The Taste of Erie Street Festival began tonight in Via Italia.  The festival is part of the International Dragon Boats for the Cure fundraising weekend.  A band played some awesome 70s pop tunes.  More photos below.

Originally published at Windsor Visuals - a windsor photoblog. You can comment here or there.

Firefighters quickly extinguished a blaze at a 735 University Ave. E. on Friday night.  The dwelling had reportedly had its hydro cut during a previous fire several months ago.

Originally published at Windsor Visuals - a windsor photoblog. You can comment here or there.

i. Rec me your favorite SPN stories written in the past year! Or link me your favorite recs lists. I have a lot to catch up on.

ii. Or tell me what music you are listening to right now, since we are talking about music. Is there anything better than driving on empty country roads in the summertime with the windows down and the radio cranked up? No. No, I don't think there is.

iii. Or tell me what I should write now that my remix is off to beta:
Poll #1428002
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which cliche_bingo story should I write today?

I guess I feel like writing about the ladies today.

iv. Wow, the reactions on my flist are making me really glad I don't watch Torchwood anymore. :(

Everybody has listened to this clip, right? Right.

Do we dare hope for Fever-type pop sound without the painfully pretentious, misogynistic lyrics? I would be okay with that.

Gosh. Now I'm all interested in what this new album will sound like.

♥

Phog lounge in downtown Windsor is set to party and celebrate their victory in CBC Radio 3’s “Searchlight” competition from back in February.  The contest narrowed down 116 live music venues all over Canada to determine the best local music venue in the land.

Phog Phest takes place on Saturday from 1pm to 1am.  The festival will be an awesome celebration of local musical talent.  Check out the poster below, plus learn about a few other events in the area this weekend.

Originally published at Windsor Visuals - a windsor photoblog. You can comment here or there.

Is there anything more annoying that somebody who comes in and starts nitpicking plot lines MONTHS after the episodes have aired?

( 4.08 through 4.10 )

Not Related To Supernatural: It warms the cockles of my cold, jaded heart to see how many people are including utterly gratuitous cages in their prompts on bandom_hc. *proud*

(I did not actually know what a cockle is, so I had to look it up. Apparently it's a clam. Good to know!)

I really need to write the last bit of my remix. But I only slept about two hours last night. My brain has already shut down for the day. *sigh*

Like anybody even cares! I have started watching SPN season 4, even though I am already thoroughly spoiled for about half of it and am clued into the other half by general fannish osmosis.

But whatever, I'm going to ramble about television episodes rather than discussing how epically fucked up and twitchy my week has been and continues to be.

( 4.01 through 4.07 )

Man. I need more coffee. *caffeine jitters*

It's 5 a.m. Why am I awake? This is not acceptable.

THINGS:

bandom_hc: The Really Really Ridiculously Cliche Bandom Hurt/Comfort Challenge. I'm going to leave FIVE HUNDRED MILLION PROMPTS about boys being locked in cages. Just watch me.

reel_startrek: Star Trek movie AU challenge. For any and all Star Trek canons or RPF.

Fire broke out at the historic ADLER building in olde Ford City, most commonly known as Drouillard Rd.  The fire apparently started in an extension to the Adler Bakery at 992 Drouillard, which housed tenants.  When I arrived, while walking down an alley to the scene, power was shut off to the neighbourhood and adjacent neighbourhoods past Strabane Ave.

Originally published at Windsor Visuals - a windsor photoblog. You can comment here or there.

So I guess I can hold a fannish grudge for about fourteen months, but no longer. After that it just takes too much effort.

And the Angels Sang a Chorus of "Going Down, Going Down, Going Down Now"
Supernatural. Castiel, gen, PG-13. 1400 words. For the cliche_bingo square "A day in the life."
After the apocalypse is averted, the angels of the Lord return to Heaven for a reunion that is holy and joyous and righteous and really fucking boring.

( Castiel is cheating again. )

Back in June, Transit Windsor introduced six of eighteen of its New Flyer DE40LFR Hybrid Buses.  The new buses are on the road, serving the Crosstown 2 and Transway 1A and 1C lines.

Using a system called parallel hybrid-electric, the buses start out by leaving the curb in electric mode using GM Allison Ep40 Electric propulsion.  The buses, when in electric mode are nearly as quiet as a passenger car from 10 metres away (producing 79 dB of sound), and remain quiet – without the usual belching diesel plume — until the vehicle reaches around 20 km/h.

Then the GM-Allison transmission blends power from the clean-diesel engine and the nickle metal hydride batteries (located on the roof) for cruising speed up until around 60 km/h where the vehicle switches entirely to its 8.9L Cummins ISL diesel engine for highway speeds.

One of the other neat features of these buses are that they use what’s called regenerative braking — when the buses slow down, the energy produced by braking is transferred back to the NiMH batteries.

Each bus cost Transit Windsor $639,000 for a total of $11.4 million — only $1.79m of which was paid by Windsor taxpayers (Ontario and Ottawa picked up the rest of the costs).

