A bit sad tonight as I sit on the train, Toronto-bound. Just before boarding the train I drove my old green VW Golf down to my mechanic and said goodbye.

The car has been a great and dependable friend over almost 8 years and has carried me and others 128 000 km (80 000 mi) to good times and bad times, near and far.

No doubt it winced as it contemplated each foray down washboard gravel logging roads in Algonquin park. I am sure it sighed with resignation at the thought of the next load of stuff moved between 3 of my apartments and my house, to say nothing of the apartments of others. It endured freezing cold winters galore and always started (except once). It stayed on the road, while many others slid off.

It welcomed the increasingly frequent visits from a certain individual who came to be a fixture in the passenger seat, although it must have been puzzled about why that seat was always sliding all the way to the front. Although it didn’t set out to be a diner, a good few meals were consumed in it as well. It waited patiently as I worked and played, and with very few exceptions was already ready for an unexpected jaunt or side-trip.

At the end of the day, my mechanic tells me that with repair and rebuilding it may still have 100 000 kilometers left to go. I hope he’s right. I hope someone will take care of it and enjoy it as much as I have. I wasn’t its first friend but I tried to be a good one, and I hope I will not be its last.

 › domicile     2007-06-06 23:35   ...1 comment

Friday was the day of the delivery of our new AEG laundry equipment.

I planned to work at home that day while waiting for the truck. Partway through the morning it occurred to me that I should clear a path from the front door to the basement stairs. I did that. It then occurred to me that I should have one more measurement of the basement door, which lead to the realization (by reference to the dimensions on the AEG website) that the door needed to be a bit wider to accomodate the equipment. I then spent a while removing pieces of wood from the doorframe and tearing hooks off the wall. I even removed some moulding from the bottom of the wall in the stairwell. Huge quantities of plaster chunks and dust were generated by this procedure.

Think this was overkill on my part? Think again! If you, gentle reader, have moved house recently, you may remember that the movers sometimes put straps under very heavy items to move them up and down stairs. Here’s how tight the doorframe was: The washer went through the door, but the strap would not fit. It was a 40” washer going through a 40.4” doorway. That’s close.

Anyway, we now have an exciting new 6 kg (13.2 lb) washer. Our old washer probably could handle 2 to 2.5 kg, and so as you can imagine we now expect to put a rather large dent in the fabrics that have piled up awaiting cleaning.

So far so good, this equipment is performing admirably. It has a great capacity, excellent power consumption characteristics and it’s unimaginably great on water utilisation. And the dryer is good too… it does not roast the clothes which may mean that we can use the dryer more and the racks less!

What’s great about this equipment is that the motors don’t spin the clothes all the time. This makes perfect sense: sometimes it’s OK for the clothes to just soak a bit… why agitate them constantly? Sometimes it’s OK for the dryer to just turn the pile over… not tumble things without cease. These machines seem to do work when required and not otherwise. Smart.

Go AEG laundry Go!

 › domicile     2005-11-14 23:16   ...3 comments

Here’s an anecdote from what already seems like the distant past. It’s June 16th, our first full day in the house. Jen is in France at her conference. I’m thinking that I should start some of the messy tasks that we want to get out of the way before all our stuff shows up. (The two tasks being stripping the awful wallpaper in my office, and painting at least the ground floor.)

On the ground floor it wasn’t that the previous colours were awful. They were just scuffed and there were about a billion nails and hangers in the wall. As there was a fairly large cache of paint in the basement (well labelled with colour numbers) I decided that I would get them out and try to match colour to wall.

One by one the paint cans came up from the basement. Some of the rooms have similar colours and it was a task to try to figure out which was which from thin smears of paint on the outside of the cans. As I worked I built up a spreadsheet of room, paint, number, base (latex mostly) and finish. There were probably over 20 cans of paint in the basement, some clearly from previous owners… a history in there somewhere I’m sure. (There were also some rolls of ugly wallpaper… what is with that!)

Eventually I found two cans of green that matched the wall colour by the front door. I figured I’d open the can, stir it up and daub a bit of paint under a light switch cover to see if it matched. It did.

Next was a can of yellow paint, but I needed to clean off the stir stick to stir up the yellow. Over to the kitchen, and turned on the water and began to rub the stick with my fingers to get the paint off.

