Photo: "Fruit Crates" by John Elmslie, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

Toronto Centre residents are seeing red this morning. Liberal red. Perhaps unsurprisingly Glen Murray won yesterday's byelection with 47% of the vote. The NDP's Cathy Crowe garnered 33% of the vote while the PC's Pam Taylor collected 15.4%. While McGuinty and Murray bent over backwards praising each other, Crowe, despite a strong showing, was accusing the Liberals of buying the seat with the last minute $15 million for Toronto Grace Hospital. Guess we'll see what residents think when we all go to the polls soon(ish).

The city lost $600k to fraud last year, thanks to unscrupulous employees. Some were of the relatively pedestrian 'submit false medical bills for reimbursement' variety but over $300k comes from one employee who collected fees from residents to upgrade their water service. Of course that's all a drop in the bucket compared to the over $100 million an auditor found in lost cash.

I've just learned perhaps the easiest and best way to get out of a parking ticket: drive away before the ticket is placed on your car. But if councillors have their way you won't be able to do that for long. Apparently $5 million worth of tickets were canceled due to drivers pulling away, which really just tells me ticket writers don't show much leniency when drivers are near the car.

Another pedestrian hit by a vehicle this morning. At this time the extent of the injuries is unknown, but if they're serious I'd expect another round of finger pointing between drivers and walkers. Can't we all just share the road nicely?

Nothing like a good old chili competition to prepare for Super Bowl Sunday, and for the second year in a row Mike Callaghan took top prize. In other Super Bowl news advertisers are putting their ads online in advance of the game, trying to hook the online audience. But will Big Game watchers (who maybe have made their own, non-award-winning, chili) be able to see the all important commercials, or will we just get decidedly lackluster Canadian (commercial) content?

That those of us in Ontario drink milk poured from a bag is gaining worldwide noteriety thanks to a YouTube video gone viral. I'm still not accustomed to milk in a bag (I didn't grow up here) and in addition to the funny looks those used to jugs are giving us, apparently Britons are fighting an industry shifting to bags. In case you're not sure, instructions for how to prepare a bag for us are in the video below.