Puttering about on a stormy Wednesday

Well, we're being hit with our first major storm of the winter, and the Avalon Penninsula is closed. Everything! I've been listening to the CBC all day so far, and they keep reading off these ridiculously long lists of closures. I suppose they are obliged to be specific, otherwise it would make more sense to simply say what isn't closed. Which is, apparently, nothing. The airport is effectively shut down, all our ferry services are suspended, and they've been clocking gusts of up to 100km/hr.

So, I have had the pleasure of a snow day mitigated by the looming task of digging my car out. That, I will be addressing once I complete this blog post. I've been putting it off in the hope that the wind dies down a little ... which doesn't seem about to happen. Sigh.

In the meantime, I've been puttering around the house. After a year and a half of living here, I finally got itchy to start improving my new place. I don't have the capital to take on the tasks I really want to do (i.e. hire a contractor to gut my kitchen and put in an island and tile floors, or remake my sunroom--currently essentially a storage space--into an actual pleasant breakfast nook).

Hence, I'm starting modestly. Of the three upstairs bedrooms, the rear two have been unused space--mostly, I've just been storing my books in boxes, lacking the shelf space for them. Shortly after Christmas, I retasked the middle bedroom as a workout room and invested in weights and a bench (moving all the boxes into the rear bedroom).



And then, after several frustrating visits to Home Depot in which their panel saw was out of order and therefore unable to provide me with the cut plywood I needed, I finally was able to buy my supplies and build the shelves that will help turn the rear bedroom into a study / reading room / guest room.

Now, I should point out that to say I'm not particularly handy is like saying that Dick Cheney bears a mild antipathy to liberals. So I'm quite pleased with what I've managed to assemble:







These do not, it should be noted, bear a close inspection--I lack as a carpenter the kind of eerie perfection that someone like my father brings to these kind of projects, where every line is plumb and the entire thing knocks together almost without a need for glue or nails. There was a lot of spackling and cutting little shims to plug of the shortfalls in my measurements (measure one, cut twice is my motto). Fortunately, my time working as a painter through summers in my undergrad gave me, if nothing else, a talent for making imperfections if not go away, at least hide pretty well.

In addition to now having an upper floor of my house that I am quite pleased with, and will use now for more than sleeping, this process was quite fun. It took place in increments, a couple of hours after work over about two weeks. Plus, it gives me the confidence this summer to rip up my grotty deck and rebuild it.

Thoughts on shovels and pipes and the joys of home ownership

"You shovel like a champion ... but that doesn't make you a superhero."
--Mystery Men

Well, I beg to differ ....

In case we weren't sure before, winter decided to make its presence rather emphatically known yesterday, and I was treated to my inaugural digging-out-the-car-after-the-plough-has-been-past.

Conflicting thoughts running through my head as I spent over an hour bending my back to the task: "Good thing I don't have a nine o'clock class this morning"; "Why couldn't this happen when I have a nine o'clock class I could cancel?"

Ah well ... next term, I'm sure there will be a number of cancellation opportunities. I suppose I could make a point of getting up an hour earlier, but that doesn't seem likely.

Thought running through my head this morning when I saw that the plough had deposited a fresh load of snow against my car: "Sysiphus had it easy."

Still, I was quite proud of my shovelling, and made a point of taking some before and after pictures.

Further contradictory thoughts running through my head mid-shovelling: "Wow, I really need to get back to the gym." "If this happens frequently, I'll never need to go to the gym again."


And in the category of "Sometimes Stupidity Reaps Unexpected Benefits": When I came outside to take the "after" photos, I accidentally locked myself out of the house. D'oh! But fortunately my neighbour with my spare key was home. My front door has proved difficult of late, not accepting the key when it freezes up; not wishing to stand outside with my hands over the doorknob until it thawed, I let myself in through my back door.

My back door leads into my sun room, which is not well insulated. I opened the door to an odd hissing noise. Then I saw the water pooled on the floor. Then I saw the burst pipe near the floor that was gushing water about a foot up the wall. Then I dissolved in despair and panic.

