Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on December 11, 2007, at 11:25 am |
They didn’t use a wrecking ball; they used a giant set of jaws.
That’s as far as they got before the engineer or architect (John Cooke? Derek Crain?), ordered everybody to stop the demolition of the Somerset House/Ritz Hotel at the intersection of Somerset and Bank Streets.
Apparently they were doing it wrong. From what I could gather, it was supposed to be only a partial demolition. A plan had been agreed to, and the east wall (with the mural) was supposed to be partially demolished. Instead, they started chewing through the middle of the north wall. And apparently they were doing it in such a way that would make reconstructive efforts more difficult down the road, if it is determined that the building is salvagable.
The engineer (or architect) whipped out some blueprints and everybody gathered around and there was much pointing and talking and excitement.
 
Unfortunately I had to leave because I was frozen stiff and very late for work. I’ll pop back at lunchtime to see what’s happening. When I left the mural was still untouched.
UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
By lunchtime the mural had been nibbled.
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Posted by zoom! on December 10, 2007, at 7:57 pm |
I have an RRSP that is housed over at CIBC Wood Gundy. I don’t have much contact with CIBC Wood Gundy, other than the automated monthly exchange of money and statements. And once in a blue moon I call my broker guy or he calls me and we review my ‘portfolio,’ such as it is.
Every now and then they invite me to something, usually a lecture by some financial expert, but I never go because their events never sound all that interesting.
Until a few weeks ago. They sent me an invitation to an Around the World Wine Tasting Christmas celebration, put on by Groovy Grapes.
Groovy, I thought, that’s right up my alley. And I RSVP’d.
A few days later an email arrived saying there would be a financial expert from Sprott “on hand” at the wine tasting event to answer questions about world economies or some such thing.
Okay, I thought, that’s cool.
A few days later they emailed me the dress code:
 “Members shall conform to appropriate standards of attire at all times. Lounge suit or jacket and tie at all times for male members. Skirt, blouse, jacket, pantsuit, and afternoon dress for female members. Military dress shall be in conformity with the standard generally applicable to male and female members of the Armed Forces. Jackets and tailored shirts (collar and sleeves) are required but no ties, in the Lester B. Pearson Room and ClubRoom until 5 p.m. every day; and on Friday all over the Club until 5 p.m. (jackets must be worn at all times).”
Well, the dress code was a deal-breaker. I don’t mind getting dressed up for weddings or funerals, out of respect for the people involved, but I’ll be damned if I’ll get dressed up out of respect for money. And nobody’s going to tell me what to wear to drink wine. To quote Andrea SK, “It’s. Fucking. Wine. Relax y’all.”
So I emailed my broker guy and said “Greg, that dress code is not my style, so I won’t be attending after all. If you ever have a wine tasting event in a more down-to-earth venue, please let me know.”
And he emailed me back and said simply, “Sorry to hear. Next time hopefully.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but that response just made me feel contemptuous. Maybe I thought he’d say “Oh don’t worry about the dress code, just come and have a good time.”
Bottom line – I will not be dressing up and drinking my way around the world tomorrow evening. And I’m pissed off about it.
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Posted by zoom! on December 9, 2007, at 10:01 am |
Any math whizzes out there? I’ve been trying to wrap my head around a couple of things, and it’s just not wrapping.
1) The CHEO Dream Home. There’s an early bird draw in December, and a grand prize draw in January. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say there’s only one of each: a car in December, and a house in January.
16,000 tickets were sold. Each ticket’s chances of winning the early bird draw are 1 in 16,000.
The winning ticket will be returned to the barrel after the early bird draw.
Each ticket’s chances of winning the main prize draw are 1 in 16,000.
That means the winner of the early bird draw has the same chance of winning the grand prize as anybody else.
But the odds of winning both prizes are much, much lower. So shouldn’t the Early Bird winning ticket have a much, much lower chance of winning the Grand Prize?
