Friday, October 12, 2007

Aloha!

Here I am in beautiful Honolulu, ten days into our holiday. I'm using a computer in the business center of the building to update this.

First, the accommodations. Spacious, with an unbelievable view of the mountains and the shore, and mere steps from the Ala Moana center, a mall that rivals our very own Mallywood for variety. The one "d'oh"? All those windows, no curtains or blinds. Sure, you say, that's no biggie on the 18th floor. Yeah, but how about the past week, when the window washers were working? Biggie. However the work on the glass is all done now.

The weather has been more cloudy than sunny, but hot - 89F today. We have done some wandering about on our own, and I took a tour of Pearl Harbor and visited the Arizona Memorial. We also went on a guided hike up into the mountains on the windward side, saw a gorgeous waterfall and got our clothes & shoes stained up with red clay mud. Today we went to the Honolulu Academy of Arts Museum, then took a private guided tour of Doris Duke's Diamond Head estate, Shangri-La. Ms. Duke, a gigibillionaress, was enamoured of Islamic art and made her home here a shrine to that passion. By the end of the tour I was drooling - and trying to figure out how to translate some of her concepts into my own renos.

Tomorrow we're going to the Kualoa Ranch - the man will ride an ATV while I tour the fishpond & gardens, then we'll connect for a hike up to a lookout point on a cliff, followed by a buffet lunch. Not much else is planned for the rest of our stay except some more shopping - solo for each of us - and dinner at Duke's one evening, to watch the sunset on Waikiki Beach.

So, I guess it's time for me to head up to the glacially air-conditioned condo where my houseboy is fixing dinner........aloha, all!

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

The time for my well-deserved break is finally here - we leave tomorrow for two blissful, relaxing weeks in Oahu. No work woes, no family issues, nada for two blessed weeks. No one will be bothering us about mundane, petty shit. Ah, heaven!

It's down to the last details - fold clothes & pack them, lock up sensitive/valuable stuff (yeah, like anyone wants my Nintendo DS with Sudoko loaded), try to finish the perishables in the fridge, and check in online so we can save ourselves a bit of time and queueing up at the airport tomorrow. At least we're not leaving at some ungodly hour before any self-respecting poultry are awake, the flight leaves at 2:30 p.m.

If it's as lush as advertised, the condo we're staying in should warrant its own post. It sounds delightful - and big, bigger than either the boyfriend's house or mine in square footage. The listing on VRBO says there's broadband internet, so I may not have to hunt for an internet cafe to use. Boyfriend has called dibs on the master bedroom - king-sized bed & ensuite with a 'garden' tub, whatever that is - so I will have to settle for the second-largest of the 3 bedrooms, the one with the queen-sized bed. Boohoo, poor me - NOT. I'll have my own bathroom, too, with shower. Mr. Snooty can keep his garden tub, I'm not a bathtub person anyway.

Anyway, I will check in from Honolulu. And I'll be having an umbrella-garnished drink for every one of my friends!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Of Water and Wedding

The Dragon Boat Festival is over for another year. Our Tide Riders actually moved up a division, taking Bronze in the Borealis C final. Yeah, we did get Gold last year, but a Bronze in a higher division beats Gold in a lower one, and means our overall time has improved. So, yay us! It was a damp-ish and rainy weekend, but bearable when hanging and paddling with friends and co-workers. We had a second team on the water, the Amazons - they showed great rhythm and timing, but came in third in all of their heats. However, they came this close to winning $10,000.00. There was an arbitrarily-chosen finish time in a sealed envelope and whatever team finished with that specific time would win the cash. The time in the envelope was 3:32. Amazons finished one of their heats in 3:33. Sigh - so close!

I have already sent a brief article about the Festival and our placements to the person at work who does the in-house publication - she will be running it in next Monday's edition. Sweet!, as our team captain would say.

And now, to the wedding................

On Saturday evening my father got married. This is the man who had been a bachelor for 48 years, since he and my mother separated in 1959. The man who swore all along that he would never, ever even live with a woman, let alone marry again. The man who was happy, he declared, living on his own. So, his announcement a couple of months ago that he was going to marry the woman he'd been dating for about six months took us all by surprise, to say the least. More like............WHAT THE FUCK? HAS HE BEEN REPLACED BY A POD PERSON? Anyway, once the initial shock wore off, we slowly came to accept that this would happen. At least she made him happy - the cranky old guy we'd been seeing for the past few years was gone, replaced by the world's oldest living teenager in love.

