The Mailman Hath Not Cometh

Hi folks. As I had said in the title, the mailman hasn’t been delivering to my building since early August and as far as I’m concerned, this is criminal. For one thing, there may be important items coming to those who live in all of the units on all floors and to miss them would be bad. This includes bank statements and phone bills, among anything else that usually comes every so often.

So, why has the mailman not cometh in to deliver our mail? Apparently something had happened to him, recently and some sort of investigation has been going on. After it is over, then we will get our mail again. At least, that is what I had heard as I wasn’t told directly by anyone. My question is, how long will the investigation take? A year? Maybe not, but I am exaggerating to make a point, in that no matter how long this goes on, it feels like an eternity.

I’m sorry that our mailman may have been attacked by someone, or something else may have happened to them while making a delivery. However, this does not mean that mail delivery to our building suddenly stops and we have to get our mail from somewhere else. Mail delivery is essential, whether it is online or physical and especially because not everybody is as mobile as others may be and not everyone wants to be served by someone else, going out to get their mail for them. Another thing is that this is housing and by default, the people in these buildings may be… … unhinged in one way or another. Some have problems with addiction and mental health issues and others may have physical issues, as opposed to physical ailments. When delivering to a housing building, you are taking a risk that the people are friendly and happy to receive mail. However, not everyone may be decent and maybe it was one of those unbalanced residents attacking our mailman, resulting in the mail delivery stoppage. Then again, this may have happened somewhere else, but the result is the same.

Being a delivery person is a risky job in that you may get robbed or attacked, or even killed while making the rounds of all the units and to be honest with you, all manner of risks come with this job and so, while I feel sorry for what it happened to the person who delivers our mail, this should not mean that mail suddenly stops coming to me, or anyone else in my building for that matter. as I said earlier, this is dangerous as there may be important items coming, such as checks, statements, cards, bills and anything else which may or not be in a brown envelope with a window.

I certainly hope that something gives and we get our mail again soon, whether it is the same mailman or not and we can all rest easy, in the knowledge that we are getting everything addressed to us both digitally and on paper. I have to do something soon and it requires something being sent to me and I do not wish to go and get it somewhere else on a wild goose chase. This has to stop and hopefully soon, the mailman will come back and shove mail through my door sooner, rather than later.

Northeast blackout of 2003, 20 Years Later

It is August 14th 2023 and it has been 20 years since a major blackout had occurred during my lifetime and in this post I am going to tell the story of what had happened from my perspective. To review, let’s read about the 2003 Blackout as it had been documented for Wikipedia and then, my story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

On August 13th, I would run out to the record store to purchase an album of various artists I had heard about from talking to someone, who happened to be doing an all-nighter shift on a Toronto radio station. It was the Freddy vs. Jason (Soundtrack) and it has a lot of bands I like on it, from one of my favourite genres of rock music. There are some weird ironies I would find with the lyrics and titles of some of the songs on it, such as When Darkness Falls by a band called Killswitch Engage, The Beginning Of The End by a band called Spineshank and Sun Doesn’t Rise by Mushroomhead, among others. I had been listening to a lot of conspiracy talk radio at the time and I actually believed a lot of what was being told to me and anyone else who was listening. You know? The whole New World Order and the Illuminati, freemasons having a big part in running everything in the world , Bilderberg Meetings every year and all that? When Covid took hold on the world I was back into it briefly and despite that I don’t necessarily subscribe to conspiracy theories, I do pay attention as much as I can to the original theories as I had mentioned above. After the blackout, you can bet that there was a lot of talk about how it had happened and people had called in, saying that they had been informed about what was going to take place. Anyway, I digress.

Later in the evening on August 13th, a radio station I listen to was giving away a DVD of Bob Marley and unfortunately, I don’t remember the title . I do remember being excited, despite that I don’t consider myself a fan of him as such, but I went down to 97.7 HTZFM, from Toronto to St Catharines to pick up my prise I had won the previous evening,.

During the afternoon of August 14th, I left home at around 11:30 AM to go to the bus terminal to pick up my same-day return ticket to and from St Catharines and so far, everything had gone according to plan. I got to St Catharines at around 2:00 PM I left 97.7 HTZFM at about 3:00 PM. By the way, this is the same building which also houses 610 CKTB AM and 105.7 CHRE and when I got there, I picked up my DVD and got reacquainted with somebody I knew who had done evenings and had just returned the month before, from maternity leave. Back then I used to take taxies to and from places I didn’t know how to get to and I would eventually start taking the bus more often, in other cities I would visit.

