Returning to Toronto…
3 minute read
March 10, 2019, 12:17 PM
In about a month, I’m going traveling. Elyse and I are going to Toronto for about a week, and we’re going to see as much as we can in the five days that we will have on site. My goal is to see as many Today’s Special filming locations as possible. I’ve done a lot of research on these for the new version of the Today’s Special site that I’m still working on, and have written about these filming locations in the past. I plan not only to visit the store again, but also a whole lot of others. Meanwhile, Elyse has given me a list of stuff that she wants to see – a lot of it elevators – and we’re going to work as many of those in as we can as well.
It’s funny about what I’m doing similarly to my original trip to Toronto back in 1999, and what I’m doing differently. We’re staying the Chelsea Hotel at Gerrard and Yonge, just like I did last time. I booked a deluxe room, just like I did in the nineties, which should place us on a relatively high floor. Mom and I had room 1667 back in 1999, and then I suppose that we’ll see what they give us this time around. I would laugh if we got room 2137, which is also the number of Elyse’s favorite Metrobus. We’ll see, I suppose. From the photos that I saw, though, the Chelsea has been renovated since we were there before, so the Chelsea will be a very different experience than before, as I imagine that everything will look quite different. The rooftop bar is now a fitness center, for one. And speaking of the rooftop, unlike last time, when I was just under the age requirement to go on the roof deck (you had to be 19, and I was 18), and Mom brought me in anyway, I now am well above the age requirement to go in there.
I also wonder if the fire alarm will go off this time, like it did back in 1999. I remember being a little uptight about that whole situation before. After all, all of my experience prior to this was that if the fire alarm sounds, you leave the building. They only evacuated three floors: the fire floor, and the floors immediately above and below. I found out later that it was a relatively minor electrical fire on the 20th floor that was the source of all of the commotion. Nowadays, I know a lot more about how high-rise fire alarm systems work, and might be a bit more sedate should something like that happen again. I wonder if it still has those Pyrotronics pull stations. Funny, though – I still remember what their alarm sounded like almost twenty years later. That was the first time that I had ever heard a voice evacuation system, or a two-stage system. It was memorable, but also a bit unnerving, since this was well outside of my experience, plus it was getting close to the time that we needed to leave to head home.
Continue reading…
Home organization…
5 minute read
February 28, 2019, 8:33 AM
I suppose that home design is a continuing evolution. There’s the first wave of home organization, which is mainly about making moving boxes disappear, and then there’s that second wave later on where you come up with a more sustainable solution, after you’ve had time to think about how things should go. I recently did this with the back bedroom, where I put it through a second wave of organization. The back bedroom has always been a bit of a multipurpose room. I can inflate my air mattress in there, and it becomes the guest bedroom. It’s something of a playroom as well, as Elyse has used it to build Lego sets. It’s also the home library, as that’s where I keep my books and videos and such. The closet is a “miscellaneous storage” area, and is an open design. It had an Elfa shelving system in it when I moved in, and it was laid out for hanging clothes at that time. I organized the linen closet in the hallway at the same time that I did this project, since I was moving things between both spaces. I had previously reorganized the linen closet in order to make the shelving arrangement more compact, and discovered how inefficient that space was.
Here’s what both spaces looked like before I started working on them:
Back bedroom closet. Note that everything is just kind of thrown in there. We did this in order to quickly get the room operational ahead of a guest’s coming to visit, so that we could put them in here rather than in the living room.
Categories: House
I want to see a primary challenge in 2020…
6 minute read
February 18, 2019, 2:20 PM
So with the 2018 midterm elections behind us, that means that it’s presidential season again. This one is already shaping up to be an interesting one, with a large field of Democratic candidates, and a few possible primary challengers for Donald Trump.
As of this writing, there are eleven declared candidates on the Democratic side of things. A big field like that should produce a good nominee. By comparison, in 1992, the last time that the Democrats (or anyone) unseated a sitting president, there was a field of nine candidates. At this point, I am taking a watch-and-see attitude, because I consider it to be too early to really judge it all yet. I expect that we will see even more candidates emerge on the Democratic side before it’s over, and there is still much to happen before I really dive in and pay attention to them like I mean it. I’m more hopeful about certain candidates than others, but again, it’s still too early.
