Swedish Efficiency

After 30 hours on four planes, I'm here in efficiency heaven. The Swedes have these *amazing* 24 inch fridges everywhere in all colours. Black. Silver. I'm so jealous. The garbage cans are separated by recycling/compost/garbage, swing out completely to access to all spaces. The toilets are all two inches higher and dual flush super-low water volume. No intersection lights, just whizzing tiny traffic circles that are well signed. Triple panes windows and underfloor heating.

I'm off to France on Saturday, so we'll see whether I need to experience the bureaucracy and if so, whether it will kill me.

The first ten seconds

I remember listening to a CBC documentary earlier this summer about the history of song composition. The guest speaker had theories as to how our new media and nearly unprecedented online exposure to new music (if one seeks it) has affected the composition of pop tunes. Basically, if you can't grab the attention of the listener in the first seven seconds, they will skip to the next song. This is in contrast to how radio works (where it isn't so instantaneous) and in complete conflict with how one experiences live music (you basically must stay put through the song). He had used Kei$ha's TikTok song as an example, among others. I was skeptical about his premise but intrigued enough to stay in the car well after I had arrived to my destination, just to keep listening.

A friend introduced me to this online radio streaming site that puts together playlists based on your mood or activity: stereomood. I really enjoy it, and it had introduced me (or in some cases, re-introduced me) to some very fantastic music.

This morning, I realized that I can generally tell whether I really, really* like a song in the first ten seconds or so. Some examples:

Greg Laswell

The Weepies

Bonobo

(PS How much does it drive me nuts when I google a song for a embed-able link and find the song was featured on Grey's Anatomy or The O.C.?? Shittons 'cause I think I'm better then everyone else and then realize I'm not.)

Fridays. Sigh.

*playing repeat twelve times in a row yet STILL singing it to myself after work, when I wake up or when I go to sleep.

Acceptable language in a lab: "just eye-ballin' it".

Amusing.

Mercredi, je sera en France. En préparation...

Ça commence at 03:20, finit à 09:30

Et, si vous pouvez, DANSER! Célébrez une belle vie. La musique de Gigi French.

auto-pilot gender-bender

Breaking old habits = very hard to do. Not just psychological bad habits, but the physical kind where your body does things without your brain acknowledging it, a situation we call auto-pilot at my place. Hubby will often go on auto-pilot while driving, suddenly veering off course to go to work when really we need to stop at the gas-station or the grocery store.

I don't know who designed the new first floor bathrooms in my building, but they underestimated the auto-pilot abilities of the long-term employees here. If they realized how difficult it is to break your body's natural path to the washroom when your brain is concentrated on the bladder, they might not have switched the position of the boys & girls bathroom.


It is a wee bit more complicated then that, of course. The old design was a female washroom and custodian closet along one hallway and then around the corner a short distance away, a male washroom. I suppose it makes more sense to have the two washrooms next to each other and the custodian closet around the corner. Fair enough. But the new design didn't just swap the custodian closet for a male washroom and left the female washroom intact oh noo...the old female washroom is now the new male washroom, while the custodian closet has been transformed into an expansive female washroom. 'Cause we need room to move in our skirts, yo.

Once every few days I catch myself plowing the first door open to the men's washroom. There are two doors, which allows me a space for my brain to catch my body in action and back the fuck up. I don't particularly care, and have lived in a shared on-campus residence where washrooms were unisex. It suited me just fine. But I expect walking into the men's washroom to face an older colleague would be weird for them.

And this whole thing reminded me of an ad campaign I saw recently for a NSFW website called xdress. The sticker option made me giggle:



My course of action is obvious. Bend gender norms and question the status quo.

sniffle snuffle

The time it takes a virus to find me in my new niche at work (away from most of the students):

10 days.

Excuse me while I go sneeze for the fucktillionth time.

bleeding green

Next month my value package for communications runs out. Currently we pay $30/month for home phone and $30/month for internet. Next month that will jump to $90 a month for a basic home phone without ANY calling features, plus wi-fi internet. Goddamn ridiculous.

Don't know what to do about it though. We could drop our home phone I guess, and just use our pay-as-you-go cell phone. That would require us to keep it charged at all times and be otherwise put together. We've already given out our home phone number to a bunch of people. But there's no way I'm going without internet. I'm addicted.

Bummer. Sometimes living in Canada has it's downsides.

Today's Muse

I love Milla Jovovich, her nerdy fanbase and her continual acceptance of shitty movies because her husband directs them.