2) If I walk 10 kilometers at 5 km/hr, would I use the same amount of energy as if I walked 5 km at 10km/hr?
3) I set my programmable thermostat for 15C during the night, 18C when my alarm goes off, back to 15C when I leave for work, and 20C in the evenings. Is it hugely inefficient to warm my house up for that 45 minutes in the morning before work? And doesn’t it take almost as much energy to heat my house from 15 to 20 degrees as it would to keep it at 20 all day?
Posted by zoom! on December 8, 2007, at 2:01 pm |
 The thing I enjoy most about myself is my obsessive nature. I am not about balance and moderation: I am about serial excess. I used to think it was a problem, or at least symptomatic of a problem, but I don’t worry about it anymore. Now I just dive right in and immerse myself in it, whatever it happens to be.
I love when a new obsession gets ahold of me and sinks its teeth into my every waking moment. It’s like someone flicks a switch and something that never particularly interested me before becomes instantly and completely fascinating.
I love the ravenous research best of all. When you know nothing about something, the world is rich with seemingly endless opportunities to learn more. There are thousands of books and people and resources and experts and branches to explore. Everything, in the beginning, is fresh and juicy and bursting with information.
So. On Wednesday I was walking along Bank Street at lunchtime and I walked by a framing shop/art gallery and suddenly a piece of art in the window made my head swivel.
Some people might have just bought the piece of art and taken it home and hung it on their wall and been satisified with that. Not me. No. I did not buy the piece of art. Instead, I decided to become an art collector.
Within three days I had visited hundreds of websites, amassed a huge set of relevant art links, borrowed two books from the library, contacted the author of one of them, and gone to four art galleries, including an vernissage and a silent art auction preview.
The books I borrowed are The Intrepid Art Collector: A Beginner’s Guide to Finding, Buying and Appreciating Art on a Budget, by Lisa Hunter, and Art for All: How to Buy Fine Art for Under $300, by Alan S. Bamberger.
My plan is to not actually buy any art until I’ve read these books. I want to develop a plan to guide my collection. I’ve learned from my other collections that I shouldn’t unleash my spending power in the earliest phase of a new obsession, because things can change very quickly in the beginning. But I think what I want to collect is works by contemporary local artists.
Last night I went to La Petit Mort Gallery on Cumberland for the Vernissage of the “I Wish I Could Afford Artwork as a Gift” sale. It was fantastic, I loved it.
I wanted to buy all kinds of stuff, but I restrained myself and didn’t buy anything.
 I was especially tempted to buy something by mixed media artist Meaghan Haughian. I adored her art – much of which incorporates words and old photos and paper dolls – and she herself was lovely too. If I had bought something, it would either have been the carousel that somebody else bought, or this piece called She’s on Fire, from her book on the wall. (There are similar pieces in The Tales In Between section of her website – go see!)
Earlier in the day I was at Gallery 101 on Bank (near the closed intersection) where there was a preview of today’s silent auction. I asked about two pieces (The Strip Club and something about a Star), and the woman said I have a very good eye. I wonder if she says that to everybody? I think I have good taste, but the one thing everybody thinks they have is good taste. And some people don’t.
I met a friend of a friend at a party on Georgian Bay, and a few of us went to his place by boat for a drink. This guy was stinkin’ rich and very much into collecting art. Upon entering his house, I was dumbstruck by the unfortunate consequences of his combination of too much money and not enough taste. It allowed him to be tacky in a rather monumental way, which included – among other things – taxidermy, ‘sex rugs’ made of the skins of endangered species, velvet nudes, and a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel.
Posted by zoom! on December 6, 2007, at 8:17 pm |
The sidewalks are in much better shape now. The City’s snow-clearing teams have done an excellent job on almost all the sidewalks I use for walking or running. Interestingly, though, sidewalk conditions seemed to deteriorate as I got closer to downtown. Maybe it’s because the City expects thousands of pedestrians can trample a walkable path just as well as a plow. I don’t know. I do know I wouldn’t want to go for a run on Somerset Street east of the Beer Store.
