with god as my witness...

I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would admire,
I thought it classic.
-The Postal Service, Clark Gable

The (very long, very boring) long weekend is slowly winding to a close, and I can't think of a better way to cap it off than by watching Gone With the Wind on TV, with the cat sprawled out in some sort of bizarre upside down position beside me. Poor silly kitten.

I'm trying to make the most of my last few days of freedom, but it isn't going well--making the most has translated to "wind 1600+ yards of yarn from hanks to balls" and "watch dangerous amounts of Degrassi: TNG on TV" and "discover that it takes a mere twelve minutes to walk from the house to Twiggs". Nothing especially productive, except that I am all set to go for yarn for the Ravelympics.

I've got a couple of good things to look forward to at school this week, though, not the least of which is Krista's return to North Bay, and possibly visits to see a few friends and their new progeny, to say nothing of the boy actually having some time off--and, of course, his 25th birthday.

holiday weekend?

I started back to work officially yesterday. My office pod has a few new faces in and around, which is good, I suppose, though I'm sad to see some of the people go. I made some organizational plans for the month, as there isn't a tonne to do before the students start showing up.[1] The school is under construction so everything's a little off...and since we share our space with Canadore, we're looking at feeling the effects of the looming Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology strike at the end of August.

The weekend is passing slowly. Part of me wishes very strongly that I'd gone home for the weekend - I'm missing the fun of Kempenfest, and Not-Heritage Not-Festival is just not cutting it here in town. I'm sure the fact that virtually all of my friends are out of town or have plans already doesn't hurt. I've been doing lots of cleaning, reading, movie watching, and catnapping, and have discovered that Twiggs is a scant 15 minute walk from my house. This is either the best news ever or the worst news ever. I had some of their fresh squeezed lemonade today, and it was very tart.

I cast on Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts today and I'm really not loving them. I don't know if it's the pattern, or the yarn (the colours are not quite what I want them to be), or the fact that I'd rather be knitting other things (like Matilda Jane, or socks). I also need to start thinking about actually putting pen to paper for some of my design stuff.

[1] There is actually lots to do; it just seems less frantic than trying to mark 140 essays in two weeks, you know.

at loose ends

I was doing so well with the blogging, and then I fell off the wagon. Fortunately it's a slow moving wagon, and I'll hopefully be able to get back on to it shortly. I start back to work on Friday (well, my contract starts on Friday, anyway) and I think that will help me stay organized. After two and a half months off work, I am craving the comfort of routine like you wouldn't believe. I don't even have that much to do for the first month, aside from get myself organized and build a really tech website, but it will still be good to get up in the morning with a little more purpose than "watch the Iron Chef I taped last night" and "nap on the couch with the kitten". And to wear clothes aside from jeans and a tank top.

I found a Call for Papers for a book looking for articles on reconciliation and redress in relation to historical injustice and Canadian identity, and I think there is a chance I can rework my MA research paper to fit it, which would be major league exciting. If I can't rework the paper, I think I can reuse my research to write a new one.

I really want to knit something right now, but I don't know what to do. My Matilda Jane is stalled pending bust shaping help from the designer. The socks I was working on are stalled because they're one of my entries for the Ravelympics, and I'm not supposed to work on them until the Olympics start next week. I could just cast on something new but that involves winding yarn into balls, which is not the easiest task to accomplish when you have a kitten who is full of beans.

I can has kitteh?

Yes, u can has kitteh.

Kitteh has no name at present, but he does have cute. His shelter name is Elliot but he's young enough that we'll be able to rename him (he doesn't respond to Elliot at all). I really like the name Elliott (which seems all the more apropos as Brett and I have been talking about Elliott Smith all week) but the boyfriend does not. I'm thinking a Neil Gaiman name would be nice. Perhaps Tristan? It is hard to say.

Owning a house is far more stressful than I had ever anticipated. Kittehs make things better.

Happy Canada Day

I've lived in North Bay Rock City off and on since 2000, but this is my first summer here. It's been a good summer so far (though I'll be happy to go back to work in August; I'm feeling a bit shiftless right now). One thing I've never experienced before, though, is the shadflies.

I've heard stories about the shadflies, of course, but actually experiencing them is an entirely different story. They are the oldest insect (apparently) in the world, and evolution has not seen fi to give them working mouths, so when they hatch from the water and become winged insects, they can't actually eat, and die off quickly. There are so many of them here- when I go to pick up Mat from work, it's almost like driving in snowy weather. I'm so happy our house isn't close to the water - I can't imagine dealing with them on a daily basis like that.