So, fast forward to the wedding. First off, I had been a bit uneasy about the fact that no one had arranged any kind of get-together for our family to meet her family. I found out why - besides Pop believing that he wasn't marrying her family, just her, so none of this "blended' family stuff. Thank God!!!!!!! I would not want to be "blended" with that bunch! As my boyfriend put it, "the Dalton Gang meets the Brady Bunch". I should have twigged to the sheer rudeness of her family when I saw that the table closest to the front of the room, thus closest to the actual ceremony was for......her GRANDCHILDREN! Yes, folks, the entitlement-zilla brat offspring of the bride's kids dictated almost everything about the evening. First there were the three teen-aged ones who had the emcee (my uncle) announce they were singing a song they "wrote" for the couple - no, they merely sang over/along with a recording of "I Hope You Dance". Badly. Then there was the 10-year-old who had a fit of weeping histrionics and had to be cajoled into warbling (off-key) a few banal verses for her "Nanny".

I, the groom's daughter, met two of the bride's three sons and her daughter. I was not introduced to said sons' wives, nor to the husband of the daughter, nor to the third son. My only interactions with the grandchildren was them shoving rudely into the buffet line in front of me. The groom's daughters and grandchildren, as well as his brothers & sisters, were relegated to the back two tables of the room. Nice, huh? Oh, the bride's son's in-laws got to share a table with my two aunties (both over 78) and my two uncles (one near 80, the other over 70) and their spouses. Can we say treated like second-class citizens?

Enough about the Brady Bunch and their appalling lack of even the most basic of manners, though. Let's talk about the ceremony itself. The officiant was a Justice of the Peace they'd selected from a list at city hall. She had a very stilted delivery and diction that reminded me of Peter Cook playing the Archbishop in "The Princess Bride". I had to stifle giggles as I imagined her droning........"mawwaige. And wuuv, twue wuuv........." I wasn't the only one - my niece and her boyfriend saw the connection, too, as did my brother-in-law.

Bottom line - while I am happy my Pop has found someone who makes him happy, and I do like the woman, I am really, really glad that I will not have to endure "family" gatherings with her totally rude and clueless clan. I'd be tempted to start a brawl with them if I had to do that. Really. And I know I'd win - because we're tougher!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

More Painting!

I painted the dining room, kitchen, and the upper base cabinets today - because a week from tomorrow there is a huge, very heavy, solid oak antique sideboard coming from my father's place, so I need to be ready for it. It is much easier to paint with less furniture in the room, duh. So, I patched holes yesterday (thanks again, GroomLeader, for helping me remove the ugly wood cabinet) and today I washed down with TSP, then rinsed, and painted. The walls around the laundry area and bathroom doorway I left for Tuesday, since my hands were starting to go numb and stay that way.

I will be contacting the student painting service to see how much they want to pick up the paint and kitchen cupboard doors, paint the damned things, and return them to me. Really, I haven't the time, space, or patience for such picky work. If it's less than $200.00, it's a deal. I'd like to have the place together for my sister's visit mid-August, but I'm not holding my breath. If I can get the door work expedited, it's no biggie to remove the 6 lower cupboard doors and paint those base cabinets. New hardware for the doors, and once they're painted and re-installed it will be like having a new kitchen.

If anyone makes it to the end of this post, I will be really shocked, since this is a very boring subject. Does anyone care that I plan to leave the cupboard where I have all my spices, oils, and sauces doorless? I though not. Maybe I'll have something more interesting to write about later this week - Dragon Boat practice is on Tuesday, and for once I'm not on duty that evening!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Color Me Really Pissed Off!

Okay, first, with the new 24/7 coverage of our position here at work, my weekend day shifts now start at the ungodly, inhuman, no-one-should-be-up-and-functional-this-early hour of 0700. Not my nice 0900-2100 shifts, oh no. 7.in.the.fucking.morning.

I was awake before the magpies this morning, damn it! Then, while driving to work, someone who turned out to be another staff member here was tailgating me. Grrrrrrr, not a wise move. While parking my car in the parkade, it was almost hit by another cow-irker who wasn't looking where she was driving. And then when I was walking through the parkade, yet another employee sped up the ramp and almost ran me down. Just a peachy start to the day.

Don't even get me started on the lack of staff and beds right now. And the reluctance of certain staff members to do their fucking jobs - no, they'd rather foot-drag and stonewall and come up with (totally bogus) reasons not to accept admissions or transfers. I have always believed a hospital to be a 24/7 functioning site. If you don't want to accept patients, don't work here!

*twitch twitch* I feel a new rant coming on - one about people abusing the health care system............

Right then - here's what an ER is for: EMERGENCY CARE!!!!! Not to get a cough that you've had for two months checked out. Not for getting your MMR booster shot. Not for prescription-hunting or drug-seeking. Not for having a minor boo-boo that could be treated with a bandaid and a lollipop assessed. Not to complain about your constipation. For the eighth time this week. When you're a heroin addict. Not to get the wax syringed out of your ears.