In the meantime, I am more interested in what the Republicans are doing at this stage in the process. As I indicated in the title, I want to see Trump fend off a primary challenge from within his own party. I have seen lots of discussion and speculation on possible Republican candidates to primary the president, and they all seem like they have potential. I’ve heard Utah senator Mitt Romney‘s name get thrown around as a potential primary challenger, along with former Ohio governor John Kasich, former Senator Bob Corker, and Maryland governor Larry Hogan. In addition, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld has formed an exploratory committee, though hasn’t formally declared. All of them seem like decent enough politicians. They should run.
Categories: National politics, State and local politics
It’s been a year since the car fire…
5 minute read
February 7, 2019, 1:18 PM
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day that I lost my Kia Soul in a massive fire. I’ve chosen to commemorate the occasion with a photo set called “Remembering the Soul“, which looks back over the entire life of the Soul, from test drives to the end. I made the set in part for Elyse, because she had a harder time getting over the fire than I did, and I also wanted to put the fire in perspective with the rest of the Soul’s life in an attempt to somewhat curate the way that she is remembered. In the past year, it’s been very easy to think of the Soul only for the fire, because the last memories with her involved standing on the roadside and watching her burn to death. But there were quite a few happy years and wonderful memories made prior to that, and the photo set is a reminder of that, even if she never made it to 100,000 miles.
Meanwhile, in the intervening year, I’ve watched as Hyundai and Kia have gotten some major criticism for other fires in their vehicles, including another 2012 model Soul in Virginia. From what I can tell, it’s involved the Hyundai Sonata and Santa Fe, and the Kia Optima, Sorento, Sportage, and Soul. Most recently, I’ve seen a recall that focuses on the above named models, minus the Soul, and it seems to explain everything adequately as far as my fire goes. According to an article on the subject:
Hyundai and Kia started recalling 1.7 million vehicles in 2015 – about 618,000 of which are Kias – because manufacturing debris can restrict oil flow to connecting rod bearings. That can cause bearings in 2-liter and 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines to wear and fail. The problem can also cause fires. The repair in many cases is an expensive engine block replacement.
Categories: Honda HR-V (2018), Kia Soul
Looking back on some old photos…
3 minute read
January 29, 2019, 1:32 PM
Recently, Elyse and I were coming home from Frederick on a night with a very bright full moon. The discussion turned towards how it was moonlight that was making everything so bright. I was no stranger to this concept, and remembered a set of photos that I shot on July 31, 2004. There, I was up on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia near Rockfish Gap, shooting photos after work using Big Mavica with the tripod, under a full moon. It was late at night, but the photos might have almost led you to think otherwise:
Categories: Blue Ridge Parkway, Photography
Why was I afraid of this as a child?
3 minute read
January 18, 2019, 1:16 PM
Remember this segment from Sesame Street episode 1578, where Gordon talks about rain?
For some reason, that segment, which I called “Gordon in a wig”, terrified me as a small child. I watched it once, and apparently, didn’t like it. After that first viewing, I would turn the television off whenever it came on.
Categories: Television
I have so many great ideas for photography, and I want a banner year…
4 minute read
January 12, 2019, 1:24 PM
Let’s admit – 2018 was kind of a bust when it came to photography. I had plans, but none of them really came to fruition, with the exception of my trip to Centralia in May. Even the big road trip in October produced only tepid results. Most of that can be attributed to extremely poor luck when it came to the weather. I got rained out almost every single time I planned to do something exciting. Sure, we’re not in a drought situation anymore (far from it), but I have a shortage of newer material, which affects other parts of the site.
That said, I have lots of plans for photo sets. I keep a list of ideas, but unfortunately, due to the rate that these shoots get accomplished, I have referred to the list as “The place where photo set ideas go to die.” A lot of the list contains infrastructure sites, such as tunnels and bridges, both locally and on the road in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. I also want to do some explore-the-town photo sets, again both locally and on the road. I also want to do a few reshoots of old subjects that I think that I can do better now than I did way back in the day. See Richmond’s Canal Walk from 2002 and Richmond 2013 for an example of this. Here are two photos of the same subject – one from the 2002 set and the 2013 set:
2002 photo.
Categories: Photography, Schumin Web meta