It's not my fault

Since I know the readership of my blog although it goes far and wide (Qatar, haven't seen you lately, where you at?) it doesn't have a massive readership so I doubt it was me that ruined it...

Last May I blogged about the Aeroplan Star Challenge and volunteered to take a flight on Virgin's Upper Class. No one has offered me that ticket yet (hint, hint). I did however complete the challenge and received my 16,500 Aeroplan points.

Aeroplan has rolled out the Star Challenge again this year, although they've tweaked it quite a lot in their favour. I spent some time reading their terms and conditions and like much of the Aeroplan reward program it leans towards helping the rich stay rich (the people who benefit the most from Aeroplan perks probably don't even pay for their own tickets yet they, not the person who pays for them, get all the freebies).

Chuck the Channel Cat in Selkirk (thanks Wikipedia)

So this time you can earn up to 25,000 Aeroplan points which is pretty impressive. To put that in perspective that means a ticket to anywhere in continental Canada or the US. However, they wised up a little bit this time and now have a minimum spend required in order to accumulate the stars in the promotion. Last time it was theoretically possible to get a free flight from one province to the next (the value of the points available) for about $40. This time the average person is looking at a minimum spend of about $470.

Broken down to the simplest form the program goes like this: Collect 100 stars to receive your 25,000 points. Chances are if you are an avid Aeroplan collector you have some sort of affiliated Visa card, so that gets you 5 stars right of the bat. You also get 1 star for registering. Great, only 94 to go. You receive 2 stars for every eligible purchase at an online retailer through their eStore, however this time it excludes eBay which was a source of many of my stars last time. You also get two stars for an in-person shop at a storefront retailer. Ones that the average Winnipegger is likely to shop at? Esso, Rexall, Sobeys and Home Hardware (when visiting rural relatives or Chuck the Channel Cat).

There are a bunch of other basically fake opportunities to earn stars with flights and car rentals but they almost all require that you both purchase and complete those during the contest period (March 11 - April 10). No one can afford to fly Air Canada without strategic planning months in advance grabbing sale prices, who are they kidding. Ditto goes for earning points with hotel stays with Aeroplan partners - no booking on a cheaper site (not eligible for Aeroplan normally) nope, you need to book directly with the hotel which almost always costs more. Do you know who might benefit from that? Business travellers who already earn hundreds of thousands of Aeroplan miles a year.

There is one slightly attainable way to earn extra stars, by using your CIBC card at special Aeroplan Bonus restaurants. You will earn one extra star as well as double the Aeroplan points on your transaction. Of course this means you will also spend way more than $470 to collect the 25,000 points. In Winnipeg restaurants include Hermano's, Chamberlyn's, Hu's, Wasabi, Deadfish, Star Grill, Carbone Pizza and Olympia Diner. If you live outside Winnipeg use this website to find restaurants in your area. Maximum of 5 stars through this method.

So since I can't imagine when I might have more money then time, so I expect to put $10 worth of gas into my car every day at Esso starting Monday (hopefully this can cover about 20 of my transactions, although I don't usually go through $200 of gas in a month, maybe I'll have to roadtrip somewhere...). I will also become a regular at Sobey's.

It's basically a promotion that is designed to have people fail which is great for Aeroplan, not great at all for consumers. If they run this promotion again and if it's tweaked to their advantage any further I won't be able to participate so I might as well go for it one last time.

Dear Staff Writer

I get it, your job kind of sucks, what with constant budget cuts and more and more work being heaped on you by the day; but could we come to some sort of agreement about furthering the negative stereotype that surrounds the North End?

In the rush to be perceived as top media dog in this city I do understand the race to post a headline before anyone else, and good for you - yours was the first story on this stabbing to come up in my newsfeed. However, was it really necessary in your 41 word, 3 sentence "article" (this includes the word count from the headline), to scream North End in both the headline and the body of the "story"? I agree, the stabbing did technically happen in the North End, that's true, but while we waited for more details did you have to further perpetuate the myth that the North End is a scary place?

Those of us that live in the North End, when we hear of a story like that make the almost always logical conclusion that the victim and attacker probably knew each other, some sort of argument gone wrong. However, when someone from outside the neighbourhood hears that there was a stabbing here, it's a case of "remember to lock the doors when we drive down Main St."

Now, the Winnipeg Sun (Staff Writer, please note that the Sun, which usually gets labeled as a tabloid, did a better job on this one) seemingly had about the same amount of information when they wrote their article, yet this is what it looked like:

A man is recovering in hospital after being stabbed early Saturday.
He has been upgraded to stable but critical condition, police spokesperson Const. Jason Michalyshen said.
Police were called to the house, in the 300-block of Alfred Avenue, at 5:50 a.m.
Michalyshen said the investigation is in its early stages.
"I'm not aware of the circumstances or the motivation," Michalyshen said.
No suspects have been identified.
It's not clear whether the victim lived in the home.
Michalyshen said the man's condition is improving.

Notice that they managed to avoid saying "North End" anywhere in their story.

