Home Renos

Home renovation is very much on my mind, as I have just completed the deck make-over.  I'll write more about this in an upcoming post, but it is fair to say I am extremely sore and am wondering if maybe I should have enlisted more help.

While our house was basically move-in ready when we took it five years ago, there were a few changes we made right away and then a few other things that have needed to be done with time.  This list won't be 100% chronological, but it's mostly to help remember the main things that got done.

After buying the house, the real estate agent's husband helped upgrade a few electric boxes and put in a proper two-way light switch at the top and bottom of the stairway to the basement.  I also disassembled a huge desk unit thing and moved it from the back of the house to the front.  I painted two rooms right away (my daughter's and the back office) and then a few months went by and I painted the small bathroom on the main floor.  While the rest of the family was away, I upgraded the rotating fan/light fixture in the dining room.  Or rather I would have managed it, but I simply could not find the ground wire, so I ultimately brought in a handyman and electrician.  It wasn't a complete waste, as they also fixed up the closet light, which wasn't wired properly.  At the same time, I had them try to seal off the area under the porch from raccoons (which seemed to have worked for maybe a year or two, but now I need to up my game!) and install a handrail for the stairs down into the basement and reinforce the stairs as some of the risers were loose(!).  (The house is pretty close to 100 years old and is not up to code in lots of ways.)  A bit of the painting saga is discussed here.

I believe it was towards the end of year 1 when the washing machine went out and had to be replaced.  The unit was still fairly new and certainly should have held up a few more years.  I actually had to dismantle the door to get it into the basement!

It was fairly early on when I replaced the light fixture in the back office with one of those LED lights.  Never again!  It flickers all the time, and while this may be a function of crappy wiring back here, I am going to have to replace the entire unit, so I'll go back to a more traditional unit with light bulbs.  I may well do that this late fall or over the winter.

It looks like I stained the deck in two phases over the summer of 2016.  The top part was probably more critical, and I did enlist the kids to help to some extent...  Then the family went off to Chicago in the later part of the summer, and I finally got around to staining the bottom deck, though I probably should not have tried to match the stain from the upper part.  At any rate, that summer, while family was away I brought the handymen back to try to put a handrail in going up to the 2nd floor.  I was basically expecting to have to knock down the wall and rebuild it, but it turns out it was actually possible to put the railing right along the top.  So that was a lot less work in the end, and it turned out pretty well.  (Some of the details are here.)

I can't remember any major, major expenditures in 2017, though there must have been something.  There always is.  (Actually I read a post that confirmed I didn't have to do much in 2017 other than work on the gates and install a porch light.)  We did have the furnace go out in Dec. 2017, and it took a while for it to be fixed.

The summer of 2018, I started rebuilding the upper deck, a few boards at a time.  This was a pretty major effort, discussed in some detail here.  I think the A/C pretty much died at the end of the year, but we run it so rarely that we didn't think that much about it.  I did a makeover of the front yard, getting rid of the grass and starting to plant various spreading plants.  I wouldn't say it's quite where I would like it (still too much to weed!), but maybe another bag or two of mulch would help.

Then 2019 came along and was the real killer in terms of expenses.  We had tried to get the A/C unit fixed, but it was basically an antique, and it was impossible to get anyone to service it.  We decided that we would take advantage of a sale and got a new furnace/AC unit at the same time.  Then we finally got around to having the roof redone, having put that off a few years.  The roofer said it wouldn't be safe to add yet another layer of shingles (there were something like 4 layers piled on top of each other), so they tore them all off.  We had slowly been strategizing how to prepare the basement to turn it into a bedroom for my daughter (as her room was really quite small), and one key step (though perhaps not an obvious one) was to add a bathroom down there.  It's actually quite a nice bathroom, but it cost me a huge amount of storage space, and I am still sorting through the ramifications of that.  As if that weren't enough, the dishwasher gave out towards the end of the year, and we had to get a new one installed.  One thing I was able to do on my own was to replace the ceiling fan in the kitchen (it had a fluorescent ring light that kept getting unplugged and was ultimately a big hassle).

