Mambo Taxi

Last night Dan was going to make Iles Flottantes, which sounded tasty and decadent, but the eggs wouldn't separate, which meant he was either going to waste a bunch of eggs, or change plans. So he made pound cake, which is indeed quite tasty.

I woke up this morning hearing Monty Python-esque voices saying "Iles Flottantes", or in English, "Floating Eels..." Sadly, that's all of the skit that came to my waking mind. But someone else should run with it, shouldn't they?

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This weekend has been a bit of a crapshoot. I have had a terrible backache, which has gotten better and worse in turns, but today I didn't need Tylenol with codeine, just regular Tylenol and Advil, which is an improvement.

This weekend I've gotten lots of walking in, just around downtown. I saw a twitter post yesterday that amused and amazed me: there are still apparently a bunch of people in town who are terrified of Downtown as being scary and crime-ridden. Perhaps 15 years ago it was? But I'm certain it's much less worrying than, say, Ball Square or other Boston-area neighbo(u)rhoods. A friend made a comment to the effect that such people form a distinct set of folks she is displeased to run into, in the OTHER (ritzier) end of town. And there is some truth to that for me too.

...I'd say eat the rich, but I'm not really into capitalism cannibalism.

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We have an offer on our house! The inspection is tomorrow morning, after which we'll hear if they have any problems. The realtors had a showing today "just in case" and there was a lot of interest, if Party the First falls through. Getting this close-to-finished is such a load off my mind. And for Dan, too. There's a difference between knowing in theory that it will sell, and actually having it finally happen.

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I've been trying to not think about work at home, but failed yesterday, when I decided I would just email the author of some code I'm using. His reply was both immediate and very useful, and at the same time I realized I: 1) had a bug in my alteration to his code and 2) knew the fix could be tested in about ten minutes. ...So I did that. And it worked!

So then I had to tell him I fixed the deficiency he had told me he'd never gotten around to fixing (but wanted to fix). And since he had a github account to share his code, and *I* have a github account I've never used, it made the most sense to figure out how to share it with him publicly, with all the public open-source accountability.

I expect you can see where this went (and so could I, even while I was doing it).

It took me about an hour to figure out the next part, since I've never actually used git before. But the end product looks pretty awesome to me, because something like 3 lines of code (and 1 line of documentation) means I don't have to spend at least a day writing a workaround for the (nonexistent) deficiency in the underlying system API.

Or, said another way, I made it so I can programmatically rename hosts in the campus DNS system, instead of having to delete the old host and re-creating all of its information in a new record.

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So yah. Life is pretty good, and will be even better next week when the provisional house sale becomes final!

How's by you?

We just bought a condo in downtown Kitchener. It used to be the Arrow Shirt Factory. There were four floors, and they've built 4 more floors with a set-back. Ours is the first level of the new construction, the only level with terraces. It's 1500 square feet of usable space, it will be complete some time between March and late Summer of next year, and we have ten days from yesterday to have second thoughts.

To say I'm excited is an understatement. Last night as I tried to get to sleep, my brain took me on a walk around the new neighbourhood, with little jolts as I realized what was within roughly ten minutes walk. Victoria Park! persephoneplace! nobodyhere! thefateyouare! Kitchener Market! Kitchener Market Light Rail Stop (hopefully)! Pho! Jerk Chicken! KWArtzlab hackerspace! A somewhat OK video rental store! Eventually I ran out of exclamation-marks and started falling asleep, until I was jolted awake (repeatedly) with we just bought property sight unseen!

The process, last night, was a zoo. They had an open-house for agents, but I had just called the afternoon before to find out when we could look at the demo unit, and they said we were welcome to come with our agent (who we trust very well- she sold us this house, and similarly for many of melted_snowball's colleagues). Mary was a bedrock. She was the one who suggested a few weeks ago that we be open to downtown Kitchener (it's where she lives) instead of close to the University. She was the first to tell us that the unit we were looking at was quite likely the most sensible layout in the building (I've since heard similar feedback, scarily enough) and when she left us last night, she was considering buying a smaller unit in the building to rent out.

Meanwhile, there were 40 other people talking in the non-noise-canceled sales office. Imagine like: a narrow Apple Store with wine and canapes. We got time to tour the demo units (there were two set up). 14-foot ceilings, exposed original pillars of the factory, and a lot of beige. One unit was very snark-worthy (Mary had some sotto zingers about the design and the agent who was telling everybody how great it was) and the other was fairly nice except for one feature: the loft bedroom. It turns out most units have an (optional) raised bedroom with half-height walls and sort-of wraparound windows to let in the light. We kind of want to have noise isolation in the bedroom, so that was a non-starter, even though the storage area underneath the loft was sort of cool.

Our unit only has 9-foot ceilings, but it's got 32 feet of windows, a fairly good amount of storage space, and best of all, the condo allows pets. (That was actually the first question I asked when we arrived. The first two helper-people said, "I don't know, let's find somebody who does." and the third person explained their two-pet minimum, I mean maximum.

