So... wanna buy a house?

No, not our house. Well, not our current house.

This one is on the market again.

Doesn't look like they've done much to it, aside from destroying the exterior with a whole bunch of ugly landscaping, and wasting a lot of perfectly good cedar turning the downstairs workshop into a laundry room. And given that what they're asking isn't a whole lot more than what they paid US for it, I don't think they're being motivated by any potential capital gains, if you know what I mean.

I'm tempted to go and take a tour if they have an open house, but the War Department has no interest in it at all. Something about preferring the memories over whatever travesty has been foisted upon it since we gave it up. Actually, I can see her point.

But anyway, I'm sure nobody comes here for updates on the old shed. You want to know what's up with the new digs, right? Well, we're mired in that unbelievably interminable stretch of paint, fill, sand, paint, fill, sand, sand, vacuum, beer, sand, fill, paint, etc. Which is a pretty accurate summary of doing the trim in the War Department's office/our new guest room.

I would give you a preview of what it looks like but a) it looks a lot like my office, only slightly bigger and slightly brighter, and b) I just painted the window sills and had to erect a cat barricade to keep the little bastards from jumping up onto the fresh paint:



And before some smart-ass (Dad) asks why I didn't just close the door to keep them out, it's because the door frame is also wet, and I haven't hung the door yet.

But the floor is done, the new curtains should arrive sometime this week (thanks, Mom!), the trim is almost, almost, almost finished, and with a little luck and some more work, we should be moving furniture in this weekend and getting our respective rooms together.

Oh, and speaking of flooring, we've got about 150 sq. ft. or so left of Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron engineered hardwood flooring - anyone want some? Cheap?

Man, where did THAT month(s) (and a bit) go?

Seriously, what happened to the last two months? It seems like I just updated this thing yesterday, and then I look at the date and realize I've left all my reader(s) hanging for two months.

And then I go and drop a relatively short post on you anyway... Uh... sorry?

Where were we anyway? Looks like we had just put in the stove and started messing around with the outdoors. Well, the stove is pretty much the same (still sheer awesome), so why don't we get caught up on the garden then?

The also bad news is that I don't have much in the way of photo-editing software installed on this computer yet, so I can't do my usual before-and-after presentation, but I CAN post some pictures of how the yard looks now, and tell you how it got that way.

I should also take this opportunity to point out that the outside - pretty much all of it - is really the War Department's demesnes. I just do the heavy lifting and some of the less-precise chores, like mowing the lawn. She's the one with the landscaping background, and she also does NOT share my complete and abiding hatred of the outdoors. (Actually, it's not the outdoors I hate per se, but the creatures that inhabit it. Especially the wasps. Actually, specifically the wasps. I really hate wasps.)

Where was I?

Right, the wasps. I mean, the yard! The yard. Yeah.

Okay, I'm never going to get through this post without resorting to my second favorite method of presentation: the list!

Things we've done so far:

• Finished digging out the roots from the huge cedars we cut down at the front of the house; fixed the irrigation pipe I busted while digging out said roots; planted some heathers and rhododendrons instead; and covered the rest of the bed with bark mulch.
• Dug up the turf from the shallow spots on the lawn; filled in the shallow spots with topsoil; and reseeded the now-not-shallow spots.
• Removed the stupid-looking stones from around the front bed by the big rock; weeded out all the dandelions, foxglove, and primulas; planted some heathers, rhodos, and the azalea we rescued from the backyard; and covered it up with some decent soil and a top coat of bark mulch.
• Took out a strip of flower bed along the stone wall beside the sunroom; and reseeded it as lawn.
• Cut down a couple more cedars from along the side fence; yanked out some dead or decrepit plants that really weren't doing well there; planted a "Japanese Black Dragon" wysteria in their place (which I picked out solely because of the name, by the way); and it's still an ongoing project, so lots more to do along the fence there.

Oh, what the heck, here are the "before" shots of the yard:







And the "afters":











Here are all the stones from around the beds in the front yard, now carefully piled up on the stump where the dolphin fountain used to be (a VAST improvement if you ask me - both in terms of replacing that god-awful fountain, and in terms of moving the haphazard, random assortment of rocks from around the beds in the front):



We also...

• Built a mason bee box and put it on the side of the house. (Absolutely NONE of which was my idea, by the way. Bees, wasps, butterflies - all just brothers from different mothers if you ask me. Evil flying nasties that'll sting you as soon as look at you.) Anyway, it's kinda cute, eh?

