Tag: house

New Year; New Bullets. 2025.

  • Well, 2025 is the year I turn 50. That feels like a big number.
  • I got myself a Steamdeck for Christmas. I mean, a combination of Ellen and my parents getting it for me, in what has become creating Christmas gift-giving accounting. But it’s mine now. I like it.
  • I got the LCD version because I couldn’t really justify an additional $200 for the OLED screen. If I’m missing out, I don’t know it. It’s great.
  • The house isn’t done yet. We got hung up on bureaucracy, mostly. But we waded through it and we’re out the other side, so things are happening again. That’s nice. I’m fairly confident we’ll actually be able to move in this year. Maybe I’ll post photos. Would you like to see photos?
  • I started the work to migrate this blog off WordPress and onto (unless I get even more frustrated) 11ty. It’s not as plug-and-play as I would like. But I do think the flexibility it gives me will pay dividends. I guess. I’m not convinced anyone is reading this.
  • I did turn off comments a long time ago. So it’s not like anyone can tell me otherwise. Hit me up on Mastodon!
  • Hot on the heals of the Steamdeck, I picked up Dragon Age: Veilguard. I may need a whole post for my thoughts on that. It does feel nice to be rummaging around seedy, blood-stained basements in Thedas again, tho.
  • I’m not really looking forward to 2025 for reasons you might be able to guess on your own, and probably aren’t looking to me to get into too deeply.
  • As of May, Ellen and I are living together. Unfortunately, we’re living together in the house her parents are renting that she’s allergic to. That’s not great. But I’m glad we’re together.
  • The little guy is delightful as ever. Although I did just have to deal with a half-hour tantrum about wanting to keep wearing a very wet diaper. (Yeah, he should be toilet trained by now, but we’ve been holding out till we’re in the new house which will have no carpets).
  • Doctor Who was mildly disappointing but generally in line with my expectations of Russel’s showrunning. So it’s fine. I like Ncuti as the Doctor. I wish other people wrote for him more. But that’s been true of all Russel’s Doctors.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks was pretty much the best.
  • I had high expectation for The Acolyte and was mildly disappointed (not that I thought it was bad and I’m sad it was cancelled, but I was hoping for a bit more).
  • The Skeleton Crew is exceeding my expectations, tho. That thing is great.
  • I guess I mostly watch very old franchise television.
  • I’d like to find ways to spend more time with friends this year. I’m not going to call that a resolution because calling it that pretty much guarantees I won’t do it out of spite.

2023 Wrapped

I can’t even remember the last time I did bullets…

  • Reader, I apologize. I haven’t really been keeping you up to date.
  • I’m not going to really get into a lot of detail today, tho.
  • But maybe some broad strokes.
  • 2023 was basically a continuation of 2020.
  • 2020 Wrapped:
    • Bought a house
    • Decided (with Ellen, of course) to (at least stop trying not) to have a kid
    • Other stuff you’ve probably heard of. It’s not over.
  • About the house…
    • It turned out 2021 was a terrible year to get anyone to help you fix up a house.
    • 2022 wasn’t much better, but we were able to engage a buider and, by the end of the year, gut the place, cleaning up the mould (most of which we knew about when we bought) and the mouse droppings (which we didn’t).
    • So 2023 was spent getting a design to the point where we could submit a building permit and finding people and materials to do the job of giving us a place we can actually live.
    • 2024 will, with any luck at all, be the year my wife and son and I will live together in our own house.
    • We are, of course, blessed to have a place to live. And especially to own a house. And to be able to even attempt all of this. It’s not been easy.
    • But, you know, I sold my house in 2016. (That’s a blog post I wrote for friends and family at the time. I decided to unprotect it for context-related linking). It’ll have been an eight year journey to moving into this house.
  • About the kid…
    • He’s an absolute, goddamn delight. And exhausting. But utterly delightful.
  • Not sure what more to say.
  • Work’s fine.
  • Doctor Who is back.
  • I played a lot of Picross. And Spider Solitaire. And Sudoku apps.
  • And Pokemon Go.
  • You should really listen to my Christmas mixtape. It’s good, I promise.
  • Happy New Year.

Good-bye, Ron

Today, I bought a sander.

Actually, no, I shouldn’t start there. I should start last winter.

Last winter, I moved out of my master bedroom. Yeah, last winter. I’m not the fastest when it comes to home improvement projects. Last winter, I was a little alarmed that my window kept frosting up all the time. Sure, they’re old windows, but they hadn’t done that the previous year.

My room started smelling a bit funny too. I thought maybe I was being negligent with the laundry or something, but the smell was still there after I gave the whole room a thorough cleaning. Once the frosted window thawed a bit, I got a hint about what the problem might be. Well, it took me a bit to realize the black grungy stuff wasn’t just dirt. It was mold.

Ick. Mold. I panicked a bit. All those Dateline NBC exposés about Deadly Black Mold Lurking In Your Walls! had me a bit nervous. I don’t know how long it’s been a problem, either. I moved out of the bedroom and into the basement. And I started to look around.

