I am an evil genius

Okay, first, lets get this out of the way - I'm sure someone has touched on this, as that's the kind of crowd you are, but I missed it if you did, so please enlighten me: if the new gas tax that was added last Monday was 2.5c/litre, why did all the gas prices go up 2.SIX cents??? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Now, I am nowhere near the caliber of these guys, who took extreme advantage of a program that American Airlines offered, getting millions of dollars in value out of a one time, albeit fairly hefty, investment. I also can't believe that they seemed to earn points in the loyalty reward program on top of unlimited "free" first class flights. For those of you that think flying is a chore and who would want to do that anyway, let me tell ya, as someone who has been lucky enough to fly just Business Class (not First) it no longer really becomes a chore. The ability to check in basically as late as possible, then any of that pesky waiting time is spent in a room with any amenity you might want for free (no $15 bland sandwiches here folks) and especially now as airlines are reconfiguring their planes, any long haul flight will almost certainly have a lay flat bed to rest your pretty little head. Oh and bad airline food? Not really - first class folks get food that you can identify, and as much of it as they want. -->This girl<-- got real Haagen Dazs ice cream bars when the good folk at Cathay Pacific were good enough to bump me up. The only real downside to this whole thing was that they were flying a North American airline rather than and Asian one. Seriously, if ever given a chance always fly an Asian airline, the stewardesses and counter staff are actually kind of... what's that word... oh yes, FRIENDLY (note, this is more a slag at United and Air Canada rather than WestJet, who are generally quite pleasant, however have limited international destinations).

One last side note before I get to my real point, I've added flying "Upper Class" on Virgin Atlantic to my bucket list, ideally departing London Heathrow. They send a car to pick you up, you check in from the car, you get a separate security channel to whisk you behind security to their Clubhouse. Their Clubhouse offers anything you could possibly want, a fully stocked bar with real cocktails not just ________ and Coke. Hungry? Order whatever you want to eat, no cold buffet here like in the Star Alliance lounge. What's that? Need a haircut? Manicure? Maybe a massage is more your style? Seriously, check out all the wonderful things on offer. If I have any mysterious benefactors out there who would like to help me indulge in this I would be forever grateful. Maybe Richard Branson needs a Canadian reviewer???

So moving on to things that are attainable. The Aeroplan Star Challenge. I was sent a nifty little email telling me that up to 16,500 Aeroplan miles were up for grabs this month. After reading the fine print (someone please feel free to read it and break my heart or confirm my dreams) it seems that all I need to do is make 33 purchases over the next month to get my 66 stars (I have an Aeroplan Visa so I get an automatic 5 stars). Now, further to that, it seems as though there is no minimum purchase required for any of these transactions. Which means that I could buy 33 one dollar items at Rexall, go to Sobeys 33 times and spend two bucks (Sobeys points convert at two to one) or as part of my goal, purchase, ahem,  23 separate 45's off eBay, signing in through the eStore first. So basically, if I didn't have the financial card, I would need to make 35 purchases, which in theory means that for $39.92 ($35 plus taxes, the dollar needs to be pre-tax I think at Rexall) I could get 16,500 Aeroplan points, which is enough for a flight to Toronto!

See. Evil Genius.

If I paid half as much attention to the stock market as I do customer loyalty programs I would be a very very wealthy woman. Over the years I have taken 15 free flights, including Business Class to South America and tickets to London and Central America all with Airmiles and Aeroplan.

MS Paddlewheel Queen and her Princess

One of the most common things that brings folks to my blog is people searching for either the Paddlewheel restaurant at The Bay, or people searching for a river cruise. I wrote a post last year about this, and at that time directed people to the MS River Rouge.

Well, things seem to have changed a bit and apparently both the MS Paddlewheel Queen and Princess will be up and running again this year. Call 204-942-4500 for schedules. They will be leaving from the Redwood docks, so stop by and say hello and visit the Wolseley Project 2.0, soon to be up and running.

2012 Winnipeg Bike Auction

That's right - it's that time already again - this weekend in fact! The 2012 Winnipeg bike auction will be held this Saturday April 28th and Sunday April 29th out in the boonies Charleswood. According to the link to the Associated Auto Auction website, there will be over 700 bikes available. That means the police are recovering approximately 2 bikes a day. How are there that many unclaimed bikes per year?? Probably because people like me don't take my own advice (as given in the post last year about the auction) and register their bikes for the $5. Seriously, someone please make sure I do that this year. Call 311 for more information on that if you need. Also, this year apparently they have partnered with WRENCH to provide some of the bikes - take a minute to check out their website an learn a bit more about this great non-profit.

Because clearly you are all clamouring to know exactly how my brain works, that's the song that plays when I hear the word bicycle.

And this, is what I hear every time someone talks about Twitter and mentions a tweet:
Yes, my brain is a terrifying place.

Starting Monday off right

Another great Winnipeg from the past video - should help you get over any case of the Mondays. All those great old cars, drool.

The MLS is like my version of p0rn...

Dear me, this one is a doozy! My regular readers will know I have a bit of thing for trolling the MLS, it's such an amazing opportunity to see behind all those closed doors. I've discovered an amazing space inside a former bicycle shop on Selkirk Ave, a long lost piece of Winnipeg Girl art, and even managed to meet new people. This latest MLS discovery to be fair, did not come from my trolling, but rather that of another who passed me the link - houses built in 2005 do not generally generate a click-through on my part.

Completely unassuming looking house

This house is in Algonquin Estates, a neighbourhood I wasn't even aware of to be honest, although I think it might be to East Kildonan what a sub-neighbourhood like St. John's is to the North End?

