sharp!

(But only from afar)

Front parlour pictures. Tutorial (for fellow internet searchers) will probably follow.

lost patience/lost spaces

Ben Howard The Wolves

Do it Yourself

Some pictures of our attempts at beautifying our sub floors by painting with stencil. A la Lovely Etc.

This is floor #1 in the front parlour (I worked until 3:30 AM and all I got were blotchy stencils and lifted blue paint. I think both things can be fixed though with more time).

Everything takes on a cream coloured hue at 3 AM 

My house costs three times my annual salary...

...and I got a steal of a deal.

I worry about money alot. I worry about debt, I micromanage the budget, I deny myself dinners out and new shoes more often than I used to. This article in Globe and Mail explains why I've hustled since the age of fifteen to save money for university while also trying to make a life worth living (in my eyes = travel, wedding, home ownership, time for family): it is damn expensive.

Life & tuition costs 1984 vs 2012 (Globe and Mail)

I had a big scholarship for both my degrees, and I still graduated in debt. I've recently paid off my student loan officially (no debt-punching celebrations since I cheated by consolidating the last $1000 to our home reno line of credit to simplify the budgeting/get the government off my back), six years after I graduated from my first degree paying back double what the government suggested.

This is all alarmingly relevant, as the Quebec student protests have recently swelled their ranks to encompass not just disenfranchised youth but also parents and teachers who are acutely aware of what increased debt does for life down the road. The symbol of the protestors, the little red square, represents life "in the red". I've been thinking about these protests: how peaceful they've generally been, how few media outlets are covering the unfolding events, how perpetual critics of "apathetic youth" look away (or worse, criticize the "joint-smoking, free-loading" youths) now that they are protesting in huge crowds, and how we are all basically required to get at least an undergrad degree to be competitive in a job market that doesn't pay enough to climb out of the hole in reasonable amount of time (say...less than five years).

Thank goodness I live in a cheap area of the country (for housing at least). I can't even imagine the thoughts I'd be wracked with if I lived in a city I couldn't afford in a house that cost six times my annual salary. We'd never have kids, and we would likely never vacation either. Bootstraps can only be pulled by so much force before they snap, and I've got compassion for the plight of financially drowning students everywhere. Suit up with a red square and realize that just because an older generation thinks the students are whining about bullshit doesn't mean they are.

synth birthday

Google celebrates Bob Moog's birthday today. I'm reminded that taking that music & sound class was worthwhile because it taught me who Moog was, and what a synthesizer does.

Classic.

a leap and a bound

Despite taking tons of pictures of the house over the last two weeks I've avoided updating until I had more than two minutes. The second batch of undergrad kids are now officially trained for summer work, I think I've turned the corner on my "conference cold" I acquired two weeks ago, and my sixth wedding anniversary has come & gone (we ate sushi).

Prints from a friend, taken at the house featuring our dog.

The weather has also turned nice, so we've been re-roofing, painting, sanding, installing doors, tearing down, re-grading and harvesting. 

Outside: the metal barn roofing has come off - the first step to total demolition. This little barn addition is in poor shape, and is pulling the larger barn down with it, so it has to go soon. We had family to help with this job.

Inside the barn was an old wooden box with a lid, the perfect size for a new compost heap. I'll need aeration holes, but it's rustic look will be much nicer than the current compost heap, housed in old fencing I clumsily screwed together the very first weekend we moved into the house. 

New compost (tipped over sans hinged cover) versus old compost heap.

We've started to collect the giant stones (natural & carved) littered about the property, and piling them up alongside the wood shelter. The stone from this area was exported all over the world (but mainly to New England) for mill stones, and we can find evidence of that at our little farm.

We've already demolished this section of the barn, now just to improve drainage and recover rocks.

Steadying the heavy stones with each leg before an awkward, two-person moving job.

The gardens aren't planted yet (two hours of frigging with the tiller but we think it's past revival), but we did manage to cut them. We'll probably just rent a tiller for this year to do our three garden plots, sometime in the next week. The perennial herb garden has exploded with bee balm, which is somewhat protecting our chives from chicken grazers. The mint has started to peak through (as a weed, in our untilled gardens) and the rhubarb in the orchard is yielding it's first harvest.

