I knew this morning that I had arrived as a bikeist when I read that Cynthia Dunsford left her bike at home this morning while I braved the weather and rode mine.

I’m always a little foggy in the morning. Okay, a lot foggy. So when, this morning, I was checking my email here in [[Catherine]]’s office before breakfast, and I looked out the window and saw a tiny Darth Vader walking down the street, I had a momentary panic. Then I realized it was a kid, that the [[CHANCES]] Hallowe’en party is this morning, and that I had nothing to fear.

Later on, I was watching Regis and Kelly while eating breakfast and they were interviewing Courtney Thorne-Smith, and I had a vague feeling that she and I used to date in the early 1990s.

Obviously I would be wise to spend less time sucking up popular culture.

My friend [[Harold Stephens]] returns to the net with The Life and Loves of a Ballet Russe Spear Carrier:

But now comes the truth. I couldn’t dance. I am a yachtsman, mountain climber, jungle basher, anything to do with the outdoors but I am not a dancer. Those were the years of the twist, and I could do that dance all right (anyone could) but not the waltz or even the simple fox trot. I had two left feet when it came to dancing.

So what was I doing dancing with the world famous Ballet Russe, trying to win favor of the great, beautiful Maria Tallchief?

The rest of the story.

Kudos to Empire Theatres for bringing their Reel Babies program to Charlottetown. From the promo email:

New moms, dads, and caregivers of babies (ages newborn-“pre-crawling”) are invited to come out to our theatre with their babies and view a new movie in an auditorium that is specially equipped for them. Dimmed lighting, modified volumes, change tables, stroller parking, and toys are a few of the amenities that are offered.

The first Reel Babies showing in Charlottetown is tomorrow, Oct. 27th, at 11:00 a.m. with a showing of Elizabethtown.

It seems that there’s a Frank Rukavina running for the Conservatives in the putative upcoming federal election. Frank Rukavina philosophy:

I hope you will give me the opportunity to be your voice in Parliament to fight for better health care, lower taxes, the abolishment of the gun registry, and for better support for our municipalities. We need to fight for a more transparent government, for renewed fiscal responsibility, and for the end of cronyism and corruption in Ottawa. It is time to send the Liberals a clear message - we are sick of their tired and arrogant regime.

And if that wasn’t enough, Mary Ann Sures, a “longtime personal friend” of Ayn Rand, was born Mary Ann Rukavina. She and her husband Charles wrote the memoir Facets of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand philsophy:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

The PEI Public Transit Coalition has a weblog.

I received a very complete and helpful reply to an email query to Trius Tours about why the bus never came down Prince St. on Saturday; apparently the Richmond-Sydney loop that Route #4 is said to make on the route map was removed because of traffic and construction problems.

In today’s tea house news: the folks at the [[Formosa Tea House]] hope to open their new Ellen’s Creek Plaza branch sometime later this week; plans for the Water St. branch have been delayed. Remember that you can take the West Royalty - North River Rd. bus directly to Ellen’s Creek Plaza from downtown Charlottetown.

[[Dan]] mentioned last week that he’d heard that the Formosa had a new branch in [[Halifax]]; had that confirmed today. It’s in Dartmouth, and they’ve taken over the operation of an existing restaurant. Didn’t get location or hours details.

[[Catherine]] reports that she and [[Oliver]] had lunch at the new [[Aing’s Tea House]] on Grafton Street opposite the Polyclinic. Today is their opening day. There are noodles, stuffed buns, fried rice, and a variety of teas. No word on hours of operation yet. Stay tuned for more.

The CBC reports at this hour that “the Canadian Hurricane Centre has issued warnings for both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. However, the Island should be sheltered from the worst of the weather.”

[[Prince Edward Island]]’s motto is “Parva sub Ingenti,” which can either be taken as liberating (this brochure about our Great Seal says “the Motto of Prince Edward Island suggests nurtured growth from small beginnings to greatness”) or emasculating (the more usual, and literal translation of “the small under protection of the great,” positioning us more as the puny kid on the playground with the big brother to watch out for him).

Today, though, it means “Nova Scotia and New Brunswick take a beating for us,” and for that we should be thankful.

Thanks to the wise counsel of my [[colleagues upstairs]], I’ve set up a WebSVN server that allows painless browsing of the Charlottetown Transit Map and Plazes repositories.

WebSVN is set up at:

While we’re on the topic of the lads, they’ve been busy with their own open source project, a web application toolkit that makes it easy to plop oft-used widgets into PHP5 code.