I’d always thought it was a bit odd that there was wood paneling on the back wall of the bedroom. The same sort of wood paneling that’s in my basement. (The house is from the 70s. What do you expect?) With the mold, I was suddenly suspicious. In a rare fit of DIY energy, I got out the crow bar and ripped the wood paneling down.

From Ron

Fortunately, there wasn’t any mold underneath. Just a bare, plaster wall and nail holes from the wood paneling. And thick, black glue that had been holding the paneling on. I guy named Ron put up the paneling. I know because he wrote his name on my wall. In glue.

It’s stubborn stuff, too. I tried scraping and chiseling it off, but I was doing more damage to the plaster than to the glue. I tried sanding with a manual sander, and I made a little progress, but it would take years at that rate to get it all off. I tried a heat gun, thinking that maybe there was a coat of paint under the glue, but no, it’s just plaster. Which is odd, since it means that that wood paneling has been up since the house was sold. Meaning a professional thought, in his professional wisdom, that wood paneling was a good thing to have in a master bedroom. Only in the 70s. I blame Ron.

Today I picked up a power sander and I’m making good progress on the glue. Ron is gone, at least. I’m covered in plaster dust and it feels a bit gross. The window is going to be replaced on Tuesday. Once I get the glue off, I can start spackling the holes and chips and start sanding that. Then I can clean up the mess.

Ice-Free Eaves

Apparently having not learned my lessons from [last winter’s leaky roof adventure](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2007/02/13/leaky/), I didn’t quite get around to cleaning the leaves out of the eaves troughs before the snow came. Over the last couple weeks, ice was starting to build up again.

In my defense, there was only about a week between the leaves falling off the trees and the snow starting, and the snow hasn’t let up since. I was hoping the [Looj](http://www.flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2007/11/05/leaves/) would help me out, but it didn’t fit. I called some maintenance company about an estimate, but haven’t heard back.

So I was pretty much on my own. As I was saying, the it’s been looking pretty grim as the snow hasn’t let up. Until today. A Saturday.

Today, miraculously, the temperature drifted briefly above 0°C. That was my cue, and I sprung into action.

I hooked up the rubber hose to the hot water tap in the garage, got a chisel-like device, climbed up on the ladder and chunk by damp, icy chunk, removed the leaves from the eaves troughs.

They work much better now.

I only did the L-shaped section bordering the back patio. That’s the only part that’s been giving me trouble (the ice really likes to build up in the L-corners of roofs, it seems), and it was most easily accessible by ladder. I ended up very wet by the end, and my hands ended up dyed bluish-black from the gloves I was wearing. The ladder ended up a little bit icy. I’ve put the damn thing away till the spring. I hope I don’t need it again.

I’m really going to have to work on getting someone to help me out with this maintenance stuff, since I can’t seem to keep up with it all. I’m just glad I was able to get this horrible weight off me, especially since I’ll be home in Belleville the next few weekends.

Haru, The Unwanted Kitty

Ellen and I have been seeing each other for a year now, and I’m very happy about that. I’m not going to talk about that so much, though.

[Haru looking forlorn] [When Haru came to live with me](http://flyingsquirrel.ca/squirrel/archive.php?article=282) two years ago, it was kinda meant to be a temporary thing. I did kinda realize at the time, though, that when a cat comes to live with you, it’s generally not likely to leave.

And honestly, all things being equal, I would have been perfectly okay with that. He’s a minor burden in some ways: I have to get someone to come check up on him if I take off for more than a weekend, for example, but generally, it’s really nice to have someone to greet me at the door when I get home, and he’s gotten much more friendly and cuddly over the years. He needs a bit of attention and play time, but he’s not really that much trouble. If my life had carried on as it was, I don’t think I’d mind one bit having him around for the next ten to fifteen years.

But, as is often the case with these things, my life hasn’t carried on like that. That’s not at all a bad thing.

Ellen’s very allergic to cats. And other things too, of course, but if I ever want any chance of her being able to come in my house, there can’t be any traces of a cat having lived there. The fact that a cat *is* living here means that my house (which I really like, by the way) is totally off limits to her. She’s never been inside.

Now, I very much enjoy all the time I spend at her house, but it would be nice if she could come over and see me once in a while. It’s going to be a lot of work getting the house into a state where she *can* visit (and keeping it there as well), but I think it’s worthwhile to make the attempt. There’s no point in even *starting* any of that work while Haru still lives here.

So I have a problem. My ideal solution would be to find a friend for him to go and live with so I could go and visit him sometimes. I don’t know how likely that is. After that, it’s probably putting up “free to a good home” signs at work or possibly the Humane Society, which I’d prefer not to have to do.

I’ve been procrastinating on this for a while, because really, I’d rather not have to contemplate getting rid of the little guy. I’ve grown somewhat attached. He’s a sweet kitty with his own little personality. He’s affectionate and playful and just wants a little attention from time to time. He deserves a good home, and if I could, I would have liked to be the one to give it to him.

I’m just sorry I can’t.