        

  

We also caught a tiny hummingbird that was trapped in our front porch. Beautiful and docile, it let me remove the spider webbing from it's little wings before it got sent back out to the apple blossom tree.

Dwarfed in my husband's hands, the humming bird seemed frazzled but unharmed.

Our last bit of demo and soil restructuring had to do with the path to the (new) wood shelter. Last year we had four chords of wood dumped in our driveway, and had to haul it back 50 m to the shelter before stacking. We have plans to strengthen the culvert and little wooden bridge, clearing a path for future half ton trucks to drive past the barn to dump wood directly in front of the shelter. So the little tiny house (rabbit hutch?) had to go. It was well past it's prime anyway, but clearly someone went to much effort in building it (as was apparent when we went to demolish it - just look at the tiny front door complete with hinges and the stack of bricks used as a substantial foundation). So now that it is gone, we've removed the thick railroad ties and levelled the slope.

                    

 

The sad but still terribly quaint rabbit hutch.

All that work outside requires a bonfire and mediocre beer, non?

The INSIDE of the house has also seen changes: namely the installation of several doors and "refinishing" the floors (I'm going to stencil the plywood). We went to a scratch-and-dent sale on our anniversary weekend, and snagged a set of low-e/argon garden doors for half price as well as a set of super-heavy duty pine doors for our pocket doors (they look like this, but new and only $50 a door). We put the garden doors in our future dining room, where eventually a south-facing deck will exist. But for now, a broken mill stone will have to do for a stoop :) These are installed where an old mouldy pantry used to live that was not only gross, but also blocked any sunlight from reaching the dark dank room. Not anymore!

We've also got some doors for our downstairs hallway closets. These doors were in the house when we moved in and repurposed for the front entry coat & cleaning closets. The still need to be refinished, but tackling the trim (in all it's oil-based, leaded glory) will be my job after the floors are refinished & the kitchen is installed.

Speaking of floors: we really can't afford the cash for hardwood, we can't bring ourselves to compromise with something else, and we can't afford the time it would take to refinish our barnboard. So. Inspired by this lady, I've begun the process of sanding/filing/resanding/refiling the subfloor for paint. I'm doing it with drywall compound and a hand sander. Yes I'm crazy. Here are the results so far:

Belt sander: 60 grit

 Drywall compound in screw holes, two coats & 100 grit hand sander

First layer of floor and porch paint in dark blue (after midnight, unfortunately, so no direct sunshine)

So far I'm happy with how it turned out. There is a clear variation in glossiness where the paint went over unprimed wood versus where it went over the compound, but I'm confident the whole thing will appear glossy after a second coat, a stencil, and water based sealer is applied. I should have cleaned by iPhone screen a bit better for the last picture, as it appears fuzzy in comparison. No surprise since the sanding created more than a little dust...

I'm not sure how I feel about all the sunlight getting sucked out of a room because of the very dark colours, but we knew a light colour would not be practical for our very dirty lifestyle. I'm trying to save judgement until the stencil (a damask pattern in oysterputtytaupe colour) is applied, I think it will lighten considerably. Until then, I'll be over here spackling in the sun...

                       

graybeard.ppt

The benefit of being the audio-visual tech on duty during the "established" investigator session: three speakers instead of six, since they all get to speak for twice as long as the youngins. Chance of technological misfire reduced.

The downside of the being the audio-visual tech on duty during graybeard session?  They feel entitled enough to flout conference rules on loading talks ahead of time/didn't actually save the latest version so need to run back to their room/want to use their own computer. Chance of technological misfire exponentially increased.

I would

All the kids are fantastic and smart

And they will all hum "Little Talks" with me while we are doing our work. I love my job.

Shit Rolls Downhill

That time of year again: science for the masses.  Followed closely by a national (albeit tangentially related) conference being held this week at my university campus.  Busy at work in a fun way.