 I’m not sure what the story is with these shoes and stockings. They were just sitting there abandoned beside a fire hydrant on Somerset Street. Did some woman suddenly come to her senses and realize heels were stupid, especially in the snow? Did she just step out of her heels and march home in bare feet, a changed woman, unshackled and free?
 Here’s a picture I took from the bridge over the O-Train tracks. There’s no story here. I just thought the snow looked cool.
Speaking of snow, I’m feeling bad for the birds these days. All their sources of food have been covered with snow. I was thinking about the possibilities for bird feeder street art. (I’m just throwing the idea out there in case someone wants to do something with it.)
Knitting Club was a little different today. It coincided with a lunch hour webinar that one of our members had signed up for, so we all crowded into her office with our needles and yarn and knit in front of her computer while learning about employer-assisted housing programs in communities with sky-high rents like Calgary, Banff and Vancouver.
 Afterwards, I needed some time with my knitting guru to decipher a pattern. This involved the boardroom, the whiteboard which prints, and a spreadsheet to map out a complicated sleeve. And calculus, a Latin translator and a genie with three wishes. I’ll do the actual spreadsheet on the weekend, but I think I know enough now to understand what the pattern is saying.
Does anyone else think that knitting patterns should all be written in the same style, using the same conventions, and in such a way that one does not need professional assistance to understand them?
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Posted by zoom! on December 4, 2007, at 7:52 pm |
 The walk to work this morning was a bit of a slog. The City seems to have an uneven approach to sidewalk snow clearing. Not only were some sidewalks not cleared, but the snow from the street appeared to have been plowed onto the sidewalks.
This was the sidewalk on Carling Avenue just east of the Royal Ottawa Hospital this morning. The sidewalk on the other side of the street was equally unusable. Pedestrians had no choice but to walk on the street, which is a high-traffic, multi-lane artery. I don’t know how far these conditions extended, because I got the hell off Carling as soon as I could.
The Parkdale Street sidewalks appeared not to have been cleared either, but at least other snow wasn’t plowed onto them. Some of the little streets in the Civic Hospital neighbourhood appeared to have been treated very well by the City’s snow-removal teams. (You don’t think it’s because it’s kind of an upscale neighbourhood, do you?)
Then I got to Somerset. It was really patchy. From Parkdale to the bridge over the O-Train tracks was pretty good. The stretch between the bridge and Booth Street was bad, and not helped by the fact it was mostly uphill.
 It was very nice, as always, right outside the Kelly Funeral Home. They always clear all their snow, not just off the sidewalk but off the street as well. When you’re wading through unplowed snow, it’s always a relief to get to the funeral home and have 30 feet or so of clear sidewalk.
The last time I wrote about the Kelly Funeral Home was in September 2006. Just a couple of days ago I received my first nasty comment on this blog, and it was with reference to that post. I guess I just don’t normally spark much controversy or push anybody’s buttons. But it seems I’ve finally inspired someone to say he hoped I would rot in hell. Apparently John doesn’t take kindly to people disrespecting funeral home staff, and he sees humour as disrespectful.
Years ago I did a work placement in a funeral home because I was thinking about, you know, pursuing a career in the embalming arts.
While I chose not to join their ranks, I was impressed by how funny morticians and other funeral industry types can be. They kept me in stitches for days. I was also struck by how automatically they switched between the two sides of their personality as they moved between the public and private areas of the funeral home. One moment they’d be laughing and cracking jokes, and literally the next moment they’d have that somber and respectful funeral home demeanor, just by stepping through the doorway between the two areas.
So I have reason to believe funeral home staff have a sense of humour, even if Rot-In-Hell John doesn’t.
Now, about the goat. My esteemed blogging colleague, David Scrimshaw, left a comment with a link to the most incredible goat today. I have fallen in love with this goat.
