And now the summer …

I’ve been meaning to post about the coming of real spring, but I dragged my feet and summer is already here. The mercury is reaching the 30s – do we still use mercury in thermometers?  I will have to look that up.

But meanwhile, here’s something other than the weather.

Sometime in the fall, the engineering students at U of T, having nothing better to do (just check out their Timetable!), built a Wall-E on the side of the Sandford Flemming building.

Across from Wall-E, looking at him from the old Observatory (now Student Union building) they painted EVE’s head on the observatory dome.  Wally-E and EVE looked longingly at each other across King’s College Circle for about a week or so, until Wall-E was torn down by … people or the elements (Oh, my goodness! The weather, again!?!!) and EVE was left staring south-west into the distance.

Spring is here!

HAH!  No, just kidding.  It’s not.  In fact, no one believes that it shall ever come again.  It’s official, we’re in Narnia during the days of the White Witch, folks!  If you were to bump into Mr. Tumnus, he’d be wearing a parka and would be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder.  He’d be stuffing his face with Turkish Delight to take the edge off.  Sad business…

Gone are the days when we spoke of the weather only when we had nothing else to say.  Now we talk about it shamelessly at every opportunity.  We’ve had so much snow and the landscape is so monochrome that I’ve forgotten what colours are.  When the sun is out, all you’re guaranteed is that your face will freeze off in very bright light.  The weather network says it’s -14 tonight and it feels like -24.  And I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be warm!

“Thou Shall Not Steal!”

Here’s an homage to some creative in-library signage! This first one’s from the Caven Library at Knox College.  Caven is home to several collections available primarily to the Christian Education students at Knox.  And like true librarians, they’ve quoted their sources!
These other ones are on the doors inside the John M. Kelly library at St. Michael’s College, home to U of T’s Faculty of Theology.  There’s different signage all over the building, including on the back stairs. Searching for them all was like an indoor treasure hunt for laughs (in a library!).

Is it a coincidence that all of this creative signage can be found in the Christian Education college libraries?  I looked for signs inside the other libraries: Robarts, which contains the largest collection of the U of T libraries, or the Medical Sciences library.  Their signage is simple and straightforward: “Quiet Study Area” “No food or beverages in the library!”  Even the Toronto Public Library is surprisingly square and sedate.

One would have thought it would be the other way around …

Got Snow! (and ice and no heating) … It’s definitely winter in TO!

It’s been six days since the ice “storm”. The newscasts call it a storm because of its results rather than how it unfolded. In truth it was just a couple of days of steady rain combined with the perfect temperature for said rain to freeze and cake TO in ice.  The roads and sidewalks were iced like the top of a crème brûlée.  Trees bent over with the weight of all that frozen water eventually started to break and take down power lines.  By Sunday morning a huge chunk of TO was without power. Christmas Day dawned cold and lovely white.

We’ve been without heat and internet for six days.  Bundled up like Eskimos in our living room we joked as to which one we missed the most. (obviously, the internet!)  This morning when I woke I heard the telltale sounds of water bubbling through the radiators.  I rushed to the modem and saw FOUR lights and did a little geeky happy dance.