She was in Toronto promoting her new film(s), and inspired envy for both her physique and her style:


Photee 1: I love her sparkly cowl neck and side-swept bang here:

Photee 2: And I *really* love her tunic and collarbone-grazing earrings here. I could even come to love leather leggings if worn in such a bad-ass way:

pink horses and striped whales

look what I found on the "free book" table. Great cover!

Efficient kitchen design

For our forever house, it is important that the kitchen works well. Especially now that I have morphed into a domestic queen, making pickles and jams and pies and muffins every week. We have a fantastic looking kitchen design (I'll upload sketches when I get them scanned), but now I'm antsy to verify that it is as efficient as it can be. These are two great online resources I have checked out:

Blum Cabinet Hardware

&

Starcraft Custom Builders


While both pages provide great info on efficiency, the Starcraft website specifically addresses the windows vs. upper cabinet debate. This is relevant to us because we decided to move the kitchen into the brightest room of the house (central to the activity, open concept to the den & dining room). Yet the reason it was so bright is because of two windows that span lower than a traditional cabinet base.



So: we sacrifice a wall of cabinets or we sacrifice light?

Sacrifice cabinets, for sure. Aside from the prohibitive cost of replicating those windows in their current incarnation save for ten inches at the bottom - why would we move into the brightest room in the house just to squander our source of light? No, I'll get rid of my rice cooker, thanks. So the Starcraft site helps maximize the space we do have, like how to make great use of corner cabinets.



We have just a single corner cabinet, outlined in the trail tape above. An L-shaped piece of lower cabinetry provides room (eventually) for a range in the corner (away from hubbub and small hands), a length of "bar"-level countertop on the left (just like in our last house-loved it!) & a space for a dishwasher. On the short end of the L, a focal sink. The sink will be the first thing you see coming down the interior hallway along the stairwell, so the cabinetry will be "country flourish" - an arched open shelf for pottery and books flanked by tons of fancy trim. Sorta like these inspirations pictures:






Plus a fancy sink with fancy handle embedded in a fancy concrete counter. Fancy fancy.


Have also fallen in love with stone accent walls too, like this:

which would look great behind the oven. A bitch to clean, but I'll worry about that later.

Then the far wall, on the other side of the windows, will be floor to ceiling cabinetry and an archway going to the dining room. And a refrigerator, a nice slim one that fits between those 24" on center beams.

It's a lop-sided and asymmetrical design, but hopefully it provides a visually interesting room with tons function and sunlight.

this too!

Tilda Swinton's Flash Mob.

This made my day

small talk

Scene: deserted lab room where I am unpacking new equipment.

Construction worker: (enters from hallway -cue shit-eating grin) "I'm the new student."

Me: "You look a little old."

Construction worker: (clutches heart) "oh...ouch"

Me: "They didn't hire me here because I'm kind. They hired me because I'm efficient." (struggle with heavy boxes)

Construction worker: "Here, let me help you with that."

Me: "I'm fine."

Construction worker: (comes over anyway) "I'll help you."

Me: "I'm okay"

Construction worker: (steps on my toes on the way to chivalry) "Sorry." (removes boxes from my hands, searches frantically for some reason to speak, notices visible facial piercing) "Did that hurt to get done?"

Me: "Less then my ear piercings."

Construction worker: (cue shit-eating grin)

Me: (leaves)

But I still mumbled Thank You. Fuck.

mah job

Next month I travel by car to the province next door, hop on a flight that lands in T.O. for five hours, stops in Iceland for two hours, arrives in Stockholm. I need to hop a train to Northern Sweden, stay a few days, travel south by train (or maybe fly) to northern France. Stay four days. Travel to Paris, take a flight to Iceland, land in province next door, drive home. Bam bam bam.

Take that carbon footprint.

Feellng dumb

Can't get this to work. Gr...

Free Radiohead concert

scorching

The ability to fall asleep anywhere is a gift. You can find me snoozing gap-mouthed in airports or lecture halls too often, and I fall asleep mid-sentence on a regular basis. But there are situations where that is problematic. Case in point: Saturday night bonfire with family from a far-flung place. The visit is short, and has extended into the night to take advantage of the company. I'm at home, comfy in pajamas just finishing a beer, sitting around a warm fire on a warm night. I can't keep my eyes open, but don't want to be the loser who goes to sleep first. So I crawl on a blanket next to the bonfire, fall asleep in good company for a short snooze...

...and wake up when a fiery ember lands on my temple and burns a two inch long gash on my skin.

Since I was sleeping so deeply, it took awhile until I was awake enough to react. By that time I had earned myself a nice second degree burn that immediately blistered over. On my face. Dammit.