And, for those of the common-sense challenged persuasion, here's what constitutes an emergency: Loss of consciousness, particularly if accompanied by the head banging on the floor. Copious amounts of blood coming from a place blood doesn't normally issue from. A fever that makes you glow like a hibachi on high heat. Inability to breathe to the point where you're turning blue. Chest pain. Really, pain in the chest. Breathing so congested or labored you can be heard from another room. The forcible separation from one's body of a limb or a digit. Being stabbed deeper than 1 inch with any sharp object, especially if accompanied by lots of blood. Being shot. Sudden blindness. Broken bones. Getting the picture?

Oh, and if you're without transportation, and feel that the ankle you twisted a week ago need immediate attention in an ER, DO NOT call an ambulance to take you there. Pay for a cab you cheap bastard. By occupying an ambulance when you're not in dire need, you may be sentencing a TRUE emergency patient to death.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

This Blog Is Due For An Update

That's what Ms. M., the Divine, told me yesterday. So, for the benefit of those of my friends who crave cheap amusement, here goes. Today's topic is drivers.

I have been a licensed driver in Alberta for more than 35 years, a vehicle owner for 28+. I drive pretty much every day, and I have my own pantheon of annoying drivers. Bear with me while I list them, in no particular order.

The Half-Ton Halfwit: This is the rube, usually in a vehicle fueled by farm gas, who has never before driven in a population center larger then Broken Fan Belt, AB, but who now finds himself tooling along on the streets of this big city. Rubbernecking his way through the bewildering maze that is our thoroughfares, he is driving at a speed that fluctuates between dead stop and way too fast, such niceties as lanes, turn signals, and pedestrian crosswalks lost on him. His war cry - "Whar we goin' now, Ma?"

The SUV Shithead: Identified by its vehicle, this critter is unmistakable. Also unmistakable is its driving habits - high-speed, aggressive, with a don't-you-understand-the-laws-don't-apply-to-me-because-I-have-all-wheel-drive! attitude. Red lights? For the peons who don't have the vehicular capability to traverse swamps. Signaling lane changes? Puh-lease, don't you know all mankind MUST give way to their superiority. Stopping to allow a pedestrian to cross the street? Listen, Bub, if it can run over a deer, a senior citizen won't cause half as much of a bump. You can hear them now - "Get outta my way, I have an SUV!"

The Entitlementzilla: This is the driver who feels that he has the right-of-way, all the time, any time. You often encounter them driving the wrong way in parking lots, glaring and giving the finger to those drivers who can read directional arrows painted on the ashphalt. To them belong the very closest parking spots, the front of the traffic queue, and woe betide the lesser driver who dares to usurp their due. It is not unusual to see The Entitlementzilla's vehicle parked at an angle across two parking spaces, thus ensuring no one else parks too close to their precious possession. Their whine is loud and cringeworthy - "But I w-a-a-a-a-a-nt it!"

The Penile Deficient: Who hasn't spotted one of these? The middle-aged (or older) male who, with jaunty motoring cap carefully positioned to cover the bald spot, swans around in his deplorably over-priced and over-powered sports convertible. You know by looking at him that he is deluded, he really thinks he can attract a hot woman less than half his age simply because he drives an expensive car. You also know that he's dumped the woman who patiently supported him while he amassed the bucks he spent on said car. And it's a given that he is, sadly, driving his penis-substitute, because you know his real appendage is only one inch long. He can be identified by some variation of - "Hey, baby, want a date?"



The Gangsta: Ear-splittingly loud, earthquake-level vibrating stereo is the trademark of this driver. It's always a male, aged 16-25, driving anything from a muscle car to a mini-SUV to some rusted-out POS. This wanna-be bad boy wears the ball cap turned sideways or backwards, has a cigarette burning at all times, and treats the traffic laws like they are, at best, mere suggestions. He usually has the car filled with the maximum number of self-clones, each vying to be the baddest boy around. Hear them? - "*(&$#&%&_+)__)^*%$ you!"



The SpeedmeisterTailgater: Perhaps Dante, if he were alive today, would add a special circle to Hell just for this one. This is the driver who insists on staying a mere 6 inches from your back bumper. The posted speed limit simply isn't fast enough for them, and God help you if you dare to indicate that they're following too closely - they will close the gap between their grill and your tailpipe even further. They simply do not understand why you wouldn't be ecstatic about garnering yourself a speeding ticket just to satisfy their need for speed. If they do get an opportunity to pass you, they do it with a hair's-breadth of clearance, flipping you the time-honored one finger salute as they do. Their refrain is - "Get the lead out!"



The Old Dead Person: Although retired, thus free to do his shopping and run errands any day of the week, this old crock chooses to do so on weekends, when the rest of the workday planet is attempting to do the same. Senile dementia has rendered this driver incapable of remembering what he had for breakfast, yet he still possesses a valid driver's license, if only because his family physician is too soft-hearted to report his unsuitability to be behind the wheel. He drives a good 15-20 km. below the speed limit, doesn't recognize stop signs at all, and can sometimes be spotted driving the wrong way down a street. Of course, when this dangerously befuddled oldster causes a collision that results in death, his family cry loudly about how he is being unfairly blamed. If he is heard, he's most likely saying - "Is it suppertime yet?"



