It's All A Crock...

Sometimes when I send emails to my city councillor, Janet Davis I get a reply. Not always though mind you, sometimes her assistant send a general email filled with platitudes. So far it's been pretty quiet from her office. Guess they are all on holiday.

Here is why, in my view more tax money needs to be "extorted" from the poor residents of the City of Toronto. Seems that the Mayor and 16 of his most ardent supporters (my councillor included) are off on a little trip to Quebec City to celebrate a birthday. He's really into birthday celebrations...

A couple of weeks ago when Superior Propane facilities in the north west part of Toronto exploded in the middle of the night our Mayor was in Vancouver on holiday. Fair enough, we all deserve holidays but the sad part is this. He flew back to Toronto to make a quick appearance and then flew back to Vancouver to celebrate his daughter's 13th birthday. He missed the funeral of a firefighter who died in that explosion.



This was no small event here in T-Dot, 12,000 or so residents were out of their homes for days and it was the Mayors duty to be here. It was his duty to be at the funeral of a fallen firefighter. When you are in public office this must come before the birthday party of a child.

These are the things I will remember when the next municipal election rolls around but I wonder if anyone else will?

Watch Out Mayor Miller And Councillor Janet Davis

Come the next municipal election, I'm going on the warpath so to speak, in our neighbourhood to remind everyone of the new garbage tax that was sneaked in without a whole lot of public discourse. I'm also going to rerun this post frequently but especially closer to the next municipal election just to remind everyone in T-Dot what Mayor Miller has done with the explicit consent of just about every member of his council including my very own councillor, Janet Davis.

The garbage tax isn't the only new tax this money grabbing bunch at city hall are now collecting. Land transfer tax in the City of Toronto is double that of the rest of the province, right double... It has done a great job of killing our very buoyant real estate market. Why buy a house in T-Dot and pay 8000 bucks tax when you can go one block past the boundary either direction and pay 4000 bucks. My friends in real estate have told me the market in T-dot is on life support. Or how about an extra 60 bucks a year registration fee for my auto on top of the provincial fee. Drivers from other municipalities that make up the Greater Toronto Area do not have to pay it but still drive in the city.

The garbage tax of course is being hidden, called a user fee for those of us garbage pigs who insist on generating more garbage than anyone else. So the more garbage you generate the more you pay. I of course ordered the smallest bin going by the exterior measurements. Foolish me...

I am in my view one hell of a recycler and composter(we have two) but even I will be hard pressed to get by with this little baby for TWO weeks.

Now at first blush it looks pretty good and I actually thought it would be big enough for us. Closer inspection showed something quite different.

A false bottom...

The total height of this thing is 26 inches, 12 inches for the false bottom and 16 inches of room for two weeks worth of garbage, way cool... Below is the upside down view.

It would cost us about $39.00 to get the next size up bin but you know what, I'm a stubborn German and I'll be darned if I give the city one more dime. These bins, by the way, where manufactured in the U.S. and cost around 50 bucks each. I'm too lazy to do the match but figure out about a million and a half households in the city and you get the idea. That boys and girls is a waste of money.

Last year when this was being discussed I emailed our local councillor an suggested that instead of spending that kind of coin why wouldn't they just simply consider a tag and bag method? Wouldn't that have the same effect, said I...sell the tags instead of these new expensive bins? I received a very condescending email back basically treating me like an idiot. I guess the various municipal leaders in other municipalities are idiots then and only good old T-dot leaders are brilliant.

Today I figured it out, really...this city council is heavily socialist and was elected with heavy union support. Garbage collectors are unionized and with these bins they no longer have to lift them. They have nice little hooks on the back and the mechanized trucks can just lift and tip. Could that be it?

These Feet Are Made For Walking!

Well not quite but ready for the beach for sure. I woke up with another migraine today, the second one this week. A couple of hours after taking the wonder drug Maxalt I dragged my weary bod out of bed and headed for a pedicure. I figured between the terrible cold, which is still with me and the migraine I deserved a treat.

I made a small stab at packing today as well, I have half a suitcase done, only two and a half more to go. There's going to be some juggling for sure to get everything in. Now it's back to bed with a hot toddy with lots of scotch in it. Tomorrow will be a better day...

Life Sucks Sometimes...

I'm lying here on the sofa absolutely miserable and feeling sorry for myself. On Tuesday I drove the offspring and family to the airport for their return trip to Cowtown and then took myself and a friend on a bit of a shopping splurge. I needed some new summer clothes for my upcoming trip to Greece. That night I woke up with a totally stuffed head and sore throat and I'm now in the midst of the worst cold I've had in years. I can't breathe, I cant sleep and I can't get off the loo, all in all I'm pretty miserable and If I didn't know better I'd swear I have this weird bacterial infection going around called Listeriosis.

