Transit strike

Ah, the joys of living in a large city in the summer. Lots of cars, lots of heat, and lots of angry transit workers. Makes for a nice combination.

Today, I weathered my first urban transit strike. One was threatened last year, but was averted at the last minute. Now, I live a good distance from campus. Not what you would call walking distance, but if I absolutely had to walk, I could. It isn't even the distance, really, it is just the time it would take me to walk that far. Walking for four hours during a day just to go to a one hour class is a little silly. Thankfully, we have a car. Lots of people don't though.

So I had heard about the strike possibility last night, and when I woke up this morning, traffic was backed up outside as far as the eye could see either way. It was also quite warm today... 34 C (or about 93 for you Americans out there). This did not make idling in a hot car any more fun, let me tell you. So, I had to drive to campus. This sucks for two reasons. One, the parking is rediculous. $1.50 for a hour of parking. Two, the traffic. Oh God, the traffic. It was insane. I actually found a reasonably good route... I took Crescent Circle down to Avenue Road, then hopped on Dupont and wove through the back streets until I hit St. George, which no one uses because it doesn't really go anywhere but through campus. Avenue was very heavy traffic, but it was moving better than Bathurst would have since there is no parking along it and there is along Bathurst. So, I got to campus in "only" 40 minutes. On a normal day, this would take me 15-20 minutes and in the middle of the night, 10. I think if I had taken Bathurst, I could have burned up an hour.

I left early so I wouldn't get stuck with everyone then leaving work at 5, but it still took me 30 minutes to get home... with a very quick stop into the store. The traffic is still awful out there, but at least the buses are going again (though in this heavy traffic, not going very well I shouldn't think), but the subway will not be up until 7 pm or so. Hopefully tomorrow, things will be back to "normal."

Workers of the world, unite! The machinery of capitalism is oiled with the blood of the workers! There, I've been Marxist.

X-Men: the Last Stand

A small group of us went to see the new X-Men movie tonight. The place was sold out, so that was fun. I like watching a movie with a bunch of people. However, we were sitting right in front of an entire row of the f*ckwits who worked at the Apple Store in the Yorkdale Mall. Now you must realize that we got to the movie a full hour before its run time so we could get good seats (and good seats we got). Sadly, we sat in front of f*ckwits, and we had to listen to said f*ckwits for this entire hour. If you've never had to listen to a conversation between multiple f*ckwits before (much less an hour of it), consider yourself a fortunate man who is smiled upon by the Almighty and walks a blessed path. I, however, lost several braincells due to a self-destruction mechanism brought on by the refusal to process f*ckwitty conversation. These were the same f*ckwits who actually CHEERED during the iPod commercial that ran before the movie. Can you spell T-O-O-L-S, boys and girls?

The movie: I liked it. Didn't see X-Men 1 and 2 yet, but we're renting them, and then I can make a better judgment. I've always been a big Storm fan, so I got lots of Storm and I was happy. Sadly, no backstory, but that's the problem with Storm. I liked all of the different mutants, but the film was superficial at best. Still, if I wanted something deep, I probably wouldn't look for it in a movie theatre. But I do have to add, the new Pirates of the Carribean movie looks pretty neat, despite the fact that I really dislike both Orlando Bloom (who can't act, not even to the point of calling it "bad acting") and Keira Knightly (who can act, just not terribly well). Depp looks as great as ever and the plot looks like a lot of fun. Saw a trailer for Superman as well, but the jury is still out for me about whether that will actually be good or not.

So would I recommend the film? If you like lots of gratuitous action and not a lot of character development, you'll love it. If you like well-written conversation and well-thought-out, logical plotlines, you'll probably find the movie annoying or downright bad. Me, I got what I wanted: lots of mutants and lots of fighting.

Now Opening in the blogosphere...

My boyfriend, Justin, now has a blog. This is also available in my navigation bar to the left. He is funny and will have a lot of insightful things to say about bathrooms. If you are interested in my boyfriend's bathroom observations, this blog's for you.

Attack cat

I drew this from a funny story on CNN.

The cat (pictured at left with his owner) likes to sneak up on his owner's neighbors and attack them.

"He attacks from the back," Kettman said Monday. "You never see it coming. He has six toes on every foot, which constitutes a very formidable weapon."

He's a pretty big cat too, so I'm sure it is no fun. Personally, I'm not sure why his owner lets him out at this point, considering that he likes to attack people. Good thing he is not a tiger. He has gotten himself and his owner in a lot of trouble. I'm hoping he wins his court case, but he should probably be kept on a leash.

Freelove!

This is just a picture of Freelove sleeping on the futon. Why? No reason. She's just cute.

Enjoy.

New computer!

So today, we bought a new laptop for me for my adventures into Comprehensive Exam land. It is a new MacBook, the low-end Apple laptop that has the dual-core Intel processors. It also has a wide-aspect screen and these funny push-buttons for a keyboard that I am still getting used to. My fingernails keep scraping them in funny ways. I really like the computer though. I've never really had my own laptop, so it is a strange feeling to have one. I'll post some pictures of it. One nice thing about the computer is it comes with iSight, a built-in camera. So I can do video chat on iChat. Next is to make a cute cozy for it!

Exercise!

Today, I decided to take a trip down the Beltway Trail here in Toronto. It is a trail that runs from Eglinton West station through town to Yonge with a circut around a large cemetery. I didn't go that far down the trail, but I walked about a mile down and then jogged the mile back. Not a huge accomplishment for some people, but it made me feel pretty good. I definitely need to get more exercise and the trail is so beautiful. It is like walking in a forest.

Spring Cleaning

So I finally had it with the state of our bedroom. Dirty clothes everywhere, more dust bunnies than the population of Ontario, and a non-specific bad smell. I did six loads of laundry, though there are still a couple more to do, we swept, we mopped, we dusted, and we got it pretty clean. I feel a lot better now since I hate living in a mess and it is definitely better to tackle it before it gets out of hand. My next project is to go through my clothes again and do a second purge of stuff. I have all of these...well, I have three boxes of stored clothes in the closet. I would like to get rid of at least one more box in addition to switching out my summer and winter wardrobes. Honestly, I don't want to haul around a bunch of stuff I will never use again.

Today, I'm going to get some reading for my disseration in, watch a little TV, and probably go to the grocery store... I'm always going to the grocery store.

Last night we went to see Art School Confidential. Having gone through art school myself, I found it quite funny and I liked the plot. I recommend it, why not?

The Zoo

Last weekend, Justin and I went to the Toronto Zoo. It was fantastic. I am a big fan of zoos anyway because I like to be so close to the animals. I am also glad some injured animals have a place to live where people take care of them and like to be around them. As well, all of the kinds of animals that need animal friends have them, since the zoo is so big. There are seven elephants! Elephants are one of my favorite animals. They also have two cheetahs, a bunch of lions, hippos, a white rhinocerous, a very sleepy tapir, lots of apes and monkeys of different kinds, and geese. That was the funniest thing about the zoo was all the geese that were hanging out there, getting food. They even had signs up explaining aggressive goose behavior and how to avoid an aggressive goose (mostly during mating season). The zoo is huge. We spent four hours there and only saw Africa and Indo-Malaysia. There is a Canada section, the Americas, and Eurasia. So, we'll need to go back. Yay!