Office closet

Remember those spice shelves I was raving about last week?… Well, I had full intentions of finishing them this weekend. Really. Except that I kept tripping up on the piles of stuff in the middle of the office, so I thought I should deal with that first. You see, as Dan will attest, I like to multitask. Unfortunately, sometimes it borders on ADD. So when I was working on the shelves last weekend, while I was waiting for husband to come home and explain the next step (and corresponding power tool), I decided that I also needed to get started on moving around the bookshelves in the office. Everyone gets that urge once in a while, right?

Anyway, I moved the gigantic bookshelf from the office into the hallway (it’s like it belonged there all along!). I brought up some books from the basement to fill that bookshelf with, and brought up a (smaller) bookcase from the basement into the office. Of course, this meant that not everything from the original office bookshelf fit into the new one – thus the week-old piles of stuff in the middle of the office.

So I decided to tackle the highly inefficient office closet, and turn it into my own little bookshelf. The rod mounting-point-thingie looked on approvingly.

There is no before picture of the closet, for which I’m kind of glad. It was disorganized, and the stacks of boxes were getting to be somewhat dangerous.

The first shelf probably took me as long as the last two shelves combined, and by the end I had a good enough system that I almost wished I could keep going. Well, except for the fact that my hands were starting to sprout tender pre-blister spots all over the palms, so I’m actually glad that I ran out of shelves when I did. Check out how level they are!

The final product – four shelves total (the top one was already there). Note how all our computer textbooks have been exiled into the closet.

Final tally?

Tools used:

• table saw
• drill
• screwdriver (the tool, not the drink)
• levels
• nail gun (husband’s idea)
• stud finder (insert husband running it over his torso and making beeping noises here… stud… get it? )

And I even kept my goggles on the whole time today. You won’t see me losing safety points for the same thing twice in a row!

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Not your average vacation

You think my travel is sometimes a bit outside the well-worn path? Well, you should go read this trip log (I have to warn you, though, you might want to book off an evening – it’s 14 pages of forum postings). It is the story of a couple and their trusty Land Cruiser taking on one of the lesser-travelled areas of the world – the Democratic Republic of Congo. One pothole and mud track at a time.

While this is not the kind of trip I would want to do, it’s a fascinating glance into the really extreme mode of travel. It also goes a long way to showing just how messed up certain parts of the world are at the moment.

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Kids these days

I went to the dollar store today, and purchased one item. The total came to $1.13 with the taxes, but without thinking I handed the cashier the toonie that I had in my pocket. A few seconds later, I realized that I also had lots of heavy change in my change purse, so I stopped him with a “hey, hold on, I think I have that 13 cents”. To which the kid, digging around in the register for my 87 cents in change, replies “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I already entered it into the machine, it won’t give me the new amount now”. At first, I thought that he meant that he was under the impression that he had some magical cash register that kept track of all the coins, and wouldn’t dispense the new change amount (even though he had the register open and was digging around for the change). Then it hit me that what he actually meant was that he was not capable of figuring out that he if I gave him the 13 cents, the resulting change would be a loonie instead of a handful of coins.

I hate to sound old and grumpy, but… seriously??? Is basic math like this no longer a requirement for passing, oh, I don’t know, grade 4???

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Shelves!

I realize I’ve been pretty absent lately, but I’ll chalk that up to being too busy actually doing the projects to write about them. Well, that, and a serious case of “fall is coming, it’s so miserable outside, woe is me, I can’t do anything but curl up on the couch  and mope”ies. Seems like a couple of weeks later, I’m finally over it.

Funny how with the holidays approaching and everything getting busier, I’m actually finding more time to work on other projects, too. Yay for being forced to be organized!

My big new projects is spice shelves. Nearly half a year ago now, I got very excited about spice bottles that I saw online somewhere, and proceeded to order them. My mom even dutifully brought them up on her last visit! And since then, they’ve sat in boxes, eliciting longing gazes and sighs from me anytime I walk past the stack (given that I put one of the boxes on top of the toaster oven, you can imagine how often that happened).

About a month ago, I decided I’d had enough, and started trying to rearrange my kitchen to find a good spot for them. Except that nothing worked! Anywhere I tried to put them, it wasn’t accessible enough, or large enough, or … So I set my mind to building myself some spice shelves, given that I’ve already given Dan half a dozen projects, and felt that this was the one I had the best chance of getting done “on my own” (see the reason for the quotes below).

I looked around online for ideas, and was very happy when I remembered about Knock-Off Wood. Indeed, they had just the pattern that would work perfectly. Nothing fancy, but sturdy and functional. We headed off to Home Depot to buy the wood, and in my excitement to finally get started on this project, I forgot that I should let the wood sit in the house for a bit before building my shelves. I compromised by cutting the pieces to size on the first day, and letting those dry out in the basement. I sanded all of them on another evening a few days later (I’m starting to really appreciated projects which can be broken up into weekday-evening-sized steps). Unfortunately, I had to wait for a weekend to do the last step, since I didn’t think our neighbours would appreciate us running the compressor at 9 p.m. Yesterday, we were finally at home, and I was able to finish the project by nailing the pieces together, after some routing to make them fit together and for a nice finish.

