The Fonzie Apartment

The apartment above our garage is now inhabited, and both Evan and Peter gave good guesses as to the inhabitants, however neither was correct. Apartments are ripe with possible pop references including one of my personal movie favorites is the Billy Wilder classic "The Apartment". But that has nothing to do with Garages and the definitive "above the garage apartment" that belonged to the Cunninghams and was inhabited by Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli (aka The Fonz). Just like the Cunninghams we have also invited someone to stay in our apartment for an undetermined amount of time. In fact we have invited an entire family to stay in our aparment!

Michelle's sister Laurie and her S.O. (read: common-law partner) Rick are currently building a house that is not finished. Despite promises and plans for the house to be done by today (Jan 31) The house is currently missing some windows, all of its drywall, all of the flooring. While the basement is warm and has its windows there is no way into the house without some form of ladder. Anyway because of promises and plans they had to move yesterday and they had no where to move to, so a couple of weeks ago Michelle and I offered that they could live in our apartment for the interim. Oh, of course Laurie and Rick bring with them their three children: Matthew (2), Aidan(5) and Sydney (15). Yes our apartment is a bachelor and the fridge they brought is in the hallway! But then cramped life with your precious belongings is better than hotel life ($$$) and fewer belongings.

For those of you who think moving is fun most of us believe that it is more akin to organ removal without anesthesia. This was reinforced yesterday by the exhaustion and troubles faced by the end of the night. It seems that not all of the outlets in our hallway work! So the location of the fridge seemed in doubt until we managed to work something out.

The adventure of home ownership continues...

For the record there seem to be very few pictures of the Fonz's apartment (this is a challenge to anyone who thinks they know the web and how to search it ;-).
The included photo was all that I found.

Update on the Flood...

So the plumber finished his task on Friday. Indeed the shower cylinder had blown apart and then it was time to "check the system". Checking the system is an advanced proceedure whereby I walk back to the house, into the basement and turn on the water for 30 seconds. If the water continues to flow then the leak is not fixed and hopefully the plumber has had enough time to find the problem. Truly modern day. So with the faucet fixed I went to check the system and since the water meter did not stop ticking I waited a full 30 seconds before turning it off. When I got back to the garage the plumber told me there was another leak in wall. So he tore a small hole (read 1' by 2') in the garage drywall. Sure enough the pipe had burst at an elbow near the shower and had been emptying into the wall, and subsequently into the garage, the apartment or back down the conduit into the basement. Once that was fixed I went back to the house to check the system again.

Again I was dissappointed when the water meter continued to happily click away for another 30 seconds. I was about to climb the stairs from the basement when I heard the plumber burst through the front door saying in a panicked voice: "Did you turn it off??". When I meekly said "yes", he promptly replied "thank god" and left the house. When I caught up to him he said there were two more leaks and there was now water in the garage.

It seems that the garden hose in the back of the house is on a line of pipe that starts in the wall right by the shower (where the elbow had burst). The pipe comes out of the wall and travels along the ceiling of the garage where it travels down the back wall of the garage, through the wall to a tap on the exterior wall. The two breaks had occurred in the pipe against the ceiling and with the elbow repaired they had gushed. I then made the executive decision to fix that entire line, which included a rupture near the tap that had occured previous to our ownership.

With all of that done the plumber left happily and I was left with the 1'x2' hole in my wall that probably makes the shower a little colder.... but the other news about our apartment will have to wait. The teaser is that someone is moving into the apartment today! No it isn't Michelle or I but someone else... any guesses?


There were a total of 3 new pipe breaks, a destroyed shower cylinder (the thingy behind the tap) and one old pipe break were the water had been turned off.

The Great Flood of 06

I declare that as of Tuesday January 23^rd I am a Manitoban. The reason for my declaration is that Michelle and I were forced to divert our first flood since moving to the province. A flood that I hope is the great flood of 06.