A last bit of condo-buying usefulness: we can move whenever they say our unit is finished. However, beyond our 10% deposit, we're not on the hook for the rest of the price until 75% the units are sold, which is possibly not going to happen for a few months after. Which means we get to move first, then sell our place, assuming things line up OK.

What could possibly go wrong?

(*wibble*)

Bless me LJ, for I have been quiet. It has been two weeks since my last post.

Hey, I'm 36! My birthday was low-key; bookended by food: takeout BBQ one night and yummy home-cooked shrimp scampi. And ice-cream on my birthday. 36 so far feels like 35 with more things falling apart.

I've lost track of how many times I've had bike flats in the last month. It's at least five.
Tomorrow morning might be exciting; I'm biking to work by way of the bike shop, to replace the rear tube (again) and tire (overdue). The tube/tire on the bike might hold long enough for me to get there.

On Saturday morning, I went to reinflate my bike tire to the recommended pressure... and didn't notice a hole worn in the tire sidewall. "Hey, that side's bulging. Hey, maybe I should let the air out before it - " BAM! My ears were ringing for a while. I had to laugh out loud at the absurdity. I immediately pictured birds flying in circles around my head.

In the last week, I've had high hopes for a long bike-ride after work, or on the weekend, but with the different flats, it just didn't seem like a good idea. Hindsight, at least two of the flats were caused by wearing through the tire sidewalls. One was glass, one was a bad patch (over a seam) and I don't remember what the rest were. At least I can still say Rapid Flat-Fixes Я Us.

The odometer did roll over another 200 km, Friday evening just after I replaced the n-1th flat on my way home from work; exactly 30 days after the last 200km.

Other stuff falling apart? Goodness. My laptop has been crashing (though I now have Time Machine running backups, so at least that's automated), my phone/camera has been acting finicky, my iPod has been refusing to update again, our front stoop has lost a chunk of stone and now looks a bit gap-toothed, and I think the front doorknob is possibly loose. Whee! Oh, and we're probably going to replace the car reasonably soon, as upkeep costs begin to approach trade-in value. I feel super-lucky, though, that none of these are dire situations, as long as everything doesn't fail simultaneously. (*glares menacingly at laptop, phone, iPod*)

Anyhow, this weekend included a batch of errands, a wonderful walk with roverthedog and melted_snowball in a leash-free dog-park along a river, and a fairly recuperative Pilates session that made me feel all stretchy.

Work recently has included a foray into writing some C code, which is quite challenging for me. So many ways to screw up! But I've hopes that I (and colleagues I can rope into helping) will end up with a minor contribution to OpenSSH. Srs!

Since I last posted, I also went to Philadelphia for a Quaker thang, which was useful at unsticking some "how should I do this" sort of questions I'd been stuck on (and perhaps will post on eventually) and also for some good news about the Quaker Quest program- there will soon be funding to hire some number of additional staff. And then I spent a wonderful afternoon with friends in the Philly area, and we romped in the park with their dog and their 5-year-old, AND had a visit from NJ friends who came into town for the afternoon; and then they fed me soup and brownies and sent me on my flight back home with a big smile on my face.

Guess what!

The city misplaced our sewer pipe!

Apparently, their filing system involves relying on a stake that they drove into our yard last June, which seems foolproof to me.

Corollary: We're getting a big chunk of our lawn replaced, saving us the expense of doing it.

Second corollary: I am grateful that I could be home this morning, because they had to come inside to run another locate through the bowels under our house, after they had dug up a long trench from the road to where they thought the pipe was.

I think I'll just stay put, 'cause I've got a physio appointment down the street at lunch time.

So, we had the owner of Bodhi Tree Landscaping come and consult on our yard, and frankly I'm underwhelmed. He suggested we might consider using roundup to wipe out the front yard, which goes completely counter to his website's claim of pesticide-free installations. All I can figure is that he pegged us as wanting the fast route. And the do-it-yourself route, even though we did say a few times we don't want to do it ourselves, we've been not-doing-it-ourselves for 7 years.

He didn't have any photos of some of the ground-cover he suggested we consider. He said we were at the very start of figuring this out, and we should talk it over amongst ourselves and get back to him when we had a course of action for him. Um, hello?

Perhaps if I had more assertively tried to put money into his hands, he might've tried harder, but I really thought he was gong to re-offer what he said on the phone, an hour consultation for $50 or so; he didn't, and I suggested it, and for whatever reason he didn't want to. Oh well.

So that's Bodhi Tree.

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On Tuesday, the city came back and gave our house a colonoscopy. The pipe looks fine (except the city's portion has the remains of tree roots, almost certainly from the tree the city removed two years ago). And they put a stake in the lawn at our property line. The city will replace their pipe, possibly next summer, and they will pay for any sewer-line repairs between now and then. The two guys who came were mid-50s seen-it-all guys. The more assertive one said Hammonds Plumbing is owned by a crook, and he sees them in court almost every week. Hm. I'll pass it on to you all, but I'm not sure I wouldn't hire them again; they did show up on Saturday morning early and did call the city for me.

And now it's bedtime for Bonzo. And me, too.