Awwwww!!! The little baby kitten is CRYING!! Baby, you have to save him!!

Sometimes I have to resort to extreme reminding tactics. I'll report back on effectiveness. :)

Labels: christopher, dune, neglectful cat owners

Yesterday, 4pm:

Christopher: Is there some kind of big football game today or something?
Me: Dude, it's Superbowl Sunday.
Christopher: Are you sure? I thought that was near the end of February or something.
Me: No, I'm pretty sure it's today. All my recipe blogs have been preparing snacks for it.

Why I Love Him, #8754: Doesn't abandon me for football.

Labels: christopher, relationship

We got a bit of snow here this weekend, so yesterday I dragged Christopher out into the park to teach me to use his camera.





His camera is one of those super fancy ones that shoots in raw format. I don't really know exactly what that means, except that I can adjust a lot of things later that are impossible to adjust with my camera. With mine, if the photo is washed out, it's done. With his, I can fix a lot of it. So that's pretty useful.

I've also been going on dates with Christopher lately. We went to see How She Move last Wednesday and it was like Save The Last Dance except without the cheesy suckiness. Plus it's set at Jane and Finch and there are some Toronto-centric jokes. ("Man, drop the accent. Everyone knows you from Scarborough!") The writer went to York and previously did a documentary on step dancing, so the dancing in the movie is great and it's filmed fairly straight, without the million jump cuts they usually throw in to make it more exciting. Trailer:



And I'm still working out. Week 4 coming up, and I haven't missed a day yet.

Labels: christopher, photography

So, I've been thinking about blogging.

I used to blog everything and anything. I've stopped that this year, and I have mixed feelings about it. I miss the dialogue and the writing. But it is best to separate work from blogging. I get really interested in my job, so it's hard to blog without mentioning it.

I'd like to find a safe way to dive back into this type of writing.

On a more personal note:

As of yesterday, Chris and I have owned our condo for a year. According to the federal government, that makes us common-law spouses. Officially living in sin! How exciting!

Labels: blogging, christopher, relationship

Holy crap, it is August already?! This year is flying by.

Christopher left for a 3-week business trip today. He'll be in Malta for a week and then Ireland for 2 weeks, so he won't be back until the end of the month. Unless, ,you know, they change the dates again. We found out about this trip last week. It started as 4 days, then a week, then two, now three... and now we find out that some of the equipment they shipped there is damaged, so who knows what he'll actually find when he gets there. Hmph. Stupid work, stealing my boyfriend. People at my work seem to think that this will free me up to do "what I want to do," but secretly I spend most of my non-work hours hanging out with Christopher and thoroughly enjoying it, so that theory is shot. (Does that make me codependent, or just in a good relationship? Maybe it just makes me an introvert, happy enough with one boy and two cats.)

I've been thinking academic thoughts lately. Thinking about how as humans evolved, the way we see the world must have become adaptive, and this makes me wonder how much of our social system is based on "truth", and how much is based on this niche that we've evolved to fit into. I've also been thinking about how we do so much of our thinking in narrative form, and how if those narratives are threatened, we get very defensive and illogical. It doesn't matter whether you question someone's religion or their vegetarianism or their politics or their stance on abortion... it's very hard to have a level-headed discussion about this. It's very easy to get emotions running high and to take these disagreements personally, and that's very interesting to me. It seems like our capacity to discuss these issues calmly and without offense is, well, kind of broken. But if it's similarly broken across the species... maybe it's an adaptive trait with some negative consequences.

Of course, I haven't a clue who else is writing or researching about this, so I'm not sure who to read. Seems like sociology or psychology at first glance, but you would think that a good theory of brain would cover this.

Labels: christopher, evolution, narrative

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

Yesterday marked a year since Christopher and I got back together. We celebrated at Pi-Tom's, a Thai restaurant at Yonge and Alexander. (Meredith: You were totally right about the smoothies. Amazing!)

This past year, we gathered up the courage to start talking again, and got pretty damn good at it. We battled depression and won, hands down. With a killer combination of obsessive searching, a great real estate agent, and pure dumb luck, we scored a 2-bedroom condo in our ideal location at a price below market value, and we're still recovering from the shock of that! This place became home very quickly. We've pissed each other off a few times, and we've learned to recover nicely. We've kept each other laughing, and our teasing war is constantly escalating.

I've graduated and gone through a few jobs, moved in with a boy, and totally fallen in love all over again. A good, good year.

And today we get to buy a fridge! Because home ownership means there's no one to call when you realise that the fridge just isn't cold anymore. The freezer's working though, which has me thoroughly confused. And how do you dispose of an old fridge in the city? Today we will learn!

Labels: christopher, condo, relationship

Oh God, It's Happening Again
C: "Why is it morning again?? Please, baby, make it stop!"
HA: "Okay!"
C: "... it's still morning."
HA: "Well, it takes a while."

The boy claims it's cheating when I admit that it takes 6+ hours to make it stop being morning-time. Such a whiner.

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Things I Assured My Sister I Was Really Getting Our Mother for Mother's Day (But I Was Lying)
1. A polar bear, because the house seems so big these days.
2. Dreadlocks, a perfect fit for thin short blond Dutch hair.

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Great Danes = true love
C: Hey girls, what were you up to tonight?
HA: Me and Agnes talked about getting a Great Dane!
A: It's true!
C: Yeah... Heather Ann and I haven't quite reached that point in our relationship. I haven't even asked her yet if she wants a Great Dane.
A: I know, she was telling me. That's not cool, Christopher.
HA: You don't love me at all.

Labels: agnes, amanda, christopher, conversations

Labels: ada, christopher, photography