Seems like every time you pick up a newspaper, well, there I am!

"Herald Star" & "Toronto Scene" writer, reporter, photographer extrordanaire Mark Miller stopped by Thursday.

At the end of his columns in the "Toronto Scene" he always adds a blurb requesting the readers to contact him with any news and story ideas pertaining to Toronto.

Brilliant! Cast the line, dangle the bait; ask for referrals. It works.

Well, I bit.

In the below freezing bitterly cold still dark early morning hours of last Saturday morning I awoke at 5 a.m. to a cold house with no power. Prior to midnight, someone crashed into the power pole in front of my house snapping the pole three quarters of the way up. American Electric Power workers arrived at 3:45 a.m. to shut off my power and disconnect my lines.

So, fumbling around in the dark, I managed to find my torch lighter, light a few candles, slip sweat pants on over my PJs, find my shoes, grab Gary's and my cameras and head out the front door to shoot some video.

So once the power came on (at 7:20 a.m.), I powered up the computer, started uploading the vids and proceeded to shoot the following e-mail off to Mark.

Someone ran into the light pole in front of my house and AEP came out Satuday morning around 4 a.m. to replace it. I took loads of pix. Are you interested? I don't know if they caught the guy who ran into the pole. I called po-po around 8 this morning. Larry Fogle hasn't called me back.
Give me a buzz....(phone number).

I'm uploading vids onto my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/thiznat Check it out!
I'm starting a Toronto channel featuring people in the community. I'd love to vid you since you are our reporter.

Well, Mark called Monday afternoon but he wasn't interested in the photos I took of the pole replacement. He was interested in my YouTube channels and wanted to interview me for a human interest story about those channels.

I asked Mark if he was sure if he really wanted to write a story about me since one written by Janice Kiaski appeared in the "Herald Star" and "Toronto Scene" in November.

Didn't matter.

So Thursday morning, along comes Mark armed with Portage Reporter's Notebook in hand and camera bag slung over his shoulder. We compared cool cameras. His and mine were Lumix digitals.

So check out the interview in the Saturday, February 28th edition of the "Herald Star" and be sure to check out my YouTube channel soon to learn more about Mark Miller the musician, singer, songwriter.