Odd, I thought, this is very gluey paint.

Odd, I thought, this paint does not seem to be coming off the stick very well.

Odd, I thought, perhaps this is not latex paint.

It was not latex paint.

So here’s your man, standing with the water running in an empty house, in regular nice-enough clothes, with both hands slathered in green oil-based house paint.

After uttering a few choice words, I began to explore the house looking for something to clean the paint off with. I went down to the basement (opening the door with the back of my hands) and checked out the paint cans. Surely there must be one of those ubiquitous cans of Varsol around or something. No ubiquitous can of Varsol was to be found. More choice words.

I went back upstairs, uselessly ran more water over the stick, succeeded in smearing even more paint on my hands, wandered to the front door (closed), looked out the window for a while, contemplated what the steering wheel and gear shift of my car would look like with green oil paint smears, experimented with the unpleasant stickiness of my fingers and generally felt sorry for myself.

I decided to go down to the basement one more time. This time I spotted a weird glass pickle jar full of solid yellow goo. Taking the goo jar out, I looked at a few useless things behind it (wd-40 etc) and went to leave. I decided to put the goo jar back in the cupboard and that’s when I noticed it… a little white hand-written sticker labelled paint thinner on the lid of the goo jar.

I took the goo jar up to the kitchen and opened the lid in the sink. Surprisingly a little tiny bit of liquid was over the top of the goo. I poured the gooey liquid onto my hands and presto the paint started to dissolve. A bit more liquid came out and it was enough to clean off the stick.

Needless to say I was so relieved that I wasn’t going to have to leave handprints all over town in a fit of Varsol purchasing…

It makes you think, though, how many years ago did that paint thinner get stashed away down there. And why did it turn into weird yellow goo? I guess I have to smile back 20 years to thank that person for leaving the varsol which wound up in my empty house on my first full day of home ownership — when it was exactly what I needed.

 › domicile     2005-08-04 15:54   ...1 comment

I think that I would like, someday, to do some kind of artistic exploration of empty spaces. Not new empty spaces, but very old ones. A series of photos of empty apartments. Dusty cobwebs in the corners, the old fragments of wallpaper behind the rads and maybe some still life elements… items forgotten that hint at the life the place once had. If these walls could talk and all that.

We went over to the old apartment today to get rid of the old boxes in our basement room and generally do the last stuff we needed to do there. Whilst there I had planned to go upstairs and have a walkthrough of the old place, generally to say goodbye.

Apartments are a bit like people to me… like good friends. I am extremely picky about living spaces. They have to feel like home; if they don’t feel like home right on day one then they never will. I’ve been lucky to find homes that spoke to me, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time in each one. Leaving each has been a sad experience. The booming echoey sounds, the crackling floors reverberating as you walk around, the memories of things said and done, paint applied, upgrades and work put in, social occasions, the company of friends, love, fights, sorrow, joy, good food, the list goes on.

With these kinds of thoughts on my mind I did go upstairs when we did the box recycling tonight. It was a bit of a shock. Heavy spray painting equipment filled the kitchen (whose quirky and weird-but-loved green linoleum will be torn out and replaced by hardwood).

I hadn’t expected it to happen so fast… Our pleasing dark blue bedroom is white. So is our light blue office (we didn’t like that colour, actually, but when we bought paint to cover it we discovered we had matched the shade exactly). The taupe living room is white. The hall is white. The bathroom is white. Not only are the rooms white, but white paint is violating the green linoleum near the baseboards and the windows of the office also have a fine white misty coating. (Not a stellar job. Our apartment deserves better.)

No one has torn up my ethernet cabling. They just painted it white… Now it joins all the other strange items with coats of paint — my contribution to the future’s past, I guess.

I wanted to walk through our apartment one more time. To see and to remember. I went upstairs to say goodbye to my friend, but my friend had already gone.

 › domicile     2005-07-05 00:03   ...1 comment

After a morning of signing papers at the lawyer’s office (double duty because your partner is in France) and then working most of the day you pick up your keys to your new house. In the envelope with your keys is your first property tax bill.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you don’t even get to step onto your new property, much less open the door, before the government serves you with notice of your obligations.