Don't get me wrong, I also hate the drivers who are simultaneously eating, smoking, doing their nails and making cell phone calls while on the road and moving, as well as those who drive about with children bouncing, completely unrestrained by such mundane things as safety devices, in the front and back seats of the car. Oh yes, I am an equal-opportunity grouch. I just can't come up with catchy-sounding names for the last two categories. Besides, my fingers are getting tired.

Monday, April 30, 2007

One Month In My New Home

Well, on Saturday it was a month since moving day. I think I've done pretty well in that time. I may not have any of my pictures/artwork hung up on the walls yet, but I have the rest of the main floor unpacked, ditto the second floor. And, after three intensive days of work (and some really livid, massive new bruises), I have almost all of the loft done. There is one large bookcase to wash down, and only 11 liquor store boxes of books left to unpack. That, considering it was hard to navigate one's way across the room up there for boxes just 4 days ago, is a huge improvement!

The yard is looking sad, though. Clueless and Hellspawn obviously had a dog, there are huge patches of dead lawn everywhere, as well as a big square patch where the doghouse stood. I'm thinking that maybe next summer I'll do some xeroscaping out there - you don't have to mow rocks. My boyfriend has loaned me an old weed-whacker, as the grass I'll have to cut encompasses such a small area. He's also loaned me a really terrific pair of garden clippers, for the hedge. Now, I wouldn't have the first idea of what I'm supposed to trim on the hedge. I prefer the wild-foliage-impenetrable-thorn-thicket look, anyway. I do have my statue of St. Francis of Assissi in the yard, along with my wind whirlies and suncatchers; the yard kind of looks like a shabby old rubbie dressed in clown clothes. Oh well, that's my style, I like it.

Today I plan to have lunch with two of my book-packing girlfriends. They're coming over here first so I can show off my little house, then we'll hit somewhere nice for lunch. NOT the Asian Village because as my best friend says, "I eat Indian all the time". Of course, she is Indian. Maybe we'll go to Hoang Long, or perhaps one of the places in The Mall.

There is supposed to be a contractor coming by this afternoon after 4 to measure for my two interior doors. I opted to go with Rona installations, they are, after all, a Canadian company (Home Depot is not Canuckistani). There's a $45.00 fee for the site measuring, said amount being deducted from the final total if you contract with Rona to do the job. Nice deal, if you ask me. As soon as I have the bedroom doors installed, I will be ready for houseguests. Hear that, my Usanian and otherly-located friends?

Time to go and run the Hoover over the carpets - company's coming!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Oh, You Gotta Have Friends........

Long time since my last entry, I notice. That's because I was packing and moving and unpacking. Much, much packing and unpacking. So, for those of you waiting with bated breath for the next installment of my thrilling moving saga, I will proceed - and try to keep it from turning into a narrative the size of "Battlefield Earth".

Packing up one's belongings after 13 years in one location is a huge job! You just don't realize how much you've accumulated until the time comes to get it all consolidated into boxes. I did purge, with a vengeance - I must have sent 25-30 boxes to Goodwill, as well as two trunkloads of stuff to the Eco-station. The hopelessly unusable stuff? Contractor's garbage bags, of course.

What with my eye surgery (went just fine, thanks!) and work, I kind of ran out of time to pack. Actually, by the last day before the move, I'd also run out of boxes and paper for packing, too. The last bits of the kitchen were packed in baskets from my extensive collection, padded with leftover gift wrap. Honest!

My incredibly helpful niece took time from her very busy uni-student-cum -student-teacher life and helped me pack up all the collectible tins and other decorative junk from the tops of the kitchen cupboards, as well as all of the non-perishable foodstuffs in both pantry areas. Then the Monday before the movers were due, three of my lovely friends from work came over and helped me pack the books. All 3000+ of them. When that was done, they moved on to the linen closet. The next day, one of the three, my very best friend, came by again, and between us we got the kitchen all packed up. That would be when we ran out of packing materials and had to get creative.

**Aside: my best friend should go into business as a professional packer. She managed to get a lot more into boxes than I would have, and not a thing ended up cracked or chipped or broken.**

So, finally it was moving day. The company I'd hired, Mini-Move, had planned on 4 men + 2 trucks - but they stopped to pick up a fifth man on the way to my old apartment. Good thing they did, even with 5 of them it still took about 4.5 hours to unload the trucks at my new house. No casualties, no damage except one castor from the bed frame was misplaced - I found it after I'd replaced all 4, but no biggie, I now have a spare set. Excellent work by a team of very nice gentlemen who were sweet enough to laugh at my jokes. The cookies I'd laid in for them were a big hit, too. Cost me a fair bit, but well worth it when you consider the books and bookcases had to go all the way up to the loft.

