Ladies and gentlemen, my pipes.

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(Like, the ABS kind, not the locomoting kind.)

You know when you’re living in downtown Toronto, and you hear a couple walk past a new condo tower, and they’re sipping their peppermint Starbucks lattes and they’re like “that went up so fast! It’s probably held together with gum and toothpicks!” and they laugh and stroll off down the street. And you watch them go, pressed up against the glass window of your condo, where you are busy disentangling the grocery store shopping bag that the builders used to shore up your drain pipe?

Yeah.

Exhibit A:

(Note: That shit on the floor? Yeah, that was just already there. That’s not from us or anything. Without exception, every nook of our place that was hidden by a surface or bit of drywall has been harbouring random construction shit like this. Thanks Urbancorp!)

Why a grocery store bag? Weeelllll the lazy fucktards who built our place, using only glue and their (sparse) wits, apparently couldn’t be assed to find a hole saw, so they just bashed out an opening roughly the size of the pipes plus a bit… declared that It Was Good, then shimmed the bejebeers out of it with bits of particleboard and leftover plastic bits.

Re-enactment:

Fucktard #1: “Hey, Fucktard #2, are you almost done with your lunch? I need a manky plastic bag to finish up this plumbing work?”

Fucktard #2: “Sure thing boss! Do you want some of these french fries for insulation?*”

*The fry thing is probably not true. Probably.

Exhibit B:

See that little shiny thing poking out from the bottom of the detritus? That, folks, is a junction box. Within (and by “within” I mean exposed) are some spliced wires. Where does this sit? Oh, y’know. On the floor. Under the drain pipe and water lines.

This is why whenever I go to do something simple like, I don’t know, hang a picture, I end up having to do light drywall and plumbing work as prep. On the plus side, my tool collection is getting impressive.

I even have a hole saw.

Move in ready! Just steps from Starbucks, trendy neighbourhoods and electrocution!*

*Disclaimer: “Trendy neighbourhoods” include but are not limited to barf-covered sidewalks on Sunday mornings.

Posted in: houses, rantish peeve

It was the best of times, it was ssssssssAJsssM

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From the first pages of the late great David Rakoff’s Don’t Get Too Comfortable:

LONDON, May 9—Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess. Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that monkeys left alone with a computer failed to produce a single word. “They pressed a lot of S’s,” said Mike Phillips, a researcher in the project which was paid for by the Arts Council. The researchers left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then they waited. Eventually, the monkeys produced only five pages of text, primarily filled with the letter S. At the end, a few A’s, J’s, L’s and M’s were struck. “Another thing they were interested in was defecating and urinating all over the keyboard,” Mr. Phillips added.

-Associated Press

Posted in: books, funnies

Hi Me, it’s me.

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Hey you.

So, I hear you have your motorcycle test booked for tomorrow. I also hear that while you thought you had your head sorted out about it, I have it on good authority that your belly was still churning like a cement mixer. Which means you were probably not actually sorted out about it (how’re those pangs down your arm treating you?).

Future Me, here are some notes from the eye of the belly storm. Three things that actually made a difference in calming our ass down.

1. Treats!

You are very good at giving yourself a little reward after success. But you never give yourself a consolation prize. (No, berating yourself is not a “prize”. Moron.)

What that means is you head into things with a prize in mind, just hoping that it will work out. But you let the sentence trail. You say “Okay, here goes, and if this doesn’t go well then…”

That ellipsis there? That gets us into trouble. Because when things don’t go well, through our own result, or just some random circumstance, we are left as a pile of goo. Because all we had “planned” for if it didn’t turn out was how incredibly sad we were going to be.

FAIL.

Think of something you really, genuinely, want. What would be amazing. What would you like so much, that if you can only have it if you “fail”, you might find yourself kinda hoping that you do fail, so much do you want this treat (*cough*facial!*cough*). Make it better than your “everything went great!” reward. Got it? Good. That is the thing you get if it doesn’t work out. WIN!