Luckily I am a Glebe resident and therefore a meddling busybody. Therefore I do believe that I get something for that money. The provincial land transfer tax, though, that is a different story.

 › domicile     2005-06-26 00:42   ...0 comments

I’m going to put a series of entries out about interesting/irritating/funny things that happened while preparing for the move. However, how about a general update?

We are in our little house. Almost all our stuff is in our little house with us. We have repainted about 30-40% of the house I would say, and that was quite an undertaking. We have installed a 30 litre dehumidifier in the basement and that is bringing the humidity down really well. We have lots of projects to do, but lots of time to do them in.

Now we are surrounded by boxes boxes boxes. We have developed an unpacking plan which will hopefully keep us from going insane as we unpack all these items. We’ve done the bathroom stuff, although the previous owner’s kitty litter was in the cupboard we want to put it into. We’ll have to try to clean that out before our extra kleenex boxes (etc) go into there.

The next task may be to tackle the kitchen. We had a lovely big kitchen at the last apartment, so downsizing here may be a challenge.

In any case, we are in and happy. Soon it will be time for you to visit.

 › domicile     2005-06-24 10:11   ...2 comments

Like that Carlsberg commercial says… “You and the bank own a lovely home”.

The house deal has come to a happy ending today. I had a meeting at the lawyer’s at 8:30 am (ouch) and signed our lives away. (Since Jen is away at present I signed piles of papers on her behalf.) The process seemed straightforward enough even if our lawyer was a bit plastic himself. (He seems to have a patter and repeated a bunch of his statements verbatim from our initial meeting.) We didn’t get to keep copies of anything we signed today, although he reassured me that this was because his staff will collect everything into one big report (rather than being handed a paper here and a paper there).

His staff seem to be quite competent and around 3:30 his clerk called to say that the deal was done. Around 4:30, after finishing a few work tasks, I went over there and picked up the keys. In the envelope with the keys was a property tax bill for $1700. You can’t even own a house for 30 seconds it seems before the bills start showing up. (The tax bills were issued last month, but they are due on Monday! And it is our place now!)

Got to the house around 5:30 and found everything perfect there. The house was spotless. The floors, the bathroom, even the oven was sparkling clean. We have had a few days of rain here this week but the basement was dry. (A bit of condensation on walls and floor but no running water. No visible moisture on the dirt floor area either.)

I went through the house checking things out and all the rooms were still there. Manuals for everything from windows to fridges to carbon monoxide detectors were provided. About a billion keys.

In terms of the work before we move in. I think we will have to do a bit more painting than we planned. The downstairs is painted a light yellow colour which is actually a bit grimy now that her stuff is out. Also, there are a lot of nails in the wall for hanging her many items. I think that space is going to have to be pained. Luckily the paint cans in the basement list the colour number so I’ll call the paint store tomorrow and see if that colour can still be made up. I still want to get the wallpaper off my office, but we’ll see how much gets done before we move in.

My dad came over in the evening and got a grand tour. He seemed to really like the house (which is great). Looking forward to showing it off to all of you. I am hoping Jen will have the energy on her return for an evening of tours on Friday night. I’d like her to be able to share in the grand tour excitement.

The house was as cool as I remembered it. I think I will really enjoy it. Of course, it is a little bittersweet though. As I write this from the balcony of our current apartment I am feeling slightly sad to be leaving our current home which we love so much. There is a season for everything, however, and it is the season of home ownership now. And the home we own is a wonderful space.

 › domicile     2005-06-16 00:22   ...1 comment

We visited the current owner of our house this evening. The purpose of the visit was to ask her how the heating system worked, a few other questions and to make many measurements. We also saw the back yard sans snow… it is quite attractive and surprisingly private with its richly leafed hedge.

The measuring happened in the way you would expect. The person was very nice and clearly has put her heart and soul into the place. She told us many stories about her renovations, told us exactly what stains she uses on her woodwork and explained all about the plants she has.

It was nice to know something about the person who made the house what it is today; I think she was happy to know that a nice young couple is buying it and will appreciate it too. She will leave us her new number in case we need anything, which is nice. Also, she has a deskfull of papers and receipts and warranties.

And we still like the house. 21 days until it is ours. 28 days until we move.