I know I don't have it though as I don't have a fever and never buy prepackaged cold cuts which seems to be the source of this outbreak. I have so many things that still need to be done in the next few days before we get on that plane and lying on the sofa was not on my plan. I still have to get back up to the cabin and fire all the pottery I made this summer. I still have a huge shopping list of things to buy to take with me and I have to organize all the bills and stuff for the two months we will be gone, grrr... I didn't need to get sick.

As my doc said yesterday, just drink lots of fluids, lots of Tylenol, rest and ride it out...guess that's all I can do.

She's Gone Home

Her parents have taken her home and we miss her terribly. The next time we will see her will be for Christmas. I hope she doesn't forget us...

Circue du Soleil - Saltimbanco

Yesterday I collected on my birthday gift from the offspring and his girl and well all went to the Air Canada Centre here in T-Dot to see this amazing show. The video clip below is not mine, handbags were searched on the way so I didn't bring a camera. The little clip is just a little of what the show entailed. It was in one word awesome and I don't use that word very often. Our seats were on the floor, third row which made it even more spectacular.



If you ever get a chance, go see them, they put on a heck of a performance...

Where Am I?

I'm here, really I am. It's been a little busy recently with the offspring and family in town from out west and shopping and planning for that seven weeks away from home. It's a little tricky because I'm dealing with two different climates. Greece will be nice and hot and my 10 days in the very north east part of Germany will probably be cold.

Between all the planning and plotting I've also had to deal with some computer issues. I own a laptop but it's not particularly light or small and last year poor Steve was lugging that thing around everywhere we went. I decided to buy myself a little IBM Thinkpad just for travelling. Now because I'm not terribly rich I found a nice little refurbished one for a really good price and proceeded to load all my programs. That took me half of yesterday to finish and by the end of the day that little sucker crashed. Now it didn't do it once or twice just to be clear, it kept crashing and I was pretty much ready to chuck it all. Murphy's Law, whatever can break when I get it home, does... it's pretty much expected in my life.

Today I got a replacement and I'm back to loading programs. Luckily the shop I bought this computer from is in my neighbourhood and he has many of them. This one seems to be working well and if it quits in the next couple of weeks he'll replace it until he finds one that is good. If I loose it on my trip I won't be too upset.

My poor knitting blog has been sadly neglected of late and I'll probably have to put it on hiatus until we return from Greece. That's probably okay since I don't seem to have much time for knitting right now.

The Germany part of the trip is starting to get a little complicated for me. I have a cousin, who in true German tradition wants to plan everything ahead. Me, I just like to go with the flow and do whatever happens to strike my fancy at any given time. So when I get emails asking me where, what and when I get a little spaced out. I recognize that he really wants to please me but booking excursions too far in advance scares me...heck what if I have a migraine that day.

My friend from Wiesbaden where I would normally have gone, is going to Jordan during that time span but wants to come to Berlin for two days to meet me. Well I'm 3 hours from Berlin and do I dare tell my cousin that I'd like to go back there two days after he picks me up just to spend the weekend with my friend? I want to go to Dresden and Hamburg but they are at opposite ends. Maybe I should just get a Eurorail pass and spend 10 days on a train, that would be fun. And to top it off my aunt/godmother in Wiesbaden is pissed at me for not being there for her 80th birthday. Can't please everyone can we...

Meanwhile here in T-Dot is still rains every day and my body sure feels it. I started going to a tanning salon (I can just hear my nurse friends groaning about skin cancer) every couple of days for four minutes just so I wouldn't look so sickly white on the Greek beaches and have discovered that it actually makes me feel better. Since I started going my arthritis and fybro pains are much less severe than normal.

Meanwhile is the world going to hell in a hand basket so to speak with WWIII on the horizon? And the Russians, well a little blackmail goes a long way. Wonder who will blink first?

Can Anyone Stop Russia

Is this the beginning of the end for the former Soviet republics? Will they be taken back one by one? Is it starting with Georgia? The Europeans are not making any moves to stop the bombing in south Georgia and if they don't which country will be next...Ukraine, Poland, Chekoslovakia or maybe even Germany? I believe this to be a huge crisis and this time I don't think the Americans can or should do much about it. This is strictly Europe's problem.

Is this the beginning of the third world war? What is the end game?

I So Need Some Greek Sunshine

Only twenty three days and we're out of here and if your wondering why I'm counting? Well that would be because here in T-Dot we have hardly seen any sun this summer, in fact this goes down in the record books as the soggiest summer ever... I think I vaguely remember two or three sunny days in July.

The tickets are booked and I can hardly wait. We will spend a total of seven weeks away and I'm off to Germany for two of those weeks. Last year I went to Wiesbaden.

