school of bob villa, lesson 1:

if you apply ENOUGH of many different types of wood glue, one of them is bound to work and will make the joint stick. !!!!! success! i'm not gonna lie, things were looking pretty grim there for a bit, exacerbated by the fact that the home depot mission that i had been (wrongly) priding myself on (i should have known that it was eerily too well to be believed, what with me finding everything on my list with only a minimum of waiting and grade 9-style pantomiming to a bevy of pleasantly disengaged orange-aproned staff) yielded the wrong web clamping. BOO! i injected about four different kinds of wood glue into the joints of my practice telephone table and finally, in a fit of desperation, completely flummoxed by the workings of the web clamping (or what i *thought* was web clamping), i grabbed a crate of records and balanced it precariously on the upended table to put some weight on the setting joints. i'm supposed to let it dry for a good 12 hours, but when i went into the room (which i have hermetically sealed against all interlopers in a superstitious appeal to woodworking karma) and gingerly wiggled the joint, it didn't wiggle at all. it's too soon to tell, but i'm cautiously optimistic.

i also went to town with my brand-new upholstery staple remover on the existing seat covers, peeling off god-knows-how-ancient cheap filling and a tacky, "cream" (i think it must have once been cream) coloured naugahyde fabric. i did all this while wearing safety goggles and breathing through my mouth. i get that from my mom. my mom has a very strange habit of breathing through her mouth whenever she's put in situations like: being on public transportation, using a bathroom in the developing world, on the (rare) occasions that she does the dishes. it's kind of weird to me because as i have learned, smells are actually particulate matter, which means when you mouth breath around off-putting odors, you're actually EATING them. this didn't stop me from fulfilling my lagerfeld genetic destiny by mouth-breathing like a mofo as i lifted one staple after another. i procured some foam ($10! for 2 seats!) and now i just need a staple gun and i can go to town.

i'm documenting the whole process. i likes me a good crafty before-and-after like few other things.

so, yesterday's meeting with our lawyer was...um...interesting (if not exactly confidence-inspiring) to say the least. he works out of a barebones storefront across from a subway station on the danforth. it's like, one room, with no privacy, so when his next appointment walked in while he was dealing with us, he had to ask them to wait outside. on the street. when i had called to book the appointment i had tried to get something during the day but he had told me that he was "in court" all day and wouldn't be able to see us until after 7pm. so we get there and i noticed that on his right hand, he had a FRESH scrappy doo wonderland stamp. !!!!! i surreptitiously pointed this out to the dotytron who responded with raised eyebrows and suppressed LOLs. i can't BELIEVE how cheap this guy is. he looks like a cross between the dad on "american dad" and troy mcclure. the lowest rate i had been quoted from other lawyers was $695 for the house and $295 for the mortgage, plus disbursements. this guy charges a flat fee of $500 for both the mortgage and the house and that's INCLUDING some of the disbursements! i am SO GLAD my mom is a real estate lawyer right now (she can't represent us because it's a conflict of interest). she's going to be checking over everything that happens and she's totally in our corner so it's a nice insurance policy. lawyers nowadays (for real estate transactions) are hella lazy and don't do their due diligence and rely on title insurance to cover their butts. it's crazy.

"scene not herd" was a complete 180 from last year's selection. while last year was super indie, with like a billion new pornographers' videos and like a billion emily haines videos, this year was total hipster, with an almost all-electronic music card. it's disappointing what this series has become. it's really poorly curated. even three years ago i saw some AMAZING videos. the international selection is so lacking and it seems to be used as an excuse for the curator to show how much street cred he/she has. show me videos that ENHANCE the music video genre! show me videos that are doing something crazy! there's so much re-treading of ground that it's shocking the creative rut that people are in. my favorite of the night was this one:

it's pretty cute. it's also really hard to lose with stop-motion animation.

tonight we're having dinner at the roomie's new place. i'm not sure what we're getting to eat, as usually "cooking" for the roomie means ordering takeout. i made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. after that, depending on how ambitious/motivated we're feeling, we might go to a party at one of my dodgeball teammates' house...but that's VERY far away (well, st. clair and oakwood) so we'll see.

fin.

what a day! what a week!