 So, this completely normal looking house, holds a secret. Well, not quite a secret, Western Living magazine wrote an article about it in 2008, detailing the crazy freaking transformation of the basement into a Las Vegas style club and gameroom!

1070 McIvor is one heck of a house! Where to start? The roulette wheel dance floor? The 52 seats available? The poker tables? The separate gender multi-stall bathrooms?? I'm dying to know - have you been to this place? Someone who's reading this has, or at least knows someone who has (3 degrees of Winnipeg separation after all!). Now, I'm no expert at all as to property values in this neighbourhood, so I don't if the $599,000 asking price (dropped from $659,900 it seems from the feature sheet) is a good deal or not, but I'm thinking you could host at least a few nights down here and turn a profit before the authorities caught on!

If the appropriate people see this I would like to attend either the last hurrah for the old owner or the sure-to-be-one-hell-of-a-housewarming for the new owners!

What's in a word?

A lot of blog traffic if that word is h00ker.

I've reached the point where I think I might go back and change all the correct spellings of the word to the mildly ironic version where the "00" could certainly be confused for a certain part of a h00kers anatomy. Over 65% of my all-time search results that brought people to my blog were some variation of people searching for where to get busy with a stranger here in our fair city. I am just grateful that I (Love Me Love My Winnipeg that is) make the top 3 search terms!

Now, while part of me just wants to leave the word, as is, so that all the these folks looking for love in all the wrong places (hint: Google is wrong place for finding street workers, you find them on streets and it's probably easiest to ask a suburban teen where in Winnipeg they are, as that is what legends of the bad parts of town are made of) end up reading my ramblings instead.

What do other bloggers think? How do you deal with this sort of thing?

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So for those of you who were listening to CJOB (Richard Cloutier to be specific) in the last couple of weeks you may have heard me chatting about life in the North End and also about the garbage problem that shows no signs of going away. It was great to get to be a voice for what the neighbourhood is really like, I even heard from a man afterward who said that I helped to persuade him to consider the North End as a place suitable for his daughter to live after all.

Typical sight in my back lane, especially at this autobin

We still have a long way to go of course, especially in terms of eradicating the garbage (of both the human and litter variety) but I truly think it will happen. Right now my biggest concern with the litter is what is going to happen once they get rid of the autobins; at the moment they fit some of the bulky garbage, things like chairs and non-console tv's, where is that all going to go once the bins are gone? I predict a lot more emails to 311 - I think I'm probably going to become "oh... that girl again" - but what else am I supposed to do? Even just picking up the stray litter that is all over the place has netted me over two full garbage bags this year, what would I do if I had a large family and didn't have the room in my wheelie cart for that?

Sigh. On to happier things. Today is Transcona's 100th Birthday! I really really really hope there are 100 pink plastic flamingos on a boulevard or something!

Qatar is back!

Like many bloggers I get a kick out of some of my stats and search queries. Since I love to travel I also really enjoy seeing what countries some of my readers come from. Months ago I had a semi-regular visitor from Qatar. This particularly makes my day because a). Qatar is just a cool name and it's a "Q" word without a "u"    b). I've been to Qatar, sort of. As a general rule I don't count airport stopovers as countries visited so it's not technically on my list, but I did spend about 5 hours in the airport in Doha a few years ago. Most unexpected thing? They have an A & W in the airport - that's just weird, it's not like A & W's are found all over the place. Anywhoo, welcome back to my Qatar reader - I've missed ya!

This brings me to yet another "small world" Winnipeg story. Yes, I'm aware that Winnipeg is a crazy small town at its heart but I seem to have stranger than normal encounters. Last  week I was attending an auction at Kaye's and I sent out a Tweet (follow me! @LoveMeLoveMyWpg) commenting that I was at an auction and that it was more fun than watching Storage Wars on TV. One of my followers tweeted back that they were also at Kaye's. Ok, yes, that in itself is not that shocking, Winnipeg is not exactly overflowing with daily auctions. What is completely freaky and small world like is that when I responded to the Tweet to say that I was the girl who just lost out on a vintage fridge - the real life person next to me looked up from her phone and introduced herself!

Turns out the friend that had told me about the auction in the first place (who didn't even know that I had a blog) and was good enough to be willing to help me haul the fridge home in his truck, had another friend at the same auction. The three of us were chatting as I responded to my tweet and we each discovered the real life person behind the user name. So it was super great to meet someone who reads and likes my blog but crazy to think we were already connected by one degree of separation!

The fridge I didn't win actually wasn't for me (not that I'm above hoarding fridges, because I'm not) but a good friend of mine. So I'm officially doing a shout out to find his "dream' fridge. It's a 1938 Frigidaire. There must be another one out there somewhere... please help me find it - I would win best present ever forever. I'll never understand why the guy bidding against me also seemed to want it so bad, I don't believe that it's a particularly valuable model (except to my friend) and I think it's even too small to qualify for the free $40 that Hydro will give you to scrap your old fridge (I would link to that program but I can't support the destruction of such beautiful works of machinery, I call balderdash on them being super expensive to run, I run two of them in my house right now and my electric bill is on par with other friends of mine who only have 1 modern fridge). But here it is, it may have also been available in 1939 or into the 1940's, the key identifier is probably the push button to open it.

This is the outside

This is the inside

So, readers far and wide (although Qatar is probably too far) please find me one, will pick up, I'm always up for a road trip! While you're at it - I'm looking for an early 1950's fridge with a separate fridge/freezer, will pay extra if it's the model that has the lazy susan inside.