I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

OTTAWA ARSON SUSPECT CAUGHT IN NEPEAN?

From Andrew Seymour of the Ottawa Citizen:

"A fire that destroyed a camper trailer and damaged a neighbouring house is believed to be one in a series of five fires that were deliberately set early Tuesday morning.

Ottawa police said it appears an arsonist set fire to the trailer parked in the driveway of a house at 732 Claude St., near Cummings Avenue, before the flames spread to the home's roof.

Two people who were in the house when the fire was discovered at about 3:25 a.m. were awakened by the smoke alarm and escaped without injury, police said. Damage is estimated at about $100,000.

Ottawa police Det. Perry Biddiscombe said the fire followed a similar one on May Street in Overbrook at about 1:30 a.m., where a number of recycling bins were set ablaze.

Deliberately set fires were also discovered at residences on Trojan Avenue, Hendon Way and Bowmont Street."

My mother worked late on Tuesday evening and will start early on Wednesday morning, so I had to fend for myself for dinner, and, as is often the case, "fending for myself" can be defined as "going to McDonald's or Wendy's".

Just before I reached the Wendy's at the corner of Merivale Road and Meadowlands Drive, I spotted a fire engine outside the Rogers Video at the side of Merivale Place, the strip mall with HMV and Winners.






I could see some wet pavement, as though the Ottawa fire department had put out a fire in the parking lot instead of in the building itself. I wondered if there had been an engine fire, though I didn't see any burnt-looking cars.

So I went to Wendy's, had my usual #6 Spicy Chicken sandwich combo (yummy, though they were out of the little ketchup cups, so I had to splurt ketchup onto a napkin), and, since I didn't quite have the urge to rent anything from Blockbuster, I decided to walk straight back home.

On the way back, I noticed the fire engine was gone, but two Ottawa Police Service Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor cruisers had taken its place. I saw a strange configuration of limbs to the left of the cars. It took me a moment to figure out that I saw more legs than arms because one of the owners of pairs of legs was handcuffed and was put in the police car on the right. Meanwhile, a couple of other police officers were shining flashlights into the dumpsters at the side of Rogers Video, so I deduced that's where the fire was.

I tried taking a picture using the 2 second long exposure setting on my Kodak EasyShare C643 Zoom, but I didn't want to cross Meadowlands and get too close on the odd chance that the guy being arrested wasn't the only suspect, and I had nothing to rest my camera on for the long exposure, so you can't really make out too much of anything.





The two cars on the left are the police cruisers.

I walked home, told my mother what I had seen, and she seemed to think that it might be related to the arsons which she had heard about on CFRA 580AM. I suppose that's possible, though Nepean is on the other side of Ottawa from Overbrook, the area where the other fires were set.



At least this incident gave me something new that is actually worth blogging about. I've been fully intending to write both about my trip to Montreal and then Mont-Tremblant to watch the Ferrari race and about my not-so-great Canada Day experiences this year, but they'd both be fairly long articles and I'm a terrible procrastinator, which makes me averse to using Blogger at all until I can focus enough on writing.

In other news, I went to my niece's 1st birthday party at my sister's house on Saturday and ate more than my fair share of General Tao Chicken and Orange Beef from the Fortune Express Chinese restaurant in Kanata, but everyone else ate the egg rolls before I could get one, so it evened out. I gave my niece a stuffed horse doll that I had bought at the Kanata Wal-Mart, since they didn't have that much in the way of stuffed toys suitable for a one-year old and I didn't feel like giving her an Elmo or a Barney, and also since I remember that she had been fascinated by a sign with a horse for some kind of whiskey at the Glen Scottish restaurant on Hazeldean a couple of weeks prior.

Also, my parents are in the process of getting new passports because my 94-year old grandmother in Wimbledon has some kind of superbug and probably won't survive a couple of weeks. I have been wanting to visit London again myself, but I will have to stay home and take care of the dogs while my parents attend the funeral (if there is one... ya never know, she might pull through and get that phone call from the Queen on the occasion of my grandmother's 100 birthday). But I might be going on a trip to Detroit in August... I don't know if I should give details, but a certain automobile manufacturer has invited several photographers at Flickr to attend the Woodward Dream Cruise classic car parade, and they'll pay for airfare and hotel! If I go, and I can't think of any reason to refuse this offer, it'll actually be my first trip to the United States since 1993 (which was just a day trip to visit Mountain Lake Public Radio (now "North Country Public Radio") in Plattsburgh NY).

BONUS SONG: Here I am singing "Ichigo Complete", the opening theme song to the Ichigo Mashimaro (Strawberry Marshmallow/苺ましまろ) anime. (Original version here.)

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:27 AM