This year I'm going some where I haven't been since I was six.

Before my parents emigrated to Canada in 1956 my Mom took me to her parental home in Greifswald to say goodbye to her family. Little did she know that she would never see her parents or most of her siblings again. August 13, 1961 Greifswald became a city behind the Berlin Wall and no one was getting in or out for years to come.

In 1946 my Mom escaped through the Russian sector to the west to meet up and marry my Dad. Because of that I was born in the west. Since the end of the war Greifswald would always remain firmly in Russian control and that last visit with me in tow was a little dangerous for her. But she could not leave Germany for a new land without saying goodbye.

In November 1989 when the wall came down my Mother was in hospital with Pancreatitis. She was too sick to believe what I was telling her. When she recovered I made her a promise I was unable to keep, that we would go there together and walk the paths of her childhood.

A number of things conspired to keep me from making that trip with her. There were always other thingsfor her to do. My parents made trips to Yellowknife for their grandsons (my offspring) wedding, trips to British Columbia, a road trip to Nova Scotia that I made with her. Then there were two knee replacements, my father's ill health and death and finally my hip replacement. And of course the building of her room onto our house took almost the whole summer of 2004.

Once we had Mom safely settled with us she was too frail to make that trip and I regretted not somehow finding the time and wherewithal to make it happen sooner.

The night before she died she spoke of "going home" and I jokingly asked her how she was getting there thinking she meant our home. She said "I'm walking across the bridge" and again I thought she meant the bridge on the way home. Checking some photos of Greifswald (compliments of my cousin) I now know that there is a bridge that separates the town centre from where my Mom lived as a child. Kind of makes me wonder...



Now I'm making the trip without her, a pilgrimage of sorts. To walk where she walked and to dip my toes into her beloved Baltic Sea.

Look Who's Here

Elliotte Rositta arrived from Calgary yesterday with her parents and she wasted no time taking over Oma's chair. She's been checking out the knitting needles and yarn stash soon, think she wants to learn to knit soon?

Beijing Olympics

I hate totalitarian regimes...yes hate is a strong word but that's how I feel. It comes from my background I suppose having had grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins living behind the Berlin wall and never being able to see them again once we left Germany.

I also hated seeing the way people were and still are living in Cuba and how afraid they were of their own shadows and always looking over their shoulder to see who was watching them.

This Olympics is reminiscent of Hitler's 1936 Summer Olympics but because it's China, well what the heck, mustn't offend. Never mind that they give us bad drugs, deadly pet food and toxic paint on our children's toys...oh let's not forget SARS. Did their totalitarian government cover that up and make it worse?

Well then there were the 1968 Mexico Olympics, another cock up in my view and let's not forget Russia in 1980. I was proud that Canada stood with other countries to boycott that one.

The Olympic slogan "one world - one dream" didn't mean much for Hitler when it came to black people, didn't mean much in Mexico either. The Russians, well they just wanted to own the world and the Chinese, well we all know how they feel about Tibet don't we.

Do they want to own the world too?

A Form Of Protest - You Think?

The U.S. cycling team arrived at the Beijing airport all wearing black respiratory masks. I would like to think this was a form of protest against China.

The Chinese are not taking it well calling it provocative especially since one of the cyclists competes indoors. I think the color black is very telling...

Just For A Change Of Pace

Instead of knitting, this is what I did this weekend.



And this...



And this...



I know it doesn't look like much yet but wait a couple of weeks. Now it all has to dry, be trimmed, and fired twice. I haven't done any pottery in four years so it was pretty amazing that I could still do it. It used to be a business for me but now I will do it just for fun and for friends.

So while I was doing all of the above, they guys were out fishing and came home with this.



They made for a lovely dinner.

It's Friday - I'm Lazy - And We're Outta Here..

I'm a little lazy with blogging this week but that's because I have spent untold hours on the phone trying to score a couple of plane tickets to Greece. I was a tiny limited in when we could leave and my preferred date was September 2nd. There was just one seat available and heck, there are two of us so the search was on. The travel agent came through though in the end and got us two seats.

The bad news, it's on Olympic so I guess I have to "eat my words" of "never again", sigh...

The good news, I have more legroom because of my disability and I get to take an extra 26 kg of luggage which pleases me. Air Transat offered 12 inches of leg room and one suitcase of 30 kg per person. Olympic is allowing two pieces 26 kg per person and I get extra. It was a no brainer. All other airlines going to Athens have stop overs which don't suit me.

Now the hunt for travel insurance is on and this one is even more difficult. I have been told everything from "your not insurable" to sure we can do for $1,000. for the 52 days, gulp...still checking.

And now were checking out for a few days to head north and I'll do a little more pottery.