It took me quite a long time in 2020 (even with mostly working from home from March on) to get rid of the rest of the junk in the basement to allow my daughter to move in.  Three bookcases moved upstairs!  On the positive side, I am much more likely to remember to attempt reading these books in some kind of sequence, but my spaces up here do feel cluttered now.  And before she took possession, she asked for the walls to be painted white.  She also wanted the carpet torn up and replaced with laminate or something comparable, but we drew the line at that.

We had severe rains this summer (in between gruelling hot weeks), and at some point, rain started coming in through one of the windows in the basement.  It's actually somewhat fortunate that the vast majority of my stuff had been relocated (aside from some notebooks that I am trying to scan before they get totally moldy) and my daughter hadn't moved anything in.  There was then a week wasted while we tried to decide if it was from the A/C piping or the furnace, but then someone from the insurance company came by and said it was definitely from the window.  Now TD Insurance has decided not to honor the claim, and then the restoration firm vanished on me, even though we would have paid.  It has been extremely, extremely difficult to get workmen to come in, though we eventually got someone in to repair the dishwasher (not promising in that it was only about six months old) and finally we got someone else in to help clean up the damage in the basement and take care of a few other things, like adding even more bolts to the stairs to the basement.  He also helped fix a toilet that had been running for quite a long time (leading to a huge water bill) and recaulked the window well (and said that there was no real need to put in glass block instead of a standard window).  He noticed that there was water damage in the mud room (and we just had a roofer come back to fix that and stop the leaking), and he recommended that one of the drain pipes be redirected, which we'll try to have done next week.

I believe I mentioned that I managed to fix a lock (to the mud room) that no longer locked properly.  Today I added another board underneath the Little Free Library, so that won't collapse.  And of course I switched out 16 boards on the deck (probably just about half of the upper deck has been replaced between the 2018 reno job and now), which was a massive effort, as I alluded to at the top of the post.  Hopefully the last major task for the year will be painting the kitchen, which I'll be starting fairly soon.  And now I've exhausted myself, just reminding myself how much has gone into the house over the past five years...

Chilly

There is a huge amount on my mind as always, and it is a shame I can't just dictate some thoughts and have a program translate them into a blog post.  I do have a good excuse, which is work is keeping me quite busy (and I end up working late most nights) and I am also in the midst of home repairs (well, back deck repairs really).

It has been delayed and delayed, and there is still much confusion, but the kids are back to school in this really weird two-days on/two-days off pattern.  However, this is mornings only, and then in the afternoons (starting this week), they are supposed to do some on-line learning.  It's far from ideal (and will likely be disrupted several times by COVID outbreaks), but it gives them a bit more structure.  Frankly, almost anything that gets them out of the house is ok in my eyes right now.  

It's been very depressing watching the new case count increase in Ontario (we're up to about four times at high as we were in early July, though that is still half or even 25% of many US states of comparable size).  Now some of this is due to increased testing (as parents are trying desperately to prepare their kids for school), but some of it is just too much socializing.  Some of our gains have been rolled back, though for the moment gyms and movie theatres can remain open.  I would definitely welcome tighter controls and shorter hours for the bars, and we'll see if that gets announced soon.*

This has definitely put a crimp in the reopening plans of most theatres and concert halls.  RCM is having to cut its audience down in half again, and it still isn't clear if they will honor my tickets for next month or not (to say nothing of Kronos Quartet in January, though at this point I doubt they'll even get across the border).  Another concert that looked pretty interesting was cancelled, and in the end, I think this season will also go down the drain.  Several theatre companies that were looking into doing something have pretty much given up or gone virtual.  No question I am losing interest in on-line performances to the point I have pretty much tuned it all out.  Actually I did make it to the AGO for the first time since the pandemic, and that was ok if a little weird at times, seeing that some huge room was restricted to no more than 5 art lovers at a time.**

Sometimes I feel a bit like an urban pioneer, trying to find what is open and not in the downtown financial district.  Some of the time it is an interesting rush, but most of the time it is just depressing.  When I slow down to think about it, I am deeply depressed about life in general and simply enraged about the state of politics down south.  (Though I'll save most of my ire for another post.)  While there are definitely going to be delays, I'm going to start pushing through my Canadian citizenship paperwork this fall.  