• Made a nice home for a couple of passing ducks. Okay, so we didn't really do anything specific to attract them, they just showed up one morning and have been dropping by for visits fairly regularly ever since.

• And, lest I forget, I also drove all the way up to McBride to pick up a painting that, it turns out, didn't fit into my car. Fortunately, not only was the consolation prize a rather spectacular photograph:

But mon pere was gracious and awesome enough to drive all the way down FROM McBride the following week to personally deliver the original painting as well, which looks absolutely amazing and really helps to finish off the bear pit:



Anyway, we're currently working on Amy's office/the guest room, and I've already finished the floor, but it's late and I'm tired, and I'm sure everyone would rather I post again this weekend than waste EVERYTHING in one post now, right?

Right?

Hello? Anybody still reading this?


Bueller?

Sheer awesome

Man, I can't even tell you how much I've missed cooking with gas. I also can't even tell you how much of a piece of shit the old electric stove was - but I'm sure going to try!

So, the stove that Frank left us was probably original to the house. Which means it was installed in the middle of the 80s, and was not exactly pampered, if you know what I mean. For example, to set the clock, we had to hold down the "Clock" button, and then press and hold the up arrow until it reached the time we wanted. Simple enough - provided the clock button actually worked, which, of course, it didn't. I had to lean hard on the clock button and kind of roll my thumb around until it engaged, and then whale away on the up button until the time started to move, and hope that I got the time set before my thumb moved off the sweet spot.

And then there were the burners. Not one of the damn things was even close to level, which meant that pots and pans wouldn't sit flat on the burners. To heat up oil in a pan, for instance, we kept having to turn the handle of the pan to make sure we got an even heat. It also meant that using the wok was an exercise in frustration, as it wouldn't sit flat on the big burner, so we'd get hot spots in different places, depending on which direction the handle was facing.

Also, I had started to notice that things in the oven cooked faster on the right side, closer to the door. Which meant that every time I baked or roasted something, I had to turn the pan halfway through cooking to make sure I got an even cook.

But not anymore! The same guys that hooked up our gas fireplace came back last Wednesday and installed the new gas stove. (I took the old electric crap-pile up to Hartland on Saturday and drove away without a second glance. We would have sold it or given it away, but neither of us really felt comfortable having anyone we knew actually use the damn thing.)

Here's the most awesomest stove in the world, nestled tight up against our favorite Frank-artifact (Fartifact?), the What About Happiness label:



It looks a little different than our old friend, but it's pretty much the same model, just five years newer - and with more glowy lights!



And just to prove that we're using it to make awesome food, here it is baking my world-famous Panko-and-herb sockeye and rosemary potato wedges:



First time using the oven, and rest assured - it kicks ASS. Seriously awesome appliance.

Whew.

Well, after that, anything I post will be a let-down, I'm sure, but I do have some other progress to report, and it's pretty awesome, too.

I was out in the garage on Saturday, putting a cat flap in our bedroom door (that's for the next post, that one is), and my Crazy Neighbour™ came wandering over. Seems like his wife had gone out for the day and he was bored with sitting around the house. So he figured he'd come over and maybe do some work on our place for a while. (Seriously - I didn't ask him. He volunteered. Because, as I may have mentioned, he's crazy.) Well, he took one look at the big mess of concrete where the lamp standard used to be, and that was it: that thing was coming out.

So he brought over a whole mess of tools and started in on it. Well, I couldn't very well stand there and let a guy going through chemotherapy tackle such a big job on his own, so I put my project aside and went out to help.

Now, I realize the picture isn't all that impressive, but let me tell you: there was a full metric shit-ton of concrete underneath that light. It took the two of us the better part of an hour-and-a-half to get it out of the pit and we didn't even break any sprinkler pipes while doing it. When we did get the lump out of the hole, we had to beat it apart with a sledge-hammer to get it small enough to lift into a wheelbarrow. I put most of the rocks we knocked off back into the hole and threw some mud over it:



The pipe sticking out the side is the "conduit" (i.e., sprinkler pipe) that Frank used to run the electrical. And yes, it was FULL of water.

Anyway, emboldened by our success, we turned our attention to the second of the two stumps left when we removed the big cedars from the front of the house. I had actually got the first of the two out the weekend before.

