Sugar Shack

The weekends pass by far too quickly, even when you leave work over an hour early on Friday.
Gosh and I have determined that we spend way too much money when we shop together and then we went to Kortright on Sunday to take part in the Maple Sugar Festival and to do some hiking on the trails. It was a beautiful day and was a complete throwback for me to my childhood when my parents would take my sister and I to various parks and conservation areas for some "air" as they would tell us. The disappointing thing is that development has invaded the surrounding area by Kortright... huge monster homes with about 2 square feet of grass in front and back. All this progress disgusts me.
Even in my own neighbourhood, two 35 storey condominiums are going to be built in the next few years which is upsetting because that is unnecessarily high and will steal the privacy from overhead that my neighbourhood currently enjoys. Apparently the Ontario Municipal Board which is evil and development happy considers any part of the city with a subway line as "downtown", which is absolutely ridiculous. I mean I would prefer development happen in the city moreso than stealing farmland, which those big monster homes in the 905 do, but at the same time 35 storeys (which is an improvement from the original 40-storey plan) is fucking ridiculous. It's going to overload the population of the area more than it already is, put added pressure on an already crumbling transit system, increase traffic on all thoroughfares, and make life ridiculously hellish. There are no resources in place to support this population boom once it moves in. Does this seem incredibly backwards??? Well, that's because it is.
There was a time when I absolutely loved the neighbourhood I grew up in and I still do, but as more people move away and the area is changing, I am able to see that in time I will want to escape, although you can't outrun development or "progress" as they call it, anymore.
When you fly over Toronto, you really get the best perspective of what urban sprawl really means. It's hard to believe this city started out as a 10-block grid by the lakefront and now it's threatening to eat up every available resource that made it an attractive settlement in the first place. Even when I read books about the historic homes of Toronto and historical sites within the city, it's quite clear that the Toronto my grandparents knew is a completely different city than the Toronto that I know. Hell the Toronto I know is completely different than what I knew as a child.
I can't believe how many ravines have been flattened out and how many streams have been paved over. If this is the way Toronto is, no wonder the earth is screaming out to all 6 billion of us on the planet... because in the end people are kind of a scourge.
I'm sorry for the negative reflection of this post, but on some days I am just totally disheartened with the state of my little corner of the world, the problems of which are totally insignificant to other world issues.

So, now for a complete 180 and some trivial fun, Gawker now has a feature called Gawker Stalker where New Yorkers can post their celebrity sitings and it will be marked on a Google map. It makes me laugh because some of the entries are just amusing to read. Hell, they could all be embellished and it wouldn't matter but if you're looking for distracting frivolity, it's a quick read. The recent entries on Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Esposito, and Erika Christensen had a little extra commentary at the end that made me have to suppress my giggles here at the front of the fishbowl.