Door Closure Test
Published January 7, 2009 | 
They knocked on my door. I answered.
They stopped the door before I opened it 6 inches, let it close, and said “Thanks, we’re done.”
That was it.
How do I get a job as a door closure testing specialist?
Because My Apartment Is Amazing
Published January 7, 2009 | Went downstairs to toss a late load of laundry into the dryer and saw a notice posted in the laundry room — there are “door closure tests” tomorrow between 10am and 4pm, so people will need access to my apartment. What the fuck is a door closure test? Clearly my doors close, or else I’d have complained. It’s nice that they’re concerned with my door, but they still don’t care about the things I’ve been complaining about since we moved in — like a shelf for our closet, or a towel bar for our washroom, or the loose/detached track on the medicine cabinet, or that spot in the floor where the Jenga-esque wood block lifts up sometimes when you walk across it, the non-functional clock on the oven, the cabinet doors that still stick…
… so now I’m really, really curious as to what on earth a “door closure test” is and why it needs to be done with less than 12 hours worth of notice (especially considering that, if I hadn’t decided to do a load of laundry at 10pm, I wouldn’t have known about it at all). Thank goodness I straightened up around here a bit today, since they’re going to be knocking on my door at about the same time I’ll be crawling out of bed.
My Master Plan
Published January 2, 2009 | I am hoping, before the baby gets here, to set up this blog on its own domain — then I’ll be able to set up photo albums and videos, along with having way more control over the layout and whatnot. Buying the domain name is cheap, like $3 thru GoDaddy or whatnot, but webspace runs about $50 a year. No big deal, as I have plans to make that money back, but a friend is offering me some of his webspace to get started with. I don’t know if I want to take advantage of that, so I can start working with the design and whatnot and get used to handling all the background stuff that I want to work with, or if I just want to take the plunge and do it on my own, without having him to fall back on. I’m feeling very entrepreneurial and daring lately, and have a few ideas twisting around in my noggin…
So, to anyone else that has set up their own domain — did you just jump into it head-first? Did you learn HTML & other coding as you went along, or did you go into it with a newbie guide at your side? Do you have a friend you call on for technical support, or do you do your best to figure things out first and then call on someone when it’s just too much to do alone?
Inquiring minds want to know!
The Keg
Published January 2, 2009 | So, I’m not a red meat eater, but for Christmas, my brother-in-law got Chris & I a gift card for The Keg Steakhouse & Bar. I’ve eaten there before and quite enjoyed it, and since my birthday is on Monday, I called the restaurant yesterday to make a reservation for Saturday night (Monday we’re going to a home birth class… what a great present).
They don’t accept reservations for Friday and Saturday night. What? I mean, seriously? Those are the nights that restaurants make a ton of cash, so why can’t they accept a reservation? Maybe they lose money by holding tables for people that are late or never show up? I didn’t really ask questions because honestly, we’re going in at around 6pm and I expect most people meet for dinner later than that.
So last night, I have this dream. Chris and I go to the Keg, where we’re seated in a waiting room with four other people, all holding gift cards as well. A waitress comes in and says we will all be seated downstairs, and to please follow her. We follow her down two flights of stairs into a bright white cafeteria packed with boxes and those shitty little folding tables that are in elementary school cafs, lit with florescent lights. I say, “I’m not eating under these florescent lights,” and she replies, “You’re right!”
We keep walking through the cafeteria and when we leave, we’re in a greenhouse, but there are no plants — just dirt. The girl pulls something out of her pocket and a console shoots up out of the ground while gardening hoses spray water all around us. She pushes a button on the console and another passageway appears, which she escorts us down. We walk up one more flight of stairs and she opens the doors with a smile: “You can use your Keg gift cards here.”
We’re in a country line dancing club. It’s full of old people dancing around and for some reason, there’s a bowling ball alley here too. These people are really bad at bowling, so the balls are just randomly sliding across the floor and it’s like playing Frogger or something. I turn to tell the woman, “I’m not eating here,” but she has already slipped back through the doors behind us and locked them.