2. Do something else.

Have you lost perspective? Have you built this thing up into The Thing of All Importance. No? … Are you lying?

Yes you are. You are so worried and so nervous. Because you have to get 100%. If you don’t get 100%, we have it on pretty good authority that the world will end and you will be useless.

Oh. No. Wait.

Actually, we had that on bad authority. For a very long time. We have since replaced that with good authority that the world will, in fact, go on. You will live to try another day. Having to do something more than once is not failure. Failure actually does lead to learning. You do many things, you have accomplished much, and you are not, by any stretch of any imagination, useless.

Trying to do something hard or new or unusual that you aren’t perfect at right away is much more valuable than the thing you never have to work for but are “naturally” good at.

Got it? Good.

Now. Go do something that has nothing to do with what you’re stressed about. If it’s work, go for a run. If it’s exercise, bake. If it’s mountain biking, read a book. Go to opposite land! Your life is bigger than any one thing. No one thing is that important. They’re all moving forward. Some faster, some slower. You’re working out your skills in lots of areas. There is balance. It is all good. Try, learn, fail, fight, win.

3. This too shall pass.

Being predisposed against religion means that sometimes good idea babies are lost to retrograde authoritarian bathwater. Like the phrase: “This too shall pass”. Perhaps the only sentiment that means something to me/Me, even after detentacling Catholicism from my brain. (Yeah yeah, don’t steal, be nice to people, etc. I still hold to those, they got a free pass under “duh”.)

“This too shall pass” is a good and useful truth. It’s about change. All change. A person doesn’t look at an adorable kitten and say “this too shall pass” (unless they’re a person who wears a lot of black eyeliner). Though it’s equally applicable. Everything changes and everything ends. Good and bad. Stressful, frivolous, flippant or significant.

That includes motorcycle tests. One way or the other, it will be over. You will go on. More decisions will be made. Tests can be retaken (for free even). You will still be you. You will figure it out. This too shall pass.

 

I know sometimes we can be a bit balls at managing our stress. We’re getting better though, teamie. Give yourself credit for that. While you’re at it, give yourself credit for everything. You are so quick to focus on what you haven’t done yet, or the “lost” 5%. Stop that. Enjoy your accomplishments. Enjoy where you’ve got to. It’s a good damn place.

Oh, and also? At 30, you took one of your dreams and made it happen. Studied, tested, passed, registered, studied, tested, passed, purchased, practiced, improved. Were told you’re doing great and at exactly the right spot to pass this next test. New skills, the very best kind. Still alive? Then there is still time.

And if you don’t pass tomorrow, on your very first try, that facial is still going to feel so damn good.

Posted in: life stuff, motorcycle, ponderings

The Happy Ending

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“The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

…

This death to the logic and the emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, and shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation…

…the fairy tale of happiness ever after cannot be taken seriously; it belongs to the never-never land of childhood, which is protected from the realities that will become terribly known soon enough; just as the myth of heaven ever after is for the old, whose lives are behind them and whose hearts have to be readied for the last portal of the transit into night…

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest — as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars. Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible.”

~Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Posted in: books, life stuff, ponderings

I am not bored.

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“Boredom arises from the loss of meaning, which in turn comes in part from a failure of religio or connectedness with one another and with our past. This book is a modest plea for the realization that absolutely nothing is intrinsically boring, least of all the everyday, ordinary things. These, today, are after all what even we are prepared to admit we have in common. We have recently discovered in ourselves a determination to consider nothing to be beneath consideration, and a willingness to question passionately matters which used to be thought too basic for words. I think the reason for this is that we are fighting back with an altogether healthy urge to recapture ancient but pitifully neglected, thoroughly human responses such as participatory attention, receptivity and appreciation. We have learned well the lessons about the stupidities of superstition, of misplaced, because ignorant, wonder. It is time now to think about whether we have leaped from the trivial to the vacant. Boredom is an irritable condition, and an exceedingly dangerous one when it is accompanied by enormous destructive power.”

~ Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner

p.s. Matt, I have your book… ; )

Posted in: books, food and drink, life stuff, ponderings

Math!

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Last night, Hubby and I were lying in bed chatting. I know, it seems harmless. The problem is that Hubby and I really like talking to each other. So about half the time we’re lying in bed chatting, we are dooming ourselves to a next day filled with Badness and Fatigue.

Because, as mentioned, we are chatting. Where chatting does not equal falling asleep, winding down, or preparing for restfulness. It equals alert intrigued swapping and building of ideas and opinions and theories and memories. It is the anti-sleep, and can mean a pile of 2am “okay, no really we need to fall asleep… … … … so would it work if you took the value for…”

And we’re off again.

And again.

(And again.)

Last night, we were discussing math. One thread specifically on what math looks like in your head. When you’re trying to solve a problem, what do you “see”?

Which is when I confirmed what I suspected, which is that, when solving a math problem, there is no better place to be than inside my husband’s head. He may sometimes live amongst stacks of magazines, and keep a pile of shorts beside the bed like a feral animal (who wears pants), but when it comes to problem solving, there is no tidier place than my husband’s brain.

His description:

“Well, when I see numbers, they’re organized on a line in stacked blocks of 10. There are special markers for where the powers of 2 are. And of course A-F is overlaid for hex #s. Those all go left to right. Then there are the negative numbers, they run to the left, and down. Except if I’m working with negatives, then I reverse it.

Everything is colour coded too, but you can’t see the colours because they’re in your head. But it’s there.”

He then proceeded to rattle off offhand the powers of 2 from 0 to the 17th power. Hazard/Job perk of being a programmer.

While I enjoy doing mental math, when I see numbers in my head, they bear a closer resemblance to how they appear on Sesame Street. You know. Like they were rendered by someone on acid. They’re sort of floaty, sometimes with a background pattern.
Sesame Street Number 3

Hubby’s a fan of this. (My representation of numbers, not acid.) When I described my mental math process, he said it sounds like I do math very symbolically, higher on theory, lower on rote. But I tend to get the right answers when I do math in my head, which I guess is a point in support of the Sesame Street Acid Trip Method.

However.

When it comes to division, it turns out that he is a dirty hippy anarchist. He may be all sequenced spitshine for most functions, but division? He’s a mess. When I divide in my head, I do long division. AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL. My mental long-division is done with a sharpened number 2 pencil and I would be happy to turn in my work with my answer.

When Husband does division, apparently he just tends to guesstimate multiply, 9 times out of 10.

You think you know someone.

“Close enough.”

I guess I found his pile of shorts.

Posted in: life stuff, the EF

Wont Fix

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I have money. I have a house. I have things in the house that you should be able to use money to fix.

Not so.

A shortlist of some of the things:
* hot water on demand unit
* air handler
* potlights
* location of cold air return vent
* reskimming of popcorn ceilings

Each one of these has had at least one contractor just:
* not show up
* not reply to email(s)
* not reply to voicemail(s)
* not reply to inquiries using the webform on their site

In the more extreme cases, like the HVAC system, we’re now officially up to 5 or 6 (or more) contractors who have dropped the ball. Including one (Belyea Bros) who did a direct mail drop (“Having trouble with your hot water [people living on this street]?”), sent a guy out, gave us a quote and a huge pile of reassurance… and then we never heard (or heard back from) them again. Oh, no, I’m wrong. We did get another flyer from them.

We finally sucked it up yesterday and just had Direct Energy replace our broken hot water on demand system with a new one. Still a rental, but a newer model, for more money a month. Whatever, we thought, we just need to make some progress here.

This morning I turned on the tap… cold water only. Brand spanking new machine? “Error 25E”. Call an authorized service centre.

I did. They were supposed to be here between 1 and 5pm today.

It’s 5pm here now.

I’d have a bad case of the stabbies right now, if a little piece of my soul hadn’t just died. Or maybe it’s just not working because it’s dirty from not being able to shower all day. I should call an authorized service centre.

Posted in: houses, life stuff, mah rage