bugs and beer and fridge magnets

(above photo: This bug is eating our Corkscrew Hazel! Anyone know what it is? And if insecticidal soap will work on it?)

I was highly interested (and relieved) to read how many of you still have unpacked boxes from previous moves. From Beckett, for example:

"We've lived in this house for about 12 years now. We still have boxes from several moves ago out in the garage. They'll probably be there when we die and the boys will have to go through all that old stuff and Riley will say: "What did they save this for??" and Casey will say: "Come on, you know Dad never threw anything away. Wow, some of these computer games are from back in the 80's!!! Wonder if they're worth anything, since those old antique computers they ran on are out here somewhere..."

I grew up moving a lot; it wasn't until I went to high school that I discovered that some people didn't have boxes of stuff; all their stuff was unpacked.

What a concept."

All this unpacking hasn't been great for my tendinitis; Jeff's been doing all the heavy work and I've been doing it a bit at a time, but there's just so much to do. One corner of my office is now filled with boxes. I think I'm going to give my arms a break this weekend, when my friend Rand comes to visit (our very first houseguest!). It's been ages since he and I have been able to hang out for any extended period, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing him again. Allison will be joining us for dinner on Saturday; I'm planning a "make your own handroll sushi" meal. I had lunch with Allison earlier this week; it's easier for us to get together now that I'm living further north (and she's on summer vacation right now, of course).

Some pics...

My friend Walter has his first beer in nearly 20 years, in celebration of his birthday:



Some housewarming goodies from my sister, yum:


Check out my new magnetic wall! I have way too many fridge magnets to put up, so am limiting myself to magnetic poetry and a few magnets at a time. When I get bored of black, I may paint something over this and still use it as a magnetic wall.



I LOVE my new home office.

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unpacking

(Photo above: my office, a work in progress. If you click through to Flickr, you can see Javascript tags for objects in the room)

Happy birthday to our friend Walter!

So I ended up using two pint cans of magnetic paint. One can gave me about five coats; I tested the magnetic pull with small piece of fridge poetry from Ruth (the word "chair") and it seemed pretty weak to me, so I bought another can.

Tips for those using magnetic paint: It dries VERY QUICKLY. The instructions advise using a roller brush and then smoothing over with a foam brush for each coat of paint, but I found I didn't have time for the second brush...the paint was already dry! I smartened up by the second can of paint and using a foam roller brush, but the previous coats of paint were already pretty rough and textured.

Ah well, I figure it'll just make the wall more interesting. :-) I've also decided to leave the section black, and paint a frame around it as well as add a night scene.

Thanks to Parki and Walter for their help over the weekend! Jeff now has a workbench set-up in the toolroom, and one of our storage lockers has been emptied. Here's what's still left in the other one:



A ton to unpack. I feel as if we've been packing and unpacking and moving forever. Though I can't really complain, considering what Scott and Amanda are going through! A quickie survey: How many of you still have boxes that were never unpacked from your last move?

Jeff doesn't tend to take photos of me when we're away and I keep forgetting to stick a camera in his hand when he's free and ask, so our photo albums tend to be records of what appears to be Jeff on various trips by himself or with our family and friends. Here's proof that I actually was at the cottage with my sister and her family last month (thanks to my sister for the photo):



In case you're curious, I'm watching Jeff and my nieces in the lake. Either that, or I'm daydreaming about the day we're finally fully moved in and unpacked and I can get back to my writing fulltime....

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urban tapestry practice, postcards, magnetic walls

(Above photo: Allison & Jodi at an Urban Tapestry practice at Jodi's place. We were doing prep for our upcoming gig in Germany at Filkcontinental.)

Still in the midst of moving chaos and unpacking. Many thanks to Parki for helping move stuff from our mom-in-law's condo to the new house during the week! This weekend, we'll be starting to empty our two storage lockers (including most of the contents of my old home office which was packed up SEVEN MONTHS AGO, woohoo!) and getting more of our stuff from Ginny's.

Some more pics....

Housewarming gift from Jodi, which Jeff hung from my office tree for me:



Postcard from Julie:



Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville, PA. www.thecolonialtheatre.com. 610-917-1228. Built as a Vaudeville House at the start of the 20th century, the Colonial is owned and operated by the Association for the Colonial Theatre, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the full restoration and use of the facility as a centerpiece for cultural and civic activity. The Colonial appeared in the 1958 sci-fi cult film "The Blob." Davidson Neon restored the 50's neon marquee in 2002. Carnevale Eustis Architects of Phoenixville designed th new street-level facade.

"Just in time for Blobfest, a postcard from the theatre in my own hometown, where "The Blob" was filmed (well, the bit of it when they run out of the cinema pursued by Blob) Now refurbished & back in action. Love, Julie."

Postcard from Rand and Erin:



Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland. The building shape is a registered trademark of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

"Debbie -

We wanted you to have this to add to your collection! The Hall of Fame was fantastic - details to come! Hope the move went smoothly - looking forward to seeing the new house!

Love Erin & Rand :-)"

You can see my full postcard collection here.

