A Year in Review

Click on photo to see that the image is made up of all the year's blogged images.

Hard to believe but it's been a whole year, as of today, for blogging to BagelHot. I would like to thank all the people that have contributed to the site with their comments and ideas (yes even cupcake). To date there have been 296 posts containing 386 images. One wonders where all this stuff gets stored on the web.

Recently the "Hello" program has become problematic uploading images. Bloggerbot seems to freeze. Has anyone else had this problem? This explains why there is no picture today. It's possible that the blogger guys are doing some maintenance. I'll look into this.

For now Happy New Year.

--- additional notes

As it turns out I can use the image icon in blogger. I forgot to turn the pop-up block option off. Well there you go.

Zamboni

Zamboni cleans ice at Nathan Phillips Square

With my sleep schedule still wonky I still managed to crawl out of the apartment to shoot some city hall pictures.

Cravings

The Beaches bike trail

Thanks to the odd shift sleep schedule that has taken over my body, from 11pm to 4am then from 11am to 3pm, I was up at around 7:30am craving a sausage and egg McMuffin from McDonalds and the tiny oily hash brown that comes with it. It wasn't until about 8:30am that I made up my mind to brace the cold, semi-wet outside to get one (or maybe two).

After eating the two McMuffins I decided to wander off to the park to get some exercise. I didn't feel sleepy and hadn't been down to the beaches in a while. Gray, cold, damp and pretty low traffic. People jogging or walking their dogs seemed to be the main population. There was the odd couple doing the power walk but overall it was pretty quiet.


A weird ass beaches tree could be a home for a mini hobbit.

I ended up at the Leuty station, took a few pictures, and turned back. There really wasn't much to see. My pillow was calling for my second sleep shift.

Do you hear what I hear?

Freshly removed ear wax just slightly bigger than half a dime.

On a weird real life imitates art note, A few days ago I was visiting Darryl and watched a movie called "It's all gone, Pete Tong". It's a movie about a DJ that looses his hearing and how he copes and doesn't cope with the hearing loss. After watching the movie my left inner ear started feeling scratchy.

Over the course of the next few days it felt like I was under water, left ear only until by boxing day I'd say I could only hear about 20% of the sounds getting into my ear. I tried using the phone on the left side of my head then the right side to compare. Water, Q-tips, my finger, they didn't really seem to do anything. I decided to go to a medical center.

An interesting note. Not a lot of medical centers are opened just after Christmas. At least not along Danforth as I walked by a few. Eventually I got to one near Main street (just a bit east on the south side). There I waited in a relatively small line up to see the next available doctor.

What is it about doctors offices that they have to be so grey with fluorescent lighting? And everyone seems glum. Well okay if somethings wrong with you you might be a be a wee bit glum. I suppose that's understandable. I guess I was just happy to know a doctor was on the job until 8pm and that I could find out what the heck was wrong with my hearing.

After sitting on the standard doctor bench/table the doctor, a very friendly individual I might add considering he was working the holiday week, looked into my ear, then my other ear (the good one). He then used the little plastic scoop (see picture above) to pull out an extremely large piece of ear wax.

"Holy Cow!" was my reply. He didn't seem that phased and bragged that he pulled out a piece of crud three times that big out of another patients ear. The doctor was pretty cool as he let me gape in awe and asked if I wanted it as a souvenir. I told him "no" but I did want a picture of it. As he prescribed some Sandoz Pentasone for a minor ear infection I shot a few pictures with my camera.

I was a bit worried when he asked if I had any insurance. My brain raced as I thought I was going to be gouged to buy the stuff. In the end the medication ended up being about $22 for a weeks worth. That wasn't too bad. More importantly I got my hearing back.

Cat-atonic

lazy cat checks out the cat-nip mouse

Today is boxing day, at one point a holiday, now a day to go shopping to find bargins. At least I'm sure that's what Dan would have had us do if he were still around. His sayings were "You can't take the money with you." and "Who ever has the most stuff wins". Not to disappoint, William, Gary and I set out early in the morning to hunt down DVDs, tech toys, and other things on sale. We visited the camera shops, the computer shops, we even set foot in a clothing shop or two (that was Gary's idea).

There really wasn't any insane-o price drops on stuff that I really wanted. Which is a good thing. I really don't need any more "junk" to fill the apartment. By the end of the day at the HMV superstore we made out way back to the car. It was around 5:23pm. That's when we heard what sounded like gun shots went off. We were about a block away in front of the Ryerson campus. At the time we weren't sure what made the sounds. Fire crackers, a bad car.