Before:


After:


And yes, I DID break a sprinkler pipe while doing that, but given that there are THREE of them right there, I figure one out of three ain't too bad.

Anyway, we managed to get the bulk of the thing out yesterday, and I went back out and tidied it up this afternoon.

Before:


After:


After all, it's not like we could mow the lawn, given that it was RAINING AGAIN. Seriously - there has not been a single day this entire spring that we could call the relatives and Toronto and laugh at them. (Although, to everyone living in Calgary, I have to still say, HA HA!) We STILL haven't mowed the lawn this year.

Looks like hell, too, but what can we do?

Anyway, I've got more, but it's late, and I want to save a little for the next post. Who knows, maybe I'll post something in the middle of the week! Oooh! Tricky!

A little bit of catching up...

We're mired in that seemingly interminable process of painting, installing, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, painting, and painting the trim in my office, and none of it looks all that impressive. It also, as I may have intimated, takes FOREVER.

So I thought I'd use this post to catch up on a mixture of things that have been going on around the house and in the neighbourhood. Not really sure what I'll wind up including, but hey - you get what you pay for with this blog.

Let's get started, eh?


Timer switch



That little beauty is the awesomest invention ever. I know it just looks like a light switch with a clock in it, but check it out:



It glows! Hahahahahaha!

Uh... too excited? Yeah? Thought so...

Anyway, the point of that particular switch is that, here in the wilds of BC, the sun goes down awfully early in the day in the winter. This meant that the War Department was getting home from work in the dark, and trying to unlock the door in the already darkened doorway. We needed a way to make the outside lights come on before she got home - preferably a way that didn't involve leaving the damn things on all day, sucking up power.

Unfortunately, the outside lights are on a three-way switch (there's another switch for them inside the garage), and we really didn't want to start tearing out drywall and rewiring them for a timer or light sensor.

Fortunately, we found these on the inter-tubage, and what with the War Department's prowess as an electrician, we now have outside lights that come on automatically when the sun goes down - and yes, the switch calculates sundown for us, without the use of an exterior light sensor. It even compensated for Daylight Savings Time. Gotta be right up there in terms of the best 60 bucks we've spent on the place.

New Arrival
I had to transfer some money from one of my investment accounts to another, and some of it "accidentally" made its way into an entirely different account. One that promptly signed over the contents to Sears:



What's in the box, you ask?

One of these beauties:



No, you can't see the front yet. Not until it gets installed on Wednesday.

Finishing Up Old Chores AND This Week In Mayonnaise
Way back when, we fixed this monstrosity on the front wall of the living room. As I explained at the time, it was a piece of old extension cord spliced into an electrical wire that ran through sprinkler piping out through the wall, and underground to the lamp beside the driveway - the fake wrought-iron Canadian Tire special visible on the right side of this picture.

Anyway, we were out puttering around in the nice weather on Saturday (seriously - what the ever-lovin' Jebus is up with the weather this spring? It's almost April and we haven't even mowed our lawn yet! Sheesh!) and Amy asked if I thought I could just push the lamp over, and get it out of the way. Turns out it wasn't nearly strong enough to support the weight of the slab of concrete in which it was based, and the lamp snapped neatly in half. Which, I suppose, made it easier to carry into the garage where it will sit until our next trip to the recycling depot. Once that was out of the way, though, we took a closer look at the base:



Yeah - looks like the electrical was equally as crappy on both ends of that installation. It's not even outdoor wire - just regular old Romex. They just fed it right up through the form and poured the concrete over it. And then they set the lamp down into the concrete, essentially ensuring that the wire would ALWAYS be passing directly through whatever water had accumulated in the base.

Oh, and those little round marks around the outside of the footing? Coins. From the eighties. Oh, and I just KNOW you're wondering how (because "why?" would be unanswerable) the coins were attached to the concrete. Go ahead, ask me.



Mayonnaise, of course.

Finished!
Anyway, in the five days or so that it's taken me to get around to actually finishing this post... we finished the office! Whoo!











Of course, I can't actually use it as my office yet. See, we kinda need it as a spare bedroom and to store all the crap we've been storing in Amy's office.

Three guesses what the next project is, and the first two don't count....

An Anniversary
Before I go, I'm not sure how this affects what I'm sure are a number of various and varying pools and betting circles out there, but this was exactly a year ago today:



So there. Nyaaah!