Dr. Claw

We spent last night at the apartment, woke up early, and got to work. We cleaned the place out in under four hours, and now we officially live here.

Now that we know that the amount of stuff coming in here has relatively stabilized, we are much better off. The dehumidifier is downstairs, kicking ass and taking names, and things have dried out to the point that I'm okay with putting stuff down there. The master bedroom still needs to be painted, and I'm hoping that we can finalize our colour choice tonight/tomorrow, and go pick up the paint and start painting on Wednesday. Once that's done, we can build our bed, and set up the dressers. Come Friday, the split boxspring for the bed will be delivered, and the room will be good to go. Once that happens, the guest room will empty out a bit, and I'll be able to get into the (currently completely packed) craft room and start organizing and prepping for paint there. I put a pretty good dent in the dining room today, but a lot of the stuff there belongs to The Boyfriend, and I'm not quite sure what he intends to do with all of it.

James came over last night, and brought a house warming gift all the way from Sudbury - he brought us a hermit crab and its complete habitat. The crab has a coconut house. It's so fun. I was worried that he was dead, but he moved from his cocohut to his sponge, so I guess he's doing okay. I have to feed him tomorrow, and mist his sponge. I also have to try to convince Mat that we should name him Dr. Claw.

I got my first fun mail at the new house today: two parcels. The first contained my swap kit from HSKS5, which was full of tremendous things, including some of the most beautiful sock yarn imaginable; the second was from KnitPicks, which was unexpected. The last time I ordered from them, it took a really long time to get here...nearly three weeks. This one came within 9 days of me ordering, all the more impressive given that 3 of those days were weekends, and that it ships from the States.

I got some bare yarn to dye, a set of their laminated wood DPNs, and the dye starter set (2 blues, 2 reds, a yellow and a black). A couple of the girls from the knitting guild here are going to show me how to dye the yarn--I'm so excited.

working hard...

So today The Boyfriend's parents came up, bringing with them everything he has ever owned. Our house is now full of stuff. It is going to take forever to get it organized.

We had a bit of a scare on Friday when we realized the box spring for our new mattress was not going to go upstairs. Thankfully we were able to get the delivery guys to take it back to the Brick, and exchange it for a split box, which is coming (hopefully) on Friday of this week. Our original plan had been to take The Boyfriend's old mattress and set that up in the second bedroom for our guest room, but that was foiled today when we tried to get the box (only a double) up the stairs and failed at it. (We wound up, eventually, at Home Depot, where 4 4x4s and two sheets of chipboard are taking the place of the boxspring...not ideal, but it's a guest room, so hopefuly no one will be there long term.)

Tomorrow we have to finish moving out of the apartment, and clean it. And then the cleaning here can begin...

now we're getting somewhere

If nothing else, the living room is more or less ready to go. Every time I feel a little bit panicked, I come in here and look at my beautiful sofa and loveseat, and the nice tables. It calms me right down. Eventually stuff will get done. It might seem unbelievably chaotic right now, but in good time we will get things in order.

Also, we now have a barbeque, courtesy of the best parents in the world. It is full of AWESOME.

our house, in the middle of our street

I am the kind of person who likes things to work out. I was originally going to write that I'm not a patient person, but that actually isn't true: I'm normally very patient. I just like it when things work out the way that they are supposed to. I like people who meet deadlines (or, if they miss them, who can communicate what's happening clearly). I'm very much my father's type A daughter.

Buying houses and moving is not for type A people.

It has been a couple of very crazy, very overwhelming days around here. Somethings have gone well: We spent a lot of money yesterday, but we got excellent value for our money. We successfully cleaned the carpets. The phone, internet, and satellite all got hooked up like they were supposed to be (and Bell Canada continues to astound me by actually treating me well as a customer). On the whole, though, I feel like there's been a lot of one step forward, two step back. The house was not very clean when we took possession. I wasn't expecting it to be immaculate by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a little outside what I would normally consider acceptable. The tub is hideous. The judicious application of CLR is helping to clear it up, but it will still have to be replaced. The previous owners also decided it would be a good idea to paint the unfinished cement floor in the basement with some of that cement paint, which is actually a good idea, if you can be troubled to take the time to actually sweep and scrub the floor before painting, and also run a dehumidifier in the basement, which is exceptionally damp. So damp, in fact, that when you walk downstairs, the paint will come off whatever you are walking on...

The real kicker, though? We have mice. We found a trap in one cupboard and evidence of tunnelling in another. Upon further examination outside, we discovered that they are probably coming in our chimney. Awesome. On one hand, I can understand why a seller would be reluctant to disclose something like prior to a sale, but that would have been a lot nicer than getting that fun surprise all on our own.

