Apartment Living

Some pet peeves (in jot note form!):

- People who don't take their shit out of the washer or dryer when it's done. If I come to do laundry and every washer is full of clean clothes, I will leave and return in a half hour. If those clothes are still there I am taking them out. I don't feel like that's unreasonable.

- People who blast their shitty Nickelback-esque music to the point where it sounds as if it's being played IN my apartment.

- For the love of god, don't take your kids "out" to play in the hallway. What kind of deadbeat are you? So circumstances don't allow you to own a house with a backyard for your kids to play in. Take them to a park or something! The hallway is not a playground and the apartment doors here are paper thin.

- Don't invite your guests to park in such a away that it blocks someone into their parking space or makes it especially difficult to get out. We live here and pay for parking. No-one should have to do a 19 point turn to get out of a parking space. There IS in fact guest parking here that doesn't obstruct other spaces.

That is all. Good day!

I said good day!

Crazy Times

*Sigh* This is my last day off after having a week off work between jobs. Last Monday I put in my two weeks notice in order to pursue a higher paying job with another company. Because my new job is with a competing company I was told to get my things and immediately leave the premises. So I said goodbye to everyone and took off. If I had been paying attention as I walked to my car I would have noticed the Eastern Canada Director sitting in the parking lot. Evidently a few minutes after I left he came in, called a meeting, and told them that the lab was shutting down! So everyone got laid off :( I'm really shocked that it came to that, but I guess I really shouldn't be. All the signs were there. Five people quit in the last 6 months and not a single one of them got replaced. It was getting to the point where I was doing the jobs of four people! I feel really guilty (survivor's guilt I guess) but man did I ever dodge a bullet! And in lieu of notice I got paid out for two weeks. So this week I've had off has been paid, and next week I will be getting paid for my new job AND my old job! I'm really excited to start my new job. I'm going to be a project manager which is a client services role. I'm going to be getting paid more and probably doing less work. I also get to sit at a desk and dress up every day :) I'm even allowed to wear heels, skirts, open toed shoes and everything since I don't have to actually go into the lab! And what's really cool is some people I used to work with already work there!

So I've been pretty social with my week off. Last night I went dancing at Tribeca with Lindsay, Lea, Ian and his friend Adam. It was Brit-pop night which is totally fun. I wish I knew what more of the songs were so I could download them... anyway, not the point of this story. By the time 1:30am rolled around it was just Lindsay and I, and as per usual we were busy attracting the bottom 1% of the men at the club. There was this one dude who was especially annoying. He managed to start dancing "with" Lindsay (or near her, with her having none of it) and then put his hands on her shoulders and started swaying her back and forth. She swatted his hands away and he said something like, "if you don't want dick get outta here". WTF?! I have nothing against dick, but this dick in particular didn't seem to realize that he was short, stout, and had a gross beard. Also, VERY poor social skills. Why are men so fucking stupid? Stupid doesn't even cover it, they also seem to have this sense of entitlement that women don't have as much. Just because you don't find some totally creepy asshole to be the hottest thing in the world automatically means you're some sort of man-hater. I really hate how women are expected to just jump all over whatever guy comes along and shows interest. I was under the impression that we weren't living in the 50s anymore and that we could expect a little more than to be just some dude's arm candy.

Well, enough ranting for one day, better be hitting the ol' dusty trail. I've gotta go be totally lame and plan out outfits for the week :P

I am totally creeped out right now!

Last night I was standing in my kitchen talking to Ashley (who was sitting on the couch) and I was just sort of gazing absentmindedly out the window over her shoulder. I then noticed a faint glow as if from the end of a lit cigarette. It was then that I realized that I was looking directly into the face of some creep looking in our window! Granted, we ARE on the ground floor but this person was probably only about 4 feet away from the window, looking directly at me. And I was looking DIRECTLY AT HIM! And he DIDN'T MOVE!!! Ashley went out on the deck to have a smoke/yell at him. I could hear her talking to someone so I poked my head out the patio door and asked if he was still there and she said "yeah, he's right there pretending he can't hear me". When she turned back he wasn't there anymore and neither of us heard or saw him move. It was so weird! So either he is a) a pervert, b) a potential burglar or c) a vampire. It's really sad when you're hoping it's just a pervert! (We threw in the "vampire" because he didn't care AT ALL that we saw him and disappeared quickly and silently.) What's really weird is that we have no idea if he's done this before or how many times. What would possess a person to just be chillin', staring in our window? There's nothing back there but woods so there's no reason whatsoever to be back there (especially at 1am) unless you are a scary weirdo.

So here's the plan if he comes back:
Option A - take a photo of our peeper.
Option B - make like we didn't see him and call the police.

A success story

I tried that bread recipe again (just the one pound version) and it worked out great! It's the right shape and everything!

Breadmakery fiasco

Greetings. How are you? I am fine. Remember writing letters when you were a kid and that's sort of how they would all start? Simpler times, man.

