Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Porch, redux

An excellent weekend on the house (pix below).

We’re into a cycle of solving problems and uncovering new ones, much like doing the Wuzzle’s room, which ended up taking months. I’m sort of mellow about it now – it’s just the way it’s going to be.

The solved problem was the porch’s front beam, which we’ve cased with new pine boards to make it look reasonably straight, and also to avoid having to strip all the old paint. The problem was to create a rectangle about 15” by 20’ in an irregular shape.

C., who has a better spatial sense than I do, suggested putting 1x12 on the bottom of the front beam, covering the leftover area on top with scraps, then concealing that with trim – I did it the other way round last weekend.

I was a bit self-conscious about the previous attempt, one, because it looked silly and lopsided, two, because the opposite neighbour is about to put his house on the market (it looks very Homes and Gardens; there were professional window-washers there this morning, and pots of geraniums have materialized on the front doorstep) and we are that house’s view. It’s a bit like the Melita house was before it was sold – a sort of idealized tableau of a house, rather than a place people might actually be living.

Anyway, the line between looking like a promising work in progress and looking like a bizarre disaster is a fine one, and my conscience is reasonably clear.

The new unsolved problem is the state of the front board on the gable, which (it became clear) really should be replaced. The curved ornamental boards are rotted a bit at the corners, and could be taken out and reproduced. I could use the router table, or maybe a fine blade on the jigsaw. Next weekend's project.

Pix!

Pix!

'Mr. Mitty is with us now in the studio ... '

Finder's points to Bill Doskoch:

BBC News 'wrong Guy' is revealed

Guy Goma, a graduate from the Congo, appeared on the news channel in place of an IT expert after a mix-up.

But Mr Goma, who was wrongly identified in the press as a taxi driver, was really at the BBC for a job interview.

Mr Goma said his appearance was "very stressful" and wondered why the questions were not related to the data support cleanser job he applied for.

...Mr Goma said his interview was "very short", but he was prepared to return to the airwaves and was "happy to speak about any situation".

He added that next time he would insist upon "preparing myself".

Full story

Today …

… is the Wuzzle’s half-birthday. Here’s how he looked six months ago:

They put a hat on him, as you can see in the picture; it slipped down over his eyes, I adjusted it, and he exploded - being extruded through someone’s pelvis was bad enough (he was born with an expression of astonished indignation, as perhaps everybody is), but now somebody was messing with his hat! Bah!

‘We’re going to like each other,’ I thought, and we have.

la luta continua

Our slow, glacier-like drift toward respectability continues. This weekend’s installment: covering over the gaping maw at the end of the porch with tongue-and-groove. With trim, this will look nearly plausible. I wish I remembered more from Grade 8 geometry, but it can't be helped.

Someone at Slate had the idea of testing a series of bike locks to see how easy they were to crack. It’s interesting; I’m glad I’m not relying on just a cable lock any more. If they’re as easy to cut as the writer found, it explains a certain amount about the two times I’ve had a bike stolen (it was the same bike; it’s an odd story).

The heavy chain locks and the New York lock come off well, maybe not surprisingly.

Two problems, though: as a couple of people in the comments section pointed out, the writer didn’t use a car jack in his lock-breaking arsenal, and he didn’t test the StocksLock (above). It’s a pity, because it’s conceptually different from the others tested, as opposed to just being another brand.

This rain barrel business

We figured out how to install the rain barrels – that’s wasn't the hard part.

Finding a place for the water to go once it's collected: that's where the instructions get a bit vague, and now I know why. Here's how the barrels looked this morning:

There's 220L in the first barrel, 190L in the second one and 75L in the backup overflow, which as you can see is full. That's a grand total of 385L, and there must have been overflow from that – the garbage can is brimming. We emptied them last night, so this is all from overnight rainfall.

We could point the overflow hose out on to the lawn, but it's a bit higher than the patio, which means overflow goes back toward the house. (Thanks, Mr. Concrete!)

We may end up digging a dry well, though in a household where 'We need a project!' is a running joke, I'm not sure when I'd get to it.