The silver lining in that cloud is that my "Can we please get a cat?" argument is suddenly much more valid.

Homeowner

This will likely go down in history as the most expensive week of my life. We paid our closing costs yesterday, and took possession of the house today at about noon. Since then, we have been shopping, shopping, shopping, and will likely do more of the same tomorrow.

Things we have purchased in the last week: Sofa, loveseat, mattress and boxspring, sleigh bedframe (sounds extravagant but wasn't - we got it for 25% of the original price because it's a floor model), chest, three tables, an enormous bucket of primer, rollers, spackle, spackle spatulas, two fans, eavestrough extenders, gardening gloves, wastebaskets, doormats, new doorknobs/locks, lightbulbs, oven cleaner, CLR, frying pans, paper towels, dropcloths, used towels and sheets for cleaning/painting, a tape measure, ant traps, painters' tape, and about a million other things that I can't remember right now.

We still haven't actually decided on paint colours so we'll get to back tomorrow and do it that too.

We also rented a rug shampoo-er, so we need to go get cracking on that. I'll update more later.

In which I am relieved to not be a pedophile...

I was out for coffee last week with a friend, and our conversation turned to our mutual admiration for the late, lamented TV show Everwood. There were (and are!) lots of reasons to like Everwood: great writing, directing, and acting; lots of interesting stories; DR. HAROLD ABBOTT; Bright and the Promebago. But one of the things that I used to like especially much about Everwood was the certain je-ne-sais-quoi of young Gregory Smith.




As I was telling Brett this, I realized that there was potentially something weird about what I was saying (vis-a-vis the age difference between myself and Ephram Brown) so I felt it necessary to qualify this statement by explaining that I was quite a bit younger at the time that Everwood was actually on TV, and thus closer in age to Ephram, and thus, not a pervert.

I forgot all about that until I saw some previews for Wanted, which gets a theatrical release this weekend. Imagine my surprise when I noticed the gentle beauty of a (now older) Gregory Smith doing things like dodging bullets and making eyes at Angelina Jolie and her tattoos. And then I decided that, in the interests of not being weird, I should probably find out exactly how much younger than me Gregory Smith is.

So I looked up Wanted on the IMDB. It turns out that young Gregory Smith is only two years younger than I am (and if we are being precise, he is in fact one month and two days older than The Boyfriend), which pretty much officially absolves me from being weird. It also turns out that Gregory Smith is not actually in Wanted, and the object of my viewing pleasure is actually James McAvoy. Who, incidentally, is two years *older* than me. And Scottish. And hot. Did I mention that already?

So yeah. Wanted and Wall-e this weekend, but I suspect we'll be too busy with the house to make it into either.

an open letter to Ben Mulroney...

Dear Ben Mulroney,

I don't know that having your father be the man who signed Canada to the North American Free Trade Agreement is anything to be bragging about, especially on national TV.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen

Complaints About Harry Potter

I've been thinking about the Potter series a lot lately; partly because of my participation in the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap and partly just because it's summer, and aside from packing I haven't really done much lately except crack through the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD and read. Oh, and knit a little bit, I guess.

Anyhow. Harry Potter. I have two main problems with these books, and they are probably not what you think they are. Yes, blah blah blah romance, blah blah blah epilogue--I'm not a huge fan of the epilogue, exactly, but at the end of the day I can accept that, you know, J.K. Rowling wrote these books and I didn't, and that as much as she's realized a very wonderful, wonderfully vivid world that I feel like I could belong to, I...don't. And it's her world, so what she says goes.

Problem the first: I have a very hard time accepting that the wizarding world is as ignorant of the Muggle world as the books make it out to be. It just doesn't make sense. First of all, there aren't *that* many wizarding communities in Britain, so most of these wizards are living in some proximity to Muggles, and it seems illogical to me that the wizards are so completely oblivious. What about money, for example? Where do wizards shop when they need things not available at Diagon Alley? (Like groceries, for example.) Additionally, I think that the younger generation of wizards (i.e., those at Hogwarts) would be much better equipped to deal with the Muggle world based on their interactions with their Muggle born counterparts.