 › domicile     2005-05-26 00:29   ...0 comments

Finally, over 3 months after the start of the process, our mortgage is finalized! It’s a home-equity line of credit. At 4.55% with TD Canada Trust for the next 5 years. And it is final, with no inspection/appraisal required. A bodacious deal if I do say so myself.

Jen is telling me that I need to be happy and savour the success of the mortgage negotiations. (She is right, but it is hard not to just move on to the next stressful thing: insurance.)

Our house is one step closer! And with about 40 days to go it will soon be past time to start packing ;)

 › domicile     2005-05-07 16:03   ...4 comments

Some of you may know that we have had a very stressful week with respect to the new house. However, I can confirm at this time that we have removed our conditions relating to the purchase of the house. Translation: Come spring it is ours!

 › domicile     2005-02-08 00:37   ...0 comments

Well ladies and gentlemen… We have a home!

We won’t be moving in until the springtime, and the offer is still conditional on our home inspector giving the seal of approval, but we’re very happy to have found this cute little house!

Some more photos are under the cut. And yes, Stittsville folk, this house IS in the glebe!

Read the Complete Entry

 › domicile     2005-01-31 23:43   ...11 comments

Well folks it’s gonna be a bittersweet week next week.

Why? Well, a new small white computer is coming to town from Taoyuan City, Taiwan. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

It’s going to be a great machine. It’s a 14” iBook, armed with a 1.33 GHz G4 processor 768 megs of RAM and an 80 GB disk. Going to be quite the little speed demon. And I’m very excited about it. Planning to make use of the faster processor for better compiles of PhoneValet, faster runs of my model and much faster photo editing and processing. As well as video editing tools, etc. (Trevor your 8mm rips have inspired me to give it a shot myself if I can find a projector!)

So why a bittersweet week then? Well, I am the type to get attached to everything. I’m trying to break this habit a bit, and have accordingly decided to avoid making emotional bonds with socks. However, letting go of my previous baby is going to be very hard. Its 600 Mhz of G3 processing power have been put to good use though, and one commercial product was born within it, as was SlimBatteryMonitor and DateTree, as well as 3 or 4 unfinished projects that may see the light of day sometime. This blog too! I probably have spent an average of 8-10 hours per day, every day, working on the old box.

I’m not sure what will happen to the old iBook. It belongs to Parliant, so either it will be absorbed into the lab there, or it will be sold. Sigh.

Of course, right after I ordered the iBook the rumors have begun of an iBook G5 (suggested here) but what can you do? I need it now… the old machine has to spend a month in service to get a new screen… again!

 › domicile     2005-01-15 22:04   ...1 comment

Well… a little red-and-white canoe to be more accurate. (Photo here, imagine red instead of blue. Info here.)

So I was biking home from work last Friday, idly thinking thoughts of nothing in particular when I rounded the corner at the Rideau Canoe Club and saw the large Swift Canoe and Kayak banner on their property. It might as well have been a large red bull flag for me, beckoning me onto the club lawn where 8 or 10 people were unloading boats onto the grass.

As you may know loyal reader, I, the recently betrothed narrator of this story, had not yet purchased any token of my affection for my intended. No ring. Nothing. This niggardly disregard for the niceties and proprieties of engagement wasn’t entirely thoughtless, however, as my fiancée doesn’t like rings. A few months ago I was presented with the following demand: “Provide an engagement canoe.”

Actually, the request wasn’t really made in that peremptory tone. But artistic license and all…

So anyway, here’s your man, complete with 10 year old scuffed red helmet, sunglasses, sweaty shirt and totally unshaven bouncing wildly along the sidewalk and over the club lawn like some kind of predator bearing down on his prey. The field of canoes. Now, I know of this sale, my mother having bought a canoe here several years ago. I know that Swift canoes are fantastic craftsman-built boats. I also know that this is their year-end sale where demonstrators and used boats are sold alongside new boats.

I approach the staff. Their uneasy eyes on me as I leap over bush, bracken and gully. (Ok, ok, it’s only 10 metres from the road and it’s grassy and flat. Throw me a frickin bone here people.) I inquire: “How much would I expect to pay for a 17’ prospector design.” They answer: “Symmetrical or asymmetrical design.” I begin to feel that the day is fated for a canoe purchase.