Now I only need to sand down the wood filler and put a few coats of clear stain to seal the wood, and I’ll be done! And what do you know – I don’t have any other big commitments on my calendar all week! So maybe I can start using my wonderful new spice bottles next weekend – so excited! This will be the first real project that I’ve done (mostly) on my own which required multiple power tools. Did I have to keep asking where his tools were? Yup. Did he feel the need to supervise me anything I was near the power tools (ok, the sander I was given free rein with)? Definitely. But now that I haven’t drawn any blood with my woodworking project (although I dock myself major safety points for forgetting to put my goggles back on when I was finishing the last shelf with the nailer), I’m looking forward to doing more!

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Fishies!

I have to admit it – while I’m not a fan of not getting enough sleep, there are definitely certain advantages to getting up EARLY. On Friday, I was up well before the crack of dawn, and by 9 a.m. I felt highly accomplished. I’d packed lunches, gotten ready for the day ahead, had a massage, had a favourite coffee and breakfast, and gone through a few issues at work. And that’s before 9, people!

In other news, we finally have fish! Well, we’ve actually had fish for the last 5 days – I’ve just been too unmotivated to post this whole week. The people at the aquarium store told me to pick 3 fish to start with, and I’m happy to report they’re still swimming around happily.

It took a bit of effort to get the cats to actually notice the fish, but since then I often find them up on the shelf next to the aquarium, following their movements around. A few times, Shakey hesitantly (and in slow motion) tried to “catch” the fish through the glass, but quickly realized that it wasn’t going to work. No cats have ended up in the fish tank yet (you laugh, but when I was little I had a cat who did just that).

We have two batman platys, and one gorgeous red sword. Aren’t they puuuuuuuurdy?

Tomorrow I can start getting them friends – they’ve passed the one-week test! And I definitely need to work on figuring out the correct settings on my camera for fish photos.

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Aquarium

In a wave of unfinished projects getting finished, I managed to knock two off my list this past weekend! Yay me!

First, those who have visited our house in the last 10 months may remember an aquarium sitting on our mantelpiece. Due to a combination of cost, time, and fear of the unknown, I’ve been putting off setting up the aquarium with its rightful residents since I got it for Christmas last year. Well, I finally decided enough was enough, hoofed it over to the nearby (live) fish store, and got all my supplies in order.

Thus, unfinished project number two comes to the forefront. When we first pained the living and dining room, I had this idea that perhaps it would be nice to paint the small walls jutting out to separate the two rooms a different colour, to visually separate the space even more. Thus they sat, primed but unpainted, for close to 2 years. The key was that once we got the aquarium filled up, it would be immovable. And since the plan was to leave it on top of the fireplace, it would block access to one of the walls in question. So I had to do something about it, and quickly.

Over the summer, I’ve slowly come to the realization that because of the faux finish on the walls, a solid colour on the separator walls would look out of place, and a different faux finish/colour would look to busy. So this weekend I finally finished what I started two years ago, and in the same fashion – same faux finish on the unfinished walls as I did in the rest of the room in the first place. Now, I just hope that next time it doesn’t take me two years to make a decision like this.

Here’s the final result, first with the light on and then looking out into the living room. Note the nicely uniform wall colour behind the aquarium. I can just imagine how nice it will be to curl up on the couch, with the water bubbling in the background and colourful little fishies darting around in the background.

But of course, that has to wait. First I have to let the (good) bacterial cultures establish themselves in the fishtank. To that end, I’m using this wonderful stuff (300 m bacteria in every teaspoon – the breakfast of champions!)

Once they do their magic for a few days, I’m supposed to get a couple of trial fish. If they survive a few weeks, with no signs of discomfort, then I can start stocking up! With all the additives, fish (some of the more extravagant ones are over $60!), and filter and heater running all day, I have a feeling this is not going to be the cheapest of hobbies. But think of the calming effect! At least on me… I expect to have more than one entertaining post about kitties and fish!

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Props to Air Canada

Yet again, since I know I would’ve written a ranty blog post if the outcome hadn’t been so favourable, I’m making an effort to write about a case when things did go my way. A lot of people that I talk to don’t have many favourable things to say about Air Canada. I don’t know if they’re thinking of the bankrupt Air Canada of a decade ago, or if I’ve just been really lucky – but today is yet another case of me being happy with the service I received from them.

