No more bowling posts until September.

[lance_sibley]

Well, we didn't win.

On the other hand, we didn't finish last, either. I personally had a decent night, with two very good games - 179, 200, 127. That third game was cursed with splits - I had four, I think. Possibly five. (I nearly spared the 6-7-10, though... I just got a bit too much of the 6-pin, and it went behind the 7 instead of hitting it.) And I also missed two easy spares. Argh.

Surprisingly, that was only my second 200 game of the year - the other one came all the way back in September of last year. I'd have to check (yes, I have all of my old scorecards going back to the 1999-2000 season), but most years, I have something like ten 200 games. Mind you, this year had been a struggle until the last six weeks or so.

I almost didn't make it (as should be obvious by the fact that my score was exactly 200), as in the seventh frame, I threw what looked like a perfect ball - and left a 5-10 split. However, I managed to spare it. (Why I missed the lone 10-pin twice in the third game, however, is beyond me.)

We were fifth after the first game with 1110, and thought we had a chance, but alas, we failed to break 1100 in either the second or third game. (I forget what the total for the winning team was, but they managed to break 1200 in the second game, so it was probably something like 3400-3500, whereas we didn't even break 3300.)

In other news... it seems that the Toronto transit workers are a bunch of greedy assholes. Their management negotiated a contract that was very generous - 3% raises each year for the next three years, along with a contractual assurance that they would be the highest paid transit workers in Canada, plus increased benefits... and tonight the union voted to turn it down. (I saw at least one media report that said something like, "There's no danger of the union voting against this...") Which means that my meeting tomorrow may not happen, and I couldn't even go out tonight because they went on strike starting exactly at midnight. (And had I been downtown, I would have had to have taken a taxi home.) I've got a ride for Sunday's meeting, but this is hugely annoying. The TTC already pays its employees an exorbitant amount of money - there are people who make more than I do for sitting in a booth all day and watching people put their tickets in a box. (One fare collector made the recent list of city employees who earned more than $100K last year, in fact.) And now they want even more? Feh! Feh, I say! Get a real job - I slide my Metropass through the card reader in the automated turnstile, anyway, and I buy it from the machine every month. I don't need you.

Getting to work on Monday will be interesting if they're still on strike, since I have no feasible way of getting to Yonge and Finch even if the VIVA system is running. I still haven't tried to log onto my work computer from home since the move, so I don't know if I can do it.

I'm really hoping that the provincial government follows through on their threat to legislate the TTC as an essential service, because I'm tired of them holding me and people like me who don't drive hostage every three years.

And finally, I spent some time last night and entered a bunch of new panels into the Polaris database, and they're up on the website. (I entered a few more tonight, but they're not up yet.) I think that p_j_k has taken over the position as the team member who comes up with the best panel titles. A few of them were over the 35-character limit, but I liked them too much to change them. We'll just have to abbreviate them in the pocket programme.

Some examples:

This Panel Would Be So Much Better If It Were On Fire (Writing)
I've Got Three Panels And I Know How To Use Them (Comics)
You're Not A Gay Elven Cyborg! (Writing)
I LIKED Vampire Lesbian High School Girls 4! (Literature)

And the prize for the panel whose title is most likely to be misconstrued:

The Climax Goes On Page 75 (Screenwriting)

(The full list to date is here.)

Yes, I think these even beat out the panel at Toronto Trek 17 on Trill social mores... which was called "Hold Me, Trill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me".

Comments

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I gather the strike isn't about the raise - it's about maintenance workers thinking the deal is for the benefit of the drivers and that their jobs are going to be outsourced - which sounds like a hole in the contract that should have been spotted during negotiations.

Miller has asked that the TTC be made an essential service - I wonder how long that will take. Unfortunately, I can see the TTC workers taking umbrage with that and dragging their heels getting back until they're forced too. Woo bloody woo. *sigh*

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we were watching the news after making it home last night. The bit about the maintenance workers makes us a little more sympathetic to the strikers, but still it *is* an essential service (and Andrew got interviewed saying so on the way home).