Did you notice how many comments your original story got? 54 - more than one comment for every word that you wrote. Although, I suppose 14 of those comments did have to deleted because of the classy commenters that flock to a negative story like this to spew their racism and incorrect views of the neighbourhood as a whole, especially when they are left to their own imaginations to fill in the details that are missing. When a story is incomplete like this, there should be no comments allowed until there is actually something to comment on. Or better yet, no comments at all - after all, eventually the people involved will be "in a case before the courts" - if the comments will be closed during stories about the trial, why allow them right after it happens?

Now, dear Staff Writer, I noticed you wrote a follow up article and managed to leave "North End" out of the headline, however, you just couldn't resist sneaking it in a little later, but fine, it did happen in the North End and you're finally giving a few more details, so it's a start. However, you did manage to leave out one little nugget that the Sun seemed to have time to add in, that the victim and suspect knew each other. I would argue that that is one of the most important details when reporting any crime: context.

Do Winnipeggers need to worry about being stabbed in the North End if they don't know people who are likely to stab them? Probably not. Do people need to worry about being murdered and stuffed in the trunk of a car when they visit St. Vital? No, of course not. Given a little bit of context and information we can make informed choices about things.

Although, I will happily wait for the headline of "100% of murders in Winnipeg in 2013 have been committed in Ft. Rouge/St. Vital" - imagine if that ran? While technically it is currently a true statement, it certainly doesn't speak to the values of the rest of the neighbourhood; neither does crime in the North End. So please dear Staff Writer, please think before you use your brush to paint a picture of everyone in my community, individuals create crime, not entire neighbourhoods.

Sincerely,
Winnipeg Girl

Holding a grudge

Someone I follow on twitter commented today that a neighbour who wouldn't help with a boost the other day found themselves needing one today and that it was karma. Stories of neighbours who are un-neighbourly always remind me of my days growing up in the burbs. In particular they remind me of Jeff Stoughton.

See, way back when, when babysitters didn't demand to be paid the same as other minimum wage jobs I, in addition to being the papergirl for my block, would also occasionally babysit. One of the parents I babysat for was Jeff Stoughton. He had the biggest TV I had ever seen.

Now, I only babysat for them a few times, but imagine my surprise when one cold winter day - when I managed to get my car started and backed out of the driveway (avoiding falling in a notorious Charleswood ditch) and onto the snowy street only to have it promptly die - that Mr. Stoughton refused to give me a boost because he "didn't want to ruin his battery". WTF? Is that even a thing? And who would leave a 16/17ish year old girl to fend for herself in the middle of the road (he had to ease around me to NOT help)? I acutely remember being confused and hurt that he valued a battery over me as a person.

I have secretly decided that although he has had many successes as a curler over the years, that the reason that an Olympic medal still escapes him is because of the resulting bad karma from this incident.

On a very random note, I either owe Jeff Stoughton an apology after this blog post because although I have been 100% sure of this story for many years, when wanting to confirm his lack of Olympic wins I went to Wikipedia to research. According to Wikipedia, he only has one daughter, born in 2004 - but that is, oh, about a decade past my babysitting days. So, if somehow I actually babysat for someone else, who also happened to be a curler and wouldn't help me boost my car, I'm really really sorry for always cheering for the other guys whenever Jeff Stoughton's team is playing.

Of course, I'm pretty sure it was him, so someone needs to get on updating that Wikipedia article. And maybe, just maybe, if he gives someone a boost this winter his luck will turn around and he will eventually get to the Olympics.

Ditto

I'm so good at coming up with amazing blog post names that I almost used one of my awesome ones from last year again. Yes, that is how I am framing my brain's lack of creativity, sue me, it's Monday.

Just a really quick time sensitive post:

My Sister's Closet is an event  with a donation drive ending Friday (the picture at right says until Tuesday January 18th so I called to confirm and they said Friday the 18th) that could use your help (sorry for the short notice!) They are looking for clothing and accessories for women of all shapes and sizes who are about to transition from a school setting to the workplace. I'm not sure exactly the gender make-up of my readership, but guys, let me tell ya, wearing clothing that you feel good in makes a huge difference to a woman. Not to say that it doesn't to a man, since I'm not man I don't know your take on it as such, but you don't have to be a genius to know that the social pressures for women to look a certain way are pretty overwhelming. So for all my local readers, tell a woman you know about this event - this is the time of year when everyone starts off fresh anyway, the perfect time to evaluate the closet.

Drop at 455 McDermot Ave. If you won't be able to make it down there during office hours but are able to gather some things send me an email or a DM on twitter and maybe I can pick it up from you and drop it off on your behalf.

That's it. Just about the shortest post ever - who knew I could do it?!

Here is a link to the poster for last year, I couldn't seem to find it on their website this year and I have no idea how to turn a pdf into a picture format so apologies that the picture in this post is kind of hard to read. Same general info on last year's poster, but again, note that this year they need the donations by this Friday, January 18th, 2013.

Cats! Cats! Cats!

CJOB seems to have broken a story this morning about a proposed Responsible Pet Ownership By-law that among other things, will require cat owners to license their cats, at a cost of $15/cat. This proposed by-law would also only allow pet stores to sell cats and dogs that have come from a shelter rather than breeders (or worse, places like puppy mills).