The story begins on Sunday, which at -30C was the coldest day of the winter so far. Nothing truly spectacular happened that day except that it was cold and we finished the hardwood flooring in the bedroom! We went to sleep (in the office) knowing that we had done a good job and we were glad the house was warm.

On Monday we awoke a little late and a little tired and I noticed that for an inexplicable reason the winterized garage doors were open. This is odd because I had been out to the garage once but specifically remembered closing the door. Of course the door remote was in my pocket and I could have set it off putting on my pants that morning... we have no idea how long the doors were open. The temperature was still rising at -10 and by the end of the day it rained.

After work on Monday we voted, purchased our bedframe, borrowed my sister's wet-vac and I then tried to remove the last remnant of odor from our front room carpets using baking soda, soap and hydrogen peroxide. After an hour of work I was glad it was warmer out and I was contemplating what the next endeavour would be now that the floors in the bedroom were done. We watched as the conservatives only took a minority government and went to bed tired as usual.

That night is a blur, one maybe two trips to the bathroom but nothing out of the ordinary. When I awoke I took out my earplugs (an addiction I am trying to kick) and heard then gentle click, click, click of the water meter in the room below the office. That is when I realized with horror that Michelle had not used the bathroom recently and where the heck was water running?!? I startled Michelle awake and we started running around the house looking for running water. We found nothing until I went to check on the hot water heater and that is when I saw water coming to the drain from room with the electrical panel.

Running into that room I spotted water coming up from the floor at the spot where the water goes out to the apartment above the garage. This horrified me. I shut off the water to the apartment and the water meter stopped clicking. The water from the floor did not. Michelle went to the garage as I used my sister's wet-vac to stem the modest tide in the basement. Michelle returned with word of disaster: "This is nothing compared to the apartment". The tile entrance way, the bathroom and the garage floor were flooded about a 1/4 inch. It looks like the shower unit (at the front of the first floor) froze and the tab pushed out and then broke. When the apartment warmed up (it was 0C when we entered) the shower started spraying and water went down the pipes to drip on the floor, into the conduit back to the house, and sprayed out of the shower. Not a single square centimeter of drywall is affected! The water is shut off and the plumber will attack tomorrow (Thursday). It took 3+ hours to vacuum up the flooding and I am hoping that is the only issue we have with water in the house for a while.

One less headache...the hardwood is laid

Just a quick update - this weekend Jason and I managed to get the hardwood floors laid in the bedroom that we hope to soon take residence. The walls are in desparate need of painting and we will still need to lay down the baseboards...but all of these are (hopefully) easier steps than leveling the sub-floor and laying the actual hardwood. Unfortunately, I had the digital camera at work, and so we weren't able to take a picture of Jason's wonderful job on the sub-floor before it became transformed. Pics of the hardwood soon to follow.

I'm sure that Jason will have some stories to share...but here is my take of the experience:

1) Doing renovations with a spouse is a trying experience for both parties - as any couple will attest.

2) While doing renovations, spouses are nicer to each other when a third-party is present. For several hours on day 2 - my brother Paul was there to help. With the three of us working, we managed to get much farther along than Jason and I alone could have hoped. We each had our task - mine, to set up the next few courses of wood; Jason to tamp each piece into place; Paul - to use the power nailer to get everything that Jason couldn't tamp into place to fit as snuggly as possible to the other boards as well as to identify when some of the boards needed to be placed just a bit differently so that later on we would be much happier with the job.

3) Each spouse has his/her own particular expertise that they bring to the event. In our case - my ability to eye-ball relative "straightness" of lines, laying out wood so that it looks pretty, being able to identify that 'this will drive me crazy (and hence you crazy) in the future if we don't fix this little problem now', and (most-importantly) being able to recognize Jason's skills and therefore be content with being a go-to-gal (i.e. getting what is missing in the room); Jason's ability to accurately measure, engineer creative solutions to difficult areas, natural propensity to research things in advance both to be informed as well as able to implement useful hints, and pure endurance to spend that much time on his knees and crawling around on the ground to get everything in place (particularly since my knees just can't do that concentrated effort). All expertise is valid.