I am in the process of ruining some bread at the moment. Why yes, I DO have a bread machine. I am just so inept that it's STILL not working out for me, haha. (FYI the photo to the right is entitled "Oh My God, What the Fuck is Happening?!") Here's the thing, the bread maker only came with a couple recipes (and there's not a good one for whole wheat) so I have been scouring the internets for more. I found one that sounded good and got good reviews so I decided to try it. The recipe claimed to make a one pound loaf of bread and my bread machine can only make a two pound loaf at the smallest. I was worried that the smaller loaf would just end up getting burned so I doubled the recipe. Also, doubling the recipe meant that it used the same amount of flour that my usual bread recipe uses and that always works out fine. I had no reason to believe that this was going to be a fiasco! With one hour left on the timer I noticed that my bread had gotten so huge that it was starting to lift the lid on the machine! It's trying to escape, hide your children! It will consume us alllll!!! Ahem, sorry. So I decided to remove the bread from the machine and put it in the oven. This meant slowly opening the lid and using a rubber spatula to scrape the bread off of it. This meant puncturing the bread. Now it's all saggy, it looks like it just gave birth! That loaf needs a tummy tuck, fo sho. It's currently in the oven and I'm keeping a pretty close eye on it. Right now it's so tall that it's going to touch the top of the oven soon... That seems safe and not at all a fire hazard.

BREAD UPDATE!


OK, problem with moving the bread pan to the oven - it's not really intended for that. Only the top two inches or so cooked and rose properly. The top of the bread was bordering on burnt so I took the pan out and turned the bread out on to a wire rack. At this point, the handle of the bread pan (so that you can pull it out of the bread machine) flopped over the top of the bread and totally severed the loaf in half to reveal that it was still totally dough inside. This was when I decided to try and cram it back into the pan (with little effect). Plan B (or probably plan L at this point) involved taking the dough out and slicing it into misshapen bread-like monstrosities. Here's hoping they don't taste like balls cuz they sure as fuck look like it...

Incidentally, the top layer that rose OK does in fact look and taste like bread. Delicious bread even. You can sort of pretend like it's a baguette. If you have really low standards.

Nearly February

Hello all! By "all" I mean the two people that read this. It's been a while, I know. January has been an interesting month, I must say. I moved out for the first time into a great apartment and was finally starting to get settled in and unpacked when all hell broke loose.
It was a lazy Sunday, I was hung over and about to make some French toast when I heard this gushing noise as if someone had just turned a shower on. I figured it was just a neighbour until I realized I don't even HAVE a neighbour on that side. I head downstairs to see if it's coming from the bathroom and the fire bell starts blaring! I'm already thinking "oh shit" when I see all this brown water flooding out of my bathroom and into my hallway! It's making it's way to Ashley's rooms so I yell for her and we both have a fucking anneurism. Meanwhile, fire alarm is still going so we grab our purses and keys and head to the front and see what the hell's going on.
The fire department shows up and Ashley flags them down to tell them about the flood we've got. They check it out and it turns out the pipe leading to the spinkler system had frozen and burst. Now, these lines to generally get cleared unless there is an actual fire so the water that's pumping into the apartment is filthy and smells wrected, with this really pungent metal smell. They turn the water off to that pipe and we can finally go into the apartment and get anything off the floor that needs to be moved.
The water completely soaked the floor in Ashley's room, the hallway, and half of my room. It was a complete fiasco because we had to move nearly everything from the downstairs area back upstairs. Our living room looked like a self storage locker. It's a good thing it was a building fault so the carpet cleaning and replacing the bathroom floor was all covered by management. And we even got a new bathroom floor out of the deal, which is great because the old one was pretty fugly. But I had to go live at my parents' place for a week. It's funny, I finally move out after 24 years and I have to come right back again within two weeks.
Everything is pretty much back to normal now though. I even managed to get most of the things that I still had at mom and dad's over here. And I finally got my curtains put up today (with Ashley's help of course, being that I'm super short and couldn't reach where I wanted to install the rod even while standing on a chair).

Exciting times!

We all thought it would never happen, but I am finally leaving the nest! Ashley and I (plus kitty) found a two bedroom in Clayton Park to call home starting January first! I'm so excited but nervous at the same time. I know I will be fine living away from home (it's not far), I'm just worried that I will start finding horrible things wrong with the place once we're moved in. So far the building seems non-sketchy (although a bit old) and it's close to all necessities. It's got two levels - the top is the living room and a small galley style kitchen and the bottom is the two bedrooms and the bathroom. The place has tons of storage and both of the bedrooms are larger than what I have here at my parents' place. I dropped off our applications today and paid the damage deposit and we'll be signing the lease next week. Yay! I can't wait to buy stuff to furnish the place with. I'll only be able to get a few necessities at first (like a bed, that would be great) but gradually we can start swapping out the hand-me-downs for nicer stuff. Anyway, that's all I really have to say about the subject. End transmission.