While the movers were loading up the trucks, my boyfriend went over to the new house. He was convinced he smelled natural gas in there. He was right. Atco came out and discovered that the furnace had a leaking gas valve, and they turned off the gas. It was nowhere near warm enough to live without heat, so we got Pro Plumbing out again - and close to $500.00 later, it was fixed.

The unpacking process was a bit hampered by the onset of cellulitis in my poor, split fingertips. One finger was well into a whacking good infection by the time I admitted that antibiotics were needed. This is where working in a hospital helps - I made a call to the nurse in charge in ER, she saved me a spot, and I was in & out in about 35 minutes, with a scrip for Keflex and stern instructions from the physician to wear cotton gloves for manual work. Wearing them really helped my hands to heal while enabling me to keep up with the unpacking.

I had a bit of an epiphany when I went to clean the old place - I had thought myself a genius for installing electronic mouse-repellers in every electrical outlet, and congratulated myself on creating a rodent-free zone in an otherwise infested building. Not so - the mice had merely gotten used to the electronic noise and got smarter, they stayed behind the bookcases and other heavy bits of furniture. After everything was moved out, the extent of the rodent infestation was appalling. I made an executive decision to kiss my $300.00 damage deposit (paid back in 1994) goodbye, told the shrew caretaker that I would not be cleaning, and then reported the mouse problem to Capital Health's Environmental Concerns department. I strongly suspect the mouse urine coating a lot of my belongings (and don't worry, I threw out the non-cleanable of those) was what caused such a nasty tissue inflammation in my fingers. Actually, telling the peroxided witch to blow me and clean the place herself was quite liberating!

My wallpaper stripping buddy helped me with IKEA furniture assembly - and the nice people from Sleep Country delivered my new queen-sized bed this past weekend. The living room is now almost box-free, the second floor is as complete as it can be without doors on the bedrooms, and the loft............waits. It's still a mass (mess?) of bookcases, stacked shelves for said bookcases, and boxes of books. That's a job that will have to be tackled in pieces, I think. Later this month or early next month I'll paint the kitchen base cabinets, then take the detached cupboard doors out to the patio and paint them, too.

It's GOOD to be home!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Fifty Bucks Well Spent

That would be the fifty dollars I paid the nice men with a truck who came today and hauled away the probably defunct portable dishwasher from the townhouse, as well as the two bedroom doors I'm planning on replacing. To the dump with them, I say!

Renovations are proceeding. The two bedrooms and the main floor, with the exception of the hall, are all primed. Tomorrow we start painting in earnest. I have to say, my arms are feeling the effects of painting all day. However, if we paint all day tomorrow, and if my niece graces us with her presence and assistance, then by Monday I will be able to finish up with the trim in both bedrooms.

Meanwhile, there is packing to do. As weary and sore as I am, I have to push myself to pack up at least four or five boxes tonight. I will be so glad when this is all over, and I am in my nice new little home!




Tuesday, March 13, 2007

I *HEART* Rona!

It is my go-to store. My home renovation store. My tools and tips store. My we-need-this-so-run-and-buy-it store. They should pay me to be in one of their commercials, I tell you. Since every time I turn around that little cartoon cash register is going "Cha-Ching!", I am glad Rona is getting my money. Lordy, they even sell curtains!!!

So enough about Rona. Here's the update on the townhouse renovation. The wallpaper, except for two areas about 2.5 feet wide each, is gone. I rented a wallpaper steamer (guess where?) and Groom_Leader displayed his previously-undiscovered talent for employing said tool to remove that godawful wall covering. Over 8 hours were spent in this task yesterday. When I returned the steamer this morning, I discovered that the nice man who rented it to me yesterday was only charging me $20.00 for the day's rental. What a sweetie!

Today was "dump" day - Groom_Leader schlepped the car battery and three other boxes of old small appliances and electronics to the Eco Station for me, then we loaded both our cars and delivered all the boxes to Goodwill. Tomorrow is a day off from the reno project - I am going to go for a walk with my sweetie, then I have a meeting from noon until two. After I get home, my niece, who is student-teaching at a school not too far from my current apartment, is going to drop by and hang out until she has to return to the school for an informational open house.

Thursday is plumbing day - and while the plumber is doing his thing, my capable assistant and I will be stripping (with remover gel) the last of the wallpaper, then beginning the top-to-bottom scrubbing of the place. Friday, I hope to be able to buy the paint and start priming some of the walls. Oh, and we're going to remove the bedroom doors and store them in the shed. Since I live alone, I can wait for a month or so before buying new doors at you-know-where and having them installed. I'm thinking of buying those old-fashioned looking glass doorknobs for them.