4) The parable - give someone a fish and their hunger will be sated temporarily; teach someone to fish and they will never go hungry again...plays out in the carpentry world. While I may have initially owned more power tools than Jason, he had the knowledge, experience and practice with them. When Jason patiently showed me how to do something (albeit the 'patience' occasionally seemed more like frustration - refer to point #1), he found that the time spent was much more fruitful later on in the job because he could just say "we need the wedge here" and I knew exactly what to do. (NOTE: the 'wedge' was a really creative solution that Jason read in one of his books that shows you how to get one piece of board to fit more snuggly against another piece of board - particularly when one of the boards is slightly warped.)

5) It's a great source of pride in doing the job ourselves (mistakes, problems and everything) but next time...hire it out.

On this job, I became much more proficient at using the drill, the table saw, the brad nailer, the power nailer and the air compressor. Most importantly from this job, Jason and I are still friend.

I'm sure there is more to write, but that's it for now.

7th Annual Cancer Survival Party

Okay...now I'm really out of sequence. I forgot to mention the one factor that got Jason and I to get the house in the best shape yet! We hosted our Annual cancer survival party on January 14. For two days before the event, Jason and I spent a great deal of time trying to put all those items that had come out of boxes into their rightful spaces. But, we ran out of time, and have at least managed to relocate the dumping ground from the cedar room/spa room to the basement. We entertained about 17 friends and family at the house. It was a wonderful time. We got to use our new-to-us wet bar and eat, drink and be merry. It was very fun. Except...

We still have a problem with the heating in our house. There is a large crawl space underneath what we call the "river room" - which is really the living and dining room. I typically find this room very cold. Unfortunately, one of our guests got so cold (she has absolutely no body fat) she had to leave early. Jason and I are now moving this area of the house higher up the priority list to get someone in to clean out the crawl space. Then we can insulate some of the areas that likely haven't been insulated yet. I think this should make a big difference. We will have to wait for spring to work on the roof (a problem we knew was present, but can't deal with it until the snow goes away). Sigh...will it ever end?

Further to Renovations

So...we are finally at a stage where we can start laying down the hardwood that we have purchased into our bedroom. I can't wait. Jason has spent a great deal of time with some help from a friend, Brett, to lay down 1/2 inch thick pieces of spruce plywood. I was able to help a bit over the last couple of nights. Jason and Brett did the majority of the nailing. Let me tell you, I tried to wield the 20 ounce hammer and nail in a couple of times...I don't think I am even as strong as a very weak man! It took me multiple whacks (and my whacks just weren't strong enough). At least I had Jason laughing at my attempts. I discovered that I was much better at pre-drilling in screw holes and then drilling in the screws. That was much more fun, but hard on my knees. Even with the wonderful knee pads (originally purchased to save our knees from our snow-boarding lessons last year), it wasn't quite enough.

Wednesday night - the night that Moe re-offended and landed himself back in the re-training room - Jason applied the last of the "goop" to fill in the cracks between the boards and to level the room appropriately. Well, I guess "level" is a relative term for this room. I don't believe Jason has mentioned it, but this room used to be 2 rooms. One half of the room is one level, and the other half shows a half inch down slope. To help things even further, part of that half is only a quarter-inch off.

Let's just say that we were very happy when Brett came by with his fancy laser level and we mapped out the various heights of the room. I think the hardwood (which we will begin laying tomorrow) will look much better now.

If only I could get in there to paint...with all of the sawing of wood, I didn't want sawdust on my freshly painted wall. Now Jason wants to keep the ugly peach colour until the wood is layed so that he doesn't have to worry about damaging the wall. More on this soon, I'm sure...

Further to Moe and CSI

Well, that little Moe of ours continues to foil our best efforts. On Wednesday of this week, I had made an appointment for the carpet cleaners to come reapply their stuff to remove the last of the smell. It was heavenly...well, at least heavenly after I was able to air out the fumes. By evening, the carpet was dry and I was anxious to get the room set up again. (Note: We had just gotten cable a few days before and I really just wanted to relax in front of the tv. As a secondary note: apparently we had free cable but didn't notice. Oops). I digress...

