He approves and executes the DIY Mohawk step, mid-hair-cutting:



Plays well with children:



Will not pose seriously for me:



Very serious about public transit:

Labels: christopher, photography

The one thing we didn't think to test when buying our condo was the shower. It worked... almost. The knob that switches the water from the tub to the shower (a diverter!) didn't actually switch it. It just made them both run at the same time. Sometimes it would give the tub all the hot water and the shower all the cold water, thus freezing you while burning your feet. Often, it would change its mind mid-shower and we ended up frozen or scalded at random times. The temperature was finicky, it was wasting a TON of water, and it filled our morning grogginess with frustration.

For the last six months, we have suffered and done endless Googling about diverters and mentioned the problem to friends and the building management a few times, and everyone always told us that this is just an old shower, it is broken, and the whole shower will need to be replaced. And we would sigh and say, "Gosh, that's going to cost at least $1500, isn't it?" and they would laugh and laugh and tell us that we were really underestimating the price of plumbers. Chris tried to fix it a few times, spending a whole afternoon removing the faulty (and rusted into place) diverter, while I hid in another room to avoid fretting to him about breaking it and igniting the wrath of our condo association. The thing is, times have changed since our shower was installed and diverters have changed as well. Thus, we bought two or three different kinds of diverters and none of them fit. He had to re-install the bad one just so the shower would (sort of) work. Eventually we gave up on fixing it and resigned ourselves to irritating showers and saving money until we could afford to speak to a plumber.

But then: Chris was in hunt of a new faucet and sink this past weekend (more joys of home ownership!), and he saw a diverter that looked somehow familiar... strangely enticing... perhaps even the holy grail of diverters! And he bought it in secret and dared not to tell me about it, lest we fail again in our attempts to fix the shower, and lo, there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I went away for a few hours to sit on a picnic blanket and talk about boys with Agnes, and Christopher secretly installed the new diverter and then called me with joyous news, news of a working shower! A shower that runs independently of the tub! A shower that is about 75% quieter! A shower that does not try to burn you at random times!! And lo, the boy had earned his keep, and we took him out for beer, and he kept grinning because he was so frikkin' proud of himself.

And that, my friends, is how to fix a $2000 problem with an $18 diverter. Does that boy know how to woo my Dutch heart or what?

Labels: christopher, condo

SONG 1:
Ben Folds Five - Your Redneck Past
roots! / the funny limbs that grow underground / that keep you from falling down / don't you think that you'll need them now?

just find a place where no one knows of your redneck past / yeah, you can easily dispose of your redneck past / you'll show them all back home

I can't think of the others just yet. Song submissions are welcome in the comments.

I'm growing less and less enchanted with Facebook. Remember that girl you were sort of friends with in Grade 5? Do you need to know what she's doing after work tonight? Because I certainly don't. I've grown to agree with Julian's primary reason for avoiding Facebook:

"Personally, I've stayed away from Facebook, not only because I perceive it to be the Web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 by now?) version of MySpace, but because people's expressions of excitement at having found long-lost acquaintances are exactly what turn me off. I'm not interested in reconnecting with people that I've lost touch with for years; there's probably a legitimate reason for the loss of contact, and I'm happy letting sleeping dogs lie." (Julian's blog post here)

Of course, I don't really care about the data-mining aspect of it that he goes on to rant about, because I tend to agree with the "everything's in a database anyways" line of thought along with Matt Haughey (fortuito.us: Living online, with webb apps), but that's neither here nor there.

People I see on Facebook tend to fall into three categories:

1. People I currently know
   
2. People I used to know, as an awkward and often-teased elementary school kid
   
3. People I used to know, as a Christian nut

The first category, I talk to fairly frequently anyways. I've deleted a third of my 'friends' in the last week, but the ones I've kept tend to fall into this group. Mostly because I like to write ridiculous things on Sanda's wall.

The second category... are just weird. I don't know these people anymore. Half of them have gotten married and I stopped caring about them in the summer past Grade 8, so I haven't got a flipping clue who they married, and then they add me and I think "Who the F are you??" Because seriously... this lack of maiden names thing? It makes it hard to identify people. I don't need to know the daily trivia of your life if I didn't even have my period yet the last time we talked. And I don't really feel like sharing mine (note the irony of saying that on my oh-so-public blog). Then there are the people who sent me home crying many many days in elementary school and it's a damn good thing they haven't added me, because that would really stretch the definition of 'friend', not that Facebook hasn't mangled the word already. (The Facebook definition seems to include people you've met at least once, and Belinda Stronach. Who, it should be noted, will poke you back if you poke her. There is a whole Facebook group for people who have been poked by Belinda Stronach.)

The third category are almost impossible to avoid offending. How am I these days? Well, in your worldview, I'm going to hell and I'm living in sin with my (also hell-bound) boyfriend. Of course, if we would just have a party already to announce to the world that we're having sex, then it wouldn't be sin anymore, but I can't really wrap my mind around that one these days. (Can't I just tell you all one at a time??) But seriously, those additions to my friends list always brings up the same questions: Do they know I'm not Christian anymore? How would they react? Will they hate me? Will they be (irritatingly) sorry for me, despite my insistence that I like my life? Will they be cool with it? I'm not signing up for another re-conversion attempt here, am I?

And that's not fun. So I'm quietly culling the list, deleting information from my profile, and using it less and less.

Labels: data-mining, facebook, past

This Past Week:

- Attended the PostSecret event, even though I could hear it from my balcony. I wanted to see the pretty pictures and sit on the grass. Christopher pulled up a bunch of grass for me (a present!) and then was thoroughly offended when I didn't keep it.

- Daniel, our 1.5 year old neighbour, has fallen in love with me. We went to the drumming festival in Queen's Park yesterday with his parents, and he held my hand, and gave me lots of sticks and pinecones, and insisted that I hold him and push his stroller. Then we went for glida, because little Hebrew boys love their ice cream. His mother is very impressed that I know that tov means 'good', and now I also know glida (ice cream) and mayim (water). It comes in handy when translating toddler-speak. :)

- These diagrams helped me to understand why I make the aperture smaller to increase the depth of field. Visualizing the circles of confusion will help me remember! Oh physics, I still heart you. Now to figure out why you use a higher f-stop to make the aperture smaller (which makes the depth of field bigger).

- If I worked in 401 Richmond, I would sit in the garden every day (photo taken during Doors Open last weekend):

Labels: daniel, hebrew, postsecret