Anyway, I would get a taxi to the St Catharines Bus Terminal and arrive there before 4:00 PM and I waited for the bus going back to Toronto, which was a Greyhound Canada bus, as was next scheduled to arrive. It was supposed to have been there at 4:15 and had finally made it at 4:40 PM. I got on and listened to the album Ænima by Tool and after it had finished, I must have slept through parts of it and I missed most of the album. However, knowing it as well as I do, I know what is coming next from memory.

After I woke up before the last strains of Third Eye, I let the CD end and then I turned on the radio and all I could hear about was a blackout and this was while I was in Toronto. I should also mention that we were supposed to have been at the Toronto Coach Terminal at 6:00 PM and we arrived at around 7:15 PM? Well, we did eventually arrive and others also had buses scheduled to take them elsewhere north of Toronto and in my case, I had a hard time getting a ride from the terminal on the TTC, because every bus seemed to be full. Thankfully, a kine stranger helped me get home and we walked. Her name was Shefrin and I hope I had spelled it correctly. I was very greatful to her for her help and when I got inside the lobby of my apartment building, the elevators were working on emergency power and I could open the door to get in to the lobby, with my card before hand.

When I had made it into my apartment there was no power and I had nothing to eat that I considered a meal that I could simply take out and chow down on so, I went to sleep and when I woke up about 2 or so hours later, I had electricity. I had my supper which I had intended to have, when I got home and while eating, I turned on my radio to hear music and any talk was all about the blackout. I also turned on my discman to listen to not just CDs, but also the radio on both the AM and FM band. I would hear all about the blackout being the top news story and I was up all night and a good chunk of Friday, listening to any and all radio stations, to hear how they were doing. Some stations only had 60 percent power and some were stronger, such as 97.7 HTZFM and I was able to hear it perfectly at one point, probably because the two Toronto stations were weaker at the time. Sadly, this did not translate to sitting outside and listening to the same radio station on my discman.

I would live with the possibility of having limited electricity to use for a couple of days and back then, I had a landline. I did call some numbers I knew that were not people and only automated answering machines and so far, everything seemed to work, but with announcements about the blackout screwing up bus schedules. On the other hand, my cell phone did not fully charge the battery and that was probably because of the lack of electricity that was available to me. At some point, I did watch the DVD and it was interesting to learn about Bob Marley and I had no idea that he was targeted in a shooting, a few years before he died of cancer and I would read about him and his life on Wikipedia years later.

I wonder if either the blackout, or purchasing my first crank radio in 2005 had planted the seeds for my eventual push to discover and join the wonderful hobby known as either amateur, or ham radio. I know I was thinking about what if something like this happened again and the 2022 Rogers outage was just as bad, but in a different way affecting only my way to communicate with the outside world. The difference with this outage is that we all had electricity and on the other hand, I could only communicate with those who are licensed ham radio operators like myself, throughout the duration of the outage before things were restored. I was lucky in both cases that I got home safely and in the case of the blackout, I didn’t have to throw any food out as the power wasn’t out long enough for anything to go bad.

Anyway, we are lucky to have not had a blackout of this magnitude since then and I hope that we don’t have one like that for a long time, or at least until 2073. By that time I believe that things could be brought back online quicker than 20 years ago. However, if I live that long I may not notice any speed up in pace of the fix from 2003 to maybe even today. After all, there was that Rogers outage I had to deal with last year and I didn’t get my internet back consistently, until later in the night of July 8th 2022. Hopefully, more of us have a temporary means of generating electricity, while there could be such an outage occurring at the time. There needs to be more than gas powered generators and whatever is available, needs to be at a price where anybody can purchase it at any income. I’m sure that there are battery packs out there that could possibly be up to the task, but how easy would they be for anyone to use? Not everyone has sight and accessibility is another issue which needs to be considered as well as price. Anyway, until the next major blackout occurs let’s hope that the light stay on, as well as internet and phone. https://youtu.be/MGoPmgDDQf8

Unwanted & Unwelcome

Attention all Toronto residents who live in Toronto “Housing” and are in the midst of building maintenance, such as redoing a bathroom and the kitchen. Stop them before they make your floor a potential tripping hazard, or while doing the work leave a mess on the floor you walk on, which they partially clean up when finished with the job.

Yesterday I had my bathroom redone without any warning that I could understand, as I am blind and a piece of paper was shoved through my door a few days ago. Also, phoning me is rather intrusive, as I could be in a groove in the middle of a blog post or doing something else. For some odd reason, the emails have stopped coming to me, when I am being notified of work being done. I’m gonna potentially change that by emailing my city counsellor after publishing it.