I had gotten everything ready and was just waiting for Jason to finish applying the "goop" to the upstairs floor. (see Further to Renovations in next posting). So, while I waited, I was sitting in my IKEA chair with my feet up and a blanket around me watching...yes, you guessed it...CSI. Moe, the cute cuddly feline, was exploring the room and sniffing everywhere. I was watching him more intently than I was watching the show. Moe would sniff, and then he would leave. He would return, sniff in places and then leave. After a while I figured he just couldn't find the spots that he remembered marking. I thought "Great! problem solved". Ahhh...silly human that I am. I begin to relax and watch the program on tv. Sure enough, I notice Moe adopting a particularly familiar stance - one that he uses when in the litter box. I immediately get up, see that he is peeing on the carpet and scare him out of the room in mid-pee. Thank goodness his peeing stopped while he was running away. Amidst a series of curses and scoldings, Jason asks innocently from upstairs "What's wrong?" Amidst more curses and scoldings, Jason realizes what Moe has done. I sopped things up and applied vinegar and water. Sadly, the combination of Moe and the vinegar made my room, which had just moments before smelled pretty, smell gross.

Given my anger and frustration, Moe was immediately placed back in his isolation room. He is still there. I didn't need the black light to help me find the spot this time. Jason and I will be going to purchase moth-ball crystals (which my vet handout said was a good thing to discourage cats from re-offending) before we let Moe back out. Even once we do, I think we will restrict his access. In the last few days that Moe has had free range of the house (with the exception of the carpeted room), his behaviour has been exemplary. Sigh. Hopefully moth-balls will work.

Further to Internet Access Challenges

My silence on this whole process is deafening (at least to me). Jason has done an excellent job of keeping things posted, but for me it has been more of a challenge. I have to travel a considerable distance within my building to get to a computer and the Internet. Hence, I do this infrequently at best. I only remember that I should have entered something into the blog after I am in my car driving home. Sadly, my car doesn't have computer access. In any event, this is back on my radar screen. Expect many more entries from me.

Moe the Cat and CSI

So Moe the Cat became a Manitoban before I did. Moe travelled to Winnipeg in late November and lived with my in-laws and their two cats. The other two cats are also persians and they are both much bigger than Moe, who was probably the runt of his litter. Anyway while Michelle was with Moe everything went well and then Moe spent three weeks with my in-laws and the "other cats".

The "other cats" turned on moe and blockaded him in a room. My mother in-law rounded on them and defended Moe and eventually Moe used his cuteness to wile his way into the daily lives of everyone including the "other cats". By the time Michelle returned to Manitoba and was preparing to recieve the furniture Moe was feeling at home in my in-laws house. That's when I arrived and a day later all three of us moved into the new house. At first Moe kept running around (largely to avoid us). He quickly settled in and during the first day he ate food and used his litter box.

Then Moe found a closet that was to his liking and he hid among our clothes while we worked on painting and other miscellanous tasks. While painting the front room I watched as Moe walked up to the fireplace in the front room and peed in the stone wood box beside the fireplace. We cleaned the area and put something there to stop the peeing in that location.

We quickly also noted (or rather Michelle did) that Moe stopped peeing in his litter box. After 2 days of this we started to worry. By day 3 or 4 we started to smell something in the front hallway. We did what we could but we didn't know where he was peeing exactly. Examining the area around his previous infraction did not help and that is in the room next to the front hallway. As the smell slowly increased we got upset and angry. We bought dettol and washed the front office/bedroom that really smelled like cat pee.

Not having the internet to check things out we directed others to make searches for us. This didn't really work but seemed to indicate that something like a blacklight from CSI -- might work. We finally snapped (not having internet to check things out just further frustrated us) and Michelle stopped at Home Depot and bought an Incandescent Black light. We tried it and it failed miserably.

