"Women's Room"

I suppose it only makes sense. It is called the "Men's room", why wouldn't you call it the "Women's Room", but I'm not sure I've ever seen that anywhere other than my new office. I would have called it (without considering the appropriateness of any answer) called it the "Ladies' room". Upon examination, it does occur to me that we, collectively, no longer refer to that portion of the population as "Ladies" for the most part, unless you are talking about your grandmother's bridge club, or an auxiliary attachment to some long standing "Men's" organization (Lion's, Kiwanis, Loyal Order of Water Buffalo)

Strangely, I would have said "the Women's washroom"... just not "Women's Room". I suppose since we, collectively, have adopted the group noun "Women" in replacement for "Ladies", it makes sense to move to "Women's room" but I've just never seen it before. This new workplace is very progressive!

What are the washroom/bathroom/toiletrooms (a whole 'nother can of worms) where you are called?

The Commute (part 1 of many)

So after 4 days of commuting, I've got a decent idea of what the best route (yes Karen, short of driving myself) will be, and if these times hold up for the winter things could be worse.

So far my morning commutes have been (timed from locking my door to enterring the building):

• 56 minutes (Subway and Steeles Express)
• 46 minutes (Subway and Rob Express via viaduct)
• 51 minutes (Subway and Steeles Express... this was a dream for wait time)
• 37 minutes (Subway and Rob Express via Pape/O'Connor.. and that includes 8 minutes of waiting for Rob, which I can't exactly optimize away, since I'd rather be 5 mintues early than 2 minutes late to not keep Rob waiting)
  

I think the ideal times probably lie somewhere around 35 minutes for Subway/Rob and 50 minutes for Subway/Steeles Bus. I should also point out that all of these involved leaving my place between 6:30 and 6:50 in the morning... I'll find out if this continues to be a tenable solution.

I think if I were to drive myself... the time would probably somewhere around 25-30 minutes, as long as I left at that time, which probably isn't worth the bother... now if I did have a car and drove, I could then return the favour a drive Rob, but he still might need the car to pick up Clare.

As for the afternoon commute.... I haven't been timing it as thoroughly, but mostly I've been heading out with Rob (which allows us to take the High Occupancy Lane (which actually could save 10 or 15 minutes depending on the time we leave)) and getting dropped on a streetcar route on his was to pick up Clare. I think it was about 45 minutes door to door... that still can be optimized a fair bit, I think... need to figure out if the college car or the dundas car (or even the queen car) will be fastest. It won't be as quick as the morning because I can't avoid using surface routes in the afternoon.

I'm back!

After a long hiatus, I might start this up again. Here are some of the things I might be writing about:

• Susanna and I are just back from a long trip to Europe, so I'll have a bunch of photos to link from here once I get them all off the camera which Karen most generously loaned to me for the trip.
• My office has officially moved to almost-Markham (south side of Steeles, east of the 404), so I'm still trying to figure out my commute. Suggestions are welcome!
  
• Some of my usual rants on obviously unimportant things.

Anyway, we'll see if this round of blogging lasts!