Problem the second: which is really the more serious of the two. In the face of Muggle-born/pure blood discourse, difference becomes totalized, to the point where that difference is the only one that exists: there is no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no religious tensions, no nationalism (which is a bigger deal in the UK than it might seem to those of us in North American, particularly to the Irish and the Scottish), etc. Upon reflection, this does actually tie in nicely with my earlier point, and I'm afraid I still don't buy it. All of these prejudices are so deeply seated that they don't just disappear with the wave of a magic wand, and Rowling does her readers a real disservice by pretending that they don't exist. Oh, sure, there's the possible parallels between blood status and racism in many countries, including Canada, but all of that becomes even more confused when you actually take the time to think about it, because, well, it doesn't really make sense. The only distinctions Rowling makes are full and half, where historical examples of "blood mania" tend to extend that concern much further back...as many as five generations, even.

Don't get me wrong--I still very much enjoy the books, and continue to marvel at the fullness of the realm Rowling has created. I just think there are things that could have been thought out more fully.

comin' round the bend...

As of yesterday, we are two weeks away from our closing date on the house, and starting to kick in to high gear to get everything organized. Today, that means getting quotes on insurance rates. I'd had the local Co-operators Group recommended to me by a couple of people, so we started our search there.

It was an unqualified disaster.

Though The Boyfriend and I are buying the house together, in the sense that we are paying for everything together, in the more technical legal/financial sense of everything, I am buying the house. So when we went to the Co-operators office, and asked to speak with a representative to get a quote, the man we spoke to asked whose name the house would be in. Naturally, The Boyfriend told him that it was my show (his exact phrase), so of course the insurance guy decided to address himself only to The Boyfriend, asking him all the questions and handing all of the documents, including his business card, to The Boyfriend. I'm pretty sure that the only time he spoke to me directly was to take down the correct spelling of my name, since it's the one that has to go on all of the documentation.

At the end of the meeting, we found out that he is just being trained on doing quotes for home, and isn't actually licensed to sell us any of that insurance, so if we decide to take it we'll be dealing with his superior. I still kind of can't believe that it happened like that; if it weren't for the fact that it was the first thing that The Boyfriend commented on after we left, I'd think I were being too sensitive.

The quote also seemed a little high to me (not that I have much experience with these things), so I called up TD Canada Trust's insurance division this afternoon and they gave me a quote for a package that covers more and costs about 65% of the other (plus discounts when I move my auto insurance there later this month). I will be quite happy not to give Co-operators my business.

nothing matters but the weekend...

Took a quick trip home for the weekend, as The Boyfriend's brother was turning 19, and I wanted to see my parents before they took their trip across the pond. (They're on a ten day driving tour of Scotland, and it will be the second time my dad has been back since his family emigrated to Canada - the last was when he was sixteen.) It was not the best weekend I've had in a while, something of a mixed bag. The Good: Spending time with Youngest Sister and Mz. T, drinking Orangina in a martini bar, the Stompin' Tom Story, the continued love and devotion of the grey stripey cat. The Bad: The 30+ degree weather that made my parents' unairconditioned house pretty much impossible to sleep in at night, my attempt at making dinner for everyone resulting in me slicing open my ring finger.

My finger was pretty gross; my dad and sister took good care of me. I always forget (or, more correctly, never think to consider at all) that while my mom is the nurse, my dad is also a first responder in his own right, and taught first aid and CPR both for the Red Cross and for the police force. He was awesome. I was not. The heat had really wiped me out, and I'd let myself get dehydrated, so the sight of my own blood all over the kitchen made me almost pass out. Not cool at all.

What was cool is that, as I was lying on the floor in the bathroom trying to convince myself that fainting was not a option, my poor sweet Jasper cat came a tapping at the door, and came into the bathroom to check up on me. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but under normal circumstances he's afraid of the bathroom, and won't go in at all.

On the way down, we stopped at my favourite yarn store in Huntsville. I was hoping to find some worsted weight superwash, but no dice - so now I am back to the drawing table to come up with two baby shower gifts by Sunday. There was some gorgeous Fleece Artist 2/6 Merino Sock, which I scooped up, along with a set of Brittany Birch DPNs. This put me over my limit to earn my yarn credit, so I promptly cashed that in on a skein of Handmaiden's Merino Cashmere sock yarn in lovely purples. Talk about exciting. Am on yarn diet FOR REALZ now, otherwise boyfriend may be forced to find somewhere else to live.

His hobbies aren't any less expensive, they just take up less space.

same as it ever was...

A few moments ago, I just stepped on a sewing needle that had somehow found its way on to the floor. You'd think that now that The Boyfriend is living here, I'd have someone else to blame these things on, but I'm pretty sure that a sewing needle must be mine.

The last few weeks have been busier than I ever could have imagined. My contract at the university has been renewed for three years, and it is the first time in my life that I've known what I'm doing indefinitely, which is kind of cool (especially from a financial perspective) but also a bit frightening, because I don't know if I'll be doing this for the rest of my life. (Especially since doing so would likely require the commitment of a PhD.)

