That 70’s Snow

News Flash: There’s a lot of snow in Toronto today with more to come!

I grew up in Oshawa Ontario. The back of my house connected with a stretch of land that the neighborhood called “the gully”. This was a piece of land that was owned by Ontario Hydro. It was originally part of an old rail line that had been purchased by Ontario Hydro for burying high power transmission lines. There were varying sized slopes on each side which made for a great place for small kids to go tobogganing. All I had to do was go out of my backyard and play. I mention this because I remember being quite young and being overjoyed at being able to go tobogganing during March break. That was the last time I remember this quantity of snow at this time of year.

As I grew older we never had a decent amount of snow in March but on the up side, I discovered “the tracks”. This was on the other side of the main road, Harmoney Road, which was the continuation of the old rail line. At the end was the remains of an old bridge abutment. This made for some terrific runs. Of course, being part of an old bridge meant that there was either a creek or a fence at the bottom of that wonderful hill. But doesn’t every truly good tobogganing hill have a problem somewhere at the bottom? It always adds to the excitement of the run.

They have now built houses in what was once “the gully” and the only thing remaining of “the tracks” is part of the old bridge abutment. In the image below, the clump of trees in the middle is all that remains of my favorite hill growing up.


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Next time I’m in Oshawa I should go for a walk to the end of Beaufort Avenue and see what remains.

The 8 year old man

Every year there comes a point where I hear a familiar sound. It’s usually in the morning or night and I only really notice it when I’m walking by myself. It is the wonderful sound of the ice breaking beneath my feet.

I have had this love for breaking ice since I was very small. I used to be late for school due to my obsession with trying to break all the ice I could on the sidewalk. My absolute favorite is the sound of a large chunk of ice breaking away from a larger sheet. It happens when there is a tiny gap between the ground and the ice and when it snaps, it makes this squeaky crunch sound. I also love the squeak of the ice when there is water underneath it. This has lead to me becoming very wet when I was young from falling into various creeks while breaking ice. The worst I that I remember getting wet was with my friend Harvey. We were having a great old time breaking the ice until it completely gave and both of us ended up falling into the water. I think the only place I was dry was my head. I can’t remember how wet Harvey got but I do remember that miserable twenty minute walk back to his place.

What brought all this about was walking home the other night and I heard that squeaky chunk sound. I must have been jumping around, giggling with glee for a good ten minutes. I even caught myself flinging my arms in the air while jumping to get all of my weight behind it. I really am an 8 year old man sometimes.

NIN

Trent Reznor has always been ahead of most musicians with recognizing trends and what music fans want. Yet again he is proving just this. He is offering the new NIN album Ghosts in a variety of formats, digital download (no DRM), CD or vinyl. He is even offering the first 9 tracks as a free download from the web site.

On top of giving the music to fans in whatever form they want he has also released all of it under a Creative Commons license. Specifically it’s under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. This means that people are free to remix it as long as they don’t sell the music.

I am currently downloading the free part now and will give it a listen. If I like it, I will most definitely give him my money, he deserves it.

UPDATE: I liked the first album so I bought the whole thing.

UPDATE 2: I’ve listened to the entire thing three times now and I can say without a doubt, it’s fantastic.