Category: Miscellaneous
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Post-asbestos progress
First the roof came off. Then it poured rain all weekend. Of course. There were tarps up, but they leaked. It could have been worse. We lost a light fixture. Some old drywall got wet in a few places and will eventually need to be replaced. The bathroom mats were sopping. The house survived. It […]
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HazMat Adventures
Our Nelson place is the eyesore on the block. We bought it because of that. It was affordable and well situated, and that created the possibility of bringing it up to neighbourhood standards and eventually reselling it for a price more in keeping with the rest of the strong housing market. The house has four bedrooms that […]
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My friend in Nairobi
Almost a year ago I attended a meeting of local New Denverites who were interested in the idea of sponsoring a refugee family. Out of that meeting, the Slocan Valley Refugee Coalition formed. We opened a bank account and started fund-raising and submitted our “we’re ready!” paperwork in January, requesting to be matched with a family. […]
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Web Development
I’ve been working on a couple of Udemy courses for the past month or so. I signed up for one in April but I didn’t really dig in for a while. Once I did I decided I needed more so I’m working through both in parallel. The Bootcamp course is the better of the two. It […]
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Oscar
Our old espresso machine, acquired on grocery store affinity points, served us well. For the past few months it’s often refused to operate unless nudged or tilted on its side during the warm-up phase. Then it gave up working entirely. Definitive diagnostic disassembly and attempted repair last week proved unfruitful: one of the connections had […]
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Ghost town docent
This is a plum area for a teen to find summer employment. With such a small population, and a large summer influx of vacationers, there are plenty of jobs for students. For many teens all it takes is a bit of word-of-mouth expression of interest, and some employer will call them up and offer work. […]
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The Delica
Remember way back in 2008 when I was driving Erin and Noah to Calgary once a month for lessons, and was pining for a Mitsubishi Delica? It would hold our family and instruments and groceries, and would transport the Corazon choir kids, and would get up and down our driveway, and be reliable on our mountain […]
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Graduated!
Fiona graduated from contact lens training lessons today. Okay, she only had the one lesson so this isn’t a case of hard-won mastery or anything, but she did brilliantly well and doesn’t need any more training sessions, just a check on her eyes in the New Year to make sure they’re coping well with the […]
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Size doesn’t matter
Sometimes it makes me snicker, the incongruity of size vs. competence. Fiona is small for her age, but with her bright optimism and her older siblings as models, she has a strong independent streak. She insists on being very grown up. On Fridays I laugh about giving a ride home to the proprietor of the […]
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New tea, new candy
When you have a lot of rhubarb in the garden, and strawberries are coming into season, and red clover is overflowing the waysides, and you’re an 8-year-old looking for inspiration for a new tea blend, the colours of your inspiration are pink and green. I truly love this tea. We found some bulk organic white […]
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Survey says…
Google Stats tells me some odd things about what people are looking for when they land on my blog. Most popular keyword searches: nurtured by love hairy oven beakman motor nutured by love (note the surprisingly common and rather, uh, interesting mis-spelling) pseudomaturity dorodango companion cube tissue cozy corazon choir nelson huaraches stealth rubber audience […]
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Touch-typing game
Erin and I used to play this touch-typing game in chat windows. One person touch-types a message but with their hands shifted outwards one key on the keyboard. Instead of having your index fingers over F and J, they’ll be over D and K. Touch-typing will produce a certain amount of total nonsense on the […]
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Nostalgia
While helping purge mess and clutter from the attic and coming across a sheet of once-used tropical fish gift wrap that she recalls from a birthday gone by, Fiona quips: “I’m feeling pretty nostalgic for being only 7 years old.”
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Putting Christmas “away”
Yesterday we took down the tree and the decorations. Sort of. Inspired by Erin’s approach to décor in her cabin we hoisted the strands of Christmas lights to the ceiling of the living room. We don’t have enough light in this room anyway. And it’s easier than putting the lights away. Who knows how long […]
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Slightly demented Christmas decorations
Christmas is a time of traditions, of course, and teenagers and pre-teens hold onto those traditions at least as tightly as the rest of us. I suppose it’s partly nostalgia on their part, but also the alluring excuse to be completely childish. Still, some things change. Case in point #1: the Playmobil advent calendar, used […]
