Waterloo is so attractive
Yesterday, I got off the expressway and was driving up Bridgeport when I came over the hill and noticed again the tall buildings of Uptown Waterloo. It occurred to me that not only are we undergoing a building boom, the buildings that are booming are tall and majestic – we are becoming a good looking city.
The Conference Board of Canada agrees. It recently ranked Waterloo as one of the top three most attractive places in Canada to live and work. The Conference Board of Canada does not mean attractive in terms of good looking, we ranked high – an overall “A” – in terms of education, environment, health, housing (my favourite), innovation and society.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
LRT closes roads and intersections
I’ve been a strong supporter of the LRT ever since I first heard about it. I have the advantage over most Kitchener-Waterloonians as having lived through the before and after of the construction of Taipei’s MRT when Taipei went from a dark dystopian Bladerunner-like moonscape to a bright and clean paradisal pop song. The MRT made life good. Suddenly we were not a second-rate Asian city; we were cosmopolitan and cool.
Just like Taipei’s MRT is known as it’s other name, a short form of it’s official name, it’s known as the “JieYun”, our LRT has been officially anointed with the name “ion”, as in “I be on the LRT”.
“Where you at?”
“I on the Ion”.
I don’t know if the name will catch on or not. Nor do I care. The Conestoga Parkway, that throwback moniker to the wagon trail days never really caught on as a name. Everyone refers to it as “the expressway” which is ironic as during rush hour the speed of travel is anything but express. It is more like wagon speed.
But back to the LRT (or the ion). Work on the road is set to begin next week and certain streets and intersections will be closed for up to four months. Bad news for anyone going anywhere in the region by road for the next three years. Good news for me. I think I’ll get a lot of traffic past my new listing on 82 Euclid in UpTown Waterloo.
Your furnace is a warm friend.
Last winter I had my furnace serviced for the first time. It cost me about $50 and the technician cleaned it and adjusted it to make it run more efficiently. I think it was money well spent. He advised me to do that every year and I will (every other year or so).
In relation to the cost of housing, the cost of furnaces and air conditioners has dropped significantly in the past ten years. Yet most people wait until their furnace dies before even considering replacing it. But if it’s like my old house I’m sure my 25 year old furnace chugging away in the basement cost me more money over the ten years we lived in the house than we would have spent replacing it. But what do I know about furnaces? How do I know a good brand from a bad?
Fortunately my buddies over at Hogg Mechanical posted this about furnaces. The blog post argues that the cost between an expensive furnace and an cheap one is about $600 so you should focus on reliability over cost.