A few days ago, I got an email from Air Canada saying they were changing our flight to visit my parents at Christmas. Fine, no biggie, schedules get shifted back and forth by half an hour all the time. Except that when I looked at the new itinerary in more detail, I realized that they had us

1) Leaving over an hour earlier (in the middle of the day, when even with the original flight I would have had to take half a day off work)

2) Doing two transfers instead of the original one

3) Transferring in a cramped poorly laid out airport within a 50-minute window – which would be fine on a normal day, but which I’m wary of in Calgary in the middle of the winter leading up to the holidays.

Well that’s no good! The reason I buy tickets for Christmas travel in September is so that I have my pick of flights in order to avoid these exact scenarios! I figured the very least I could do was call and give a shot at getting better flights. I found a direct flight out of Toronto that would work and was showing as available online, assuming they could get us there. The guy on the phone dragged his feet for a while, but after I listed all of my excuses (as well as the number of the flight that I wanted to be on out of Toronto), he gave up and rebooked the tickets. Yay Air Canada! The nice side effect is that with this new schedule, we even get there 2 hours earlier than we would have with the original tickets.

Now, I’m holding my breath to see how many more changes they will try to make to our reservation in the next 6 weeks…

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Chickens

I have a bone to pick with chickens. In particular, the cooking thereof. The last many times I’ve made roast chicken, it’s taken a lot longer than I feel it should have. But, perhaps, that may have had something to do with me not exactly following a recipe. Fine – today, chickens were on sale, so I picked one up for dinner. I found a recipe in a french cookbook that involved onions stuffed under the skin and obscene amounts of butter (even when I used half of what the recipe called for) slathered on top. I followed the recipe to a T, even including preheating the oven before putting the chicken in – and when I took it out at the designated time, the thighs were still severely underdone. 20 more minutes in the oven fixed the problem, but now I’m stuck with a real pickle. What is it about chickens that makes my oven freak out? I could blame it on a faulty thermostat, but every. single. other recipe comes out perfect within exactly the time specified. Maybe my oven is speciesist and hates chickens? Or maybe it loves chickens so much it will do anything to keep them in a little bit longer.

Other than the cooking time issues, though, this recipe is absolutely fantastic. Fall-off-the-bone tender meat, sinfully crispy skin, and a delicate taste of roasted onions taste infused throughout. I highly recommend it!

In other new recipe news, I found and made this soup recipe today. Dan and I are both self-confessed avocado fanatics. So when I saw a giant bag of avocados (probably close to 15) at the reject shelf in Farm Boy on the weekend, I jumped at the chance. At $1.99, it was the same price as the two “normal” avocados I had already put in my basket, and after groping the bag for a while I was fairly certain I could find more than 2 useable avocados in there. Well, we ended up with a whole bag of perfectly ripe avocados. I don’t know who put them in the reject pile, but THANK YOU – and please keep it up! *hint hint* The only modification I made was to add some chili flakes.

The cat experiment is going along reasonably well. We’re no longer greeted at the door when we come home in the evening – I always suspected that our cats only loved us for our food-distributing abilities, but it’s a little bit hurtful to see this finally confirmed. I still think they’re eating more than their normal daily share, so we’ll see whether they start getting chubby, and maybe go back to the feeders at that point. After the food coma of the last few days, Shakey was slow enough for me to snap this picture.

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Kitty food

Today marks day one of the “anytime food” experiment for our cats. Up until now, we’ve had automatic feeders dispensing dry food in the morning, and we’ve been giving them wet food by hand in the evening. Well, the batteries in the feeders died, and we thought this would be a good time to try. We had tried once before with Shakey, back when we were living in the apartment – that didn’t work too well. He would stand there and gobble up any dry food coming his way. Repeatedly. We had to give up because he was gaining weight, and not adjusting to the concept of food sitting out.

He’s older now, and a little bit less protective of his food. Recently, we’ve even noticed him walking away from his bowl while there’s still stuff in it. So off we went this evening – putting out their regular serving of wet food, and filling up their dry food bowls. And then we watched in amazement as both of them gobbled up their wet food, and then, like the food vacuums that they are, moved on to the dry food. And crunched. And muched. BB left for a bit, and then ambled back, Shakey still not lifting his snout away from the bowl. And then she came back for seconds (probably closer to thirds, in terms of portion size). Finally, even the main piggy left, and stayed away for a good 5 minutes.

When we came back from volleyball, there were still a few kibbles left of what was probably close to their (normal) daily portion of food. I managed to refill the bowls for tomorrow without the cats hearing – they were passed out in a food coma. Is that what people look like at Thanksgiving?

So day one was only marginally better than last time – but there’s food out now and it’s not being eaten! Baby steps, people, baby steps. I’m very hopeful we can get them used to this idea without them fattening up (which is what happened to Shakey after our first attempt) – those feeders take a good amount of space in the kitchen, and it would be nice to have them out from under my feet. Although I think in that case, I think I’ll miss the gong show that accompanies the yelling of the word “Food” in our house.

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