Everything else is on track - I have carpet cleaning scheduled for the 27th, and the move-out inspection will be done at 8 p.m. on the 30th. The caretaker had arranged for tradesmen to come in on the morning of the 30th to rip up the carpets and lino and replace them - and she had no idea, at that time, of what date I was moving out. So let's see, she was going to have trades entering and working in an occupied, full apartment. I stopped that with a call to the Landlord and Tenant Advisory Board, followed by a conversation with said dimwit caretaker. The workmen have been rescheduled for the morning of the 31st, after I have handed back the keys and shaken the dust of this pesthole off my feet.

One thing that really helped get the moving stuff in hand was sitting down and writing out a timeline - day by day, task by task. I feel more in control of the process now, I have a map to follow. Funny how we can reduce our stress level by relying on old, familiar habits.

And I still *HEART* Rona.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Creating Chaos From Chaos

Or, how I started the monumental task of reducing my packrat's hoard of THINGS that I own.

I am in the process of Freecycling the townhouse's dishwasher, the big black and glass shelving/display case that we removed from the living room wall (previously mounted the perfect height at which I would bean my head on the corner of it every time I rounded the corner from the dining area, incidentally), and have found a Freecycle recipient for the frou-frou fancy collectible doll that a co-worker gave me years ago.

My buddy came over today (after we tried out the Jumbo Dim Sum restaurant) and did the grunt work while I sorted and stacked the contents of the storage bin out in the hall. We're talking a space the size of a small bathroom, which had been filled to the ceiling (literally, folks) with boxes. In the end, we tossed 3 bags of garbage (Contractor's Glad garbage bags, no less), there are 2 boxes of old appliances to go to the Eco Station (goodbye to my late grandmother's two-door toaster and ancient electric waffle iron, neither used in over two decades), 12 boxes
and a decorator table with glass topper for Goodwill. What I kept wouldn't even fill one 2-cubic-foot box. How's that for drastic culling?

I'm going to pack up some more of the living room knick-knacks tonight while I listen to TV, and tomorrow my trusty buddy and I are going to enter the mystifying and wild world of wallpaper steaming. I really pray that does the trick with that deity-awful wallpaper. Tuesday will be Eco Station & Goodwill dropoff, and I will pack what I can manage of the storage room here in the apartment. Wednesday is for cleaning the condo - dust, vacuum, and then we will begin to scrubscrubscrubscrubscrub! Damn, that woman, that so-called church lady, really was a slob. Hello, Dimwit, ever hear the one about cleanliness being next to Godliness?I do have to take a break from 12 to 2 p.m. for a mandatory work meeting, but that's about it, and we will have my boyfriend to help.

Thursday the plumber is coming, plus the complex's plumber will be shutting off the water to about half the townhouses so that the wrecked shutoff T for my main water supply can be replaced. Then my plumber will set to work; he has to replace the shutoff Ts on the two toilets, replace the upstairs toilet, and the sink in the downstairs bathroom. I figure it will be about a $600 -700.00 day. While the nice plumber is working, my buddy and I will be priming walls for painting. I have decided to reduce the workload a bit - I priced interior doors at Rona, and for about $160.00, I can buy new doors for both bedrooms, rather than repainting them. Friday and the weekend will be spent painting.........the bedrooms, including the closet in the master, the hall and the entry closet, and the living room. I will be painting the kitchen cabinets and doors/drawer fronts, but after I've moved in.

One thing that's working in my favor - my opthalmologist has ordered me off work until the 20th. He's not thrilled that I am going back to work then, he'd rather I took a break from the computer and paperwork my job involves for two weeks, but I can't leave the hospital in the lurch for that long. It's hard covering my shifts, as our pool of casuals has dwindled to two. The cataract surgery was a breeze, I have had practically no discomfort postoperatively, and there is slow improvement in my visual acuity on that side, a bit more every day. I am still sensitive to daylight, so I wear the (very Terminator-looking) shades whenever I go outside.

So, watch this space for the next barely-thrilling installment of the saga of La Casita de Luna Azul.

Monday, March 05, 2007

The Work Continues.........

Well, every built-in, bracket, nail, screw, bolt and fixture that I wanted removed from the walls has been. My two sturdy peon........er, helpers managed to spindle, fold, and mutilate everything into small enough shapes to fit into XL garbage bags. We're talking venetian blinds plus tracks, a pre-fab type chipboard shelving unit as well as all of the built-in desk pieces from the loft (except the L-shaped 7' x 3' desktop, which is laying flat on the floor of the crawl space). All taken out to the dumpster and disposed of. Amazing, the destructive power contained in a couple of beer-fueled fellows!