They are still setting up. The sale does not begin until Saturday morning. However, they suggest I look at a pair of green Chestnut canoes. Alert seafaring readers may know that Chestnut is the brand of canoes that paddling legend Bill Mason (see also here) favoured above all others. Bill’s preference was for the beautiful old fashion of a canvas-covered wooden boat (now extinct). Swift is now producing the Chestnut design again albeit with modern materials instead.

The Chestnut was only 16 feet long though. And that’s a touch narrow in the beam for a canoe tripping boat. And Jen and I are canoe trippers. So, I cast about for another option.

And there it was. A 16’6” Kipewa design. Looking like new, it was sitting resplendant between beaten-up used old rental boats, it was a vision in white and red. Red in the freeboard (the part of the hull above the water) and white below. I was drawn to it immediately, almost as if in recognition. Although it had aluminum gunwales, It had cherry wood fittings, with a sliding front seat for trimming the boat, a kneeling thwart for solo paddling, and a contoured yoke for portages.

I said to one of the salespeople: “I am really interested in that red and white Kipewa”. All the sales staff immediately became very excited. “That’s the best boat here” cried one. “We made a mistake on the pricing… it’s a steal” cried another. I didn’t see these exclamations as ungenuine, more as the staff sharing in the excitement of the sale of this heavenly craft. It was in fact reasonably priced. And it was the best boat there… I looked.

The sales people told me that a lot of folks would be disappointed if I bought the boat Friday night (by which I understood that they would, in fact, sell me this boat before the sale started). I wish I’d told them that it was to be an engagement canoe, but I didn’t think of it. In any case, the boat had been used only as a demonstrator at the Rideau Canoe Club for the summer. That meant that it was being sold at a discount to account for the few small scrapes, scuffs and scratches on it. There aren’t enough scratches to be disfiguring, just enough subtle ones to make the boat look inviting, functional and real. Anyway, it turns out that several people who tried the boat over the summer had told the staff that they planned to show up for the sale on September 11th and buy the exact demonstrator they had tested. I was trumping their desires by being around on the 10th!

Problem… no wallet. In my rush to leave in the morning I had not brought my wallet with me. So here I am, with the canoe purchase opportunity of a lifetime, and no means to complete the sale. I said, “will you still be here in an hour?” they said “hurry back”. So I jumped on my bike, and tore off down the Rideau Canal Eastern Pathway to get home. I bet it was a record time, as I kept thinking about someone else arriving and buying the canoe in the meantime.

A few stressful moments at home when Jen wasn’t there, but I found her walking home from the grocery store, and bundled her into the car and back we went. I told her that we were on a secret mission, and this seemed to be keeping her on edge too; she kept asking if it was a good mission, and I reassured her, but she had no idea where we were going until we arrived at the place and she saw the array of boats. She pronounced that although she knew little about selecting boats, this one was acceptable if I thought it was good. By this point in the story you should be getting the idea that I thought it was great.

I paid for the boat. Explained to Jen that it was a boat for her. She was excited. I was excited. It was exciting. We went home. Sans boat, because I hadn’t brought all the tie downs and everything.

The next day when we went to pick up the boat we were told that indeed several people had come to the sale early specifically to buy that boat. They were very disappointed to learn that it had been sold the night before. Again I wish that I had told the staff that it was an engagement boat, but didn’t think of it at the time.

In the end, we put our new boat in the water Sunday evening at the cottage. We paddled it for an hour or so, and it was a great paddle. As dusk fell we explored a lily-pad marshy spot, flushed a few beaver out of hiding and generally enjoyed the super-smooth paddle in our fantastic new boat.

 › domicile     2004-09-17 11:11   ...0 comments

They play the drums.

 › domicile     2004-08-14 20:34   ...0 comments

Well, you might think that with a headline like that I am going to discuss my satisfaction upon the recent release of our new product PhoneValet Message Center. I am not going to do so. (Not because I am not satisfied, which I am, but because I have something else to write about this morning.)

We decided that we needed a wedding planning book with lots of checklists. So we went out to Chapters. The whole wedding section in these stores is hilariously funny because every book is wanting to be purchased by “the bride”*. We only saw one book which could be considered as a “groom” oriented book entitled Complete Guide for the Anxious Groom: Everything You Need to Know on Your Her Big Day which is obviously designed to be purchased by female friends of the groom. In short, nothing in the wedding section is aimed at men.