That's probably enough catching up for now, and I have got to get back to work.  Ciao.

* We did just hear that closing time in bars and night clubs has been shortened to 11 pm.  I'm sure it won't make a huge difference, but it is a step in the right direction.

** This week Ontario is closing in on 500 cases, and not surprisingly people are travelling less, though we don't have mandatory stay-at-home restrictions (yet).  The push to get people to come back to work has been suspended, and I imagine transit ridership will drop again.  However, it could be worse.  Quebec has just shy of 900 cases!  Nearly all of them are in Montreal or Quebec City.  I had decided a while back that flying and the train were just too risky to get to Montreal.  Apparently, I should have rented a car in late July or early August, but that window has closed (now that Montreal is back at Orange level of danger, and I clearly am not going to make it out there in time.  I really did want to get to see this exhibit on post-Impressionism, though it turns out that the library has a copy of the catalogue, so I put that on hold, though it is a poor substitute.

A Chill in the Air (Take 2)

I'm still incredibly annoyed that the save and even the update functions no longer work as before.  I am doing a bit more testing to see if I can get the base functionality back in Blogger, including tagging.  If not, it was a pretty good run, but it's true that hardly anyone reads blogs any more and they certainly don't drop by to comment, which sort of defeats the purpose, unless this is truly just going to be an on-line diary.

I'm definitely glad I didn't watch the Raptors get dismantled in Game 5.  Unfortunately, they are basically being outplayed by Boston, and it doesn't seem likely they'll get out of this round.  It's actually quite rare for me to watch an entire game of basketball (and perhaps I never have), though last year I caught chunks while at the gym.

Despite it being a holiday, I did some work.  I managed to fix one of the doors that just wouldn't lock (or rather it had to be slammed and occasionally kicked to lock, particularly when it was really humid).  I think the house is shifting just enough to cause these issues (and some in the basement), though this was relatively easy to fix.  While it has taken much, much longer than usual (and we had to resort to putting out a call on Facebook), it looks like I finally have a handyman who will stop by this week -- and do inside work, which has been quite a problem for a while now.

I did go off to the gym, which means I will likely make it 3 times over 7 days, which was basically my pre-pandemic routine, though I probably won't keep that up.  Twice a week is a little more likely for the time being, and I am not swimming at the moment either.  Going to the gym is probably the riskiest thing I've done to date.  I did go to the movies twice with my son (to see Inception and then Nolan's Tenet), though only four people were in the theatre for Inception and only 6 for Tenet!  So that didn't feel remotely risky.  I assume it is somewhat busier downtown.  I do know there are some incredible scolds who feel nothing, and particularly not movie theatres, should reopen until the pandemic is over, though I personally feel a more balanced approach is in order.  Large chunks of the economy are still in tatters (and it is quite likely that most of the entertainment industry is going to go under by this winter), so I'm certainly willing to do my small part to keep some things going.  That said, I probably would go ahead and shut down all the bars once patio season is over, as drunk and even tipsy people have been shown time and time again to have poor judgment and cannot maintain social distancing and quite a few outbreaks have been linked to bars.

I even cooked a potato-carrot casserole, but I won't know until tomorrow how well it turned out.  I didn't get a lot of work work done nor did I get through enough of the clutter that I still need to deal with, but I definitely wasn't completely idle.  I think that's enough retyping for the time being.  If I still am in the mood tomorrow I'll cover a few more of the topics that were erased.