The wallpaper - well, I learned today that Home Depot and Rona both rent wallpaper steamers. Being a proud Canadian, I'd rather go with Rona. That will have to wait until after my upcoming eye surgery on Thursday, recuperation over the weekend, and the three evening shifts after that. Also due on the 15th is the plumber, to fix my various plumbing issues. So, Groom_Leader and I will steam off the wallpaper and smooth the walls while the plumber plumbs.

The day after plumbing-and-steaming day will be paint purchasing and a thorough, extreme cleaning - there is 4 to 5 years' worth of dust on the ceiling fans, the wall light fixtures, crud and grunge inside cupboards, walls to wash down, etc. Then we will have three days to prime and paint, two of those days with the added assistance of my niece (and maybe her boyfriend). Meanwhile, when I'm not working on the townhouse, I'll be packing. And packing and packing and packing.

Moving day is March 28 - once painting is done, I'll get a steam cleaner in for the carpets, and will pre-clean some of the worst-stained areas with something deadly strong from the store. I'll also be taking a lot of smaller loads over myself, both to reduce total moving crew time and to ensure my preciousest stuff gets there safely. Curtains and curtain rods need to be bought and put up, too. I will be ready to move in on the 28th, but it's going to be a long, hard-fought battle.

Meanwhile, the surly bitch caretaker at my current address is in a snit because I called her on a violation of the Residential Tenancies Act. She felt that by leaving a piece of paper under my door which informed me she would be showing my apartment to prospective tenants Monday-Friday between 9 and 5, she had given me sufficient notice. Imagine her surprise when I informed her that the Act states that every non-emergency entry requires 24 hours' advance notice in writing. What do they expect, with the Act available online? An informed tenant accesses the available resources to protect their rights.

I guess the reason she hasn't found a renter yet in our very hot rental market may have something to do with the two new framed pieces of art I've hung facing the door. The ones I created on my computer and printed off. The ones that warn, in plain English, that this apartment building is infested with MICE.

Evil? Moi? *batting eyelashes*

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Demolition Man(s - and Women, for that matter)

I took possession of my new townhouse on Thursday. On Friday, I had the locks re-keyed so I could be sure no one else had access to my new home. Today, the fun really started!

First, the plumbing repair that wasn't. The home inspector I'd hired told me that the wax seal under the upstairs toilet needed replacing. Fine, my boyfriend does all of his own plumbing, he volunteered to do it for me. Some intense pre-job obsessing later, he was ready to take it on. BUT........

The water shutoff for that toilet is missing a handle. Whoever had repaired that toilet in the past had use Vice-Grips to turn the water off, and had stripped the threads on the fitting. Surprise, surprise, the downstairs toilet's shutoff handle was missing, too. So was the handle on the townhouse's main water shutoff in the furnace room. WTF???????? I will be calling a plumber on Monday. Fortunately, my Dad's lady friend has the number of a good, reasonably-priced one, a fellow who worked construction jobs with dad in the past.

Next - the woman who had lived in the townhouse with her daughter for years was a slob!!!!! The amount of cleaning I will have to do is staggering, she obviously didn't believe that "dust" is also a verb. Not to mention burnt-out light bulbs not replaced, spiderwebs in the corners of rooms, venetian blinds harboring thriving ecosystems of dust mites, stained carpeting, and chipped, grubby walls and doors. She let her daughter paint pictures on the walls and doors of the child's bedroom, FFS!!!!!! Lord help me,. I have to paint over all of it.

Now, the people who occupied this place before Indifferent Single Mother Church Lady were 1) trailertrash, 2) cheap, and 3) obviously on crack. There is not a single "improvement" that has been professionally done - even the laminate was laid by total amateurs. We pulled down a plethora of screwed-to-the-walls pine shelves, a built-in pine corner desk, and at least a zillion wall anchor plugs. We're not done, either - the cheap plastic venetian blinds and their fittings, as well as the (oh, shades of the bad decor of the early 1990s!) balloon valences in both bedrooms, have to be removed. Ugh. It's a damned good thing that Polyfilla is cheap.

Wallpaper - don't get me started! There is really old, really cheap wallpaper and a wallpaper border halfway up the living room walls. My niece ran a scarifier over the wallpaper, then soaked it with a dilute remover solution - and proceeded to scrape off minuscule shreds of wallpaper. It looks like I'll have to rent a steamer to remove it. Niece, however, is a star at pulling wallpaper lath and trim off with a claw hammer. I don't think she realized she had this talent!

The kicker? In addition to the $700.00+ for the plumbing repairs, in addition to the expense and time for the wallpaper steamer, in addition to the necessity of painting the kitchen cabinet doors because they're too shabby for me to live with, there's the thoughtful gift that ISMCL left me in the loft/attic crawl space - a car battery with the top split!