Yesterday morning, I got a knock on the door and it was housing, whom I am not glad to see and they had come to wreck my bathroom, in order to make it a new one, in favour of those who inspect it. It has a raised floor! Why? This is fucking pretentious and unneeded and could be a potential tripping hazard, to somebody including a little child who may be running around not looking where they’re going and when they feel the slightest raise, they could trip and fall and hurt themselves. Even I could do that if I forget that the floor is a bit higher, as it was before yesterday. It was a flat step from my carpet to get into the bathroom and now, it is a slight rise. Again, why? Also, was haivng a cracked tile floor necessary for my bathroom? My answer is an obvious no because it is just a bathroom and not a place to meet. Unfortunately, those who operate housing in cities don’t see it that way and want a place which is interesting to look at. Not me, as it is just a fucking bathroom and a place to wash and drop a load. Also, these tiles hold moisture longer and that explains why swimming pools use cracked tiles, as opposed to a flat floor surface for standing and for water to cover the bottom of a pool. I am of course talking about most public swimming pools and other outdoor pools may have much the same thing in the water, but not on land. Having the cracked tiles as a part of a bathrooms floor surface is totally unnecessary and it should be flat.

As for the sink, I believe that bathroom sinks should all have a vanity as opposed to a pedestal and especially for guys. First of all, we guys shave and we also have shavers which need charging. Am I right fellas? Putting the charger at the back of the sink or I could potentially knock it off by accident when charging my shaver is poorly thought out and provides less of a secure surface for it to rest on. Sadly, housing does not think of that when they design the plan for the bathroom and guys are left out of the discussion and if you want to charge our shavers, we take a chance of maybe forgetting that we had put it somewhere and accidentally knock it off and maybe break the device? I don’t know, but I think with the vanity is a lot better for guys in the sink with a pedestal. Besides, I live alone and am not dating at the moment and so, once again this is completely unnecessary

Otherwise, the thing I actually like is the shower. I can clean out the crack in my ass easier than I could, from April last year to now. The showerheads, toilets and parts of the sinks were being replaced in April 2022, as a part of an ongoing alleged water conservation program. I obviously don’t believe it and the sound of the flushing toilet is a prime example of this. It is loud and it is louder than it was before it was changed back then so, that is a bunch of bullshit. However, I do like the shower so I’m not completely against what they did.

At some point, housing wants to redo my kitchen and I am going to say a strong no to this, because of what had happened with the bathroom. I t will no longer be my kitchen and it will be Toronto Housing’s kitchen, like the bathroom is also no longer mine. Also, everything which was put in by housing years ago is still intact and functional. I can open doors, drawers, turn on and off faucets and nothing I put on a counter which has weight to it, falls through. How it may look is my problem and not housings and if and when (i-e) my kitchen sink or counter show signs of deterioration (such as what I have mentioned) then I will permit them to redo the kitchen. Otherwise, it is off limits.

However, if you are concerned about how your place looks, more than general safety, go ahead and let housing’s maintenance men do what they do. Let them fill your unit with smoke when drilling and most of all, don’t pay any attention to whether or not they leave things like screws, nails, or anything sharp on the floor which could damage your feet or your shoes while walking around. Also, don’t mind the occasional loss of small items like radios, covers for shavers and anything they handle, when putting things out of the way of tghe work. I hadn’t lost a radio, but a buddy of mine has years ago, when housing was doing major renovations on every single unit, in order to install a heating and cooling system. I will not allow anymore maintenance men in my unit, unless it is absolutely necessary. Basically, things have to be falling apart in my kitchen at a dangerous level, in order to convince me that I should have somebody in there to redo it. Besides, I don’t want a raised floor, like the bathroom. Unlike some people in my building, I am not particularly needy and I don’t appreciate strangers in my unit, being allowed to perform a job without my consent. I only consented to the bathroom because I knew they gonna be doing it at some point. With the kitchen, different story all together and I’ve said what I said above.

In conclusion, I hope that if you are living in Comunity Housing in Toronto or anywhere else in Ontario, I hope that you will not allow strangers in what is essentially you’re home, to do whatever the hell they want with it and change the interior, because management wanted a certain way. I’m sorry, but it’s the right of the tenant which trumps management unless it is something that could be a potential health risk, such as mould and that is a different story all together. I had that problem and I allowed them to come in and paint and get rid of it. Otherwise, they’ve done enough already.