Thoughts running through my head upon seeing the burst pipe: "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

Locking myself out was actually a stroke of luck ... I'd been planning at that point to leave for the day, and conceivably would not have noticed the burst pipe for hours.

My sunroom has a door in the floor that leads down to my basement/crawlspace, which is also where the shutoff valve is ... which, as I discovered, lacks a knob but is instead a short piece of metal with stripped threading. The water at this point was cascading down in a rather impressive waterfall that I had to duck through several times to get the water shut off.

Interesting mathematical equation: sweat from exertion of shovelling + uninsulated room + cold water + 1.5 hours of heavy shovelling = really really sore back this morning.

I took a picture for posterity's sake, but it unfortunately doesn't show the water well. If you look closely you can see the ripples in the deep puddle at the base of the stairs.



At any rate, I guess you could say it was an eventful day, with several important lessons -- the first one being, keep the heater on in the sun room, however much more I'll be spending on my hydro bill this winter.

The second one is that I should have become a plumber. $160 for five minutes work replacing the pipe. I'm tempted to calculate what my hourly wage worked out to this past semester, but I think it will just make me depressed.

December

We had our first messy winter day yesterday ... not a massive dump of snow, but still enough to remind me of a key lesson of the Newfoundland winter: always have whatever work you need to be doing on you.

I woke up yesterday to a white neighbourhood and the sound of the wind blowing the snow sideways. It would have been a perfect day to work at home, to make coffee and camp out at the dining room table with my ongoing stack of marking ... except that I'd left that in the office. Ack. So I slogged up to campus, but quickly turned around again when all I could see was white out my office window. I have learned from hard experience that when visibility goes down to zero, it is best to vacate the office before the snow accumulates to levels best negotiated by tracked vehicles. Fortunately, it did not come to that -- the weather was clearing by the time I got home -- but it was pleasant to spend the rest of the day at the dining room table with tea and comfort food to take the edge off the grading process.

I should add that we got off easy in St. John's. The Bonavista Penninsula got absolutely creamed by a blizzard that knocked out electricity, and kept it out for over twenty-four hours -- and in some places, it's still not up and running. So I don't think I'll complain (much) about the few inches of snow I shovelled off my walk this morning.

WTF happened to August????

And so I find myself clawing onto the very last day of August so that I will not have let the entire month go by without a blog entry.

I do apologize to my reading faithful, who could be forgiven for assuming my untimely death these past five weeks. Apologies especially to my anonymous ex-student who recently commented on my last post to testily state that he/she was still waiting for my thoughts on the final Harry Potter instalment, having taken my pop culture class when I taught Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sorry -- I did in fact offer my two cents, but it was in the form of my own comments on a friend's blog here.

So. Big month! I offer no lame excuses for my bloggish inactivities, other than the fact that Kristen was here for a week and a half at the beginning of the month, and then I followed her back to Ontario for a week and a half after that.

I was home in part to attend the wedding of Robert Hamilton, who was my best friend through high school, undergrad, and a good chunk of grad school as well. We lost touch when he moved to Japan to teach English -- and then stayed. He first went out there, if memory serves, in 1999 ... and now teaches Japanese university students about Japanese culture and history. Cool, eh?

Anyway, not having spoken to me in some time and not knowing where I was at, Robert sent a wedding invite to my parents' address, who dutifully forwarded it to the Rock. Was I going to miss one of my best friends ever's wedding? I don't think so.

Also, I bought a house.

Yup. I am now among the ranks of the mortage-carrying, debt-ridden bourgeoisie. My parents have been visiting these past few days, helping me with the closing and with getting the place ready for the move. The way things worked out, I have my apartment until the end of september, while taking possession of the new house yesterday. So I can move incrementally, and take a weekend or two to paint and prep the place. Here are some pictures of what the place looks like prior to any modifications:

Again, more detailed posts soon. I'm looking at the clock, and midnight approaches. I want to get this online before then so that I have at least one August post.