered streets that seem to have been neglected by plows for at least the last 3 snowfalls, and one rainfall that served to polish the layers into a hard, rutted, suspension destroying mess. Save a couple dollars in taxes by not having the plow go down the street, cost hundreds later in having to prematurely replace shocks and struts. But at least we have RIM Park to show for our tax dollars.

I suppose there are sillier ways to restructure taxes.

And at least no-one around here is paying elected officials to analyze performance enhancement in baseball in as long and drawn out a public sham as possible. I would be shocked to see anything more than stern warnings and a tap on the wrist come of it all. But then, GW needs a sport to come back to when he's done fucking the rest of his country in a year. Better to have his attention on anything but politics I say. So, welcome spring training! Time to go get some home opener tickets.

And I'm still looking for you fantasy baseballers. Info is in the previous post.

Enough

10-15 cm of wet, heavy snow last night, another 10-15 forecast tonight, this shit can stop any time. I'll take a -15 degree weather with not a cloud in the sky to this any day. Of course, the positive side of zero for an extended period of time would gain an even better reception. And if the city could stop plowing 4 foot deep snowbanks up onto the sidewalk that would be great. Between the way the Chinese elm on the corner has to be trimmed back for hydro, leaving half a tree leaning towards the house for the day it falls, and the snowbanks plowed up on the sidewalk every winter, it would be fantastic if the city just claimed their three feet of property space and re-routed the sidewalk.

Anyways, enough of the bitterness. With some help from Steve, I've got another batch of homebrew on the go; this time the Coopers Home Brew Lager. The 'Real Ale' overall didn't disappoint, but I am not one of those people who can settle on one beer to call their own until their death. Or even until liver problems cause me to ease up. As I had hoped from the start, the $22 and time spent to make roughly 3 cases of homebrew turned out to be a great option in the face of spending $30 a case from the store. It was good enough even that Steve decided to go in for a quarter of the latest batch. Three quarters of three cases in three weeks time for me should be more than enough anyways.

Elect Me Vice President in Charge of Volcanoes

I just finished reading Cat's Cradle, the first Vonnegut book I've ever read, and loved the cynical quasi-sci-fi feel, and will be on the lookout for more at the used bookstores as soon as I finish reading the rest of the stack of books I've accumulated. Today's post title is brought to you by chapter 9.

I've been playing a lot of online poker lately, finally giving in to the temptation to play for real money (and so to play 'real' poker). It lacks the interaction of sitting around with buddies to play a game, but then it makes you care less about the money you're taking in if you win, after all the ideal buddy game sees everyone at even money in the long run anyways. By that definition though, even the poker I've played with friends haven't really been 'buddy games'. What I mean though is that there isn't the same ability to read people, or feign strength or weakness. And trash talk in a chat window inevitably comes off as some blend of obvious, lame or immature. Again, I suppose to so much different from home games, just with less feeling.

Anyways, after having any and all plans for my weekend dissolve, I spent most of the day yesterday playing poker while Carolyn worked and actually made money in the more traditional sense. When you play electronically, you end up getting a sense of unjustness in the way the cards are dealt cause there's no physical deck there to reinforce the real logic. But yesterday was a day where I felt I was getting the short end of the deck. Despite playing for real money, I'm still playing in the lowest stakes games on the site, and getting realistic play is still a bit of a challenge. Suffice it to say, its very hard to 'bluff' people out when you don't have cards (as was most often the case) and when you do have the best cards, its almost inevitable that they will be in with a crap hand that ends up getting the cards they need to make theirs better.

All that said, I am at a pace now of winning just enough to keep playing a few games at a time, kind of like winning a free ticket in the lottery. Its annoying, and I think its time to move to slightly higher stakes so at least I make better players beat me for my money, rather than beat me with luck.

/end poker

I've also been looking at a site tracking some local blogs, which I have from time to time looked for over the years. Infact, I've thought for a while of maybe trying to create something along the 'ist' line of local blogs for the Waterloo area (see Gothamist,LAist, or Torontoist). But between living in the shadow of London and Toronto which actually have venues capable of/willing to host decent music acts and the like, its been more of a whim than anything. However, seeing some of the quality of blogging out there (clearly far superior than anything you'll find here), if someone could get them all on board, there could be the makings for a decent collective blog. Anyways, probably another whimsical idea (my homebrew is going down rather smoothly at the moment), but look for some updated links to some local bloggers in the near future.

