Tollywood

Our street became a film set yesterday, for a scene in the ABC pilot 'Clementine'. Actually less 'yesterday' than last night. The drama apparently required cover of darkness, though darkness on film seems to demand an awful lot of light.

When we lived in the rental house, there were several occasions on which the nearest street corner got blocked off to film car chase scenes. That sounds dramatic but it wasn't really so different from the normal traffic of buses, trucks, and so forth, and also took place early in the morning. Once I got yelled at by a Toronto police officer on security detail for the crew (what a great use of our tax dollars) because I walked out of my front door at an inopportune moment. 'You'll ruin the continuity!' he barked. I leaped back inside. A while later a member of the film crew made a point of coming by and making nice, so I wouldn't write angry letters to Rob Ford, or the newspaper.

But here, last night, the filming made a much bigger difference to the neighbourhood, perhaps because it is such a quiet street normally. The focal house, fortunately, was 8 or 10 down from us and on the opposite side of the street, so we didn't have the bright lights blazing in the window at two o'clock a.m. Still, I am kind of hoping the series tanks. We don't really want them back. Is that NIMBYism, even if it's in the front yard?

By the way, though the photo, taken yesterday, shows the timid appearance of grass under melting ice, today we had a blizzard. Enough already! I mean it.

Heated subject

Furnace is working. It was the third widget. Moral: always get a second opinion, especially if the second opinion mitigates for a less costly solution than the first. Also knock on (BrE: touch) wood.

The Hearth of the Matter

Our furnace is on the fritz. This is terribly bad news when one is regularly waking up to temperatures of -15 or -18. That’s centigrade, but it is still MINUS FIFTEEN. Or MINUS EIGHTEEN. We have two different furnace repair guys telling us two different things: 1) it can be repaired! Just get a new widget! Or 2) it can’t be repaired! Get a new furnace! Each repair guy has his own backer amongst our Board of Advisors. We have no idea who is right and who wrong. We just know it gets mighty cold with no heat. We’ve got electric space heaters plugged in, we keep the stove burner turned on in the kitchen, and the furnace goes on sometimes, but it’s not good. Not good at all. Whose bright idea was it to build a city here, anyway? A country? Have people not wondered why 90% of the Canadian population snuggles right up against the US border? I’m back to my fantasies that the War of 1812 turned out otherwise, and that the Eastern Seaboard today belongs to Canada, right down to Key West. That’s probably treason coming from an American citizen, but I’m a very cold American citizen. Just think: universal health care, decent schools, and subtropical climate. Heaven.

Winter Games

On television from Toronto we watched the Olympics in Sochi, where top skiers, skaters, snow-boarders, and bobsledders competed in temperatures that were downright balmy compared with the brutal frost-biting we’re experiencing here. The cold weather is record-breaking, apparently. ‘Worst winter since Noah built the Ark’ read the headlines (or something like that). It’s a very strange season. Every place we have lived as a family has suffered this winter: drenching rains and disastrous floods in England, drought (then floods) in California, and here an ice storm followed by loads of snow and thirty-one ‘severe cold weather alerts’. Normally there are five or six, I believe (but am not checking). And winter’s not over. I’m guessing we’ll hit forty. There’s just something biblical about all of this.

I’ve always enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics, and usually take up ice-skating every four years as a result. Not this winter. I own my own ice skates (which still surprises me) but have had no wish to don them and head for the nearest outdoor rink. Too darn cold. I’ve skied once this season, and the younger children (plus the dog) have gone sledding multiple times, but the allure of winter sports has diminished considerably. ‘Embrace the winter,’ we were told when we moved to Canada, and I’ve tried, but it’s tough, more like wrestling than hugging this year. An American friend who recently became a Canadian citizen tells me that to pass the citizenship exam I will need to prove that my entire family has skates and hockey gear (does that include the dog? Must check), that husband and I regularly get up before 7 a.m. on weekends to take children to hockey practice (we will have to take someone else's children), and that we expend a set proportion of our annual income on beer (do we have to drink it, too?). I hope she is jesting, but then again, recalling that my Cambridge-educated, England born and bred husband had to spend a full day taking an English proficiency exam it’s just possible that R. is speaking the plain truth.

On the subject of friends, another one of mine, Jennifer Berdahl, has performed an interesting analysis of Olympic medals won at Sochi per country in comparison with the countries’ gender equality scores. While it might not be surprising that countries more committed to upholding women’s rights and opportunities have more women winning medals, the interesting thing is that those countries’ men also win more medals. Check it out: http://jberdahl.blogspot.ca/. I am hoping she repeats the analysis for the Summer Olympics medal-winners.