Transit Windsor made a great step forward in mass transit with this purchase, and part of Windsor’s “service delivery review” aims to redraw many of the transit routes through Windsor to eliminate duplication of service and length of transit time.

Originally published at Windsor Visuals - a windsor photoblog. You can comment here or there.

I already have some ideas for my cliche_bingo card, but borrowing a page from somebody on my flist, I thought it would be fun to invite some prompts too.

I know I'm not always very good about filling prompts when I ask for them, but I really do love writing to prompts and requests. It's kind of like cooking for people: it's a fun way to make somebody happy by doing something I enjoy doing anyway, if that makes sense.

ANYWAY. Want to give me prompts based on my bingo card?

( this is my card )

Bandom (PATD-in-whatever-form-splintered-or-whole & MCR mostly, not so much the other folks). ST:XI, possibly TOS too. Harry Potter. Psych. Criminal Minds. Merlin. Leverage. Even - I can't believe I'm saying this - Supernatural* (but seriously, look at some of those prompts, I'm not blind). Doctor Who (but not Torchwood, as I'm so far behind on that I'll likely never catch up). SGA (although mostly I love writing SGA crossovers with other fandoms rather than SGA-only stories).

* No, haven't yet watched more than 2-3 eps of season 4, but I may get around to watching it eventually as I've currently reached the point where I've rewatched my Criminal Minds DVDs so many times I'm actually contemplating becoming a serial killer and maybe need something new to watch in addition to ST:TOS. In other words, don't worry about spoiling me or anything.

Thinking about these cliche prompts amuses me greatly, and also makes me think a lot about non-obvious approaches. Like - "speech-deprived," normally that would immediately mean "can't talk for some reason," but what if it's an Uhura story about being unable to communicate with a new species? That would be awesome. And "physical imperfections" makes me want to write the Pete & Mikey backstory for the space opera AU, even though "having half your body destroyed by a flesh-eating disease and rebuilt into a cyborg" is probably well beyond "imperfection" on any scale. And, jeez, minor characters. Some of my absolute favorite stories I've written in HP are about minor characters, so it's almost like there are Too Many Possibilities for that one. I don't even know which fandom would be most fun.

Right. So. Just prompt me. Let me use your imaginations for the power of evil good evil stories.

In other not so verbose matters, have you seen this movie?!?



also,


Is it ANTI_GAY & ANTI_TRANS?

Are we being eaten by our own, the way dogs do to other dogs?

I watched it while high on expectedly potent Canadian ganja so I couldn’t tell.

Happy birthday tree_and_leaf!

This is a good day for birthdays, one of my best friends in RL has her birthday today also.

I like to talk about my stories, so here is a meme thingy, from thistlerose:

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

Any story is fair game, no matter how small or ancient.

I need to finish my remix, but instead I am reading fanfic. I am the most laziest today. But at least I finally showered and washed the smoke scent out of my hair. It was stupidly chilly last night (50 degrees! in July!) and we had a campfire and drank wine and roasted marshmallows and it was fun.

When I was in college my fellow students and I came up with a campfire theory. We theorized that there are two types of people in the world: those who sit by a campfire peacefully still, and those who sit by a campfire unable to resist poking it constantly with a stick.

Poll #1425544
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which type of campfire person are you?

Well, we're coming to the close of our fifth full day in Sweden. We took the redeye, and KLM provided us with access to their VIP lounge, which had snacks and free drinks, and was a lot quieter than the main terminal where the hoi polloi were being paged for delaying their flights. The plane trip itself was fine. KLM from Toronto to Amsterdam offered personal TVs, and we scored the best seats on the plane, so there was a lot of legroom. I watched Sunshine Cleaning, and the good half of Watchmen. During the three hour layover, I felt like the Narrator from Fight Club. Everything seemed like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy...

A quick jaunt to Stockholm, and Kent picked us up at the airport. In the cab, he talked about living in the poor area of the city, and how that gave him a little financial freedom to do as he pleased. In fact, he said, he lived in the attic, so it was really cheap. We get to his building and the area seems fine. He takes us into the Smallest Elevator On The Planet, big enough for the three of us when we all held our breath. The door opened like a fridge, and when the elevator was moving you could touch the moving wall. Terrifying.

So we get off, and he said that the elevator doesn't go to his apartment, we have to go up some stairs. So we walk up these beautiful old marble stairs to this absolutely amazing apartment. Lesson learned: Kent is a filthy liar.

Our time here has been pretty laid back. Kent's wife, Gordana, has made us three solid (and amazing!) meals a day, and resists any attempt to assist with anything. I got yelled at for trying to clean up the table after dinner one night. Some mild touristing has been done, visiting the old city and doing a boat tour around the palace and into the Baltic. Tuesday we're taking the ferry to Gotland through Saturday. There was some talk about going to Rome for a couple of days, or perhaps Montenegro, but we likely won't have time, as next Sunday we'll be heading to the south of Sweden to spend three or four days with Linda's grandparents.

We're teaching her our hosts to play Settlers of Catan tonight, though I've been informed there may be an alcohol-related impediment to that.