Used Book Browsing

A few days back, Carolyn and I met up and walked uptown for a coffee. Having spotted a used bookstore on the way there that she'd heard about, but was unsure of the location of, we decided to stop in on the way back. In particular she was after a few Timothy Findley books, the titles of which I don't recall, and a copy of The Screwtape Letters.

The store was actually the main floor of a 1930s or 1940s era house, stuffed with 8 foot high shelves spaced too closely together to be able to stand far enough back to read the titles on the top shelf or two. Despite not finding The Screwtape Letters, she did find one of the Findley books she was after. I, on the other hand, after not finding any Douglas Coupland came out with Cat's Cradle, and a non-fiction book by Isaac Asimov, who I've only ever read a short story of for a project back in highschool english.

The stop planted a bug, and we decided to hit up another bunch of stores downtown today. The first stop was a disaster, with books spread into sections such that many had one or more overlaps with other sections making it difficult to really find anything. Some sections sorted by author name, others by title, and some apparently not at all, it was impossible to find anything specific, without randomly coming across it. The prices however were cheaper than the uptown stop (a trend that was true of every other stop as well).

A couple more stops, without finding good condition copies of the Findley books she was after, or any condition copy of The Screwtape letters, and myself not finding anything by a rather limited list of authors I was after (more or less George Orwell, Chuck Palahniuk or Douglas Coupland) we finally headed home to check out Amazon.ca.

A quick google found one more store in town we had missed, right by the universities. It turned out to be the smallest of any of the 5 stores we ended up at, and really the most bland. But despite its lack of musty bookstore character, it had the best, and cheapest selection.

She ended up with a couple Findley books, and settled for the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in lieu of not finding the other C.S. Lewis work she was after. I, being the geek that I am, finally found a Coupland book (Miss Wyoming), and also came out with two more non-fiction science books (Comet and A Brief History of Time).

The moral of this long-winded story? University students will sell off their good books to the store closest to them for beer/rent/tuition money, leaving the stuffy, musty stores to jack up their prices on books with mosquitoes squished in the inside cover.

Oktoberfest Sucks

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the admin around the university? Really I do. I love how none of their multiple online systems seem to interact with one another. I love how the different departments of the admin themselves don't interact. I love them not putting my paycheque through on the scheduled pay date, with a MasterCard bill sitting and collecting interest. I love the vagueness of the responses when I ask for some clarification in trying to track down just what happened to my money. And I especially love being told that my pay request would be in on a specific date, that being today, and still not finding it there.

Other people get charged twice for their tuition because no-one cross checks things.

And still others are forced to write petitions to stay in school only to be informed, after being told that the petition was denied, that a completely different term from the one that the petition was written for was actually considered. Was there any kind of outline of the whole petition process to be found anywhere on line, or were people more forthcoming on the phone, this kind of thing could be avoided. But instead, the administration around the university just continues to build great report with those that ever have dealings with them.

And then there are the people swarming to the city for North America's biggest beer festival. Driving like idiots. Staggering around like idiots. Closing streets. Its an overrated sham, like every other year. I don't understand why people need an excuse to drink beer in the first place; but then they wait until the price on it is jacked up, and the stuff being served is old stock being cleared off in mass quantities. Don't get me started on sitting through the awful music, along with accordion accompanied covers of otherwise tolerable songs.

Am I bitter? Just a little bit. But at least not watered down like all those $6 cups of beer that in no way actually taste like a good German brew.

Old Lane Sign?

I've managed to deflect plans from going to Niagara Falls for New Years, which I had neither the money, nor particularly the energy for, to relaxing around here, playing some games, enjoying fondue, and drinking with friends. Getting smashed with friends is after all the point of yet another arbitrarily set holiday. New beginnings, resolutions, blah blah blah, there's really no significance to the day anyways, except that its the day of the Rose Bowl. And that's not til 5 which means I'll have plenty of time to clean up and sober up before I watch Michigan show that they really should have been in the title game.

In other news, the sasquatch has invaded the wooded areas of the Waterloo moraine. Sasquatch's girlfriend appears to enjoy taking pictures of sasquatch's moss stained crotch, and hitting him there with knees, or foosball table handles at every available opportunity.