Workplace Photoshoppery

Considering I'm suffering through a slow Friday at work, I found this mildly appropriate...

















Cheers.

143 years young

Happy Birthday Canada!

Where's my cake?

Where the hell did June go?

I haven't blogged since June 6.

I just haven't felt like it.

So, for anyone who is concerned about my well being, I'm still here. Not much else going on, just here. Here's June in a nutshell:

• Kim is still looking for work

• The city is still on strike, the taxis are still on strike, my oldest graduated from grade school

• Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays all died

• I lost my driver's license due to an unpaid speeding ticket, and got it back within two weeks

• Windsor hosted the Red Bull Air Races (during the strike)

• We had a visit from distant relatives from Texas and showed them our fair town, as well as piled up garbage

• My daughter got taller?

• My nephew celebrated his 19th birthday, and therefore was taken to a bar for the first time by his father and I

• Chrysler minivan workers went back to work after being off since April

• The US military pulled out of Iraqi cities and towns

• We rebuilt our backyard and purged the crap from the house

I'm sure there's more but that's still a lot of blog fodder missed. Maybe I didn't write because there was too much going on. Maybe I was stuck to the TV too much trying to keep up with all going on in the world. Maybe I just didn't want to.

I promise to get back into it, I will start again for all you 12 people who actually read this.

See ya next month.

Windsor in the summer

I'd like to invite all my out of town friends to visit us here in beautiful Windsor this summer. With the gracious assistance of the City administration and CUPE locals, we've redecorated the place for the summer festival season, as well as implemented some new environmental policies.

The first thing you will notice is that city owned lands such as parks and rights of way are now being left to grow. This 'naturalization initiative' served two purposes, first it allows for more natural habitat for wildlife, such as birds and small animals, raccoon, skunks, rats, etc.

Secondly, it reduces the amount of CFCs being let into the atmosphere by scores of gas sucking lawn mowers. The result of this initiative will be cleaner air for all, including the wildlife. In the parks, you can see our children playing in the tall grass, games of hide and seek have never been so fun! The kids are loving it. They can also engage the wildlife in a more natural environment - those on the east side no longer have to drive to the west side to see the Ojibway Nature area. A natural extension of that unique environment is spreading across the city.

A new attraction this year is 'Art in the Meadow', formerly known as Art in the Park. However, some vandelous citizens who don't share the city's vision, cut all the grass last week at Willistead. There are always elements of society who rebel! Sadly, there is only a week of growth today to enjoy this unique natural event.

This new vision has also had side effects that were only dreams - The pesky Corvette show at Dieppe park every year has moved to LaSalle this year. Really, who want to go to a park and see a bunch of old cars sitting on the grass. We can see old cars parked on every street in the city, we don't really need them on our green spaces as well. These guys get the right one day every year to drop their 'prize' cars on the grass, getting in the way of people walking their dogs and playing frisbee.

The city has also decided that the people of Windsor are too dependent. Taxes are being wasted on having dozens of trucks fan out every day to do for the citizens what they should do themselves - clean up their own mess. How often do we tell our children to clean up their own messes, there is no butler to come along behind them. The city has taken this to heart with the citizens. We are now expected to get off our lazy computer loving TV watching lazy asses, and pick up after ourselves. Taxes will be redirected toward other city projects that are much more useful and tourist friendly than garbage and recycling, such as a canal through our downtown core. A worthy project bound to attract tourists and wildlife alike. In the meantime, we will pick up after ourselves, having learned a valuable lesson from the decision. We really are a lazy group! The landfills are benefitting too, not being filled up on a daily basis with trash from over 200,000 people. A lot of people are now going back to basics, composting, recycling, and just simply throwing out less crap. We all win!

This philosophy also extends to our public spaces. The city has redecorated its parks with carefully placed items we no longer want. The intention here is to remind us of the items that can be thrown out, with visual demonstrations of why - do you want your yards looking like this? Then take care of it. Essentially these city owned garbage piles are advertisements to us.

We should all enjoy our new Windsor. Back to basics, back to nature. The City and CUPE have done their parts to change this city, we should all too. So come visit us this summer, with festivals like Summerfest, BluesFest, Red Bull Air Races (which sadly, cut the grass), and others. We can all enjoy nature again without the insescent hum of lawnmowers and garbage trucks. We can hear the geese and the pigeons. We can see small animals that normally wouldn't visit us, we can admire true nature. I would like to take this opportunity to declare this summer in Windsor Naturefest.

Welcome to our beautiful city.

Add this to the garbage pile

The striking Inside and Outside workers in Windsor have now kept us piling our own trash for seven weeks. Garbage piles abound, the grass isn't cut anywhere on any city property, no city services except the essentials are being provided, and right around the corner is our festival season. Yeah.

Art in the Park, The Red Bull Air Races, Summerfest, Blues Fest, and countless other events that always bring the promise of a boost to our economy. And with the current recession, man do we need the boost. But the question now begs itself, what will this strike do to the events? Will CUPE allow them to happen? So far during this strike there have been several incidents of assaults against contractors, strikers actually showing up at the mayor's house to picket, alleged attempts at sabotaging contractors, and more. It's getting nasty. Neither side is budging on the issues, and neither side is making any allies. They are ridiculously far apart on the issue of post retirement benefits. In a nutshell, the city wants to end benefits to new hires in order to save money. Benefits that would only affect people hired from ratification onwards. Hey, I don't have benefits, neither do thousands of others. While I applaud the union's efforts to protect the future of their members (or future members), come on now. This is not exactly an issue that will affect anything now, let's get back to work and figure that one out after the trash is picked up. We're talking about something that won't be an issue for 40 years!

On that note, here's how one union member has earned her place in this dispute. Draw your own conclusions:

I'm not making any comments on this. It speaks for itself. I do however, feel that everyone needs to see this.

This needs to end now, before someone gets hurt. We are all residents of Windsor, regardless of what side you're on. I believe this is the straw that will break the camel's back on this strike. Maybe it's the impetous to get back to the table and resolve it. Neither side is going to like seeing this crap, and if this gets swept under the rug, more is bound to come.