A Chill in the Air (the prequel)

I'm so pissed.  I have been having so much trouble finding an ad blocker that actually works (and isn't actually compromised and spying on me as most of them do) that I went with this extreme one that doesn't play well with Blogger.  I saved my post before publishing, but it blocked the save and then literally wiped out the entire page.  So now I have close to half an hour of blogging completely wiped out and unrecoverable.  I honestly don't think I will bother to retype it.  

I will either have to give up blogging (which I'm somewhat inclined to do as it just feels increasingly pointless) or start searching again for a better ad blocker that isn't allergic to Blogger.

Another Mixed-Up Weekend

In brief, the weekend started off pretty badly, but then got better, but then ended with a major disappointment.  Friday I simply couldn't find my main USB key.  I basically emptied my pannier at work and then again at home and simply couldn't find it.  Since it didn't rain after all on Saturday, I went back in to work and fortunately found the USB key hiding under some take-out napkins.  I hung out a bit longer and then went home.  I'm generally pretty good about backing up material, which is why the USB gets such a workout.  However. it is harder now that the DVD-burner on main computer has basically given up the ghost.  I think it's a sign that it is just time to replace this thing, which is probably from 2014.  Actually I have an older computer that I fire up from time to time for very special applications.  I'll try to get around to wrapping up my post on that shortly.

Finding the USB key was a big relief obviously.  While the weather wasn't great, I did go outside and finally finished this Chinese urbanization book I need to review.  I've gotten through most of the main tasks hanging over my head (a huge report at work) and getting the basement ready for my daughter to move in, though I have this review and a paper review due in about a week.

What I was really looking forward to was an outdoor concert on Sunday.  (I waited too long on the outdoor play listed in Now last week, as all the performances were completely sold out.)  This was going to be an outdoor concert for a maximum of 14 people and Skye Wallace was the featured artist.  On the one hand, it's quite a comedown from performing a sold-out show at Lee's Palace (ok, she was really the opening act) but it is basically impossible to play anywhere nowadays.

I went off to the gym before lunch (I'm basically still maintaining a twice a week routine with 4 or so days of biking to work, which works out to another hour per day of cardio*).  Then I painted the wardrobe downstairs.  While I don't think it will turn out all that well, my daughter wants it white, so we'll see.

I was about 15 minutes away from biking off to the concert when I checked my email to verify the address details.  It was very fortunate that I did, since Skye had to cancel due to a family emergency.  I can only hope that it isn't too too serious.  There was a replacement musician lined up, but I just didn't feel up to making the trip.  It would have been an incredible let-down.  It's really quite shocking how few people were planning on going (even before this switch) and maybe people just aren't ready to socialize or it just was a really unfortunate date.  I said to keep us posted if Skye is rescheduled, so we'll see what happens.  But it definitely put a damper on what was generally an ok weekend.

Aside from using the time to wrap up reviews, I do have a couple of creative writing ideas I need to put down paper (one is about a nearly abandoned food court and the other is about a crazy date night).  And I probably ought to write the second half of my tv pilot.  All things that I am a bit more likely to do if I actually do take some time off of work.

And read a bit more.  I'm really struggling to get through all these books I said I would read (and in a few cases review).  As a side note, I have to admit, I am just not a fan of the new Blogger interface.  It is considerably harder than it should be to maintain long lists (like my main reading list).  Given that it is in pretty bad shape (and is largely sidelined for the moment while I work through a box of books to put outside in my free library), I probably ought to start again with a cleaner list, which would help.  Well, maybe if I actually take some time off in Sept...

* I was able to get my bike in the shop last Monday (with the completely flat and leaky tube) and it was ready to go by Tuesday.  In the end, I biked in Tuesday-Friday, though in a few cases I started work from home and biked in over lunchtime.

For Want of a Pump

It's really been a fairly miserable few days.

I was struggling almost the entire day Friday, trying to get this program to read in a new dataset.  I then tried to go back to an old dataset that did work and just fuse together the missing variables, but that didn't work either, and there was no useful error message.  In the end, I did manage to get it in, but it was many, many wasted hours that put me in a pretty foul mood.