Gary suggested I go back to the scene of the sounds to take pictures, if there were any to take. I made up my mind (in about two seconds) that I didn't want to do war journalism, gang violence, or any gun shooting photography of any kind. When we got to the car we turned on the radio to see if anything was going to be aired describing what just went on. Granted only five minutes had past.

After dropping off my shopping bags at home I went to visit Chris and Kyoko. There I spent some time with the cat. I tried toying with the cat with a mouse rubbed with fresh catnip. The cat lost interest pretty quickly. From attack cat he became an inactive blob of fur. Bored, lethargic, unmotivated, that cat just lay there squinting at me. "I'm in control of you, not you of me." seemed to be it's thought process when I looked at him. It's funny that.

After watching Madagascar, the animated movie, and going home I looked up the online newspaper. The sounds that we thought may have been gun shots earlier in the day were just that. A 15 year old girl, an innocent bystander, took a bullet to the head and died. Six other people were injured by stray fire.

To think that we were in the area of fire just seconds before kind of gives you a cold feeling all over. A lot of what ifs popped into my mind. I wanted to beat the crap out of the parents of the kids with the guns, just before I started beating the crap out of the kids with the guns. What the hell is wrong with this world?

Christmas Food

Raspberry angel food cake.

One of the great things about being inviting to Cupcakes place for Christmas has got to be the Christmas baking. Her Christmas baking to be precise. Last night's dinner involved a christmas ham. Today's dessert was a raspberry angel food cake and freshly torched chocolate creme brulee.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Go West

TTC hippo

After another long day of sleeping and sleeping in I woke up just in time to get on a subway to ride to the west end, to Cupcake's house. The subway ride was a relatively long commute. Perhaps an hour or so. I fell asleep and woke up to see this hippo riding on the seat across from me.

Carrot Cake

Carrot cake at the restaurant "Ten feet tall"

As the Christmas craziness starts to escalate (people doing last minute gift shopping, food shopping, home decorating, baking, getting ready for visits or visitors, putting up the last minutes christmas lights) with Christmas in just a few days I almost feel like I'm living in a surreal plane of existance with my wonky sleep schedule. The highlight of my day was to wake up at 16:30 and go for breakfast/dinner at a resturant up on the danforth called "Ten feet tall". Actually the going for dinner wasn't planned. I was hungry, Kiri was home early, she lives near the restaurant. It's funny how things just work themselves out.

I ordered a triangular burger, they do not give you a burger shape choice, and fries made of yam. To round off the meal I ordered a slice of carrot cake. The burger and fries were good but the cake was a bit rich for my liking. Why is it that carrot cake icing is always super sweet?

After dinner I seem to recall watching the Exorcist. A movie which I had never seen until now. Just one of those movies that fell through the cracks I guess. After the Exorcist I watched the Scrooge movie with Alastair Sim. Nice,

Christmas Lights at Dundas Square

Dundas Square around 1am

Thanks to the Dresden files, the show with the haunted house, my sleep schedule has been pretty wonky these last few weeks. After the outing with the tubby squirrels I got home and fell asleep with resulted in waking up at 7pm. By the time my brain didn't feel like mush it was about midnight. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep I decided to go out and shoot some stuff with the tripod.

My first destination was the infamous Dundas Square. Known for it's ugliness among most Torontoians it had a lackluster start as security guards would come up to you and tell you that you couldn't take pictures as it was not considered a public space. I'm not really sure how the city managed to approve something like this. Sorry actually I do. It was probably a cash grab of some kind. It boggles the mind.

After a few protests and scathing write ups in various newspapers the powers that be changed their mind about the whole photography thing. That or the security guards didn't think it worth harrasing tourists and photographers anymore.

Dundas Square is one of the most uninviting pieces of concrete in Toronto that is designed, I use the term designed very loosely here, to have people. With the christmas tree, menorah, and string of lights and exploding christmas spheres it's not as bad.

Fat Squirrel

Fat round squirrel

After dropping off a photo CD for a client I was in the bathurst queen area walking north. While walking by the park I noticed a bunch of rotund squirrels searching for more food getting ready for the winter hibernation. They do hibernate don't they? Or maybe they just fatten up so they can have a new years resolution to slim down again.

They must have been fed by other people. As I looked around at them they would come bounding toward me. Probably thought I was another food source. This made it a bit tricky to shoot as they lept in and out focus pretty quickly. I was a bit surprised that they could still run up and down trees and hang upsidedown without keeling over from a heart attack.