BNJMN

For all the trouble that winter causes, it really does have it's fun side. Skiing, skating, snowmen, snow forts, ice hotels, ice sculptures. Winterlude combines a few of these into a really fun festival just when people usually start tiring of the cold season. I love going down and seeing the exhibits and sculptures and people out enjoying themselves (and Beavertails)! Fortunately I managed to make my way downtown this year (it's been three or four years since I last went - even longer since I made it to the Quebec side of the festivities). There were some very nice sculptures this year. Perhaps my favourite was this interactive domino-like sculpture that had windows that were perfectly aligned. It gave you the tunneling effect of looking in a reflection of a reflection of a mirror, without seeing yourself. Very cool! Perhaps it's because I'm more aware of these kinds of things, but the event seems to get increasingly more branded by sponsors. Rogers and Samsung were on...

Perhaps the best thing about Winter is snow. It's amazing how it can completely change the look of the land- and cityscapes. Unfortunately, in order to be able to get anywhere, it needs to be put somewhere. Often, it's in a corner of a parking lot, which creates a sizable mountain that, as a kid, I loved to climb. Because there were no nearby hills to slide down (that I knew about, but I have since discovered a few...) these mountains of unwanted snow were where I would toboggan and slide and dig out forts. They were canvases where a young Ben could let his imagination go. I haven't climbed any this year. Yet. The flip side of winter is the cold. When you aren't playing, when you have to go from point A to B (or when I'm commuting home, A to B to C to D), the cold is a nuisance. Salt stains everything an undesirable grey, and waiting 10 minutes feels like an hour. Seeing your bus pull away as you run to the platform is the most depressing sight, because it means wai...

One of the small things in life that I truly enjoy is the calm after a storm. One moment, it's thundering and lightning bolts touching down all around, and the next, the sky is clear and the sun is beaming, as if it's happy to be back. Maybe it's the quick reversal of weather that intensifies the beauty that's all around that makes me not take it, at least for a short while, for granted. Last week, I had a moment when I was waiting for a bus, after the big "snowmageddon" (and I use that term in quotes, because it wasn't a bad storm at all, at least not by Ottawa's standards) where, yes, it wasn't the best weather to be commuting through, but the next morning had a certain crispness to it. It was calming, despite the traffic zooming by. It's that feeling that, if it could be bottled, I could make a fortune. I took a picture instead. And yesterday, it had started snowing in the afternoon. Seemingly out of nowhere, huge flakes began to fall slow...

Day five was fun. I arrived at work an hour and a half early (when rides are offered, you don't really want to push your luck). This allowed me the opportunity to sit down and have breakfast with a coworker. Subway breakfasts have become boring ever since they stopped actually preparing eggs and stopped carrying round 4" buns; they're microwave-ready egg patties leave me with an underwhelming 'meh'. I learned that there was freezing rain going on, so thankfully another coworker offered me a ride home. On Day Six of this wondrous OC Transpo bus strike, I did the inevitable: I walked to work. With a car, there are half a dozen different routes to take to get there, and two buses (that take the same basic route). That said, there's no convenient way to actually walk there, not without having to overshoot and circle back, or walking from point A to point B to point C to the Destination. It's all very awkward, and a lot of it has to do with how poorly planned ou...

I went to Cornwall (city south of Ottawa, on the Ontario-New York border) to make sure a window was installed at my friend's house. Aside from a brief visit to Niagara falls in the early 90s, this is the closest I have ever been to the US. It took about an hour and a half to get there, and all I could think was "in an hour and a half, I could almost get from home to Carleton University, and back by bus and O-Train". Or not, since it was the third day of the strike. While there, my friend's dad and I begun work on a project that we have. A while back, I may have hinted at something cool I was working on. My friend's dad writes lots of articles about Nepal. What I had done for his birthday was edit and compile a number of them and make them into a book, using Blurb software. The end result was very good. We've decided to use it as a starting point to refine the book and make it sellable. We worked a bit on it, changing a few things here and there. We would have ...

The benefit of not having buses is that I won't hear the early morning bus go by if I'm up at 4AM and 5AM. I haven't been up that late in a long time. I had to go to school for a meeting, so I walked. I brought along my newly-acquired snowshoes so that I could take the bike path that cuts through the Centrepointe area. This path is faster than taking any major roads from my house. After the recent blizzard, I figured the path would be travelled, but difficult (hence the snowshoes), but to be surprise, it was completely ploughed! On my way home, I donned the snowshoes and walked around Centrepointe park - at least until the battery in my camera died. Is walking a realistic alternative to public transit? It is in some cases. For instance, the walk to school was a pleasant one, given that the weather was nice. And to be honest, it isn't something I've ever done. The only time I had not taken the bus to get to school was the one time I biked along that same path earlier...

Building Christmas Shirley Temples Fried Art 1408. Scary. OooOOoOO. Long line of laptops. Creative foot positioning Guitar Hero is a game for "everyone"... but song on their slowest setting sound terrible. The snow is falling! A made a snowman in 2 minutes at Cat's suggestion. The random snow-dirt on the bus reminds me of Santa's sleigh. That is a sidewalk. William Shatner is everywhere... Pirates lamp. Expensive. Not for me. Naturally, light bulb is not included. Winter seems to be here. I was sceptical after the first bit of snow that we got, but since then, we've received a fair amount. Probably the same amount that we had by February last year. Then again, last year was a bit lacking in the whole frozen precipitation department. I just want the snow to be sticky enough to start sculpting! School-wise, I'm in the home stretch. By this time next week, this first term of the new program will be behind me. To prepare for exams, I'm not working from Saturda...