So, with that duck lined up, my mother started saying "Why don't you buy a house? Maybe you could buy a house? You should really think about buying a house." I was't too sure about the idea at first--it's a huge investment, and I make okay money but not great, plus I have those student loans still hanging around my neck. So I went in to the credit union to talk to my financial adviser, and she was fantastic. We cracked through a set of numbers, discovered that an affordable mortgage for me was going to wind up being the same as what I was already paying in rent.

The rest went basically something like this: On Tuesday we went and found a real estate agent. Before we'd even made the ten minute journey back to my apartment, he'd emailed us about 20 properties, and we made a short list of ones we wanted to see. On Wednesday, we went to see about nine houses, and we made an offer on Wednesday night. The offer was accepted, and on Thursday we got the financing straightened around. On Friday, we had the home inspection, which did not go well (think 60 amp wiring and a 25 year old furnace). On Monday, we revised our offer, and the owners accepted. Our closing date is June 26. It's all happening so fast.

It's 80 years old, 1.5 storeys with 3 bedrooms on the upper floor. The main floor has a dining room, a living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The basement is unfinished, but has a couple of pretty sizable rooms. We are also getting two fridges, a stove, the washer and dryer, and a freezer, all of which are variously old, but minimize our initial outlay and can be replaced as we go. The backyard is huge, and there is a deck.

I was pretty nervous (or outright panicked) for a while there, but now I've moved past panic into being excited again. We won't be able to afford to do everything we want withit right away, but we'll definitely build towards it.

Now, where's my IKEA catalogue?

twice in a lifetime

I know, I know, two posts in one day--next thing you know I'll be blogging regularly again or something. In all seriousness, though, this is one of the coolest things I've seen lately:

Send your name to the moon with NASA.

If you input your name, NASA will put it on a microchip that they are sending up with the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter later this year. You even get a swell certificate to showcase your support of the mission.

link via Bonnie

Hogwarts Time Again

If you are a knitterly type, or a Harry Potterly type, you may well be interested to know that sign ups for the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap are going on now over at the HSKS5 blog. It was a cracking good time last time, and if you'd like more information, you can always check out the main HSKS5 site or find us on Ravelry. Don't worry if you're a new knitter--one of the nice things about this swap is that it works to provide you with some of the fundamentals you need to tackle projects, and you also wind up meeting a lot of very nice, very supportive people who can help you to learn new skills.

history repeats, etc.

Since the end of the school term, I've been puttering around a bit aimlessly. I'm contemplating dyeing my own yarn; buying out Wal-Mart's remaining stock of Sean Sheep; working on that screenplay idea I have been thinking about for the last six months; cleaning my apartment; and, of course, that novel that I want to write.

Today, I actually had a purpose, though--the university played host to the regional Historica fair, and I had volunteered to be a judge. I was only responsible for five projects, so I had plenty of time to walk around and look at the other projects. I was very impressed by the depth and dedication the students showed to their projects--one of the ones I was responsible for was, I think, one of the best there. It's tremendous to see eleven year olds that are so devoted to history.

tightrope walker

It occured to me just now that I haven't blogged in a bit. There are a variety of reasons for that. The biggest one, of course, is the j-o-b; I've been marking for what seems like the last month solid, and that's been consuming all of my time, and a good portion of my will to live. Thankfully, I have finally finished, and submitted my marks, and gone out for my celebratory margarita (it was a strawberry kiwi and delicious, just so you know).

I have also been knitting up a storm, mostly for the various babies that seem to keep being born. My friends are a ridiculously fertile lot this year. I'm working on a pair of socks for myself, but I forgot them at my parents' the last time I was visiting so work has temporarily stalled in that area.

Speaking of work temporarily stalling, the school has decided to build a new wing beside the wing in which my office resides. (No word yet on when we'll finally start having actual separate buildings instead of just wings.) First, there was shaking. They broke the ground, still sort of frozen from the winter, and rattled my office around. Then, they took out my window. Don't get me wrong--I'm not actually cool enough to have my own window in my office, but there was a really cool window down at the end of the hall:



Now, alas, that window is no more. The construction crew took it out and drywalled over the hole of where it used to be. I am considering printing an 8x10 of that picture and putting it on the wall where the window was, but I can't decide if people would find that jerky. Oh well...even if it is jerky, I think I'll do it. I miss my window, after all. Now I'll never know what the weather's like outside.

I'm being evaluated in approximately 3 hours. Let's hope I can come back next year.