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Posted by zoom! on December 3, 2007, at 11:45 pm |
 There was a lot of action in the closed intersection of Bank and Somerset today, as demolition crews prepared for the big event. Heavy equipment was rolling in. A row of dumpsters was lined up, ready to haul away the carnage of the Somerset House Hotel. Demolition was slated to commence tomorrow or the next day.
But, at the eleventh hour, the old hotel was granted yet another stay of execution.
 The intersection will stay closed a little while longer, while the owner is given another chance to save his heritage hotel. And I have to say I’m happy about that.
I do feel sympathy for the retailers in the neighbourhood. I know it’s not fair to them, especially the Dollar-It owner whose store has been closed for almost seven weeks now.
But I don’t think we should tear down heritage buildings just because they’re cutting into Christmas profits. If this hotel can be saved, I’m in favour of trying to save it. In the grand scheme of things, what’s another week or two when we’re talking about saving a 105-year-old building?
They don’t make buildings like this anymore, and they never will again. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
UPDATE: I loved the Chair’s post today: Requiem for a Tavern.
 It took me an extra 20 minutes to walk to work this morning in the 20cm of overnight snow. It also took me an extra five minutes to get dressed to go outside: boots, flannel-lined jeans, turtleneck, wool sweater, clapotis, parka, hat, hood, wrist-warmer (just one; I’m not finished knitting its partner), Julia’s mittens. I was seriously bundled up and ready for some serious winter walking. The good news is I didn’t get cold on the 100-minute walk. But I did get too hot! It was a lot of work walking through the snow, and by the time I got to Preston Street, the hat, hood and mitts were off.
(It’s too early to tell, but I hope this isn’t one of those years in which the City saves money by ignoring the sidewalks. A few years ago they were absolutely treacherous.)
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Posted by zoom! on December 2, 2007, at 1:07 pm |
 Some people are really good at Christmas. Their homes look and smell all Christmassy in a nice way. I don’t know, maybe they use boughs of holly and cinnamon and ginger and stuff. They bake and decorate and they have good (not tacky) Christmas music playing in the background, and when you go to visit them they hand you a cup of steaming hot chocolate or mulled wine.
I have a confession to make. I’m not one of those people. Honestly, what I like most about Christmas is the week off work. Is that awful?
It’s not that I don’t like Christmassy stuff – I like it when other people do it right. I’m just not willing, I guess, to put in the time and effort to create that Christmas ambiance. Or maybe I don’t think I can do it right. Maybe I think it won’t feel magical if I know (and do) everything that goes into it – all that baking and cooking and cleaning and decorating and stuff.
 (Which reminds me: the other night I was playing Scrabble on Facebook with my sister Deb, and I asked her how her move went. She had just moved that very day. “Oh good,” she said, “Rob and the dogs are sleeping, the tree’s up and decorated, and I’ve got a ham in the oven.”)
Anyway, I think there are three basic Christmas styles:
1) Natural and Traditional
2) Overwrought and Tacky
3) Minimalist
I am a Minimalist but I come from a natural and traditional family and I kind of wish I was more like them in this respect. But like I say, I don’t want to spend all my spare time in December preparing for Christmas.
This is where you come in. I’m hoping some of you might have some Christmas tips for me. I’m looking for some quick and easy ways to make things look and feel and smell Christmassy around here. Quick and easy. I don’t want to make a thousand origami snowflakes or anything like that. I want maximum results with minimal effort.
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Posted by zoom! on December 1, 2007, at 10:44 am |
 As reported earlier, the Prime Minister axed our Portrait Gallery project so he could claim the building for himself. It’s the old US embassy across the road from Parliament Hill. He’s planning to use it for important meetings with foreign dignitaries. And, as you know, a few dozen foreign dignitaries are much more important and deserving of prime Ottawa space than a few million residents and tourists. So screw us.
Now, instead of the trippy portraits that used to decorate the wall around the building, there’s just a plain and dreary wall. All traces of the original plans for a vibrant public space in that building have been erased. Its new future is effectively conveyed by the plain and dreary wall: it will be just another boring, high-security, inaccessible private space on Wellington Street.