Emma

 Of course, the new "tax" (not a tax, but that's what the crazy people started calling it) on cats got all sorts of people calling in and complaining. Are you kidding me? Heck, it could almost be considered unfair that currently dog owners are forced to pay $64 for an unfixed dog and $29 for a pooch that has gone under the knife. A responsible pet owner should be happy to pay the fee, and yes, it should be higher for pets that aren't fixed (the proposed fee for cats that aren't fixed is $50). I find it interesting that they are going to want to charge a fee of $300 for people to be allowed to sell animals, that seems like it will be a little difficult to regulate. I foresee a lot of people who are trying to get rid of their one pet (vs. obvious breeders) selling cat supplies that come with a free cat on kijiji.


I think some important questions to be asked are how exactly this $15/cat is going to be spent; currently they are saying it will go towards subsidizing spay and neuter programs, however there should be clarification as to how much, if any will be going towards programs that trap and spay/neuter feral cats and then release them. The sound bites I heard this morning seemed to imply that simply forcing people to license their cats was going to get rid of the feral cat population, which is currently estimated at 80,000-150,000!! Clearly, that is not remotely realistic.

Having a pet is not a right, but a luxury. As pet owners we always need to be aware that a hefty medical bill can pop up, if people claim that they can't afford the $15 (I presume per year) for cat ownership then what does that say about their ability to care for their pet if it becomes sick? Now, I'm a mere mortal, I of course don't have some sort of secret stockpile of funds to pay vet bills but in the back of my mind I know that I might have to. The beautiful Emma pictured above decided to test her will to live to the tune of $600 in 2011 (I am very thankful she only felt the need to spend that much before she got the spring back in her step!)

That said, I am a believer that pets are an important part of a persons overall mental well-being and I don't begrudge lower-income people or even transient people for wanting to be pet owners, so long as they are responsible pet owners as well. Even if people just want to think of the $15 as added insurance that their pet will be returned to them if it goes missing it's well worth it.

If you're on facebook, a couple of groups well worth liking are the Winnipeg Lost Cat Alert and the Winnipeg Lost Dog Alert. Currently the dogs have 6,149 likes and the cats only have 1,582 - lets boost those cat numbers! For all the crap you have filling up your facebook feed wouldn't it be great if along with all the funny/fake-motivational/spiritual/borderline-porn pictures you could help reunite a pet with its owner?

And lastly, I know I've posted it before, but it's such a good one:

This just in!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

The North End  murder rate is down. This is no longer my gut feeling, I have real numbers.The CBC has been kind enough to post a map with all the murder stats from the last few years. Near as I can tell from CBC's slightly wonky interactive map* (and confirmed on this seemingly detailed website) so far there have been 29 murders in Winnipeg this year; number 29 which just happened over the weekend is not yet updated on either site. Of those 29 murders, guess how many happened in the notorious super scary North End??

4

Totally borrowed this image but I think they did too...

FOUR

No matter how you write it, it's less than 15% of all the murders in this city this year. Even if you broaden the horizons of what is technically the North End, as the media tend to do (which you all know is my favourite) there were only 5 that the average suburbanite would consider the North End. Please note dodgy folk of the North End, this is not a challenge to up your game. For a little bit of context in 2011 there were 40 (although 41 according to Floyd Wiebe's website) and 15 of those which is 37.5%!

Also, the murder rate in Winnipeg seems on track to be less this year as well which is nice, and obviously I wish people would stop killing each other in general, but hey, if it's going to happen if it could be in a neighbourhood that isn't mine I'm a happy girl.

*If someone from CBC reads this, I had trouble when using the "table" function - it would let me me scroll down but then would bounce back up to the top instantly. Entirely possible of course that I am inept, however usually I can do stuff like that!

Dear Google Street View, THANK YOU!

Google Street View has been invaluable to me many times, but it's always irked me that the image was so outdated. Now, obviously there isn't really a big reason that it would need to be updated, but my house is come a long way in the years that I have owned it and that's the image I want to show the world.

Previously the Street view image showed my house in it's old crumbling stucco state, boring and white. The picture was also taken on a grey spring day with garbage still strewn everywhere. Overall, my whole street and neighbourhood looked like hell. I had a great idea for a post where I was going to screen capture all of the houses and then post the photos of what they look like now - there has been a lot of positive changes especially on my block. Well, apparently I missed my chance - the new Google Street View images are up!!

I'm so excited! I often sell things on kijiji and now people will probably be less afraid to come and pick things up from me in "the hood" because darned if it doesn't look purdy! Leaves on the trees, green grass and (almost) no litter.

What I do get a kick out of though, is the 3 distinctly different days/times that make up my little corner (all images captured from Google Street View) First we have just the yellow car out front, notice the turquoise house:

 Next we see the yellow car and the kick ass vintage VW Rabbit:

 Lastly, we can now see that the Wolseley project 2.0 has been planted, and the turquoise house is now yellow!

So darned if I'm not pleased as punch with this sunnier happier view of the North End! If you look close in the bottom photo you can see the big ol' pile o' dirt that no one came to help me shovel even after my pleas on twitter*

*Please read that statement in the as-yet-to-be-developed "guilt" font