Bloody hell.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Thirteen Years (a treatise on packratitis)

Thirteen years. That's how long it's been since my last move. I have a storage "bin" in the storage room out in the building hall, filled with boxes and boxes of stuff, some not even unpacked after the last move. I have two big items of furniture that I have to unload before I move into the townhouse (both have takers, but getting them to take the items, ah, that's the challenge!) I have an in-suite storage room crammed full. And the contents of three closets, a free-standing pantry, the kitchen cupboards, the books and knick-knacks on 10 bookcases, all of the stuff in the large cedar chest, and my clothes and other personal possessions. How the hell did I accumulate all this stuff?

Start small......the desk is emptied, whenever Bex gets around to picking it up. I've got the buffet & hutch half (okay, 0ne-third) emptied, planning to finish that today, then Guilly and co. can fetch it. With the spaces presently occupied by those pieces empty, I have somewhere to stack boxes as I fill them. Monday's job? Call the nearby storage outfits and buy some boxes and packing paper. I figure, for all I have including the >3000 books, ten dozen boxes should do.

The sheer magnitude of this task is depressing me. I guess I'll just have to take it in steps, in stages. Break it into more manageable portions, as they say. Thank goodness I'm giving myself the month of March (mostly) to get the painting done in the townhouse and the packing done here, as well as 4 days after moving to clean this apartment so I can recover my measly three hundred buck damage deposit. I will get through this - but at what cost to my sanity?

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Good News/Bad News

This will probably be the first of many (well, a few, anyway) identically-titled posts. Kind of a what-I've-been-up-to-lately story in point form.

Bad News: backed into another car in the hospital parkade last Thursday night when leaving work; left a note on the car's windshield apologizing and giving my name and contact #s.

Good News: absolutely no damage to my car, not even a scratch (other car had a sizeable ding on the back bumper). Didn't hear from anyone all Friday, got to hoping the ding was old and not caused by me.

Bad News: the intern who owns the other car contacted me on Saturday. The ding was definitely not there before, she said.

Good News: since I have never, in 34 years of being a licensed driver and 27+ years of owning cars, had an at-fault accident, my insurance has an automatic forgiveness for the first one. No increase in my premiums next year.
___________________________________________________________________

Bad News: while biting into a semi-frozen chocolate a couple of weeks ago, I broke off a piece of a lower molar.

Good News: what ended up exposed was a filling, not tooth enamel, so I didn't spend the weekend in pain.

Bad News: the filling had very sharp edges; my tongue got quite abraded.

Good News: the root of the tooth is healthy, so a crown won't be a problem.

Bad News: my Blue Cross only covers 50% of crowns, so my up-front cost will be about CAD$500.00.

Good News: I have a supplemental Health Spending account that will reimburse that $500.00.
___________________________________________________________________

Good News: there is a change a-brewing in the way my job is done region-wide. A new lead day manager position will come in, coordinating the shift managers (what I am right now). After discussion with my director (and positive encouragement from her), I decided to apply for that position when it was posted.

Bad News: even before the position has been posted, our night manager has been seconded into it - by, among others, our director. Guess that shows me what they think of me. This night manager is not someone I want to be answering to.
___________________________________________________________________

Bad News: I was diagnosed last May with a cataract in my left eye. My vision (especially night vision) got progressively worse, so I was referred to an opthalmologist.

Good News: by putting my name on the surgery cancellation list, I managed to get scheduled for surgery this March, instead of June.

Bad News: the surgery and resultant recuperation period will cut into my time to paint the new townhouse prior to moving in.
___________________________________________________________________

Well, that's long enough for now. Stay tuned for more exciting developments from the Aunt hill!

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Oh My God, What Have I Done?

As of March 1, I will be a homeowner. Proud possessor of 1129 square feet of two-stories-plus-loft townhouse. Mistress of my own domain. No longer at the mercy of an absentee landlord and an indifferent, incompetent management company. Queen of my castle. Empress of my own universe. AND IN BLOODY DEBT FOR THE NEXT THIRTY YEARS!




*Deep cleansing breath* Okay, I'm better now. I was just suddenly realizing the enormity of the step I've taken. Hell, even before I move in, I have to remove/dismantle and get rid of a bunch of built-in items (shelves, a humungous desk thing in the loft, a trophy case, and so on), pull of a living room full of hideous wallpaper, remove a broken accordion closet door, patch a gazillion holes in the walls from nails and such, and paint three rooms and a closet. Plus sort/cull and pack my existing apartment full of stuff up, now that's going to be a challenge. However, when I'm done I will have a home that's all mine.

Other tasks pre-move: get a plumber to re-do the wax sealing at the base of the main bathroom toilet, have the locks changed, make about a thousand change-of address notifications, give away two large furniture items I won't have a need for in the new place, and Freecycle the portable dishwasher in the townhouse, which I hear doesn't work too well and which I have no need for. Hmmm, guess I'd better quit mucking about online and get to work!