 But wait! What’s that tucked around the corner on the very end of the plain and dreary wall??
It’s the brand new NCC Swap Box!
I suspect the NCC qualified for its own Swap Box the same way Larry O’Brien did – by virtue of its notoriety as a Big Stakes Swapper. The Swap Box says “The NCC traded Lebreton Flats for $7 million. What’ll you swap?”
 A portrait is painted inside the Swap Box, and it says “Replacing the Portrait Gallery.” There were two packages of hot chocolate and a package of brass paper fasteners. Since it was a cold and blustery day, I swapped one of Julia’s fleece-lined glasses cases for a hot chocolate.
 This Swap Box even had a bit of Swap Box history painted on its least viewable side. It said “Swap Box: Doing the NCC’s job of beautifying Ottawa since 2006!” (I’ve learned to always look at all the sides of a Swap Box.) (But I think I forgot to look at the bottom of this one.)
I don’t think this Swap Box will last long, so hurry down and see it before the authorities do!
I almost didn’t check my mailbox this morning because it was twenty-six degrees below zero with the wind chill and who in their right mind would deliberately stick their pyjama-clad arm outside into those conditions? I did, and was rewarded with something interesting in my mailbox.
It’s a zine called Lifelike, Issue 02, published by Chris Binkowski in 2005. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but this guy is quite something. He’s 27 years old, lives in Ottawa, is an active and creative multimedia artist (video, writing, photography) and he has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. (I googled it, and it’s not good – people who have it rarely survive beyond their early 30s.) He has a channel on YouTube if you want to check him out. He’s good.
Speaking of 26 below zero, did you hear that Environment Canada is predicting a particularly cold and snowy winter for pretty much all of Canada? Do you believe it?
The old hotel at the corner of Bank and Somerset will be demolished on Tuesday or Wednesday. Way deep down I’m an incurable optimist: I hope the property owner will build a Portrait Gallery in its place.
Don’t ever let anybody tell you it’s easy being an incurable optimist AND a cynic.
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Posted by zoom! on November 29, 2007, at 7:39 pm |
Things got a little heated at lunchtime today over at Bank and Somerset.
These two businessmen, who own nearby stores, were protesting the City’s sluggishness in getting the intersection re-opened for business. Christmas is coming: it’s the most critical time of year for retailers.
 One of them owns Wilde’s, the gay sex shop, and the other one owns the new Vital Health store next door. (There’s something peculiar about that Vital Health website, by the way. It needs an intervention.)
I stopped for photos and a little chat. Before long, there was a knot of passers-by involved in the discussion. A man (not pictured) argued in defense of the old heritage building, saying it was worth saving if possible, and it deserved the time it might take to find out. The two businessmen said it wasn’t possible because of safety and foundation issues, and the deadline extensions were hurting local merchants for nothing.
The other man also argued in defense of the owner of the building, who, he said, is doing everything in his power to preserve a heritage building because he loves it. The two businessmen said they had no argument with the owner, no ill will against him. They just want the City to act in a timely manner and do what has to be done. The debate continued about whether the building warranted continuing efforts for its preservation, and at whose expense and inconvenience.
 Unfortunately that’s about all I can report, because there were too many people interjecting questions and trying to answer and interrupting each other. There did not appear to be much consensus among those present, although there was much head-nodding and general agreement when someone said the City should be more forthcoming with information.
By the time I took this picture, the health store guy and that woman were discussing osteoporosis remedies.
On the bright side, I’m pleased to report that the City has picked up the garbage at the intersection.
And here’s an interesting little tidbit. As I was walking to work through the intersection this morning, I overheard a nearby couple mention the possibility that the property might become an Arts venue. As far as I know, the only place this suggestion has been raised is in the comments on this blog. It seems a bit far-fetched that they would have heard it here, but I suppose it’s possible. Does anyone know of any other discussions taking place about possible future uses for the property at Bank and Somerset?
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