Here's the forecast:

Jilly’s, you ho, this is all your fault

Joe Clark explains it all: yes, there’s an impending Leslieville Starbucks; no, that isn’t a bad thing.

I’ve always liked Starbucks, as heretical as that may sound - the Church and Wellesley one is the nearest decent coffee place to Ryerson. Besides, I like their coffee – it’s the closest you can buy to the way I make it myself.

I never got the point of that impossibly self-absorbed episode in the Annex when the gates of hell opened after the Dooney’s landlord tried to rent to them instead. (Good idea or bad idea, why would anybody west of Bathurst care?)

I was delighted when they set up across the street from Dooney’s and prospered.

Clark also beats up a soon-to-be Leslieville deli owner who describes his market as ‘quality middle-class people with comfortable finances,’ something he probably shouldn’t be allowed to live down.

I’m not sure how his business plan ended up as a public document, but it’s very entertaining:

An impulse purchase at the Cheese Market after brunch on a Sunday requires employment and financial security. People in this segment are homogeneous in their middle-class food needs: Quality meats, produce, cheese, and other dairy including eggs. These items are purchased locally at supermarkets and specialty stores, and cooked at home many nights of the week.

It’s interesting to note that, despite Price Chopper’s consistently lower prices…, Loblaws has… three or four times the number of customers… These customers are in a financial and social position in society that allows them to decide that they will never cross Leslie St. to set foot in Price Chopper.

No, no, no. The problem with Price Chopper is that it has consistently low prices and quality to match, unlike Bulk Barn (in the same building as Loblaws) or the Gerrard No Frills.

Beyond segmenting by location, the socioeconomic demographic of cheese buyers is very broad. People of all ages love cheese, but only people of a certain age buy cheese. High school students are out. University students might want to buy cheese, but with the exception of special occasions, student loans come first. An impulse purchase at the Cheese Market after brunch on a Sunday requires employment and financial security. In terms of age, there's no limit — old people love cheese!

Do bankers have to read this sort of thing all day long? I can’t imagine.

raccoon update

Much raccoon drama after dusk last night - kits squeaking in our rafters, the mother pounding around on the roof and staring into the study window, kits scurrying back and forth, the litter eventually gathered into a nearby tree. They're not subtle animals, to say the least. Neither are we, I guess.

All I can say - the talk radio method for getting rid of raccoons really, really works. I know it would work on me.

progress

The new porch ceiling (now on the diagonal, under the roof) is now covered with 1" tongue-and-groove boards, a harder, longer, fussier job than I thought it would be. Something to do with the warp in the boards combined with the uneven rafters combined with having to teeter on a ladder. The rate of progress at one point was one foot eastward an hour.

The raccoon, now on top of the neighbour's porch ceiling, is being treated to cayenne pepper and CFRB in a renewed effort to persuade her to go away.

In other news (below) the Wuzzle enjoys a swing in the aftermath of a written-off attempt at a nap:

A half-day on the porch; the Wuzzle and I were keeping each other company in the morning. In the afternoon, I solved a long-standing problem, and insulated under the bay window:

all's well that ends well

We came outside just now to find one kit hanging precariously from a rafter, one on the porch, having fallen off - he seemed fine - and one successfully recovered by the mother, who hissed suspiciously at me from the neighbour's porch.

She then retrieved kit #2, but couldn't seem to see how at get at #3. She hissed at me and I hissed at the kit as he toddled toward me. He just looked confused. In the end, the kit solved the problem by climbing into the sweeping bucket, which I used to deliver him to the rafters at arm's length.

hot shower, cold beer, feel much better

I stripped the porch ceiling down today, the messiest job imaginable.

As far as I can tell, the mother raccoon abandoned her kits (they're in the den of insulating foam at right). I thought they were all gone. The 2x4 is supposed to encourage them to leave, or for the mother to come back and get them. Hopefully, this will happen overnight.

It turns out that they had chewed, or clawed, themselves a burrow in a solid block of insulating foam under the window - this must be where the infinite number of foam bits came from.