They don’t even pretend. The contents of the books are full of “It is wise to consult both your family and his family on important aspects…” blah blah blah, me, me, me, blah blah blah.

Anyway, we did manage to find a book that has seemingly lots of good advice, but more importantly many checklists so we can avoid forgetting to consider things. We had a good time reading (and editing) the Bride’s Wedding Planner. (Bride’s in this case referring to the magazine of the same name.) Jen only allowed us to buy this planner if I agreed to re-cover it.

We also wanted to pick up a current issue of Wedding Bells Ottawa to see what’s out there in the wedding industry (damn this is weird) but they were out. In the end I picked up a copy of The Walrus a new Canadian magazine which is nothing about weddings, but is great.

After the Chapters experience we decided that we wanted to watch The Fifth Element, and decided we should try and buy it. So we walked over (an unheard-of method of transportation at the evil South Keys Shopping Centre) to Future Shop, where it transpired that every movie ever made was on sale. Well, every bad movie anyway. Jen being an aficianado of bad flicks, and myself being a not-unwilling partner in many cases, we quickly started stacking up some of these films. In some cases the films were, like, $8 or less on DVD. (Still way more than the cost to manufacture… grr…)

The new acquisitions were, in descending order of price:

Johnny Mnemonic

Anyway, we very much enjoyed The Fifth Element again, and we have huge amounts more entertainment stored up now for the rest of the summer.

* Kill Bill reference on my part was unintentional, but amusing.

 › domicile     2004-07-11 11:24   ...2 comments

Our balcony is taking shape these days. We are expanding last summer’s gardening efforts due to the generally positive effects we experienced from last summer’s plants (flowers and tomatoes).

The balcony gets lots of light, particularly in the afternoon, and our plants do surprisingly well (at least by my standards).

This year, Jen has bought flower boxes (3 of ‘em) which are attached to the balcony railings. Two of these will be vegetable and one will be for flowers.

I have bought two hanging flower baskets, and two small flats of flowers (one is Verbena) to put into pots. The red flowers came from home hardware, and the others came from the Parkdale Market.

There will also be cherry tomatoes growing in pots… mmm yummy!

 › domicile     2004-05-19 00:10   ...2 comments

Jen and I held a successful dinner party this evening at our place. It was in honour of Mother’s Day, and my mum was in attendance along with the rest of my family.

On offer was a leg of lamb (that had been in our freezer since Post-Christmas Christmas) and Jen’s groovy orange-date chicken.

The lamb was fantastic. It was well done (just like Mum likes it). We love our electronic meat thermometer which has a probe that stays in the meat on a long oven-proof cable. The cable leaves the oven and connects to the readout which also has a ‘temperature timer’ that beeps when your meat reaches a programmed temperature. Using this great gadget, and armed with some basic knowledge about doneness and temperature, you can know exactly what state your meat is in without having to cut it open!

Our lamb came out of the oven at 147° F, then its pan was covered with foil, and the roast stood until the temperature came up to 159° F. This is a temperature of just well done. The centermost slices had a teensy bit of pink in them in the right light. If you prefer medium, slice at about 152°-153° instead.

In any case, the meal was grand. And we had a good time before and after too. I think my dad liked the french folk cds.

Off to bed now, it’s been a long day!

 › domicile     2004-05-09 23:57   ...2 comments

I have tidied my desk.

I know this will come as a shock to many, but my desk surface is now clear, and I have picked up and filed/put away/recycled all the crap that was on the floor around my desk.

I could claim that this was in honour of clean off your desk day, but I’m 6 days late for that.

It took all day to accomplish this, so those who are coming to the skating party tomorrow should admire it while they can!

I can tell you (from the date of the oldest bills on the desk) that it has been getting piled on since last February… Now that’s a messy desk.

 › domicile     2004-01-17 21:13   ...2 comments

The humidifier is out. It was damn dry in the apartment.

This reminds me of the wonderful Onion point-counterpoint which features a war of the words between a humidifier and a de-humidifier. Sorry folks, Duracraft has won out this time.

 › domicile     2004-01-16 18:34   ...1 comment