I've also been strung along by this first contractor to help me clean up some water damage in the basement.  I've finally given up on him and then found someone else who will actually do indoor work, which is still incredibly challenging, though slightly easier now that the Province has moved to stage 3 and new COVID cases remain pretty low, so it feels relatively safe.  There was some mixed messaging about when he was coming over, and I missed out on a slot for Friday, which was annoying.  In the end, we agreed the new contractor would come over on Monday.  In the evening, I went over to the gym to try to burn off some of the frustration.

Sat. started off moderately well with one of the smoother grocery shopping experiences in a while.  Then I went off to work.  I've had this report hanging over my head for quite some time, so I got more done on it, though it will still probably be another day or two before I can finally pass it over to someone else for final edits.  (Along with this book review that I am kind of dreading, these tasks really do suck up way too much of my mental energy.)

However, there was one frustrating detail.  I dug up some data on car sharing that I had collected in 2017, and then repeated in 2019 and 2020.  For some bizarre reason, I seem to have collected the data for Boston but not Chicago.  I am really surprised that my 2017 self didn't get that at the time, so I spent many hours tracking through old records, trying to find the original files, and I have basically given up.  (The way the data happens to be stored means that I can't just go back and retroactively gather the 2017 data now, unfortunately.)  I'm basically left with the notion that because Chicago didn't have Car2Go in 2017, I didn't bother gathering the 2017 data.  Or perhaps I didn't check carefully enough and thought that ZipCar wasn't operating there in 2017, though I'm pretty sure I was aware that 2-way car sharing existed in Chicago, even back then.  So it is all quite baffling why I didn't collect Chicago data and then bothered to collect it for Boston.  It's certainly not the end of the world, but it was a disappointing turn of events.

I worked a little later than I wanted, but felt I was finally in a bit of a rhythm.  I decided I would be pro-active and pump up my back bike tire just a bit before setting off.  Big mistake.  Somehow my pump malfunctioned, and it is possible (though not confirmed) that it has broken the valve on the inside tube, which will also have to be replaced, though the bike shop I go to isn't open until Monday.  I tried for close to an hour to fix the pump and then pump up my back tire, but by the end of this it was completely flat.  I even went and visited the cubical of a fellow cyclist to see if he happened to have a spare portable pump, but he didn't.  I knew that if I tried to ride with a completely flat tire it would just wreck the rim and I'd have to replace the entire back wheel.  It was also dark by now, so it wouldn't have been all that safe to ride home, even with a miraculously repaired tire.

I debated various options and finally decided I would take the subway home -- with the bike.  And basically the TTC ride home was a nightmare, which it is so often.  There was a suicide just north of Bloor and it was taking them an extraordinarily long time to a) get the shuttle buses running and b) turn the trains around to take the people up to the St. George station.  There weren't many people on the train, which was one saving grace and everybody except one person was wearing a mask.  I really don't want to be taking the TTC this winter, especially if people have started working downtown again, but perhaps it isn't quite as dreadful as I imagined.  And of course, I won't be attempting to make the trip with a bike and having to carry it up and down the stairs!

I'm just about to run off to the gym again and then hit Walmart as soon as it opens.  I should be able to find a bike pump there.  I'll see if it is just the pump that was broken or if the tube also needs replacing.  I think I may be a little jumpy and not too trusting of this tire for a while and maybe I will need to drop the bike off at the bike shop anyway.  So that made for an extremely frustrating day, and I am just hoping that this Sunday turns out better.

Fall Openings

I'll try to cram quite a bit into this post.

Grocery shopping has gradually returned more or less to normal, including the opening hours.  I still remember the very long lines that snaked through the parking lot just to get in.  Now getting in is generally a breeze, though sometimes the line to get a cashier can be long, though going the self-checkout route can help quite a bit.  The hoarding impulse seems to have died down as well.