A (much-needed) housewarming gift from Ginny:



We definitely plan on buying a barbecue in the near future now that we have a deck, so very much appreciate this housewarming gift from our friends, Alison & Jeff:



Finished painting the undercoats of magnetic paint on my office wall last night after going to see Batman Returns with my sister:



I plan to paint over with the off-white in the rest of my office and then paint something interesting over that (not sure what yet). Then I can stick up fridge magnets and photos, etc.! The fridge up in our kitchen isn't the magnetic kind, so this will be the only place in the house for our sizeable collection of fridge magnets and fridge magnetic poetry sets.

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garbage day!

First garbage day!

Don't worry...I'm sure the novelty will wear off quickly, but this is new for us. We got somewhat spoiled as condo-living types; we took our garbage to the chute down the hall anytime we wanted. There were two recycling boxes which were magically emptied every day.



Now we have to make sure the garbage can is raccoon-proof, for example. Some Toronto residents have been using bungee cords, but apparently the raccoons have figured out how to take these off unless the cords are fastened in elaborate and secure configurations. And the catch is that the trash guys won't empty cans with bungee cords, so you have to make sure you take the cords off before 7 am.

Ours passed the raccoon test, at least this first time.

Leaf and yard waste is handled differently in Toronto. In the summers, this type of trash is collected every other week, and has to be in paper bags or in a rigid open-top container. Cardboard boxes aren't allowed. Branches have to be cut up and bundled within a certain specifications (click on the close-up of the picture below for details), and yard waste apparently does NOT include grass clippings, which I find somewhat confusing. Not that it matters to us, since we have no grass. :-)



The recycling rules are somewhat baffling to me. The basics are easy, of course...glass and plastic containers, cardboard. It's the minute seemingly counter-intuitive details that continue to escape my memory. While some paper gift wrap is recyclable, for example, the type with a foil pattern is not. Plastic muffin trays are not recyclable, but margarine containers are. The list of exceptions seems endless.

Things are going to get more complicated in October, when the Green Bin program starts in North York. We're planning to get a compost bin as soon as we get settled (HA!!!) and figure out where to put it. Right now, trash is picked up every week, with yard waste and recyclables being picked up on alternate weeks. Once the Green Bin program starts, trash will only be picked up every other week.

Despite confusion over recycling and trash rules, I know this is all ultimately a Good Thing. I'm already much more conscious of the types of food product packaging I buy (whether it's recyclable, for example, and how much space it will take up in the trash can if it's not). I'm also making a much concerted effort in reducing the amount of trash that comes out of this house. And yes, I'm somewhat embarrassed by the fact that it took moving into a house to make me more conscientious about this sort of thing.



According to city stats, 43,000 residential tonnes of trash were recycled in Toronto last year, with 32% of residential waste diverted because of various recycling, green bin and yard composting programs. Toronto currently ships 120 trucks of garbage a day, which is down from 140 a day in 2003.

A survey: What are the trash and recycling "rules" like in your area? I'm curious.

Heartfelt thanks to Jeff in helping me set up my office space. I'm SO pleased with it so far. I still need some more bookshelves, need to paint my magnetic wall, a phone jack, a corkboard, set up my printer and scanner area, my craft table. But at least I can start working in my office!

Here are some pics...

My workspace, with a brand-new desk from IKEA. The bookshelves in my office were from our old living room. I'm going to line the wall on the left with corkboard, and put a shelf above the corkboard:



I bought the bunch of cloth sunflowers at Lewiscraft yesterday to add some corner colour, temporarily hung up the scarf from Andrea below the window. I'm going to have a shorter book shelf below the window, need a reading lamp, may put another shelf on the other side of the filing cabinet near the tree. The reading chair is from Jeff's office and is here temporarily while he gets his workspace set up. I'm on the lookout for a nice cushy comfy armchair:



Interesting to compare the above photo to the original room before we moved in:

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chocolate-covered ginger

(Above photo: My friend Cathy, who has known me longer than anyone except for family. She just moved out to Calgary this past weekend; I'm going to miss her. :-( )

Thanks to Mark Thompson for his mouthwatering housewarming gift of chocolate-covered ginger. A house really isn't home until you've eaten chocolate in it.



We have high-speed access, woohoo! Embarrassing how much of a relief that is, really, like being allowed to finally use a ballpoint pen normally after being forced to write with a broken crayon held between my toes. How spoiled is that? I remember how THRILLED I was with my first 300-baud Hayes Smartmodem. Makes me wonder what my nieces and nephews are going to be using; one of my nieces already jokes about the "caveman days" when Jeff and I were kids. :-D

But I digress.

I mentioned before that I received some new postcards for my Flickr set. You can see the entire collection here or you can also see individual cards from Riley, Casey, Alan, and Helen. Thanks so much! If you have a postcard you'd like to volunteer for my collection, I'd be stupidly happy to receive it; please send it to me at:

Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
34 Eglinton Ave. W.,
P.O. Box 189,
Toronto, ON
Canada M4R 2H6

A few more office pics...

As you've already seen, I painted the outside of my office door with some weird-looking alien grass thingies:



It's not finished, obviously. I'm still deciding what else to add to it. Perhaps a moon floating near the top right. Perhaps the Tree of Gondor. Or perhaps a weird-looking alien creature peering up from behind the grass.

Here's the inside of my office door:



As you might have already guessed, my office is not going to match the rest of the house AT ALL. I want lots of bright colours and different textures and plan to gradually paint more of my walls with interesting plants and creatures. I tend to lean towards the goofy and colourful rather than elegant and pastel, if you haven't already guessed. :-)

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