Well, we are pissed, and when we look outside we realize we’re at least five kilometres away from The Keg, and for some god-forsaken reason our puppies are in the car in the parking lot there. So we wait at the doors for the waitress to escort the next group of gift card wielders into the line dancing club, and demand to be returned to the restaurant. She agrees to bring us there. Then when we reach the greenhouse again, the garden hoses shoot up out of the ground and spray us in our faces.
Then I woke up, furious.
I think I have some sort of deep-rooted psychological issue with the fact that they rejected our reservation.
New Year’s Resolution
Published January 1, 2009 | Same as last year:
Procrastinate less.
I figure I’ll end up taking it seriously sometime around, oh… August. Maybe.
Nesting
Published December 22, 2008 | I keep waiting for the “nesting” urge to take over. So far, my sink continues to fill with dishes — honest to God, does it ever end? Is the sink ever going to be empty again? Laundry is still strewn across the bedroom floor. The tables are still fluttered with stuff — you know, newspapers, coupons from the Welcome Wagon, more dishes, a box of cookies, unopened junk mail. The bed doesn’t get made every day, so Chris bemoans the twisted state of the blankets whenever he gets into bed (okay, I really do leave them a total mess, because I find few things more comforting than hugging them like a big, fluffy body pillow). I haven’t replaced the Vanity Fair on top of the toilet in two months, because the most recent one is somewhere on one of the tables. We’ve got two boxes that need unpacking and nowhere to unpack them. Shoes are starting to tiptoe out of the coat closet, because goddammit, my winter boots kept finding their way into the far back corner and I just can’t bend that far.
But the nursery?
The nursery is spotless. I dust and sweep in there regularly. All the newborn-sized clothes is folded and tucked into the top drawer of her dresser, while the other things are hung up by size. I haven’t done the picture art project yet (whoops!) or managed to get the sticky price tag residue off the glass piece I bought (nail polish remover?), nor have I printed out all the family pics Chris has been begging me to do for two months now for the frames that we bought to decorate our living room.
Maybe I’m just fucking lazy, and using this “I don’t have the nesting instinct” thing as a cop-out. I think this is the most realistic explanation.
Speaking of Facebook…
Published November 30, 2008 | Does anyone else get a disturbing number of Lebanese or otherwise Middle Eastern men randomly asking to be their friend? Here’s the gem I woke up to today (click for a larger image if it’s too hard to read):
I haven’t ignored him or replied yet… I thought maybe someone here would have a super witty reply that I’d regret missing out on!
My Latest Food Obsession
Published November 29, 2008 | Thanks to a random comment on MSN from my mom, I’ve been eating peanut butter & apple sandwiches every day for the last three. Like, I even want to go grocery shopping just to pick up more apples to squeeze into a sammich.
Chris thinks this is repulsive — the combination of apple and peanut butter is apparently completely foreign to his Canadian upbringing, and he simply cannot accept this as a valid food item. Peanut butter belongs with jam, and apples are an entirely different entity. I discovered this years ago when I sliced up some apples for us to snack on and served them with a side of peanut butter. I consider his distaste to be just short of heathenism, to be honest.
So of course, I like to make my sandwich, sit beside him on the couch, and chow down, making sure to mention how wonderful and tasty the combination is. I’m looking forward to making them for Maia for lunches (I will also introduce her to such tasty things as: kielbasa, sour cream, and pomegranates, none of which her father likes) and then we can taunt him for only ever eating jam with his peanut butter.
Oh yes, I have many devious plans … !
Thanksgiving Nom Noms
Published November 27, 2008 | Man, I wish I were in the US today.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving dinners!
(Are Snoopy & the Woodstocks having beer and popcorn for dinner… ???)
Crackin’ the Whip
Published November 26, 2008 | Everyone has been saying that I should get my husband, Chris, to help me out more around the house. Even Chris himself has said I should be more assertive. So, around 8pm, I walked over to him and said, “There are two things that should be done right now: the laundry needs to be folded, and the dogs need to go out. Which one are you going to do?”
He looked at me like I literally was a different person than I had been before saying that…. then he took the dogs out while I folded the laundry.
I think I approached that the right way 
Go figure, I took it from parenting advice: don’t ask an open-ended question, ask one that’s easy to answer. “What do you want for a snack?” is going to be more painful than “Would you like an apple or an orange for a snack?”
Small victories…