I was quite pleased that Toronto finally moved to Stage 3 on July 31 (over three weeks ago now!).  We were locked down harder and longer than pretty much any other major city in North America.  On the other hand, it's hard to argue with results.  Ontario is basically hovering at 100 new cases a day (better than most of the other provinces on a per capita basis and shockingly better than BC on an absolute basis), and Toronto is often under 20 new cases.  When we look down south, it is shocking what they are claimed as "success"...

The Saturday after we went to Stage 3 I stopped in at the gym just to see their plans, and then I guess I worked out later on Sunday.  I've generally been managing to get in two workouts a week and am probably at around 85% of my pre-COVID workout routine.  It definitely takes longer with all the extra wiping down of equipment, and the risks are probably a little higher than I would like (many people don't actually wear masks while lifting weights, for example) but I simply didn't have the discipline to work out at home.  My biggest gripe is that they close at 9, which means there can be a line-up of people trying to get in a 7 in order to get in a full workout before they shut the doors.  I am hoping they extend hours to 10 pm soon, which I think would largely solve that issue.  I still haven't managed to go back to the swimming pools, and perhaps I will consider that more seriously in Sept.

The kids have started going back to the dentist and orthodontist for appointments.  My much delayed check-up is Sept. 11.  (Better make sure I am up-to-speed on flossing!)

The libraries have been gradually reopening (recently we could just get the holds off the shelves ourselves) and supposedly a core number of libraries will be back to more or less normal service starting on Monday.  It's not the highest thing on my list of priorities, but I have taken advantage of the book hold service (and certainly went a little wild with the e-books during lockdown!).  I'll have to see if that means the Reference Library downtown will also be back to normal.  As far as I can tell, Robarts and the other university libraries are still very much in lockdown mode, and I don't know when that will change.

Last week the movie theatres started testing the waters of reopening.  I'm actually probably going to try to see Inception tomorrow at Beach Cinema, and then perhaps in a few more weeks I'll check out Tenet.  I believe Wes Anderson has a film coming out fairly soon, and I'll probably go to that.  Interestingly, the Paradise on Bloor was one of the last theatres to shut down, but it hasn't announced its reopening plans yet.

That's somewhat similar to the Power Plant at Harbourfront.  It was open another week longer than the Textile Museum and MOCA, but they've both reopened and the Power Plant is still closed.  It appears that the Power Plant reopens on Sept. 26 and I'll make it out fairly soon after that.

Another somewhat delayed reopening is the Ryerson Image Centre, which reopens on Sept. 16, so I'll probably get over there soon.

After holding out for quite a while, Crowsnest cancelled the fall and spring season, which was quite unfortunate, as there were at least two shows I would have gone to.  As far as I can tell, Canadian Stage still expects to present at least some shows.  There hasn't been any update at Soulpepper or Coal Mine or Factory.  Tarragon said they would be all virtual and podcast this season, and I'm starting to think that will be the same at Theatre Passe Muraille.

There was some sad news that East Side Players has decided to disband.  They were not able to weather the storm without their spring fundraiser.  While I found their work pretty hit or miss (the acting actually was usually pretty good but some of the scripts were subpar), I will be sad to see them go.  The Bloor West Village Players seem poised to return, so we shall see.

I think last weekend, there was an actual children's play outdoors in a park nearby, though I didn't seriously consider going.  Now this weekend there is a more serious play (Alphonse by Wajdi Mouawad).  I can't make it this weekend, but it moves somewhat closer next weekend to Dufferin Grove Park, and I might go.  I'm actually a little gun-shy of biking out that way for a few reasons, which I'll discuss in the next post, but I'll likely go.  A review and details on getting tickets here.

I'll end with biggest reason I wanted to get this post out there.  There is still a day and a half to catch the encore presentation of the virtual Toronto Fringe.  Check it out here until the 23rd at midnight!  And now, I really do need to move back to some more productive work.