so...I WON THE WORK COOKIE BAKE-OFF! it was surprisingly nerve-wracking for a throwaway kind of thing (and by "throwaway" i mean "agonized over my [multiple!] entries for a couple of weeks beforehand") what can i say? i'm a competitive, go-for-the-gusto kind of a gal. i have a despicable habit of really, really enjoying winning stuff. my two entries were: chocolate cornmeal cookies with orange cream, and a classic chocolate chip cookie with sea salt. i really thought the sandwich cookies with the orange cream were the clincher, but i actually won for the chocolate chip. at the end of the day, people really always come back to comfort food classics. T and i held hands as they were announcing the winners. lol! to be honest, the funnest part was trash talking T leading up to it. to balance out my olympian dreams, my teams lost at bocce AND the relay race. my lunchtime bocce team also suffered a humiliating defeat on thursday. WE LOST 11-0. that's right, we didn't score a SINGLE point. fastest bocce game EVER. that was pretty humbling, considering T all but announced it on the p.a. so that by the time i trucked back into work after eating a post-game hot dog, i was confronted with snickering, good-natured ribbing from my colleagues.

yesterday was kind of hectic. i hauled my butt home straight from the picnic, did a quick change, and then was picked up by my friend's D's friends to head to the ancaster old mill for D's wedding. it's a pretty spot. D and her new hubby N had already had the religious ceremony with the imam a few weeks prior, so this was just a chance for her to wear her pretty dress and sit down to dinner with her friends. it was very intimate...maybe 40 people in all? quite cozy and everyone was super friendly. there was no alcohol (D and N are both muslim) which cut down on the rambling, crass speeches and no dancing. the food was excellent and even though i went on my own (the dotytron couldn't make it because he had to oversee the final recital for his after school program thing) it was easy to talk to everyone and chat and mix and mingle.

look at how pretty she looks! and how handsome he is! he looks like a hockey player (kind of sergei federov-ish) this was my first time meeting him - it had been a bit of a whirlwind courtship but he's very sweet and gentle and shy and you can tell they're good together. her dress was awesome. i recommended the same place that dr. rei got her dress and D said they were so amazing there. that jacket she's wearing? it's made from the part of the train and dress they chopped off (she had it shortened to mid-calf length)! and that little ruffled pleating above the sweetheart neckline? also added (she needed the dress to have more coverage)! pretty awesome, eh?

so now i'm about to eat my breakkie and start my day. my day is kind of a wonky one. i'm going to head out to the hardware store and this place called lee valley to pick up supplies like: teak oil, strap clamps, wood glue, medium grit sandpaper and chrome polish to fix up my various chairs and whatnot. and then i'm going to put on a pair of gloves and get to work and see how i do. i'm cautiously optimistic. the plan today is to do the gluing and the clamping and to go at the chrome chair and see if i can get any of the rust off.

the plan for this evening is hopefully to somehow watch "he's just not that into you" lol! pretty ambitious, eh?

the worldwide short film festival is starting this week! it totally crept up on me without warning. usually i'm totally on top of it. it's a bit of a tradition for me and the dotytron spanning the entire length of our relationship so we'll have to try to squeeze in a couple of viewings. i really associate this festival with summer, with the dotytron, and with the nascent stages of our journey together. i'd feel a little odd if i missed it for no good reason (ie. i was in town, but just didn't go)

okay...time to start my day of impersonating bob villa! wish me luck!

my fair lil' ugmo: bathroom edition

so i'm kind of keen to get going on the bathroom. with some basic fixes (paint, a new door way, punching open a wall and installing closets) the upstairs would be COMPLETELY done and gorgeous. the bathroom is another thing standing in the way to one floor of the house being in tip top shape. as i've already mentioned, i'm feeling the hex tiles on the floor. and then i thought...what about GIANT hex tile? and then i googled up my vision today and found exactly what i was looking for! isn't it cute? i kind of like the look of the chubby hex tile with the subway tile backsplash. if tile floor and tile halfway up the walls gets to be too pricey, i'd settle for wainscoting, but my first preference is tile for such a damp space. just for the peace of mind and cleanability factor. i'm not a super-fan of the sink pictured above...i think i'm going to go for a wide pedestal style.


i'm also a fan of the deco style sink fixtures.

with a mirrored medicine cabinet above

and the ikea asker containers suspended on the grundtal rail and S hooks for toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.

above the toilet, to make up for the under counter space you lose with a pedestal sink, i would either want open shelving (with a piece of fabric stretched over top so it's still hidden) or maybe three of these shelves spaced out vertically, if i have enough width above the toilet:

fin.