We called several pet stores and one happened to have something called a "Spot Spotter" that had been sitting on their shelves a very long time. At $30 it seemed like a steal. We bought it, pumped 8 "AA" batteries into it and Voila! it worked. For the record it is a UV blacklight in a purple case and looks exactly like the ones they use on CSI. We discovered that Moe had never peed in the front hallway or in our bedroom. He was peeing in the carpet in the room with the fireplace. There were 9 spots and we don't know if they were all Moe. Perhaps an earlier pet, before the previous owner. We then started to by cleaning products and used dettol and vinegar and water solutions. This chemical soup caused such a stench that we called in a professional to use an antimicrobial on the carpets that should kill anything smaller than a pinhead for months to come. Of course it removed most, but not all, of the smell and after waiting the customary week they will apply it for free as soon as we call.

We also put Moe in an isolation room for a week. We went down for twenty minutes to an hour at a time, we included his favorite toys, scratching post, food and litter box. We have barracaded off the room he offended in and he is happily using his litter and eating well. We currently allow Moe into the fireplace room while we are there but we keep the CSI light handy in case we suspect anything more.

Moving day, our bedroom and renovations...

Our furniture was to be delivered on Dec 22^nd, with Michelle supervising while I was proctoring my last exam in Ottawa. Our plan was to live with two bedrooms of furniture in our smaller front bedroom. The logistics of that plan would enable us to quickly renovate the downstairs, which would largely involve painting. After the downstairs was set-up our cramped quarters upstairs would "force" us to renovate our larger bedroom.

To understand why we felt the need to renovate the room only requires a description of the original state of the room. When we moved in, the larger bedroom had a stage. This was a raised area taking up a quarter of the original room that was not large enough to accomodate a queen sized bed. The closet had mirrored sliding doors and the wall surrounding the closet was also mirrored. The baseboards, window and door casements were all painted a horrible peach colour with the non-mirrored walls painted a pinky peach that was equally hideous. The only "tasteful" guess for this particular combination of decor is that the person wished to sit on an elevated bed and look out the windows at the river. Non-tasteful guesses have mainly included video cameras.

Our plans fell apart when our 1934 stairwell could not accomodate our queen size bed. Michelle adapted quickly using our main floor office space as a bedroom. Unfortunately this means our office stuff is now in the basement rec room. This cascade has moved up the need to renovate the bedroom because both of our offices at U of M are currently under construction. For me the situation is not too bad because I have a temporary space in the associate Chair's, rather grand, office while he is on Sabbatical. Michelle is not so fortunate and needs a space a home because at work she is still without a computer or an internet connection in her temporary space.

Thus we painted what was necessary on the first floor and immediately tore up the stage and removed the baseboards in the upstairs room. We also purchased solid wood flooring and I am preparing to buy and secure the necessary underlay. Of course that is worthy of another entry.

Let me say one thing about moving and renovating: I have never had a full appreciation for those who have renovated thier homes. Painting, putty work, drywall repair, general fixes, and demolition are all individually painful. And for the record I am speaking of being in physical pains and being mentally exhausted.

Still I love my house and the property (20+ minutes this morning to clear 3cm of snow covered with a very light crust of ice temp: 0 deg C).

Proving Canada is a Really Big Place

To prove to anyone that Canada is a really big place I recommend having them walk west off of the U of M campus. nuff said.

Becoming a Manitoban

For the record I have been an Ontarian since I was ten days old, previous to which I was barely concious and an Albertan. Growing up I lived in Windsor, London, Burlington, Hamilton and Ottawa with heavy emphasis on Burlington and Ottawa. With that number of moves in my past and such a large variety of cities under my belt I was not overly concerned about moving again and felt I was prepared for Winnipeg. On December 23rd I bravely set off on a one way flight to Winnipeg. At approximately 3:30 pm (CST) the plane crossed over into Manitoba and a strange though occurred to me... "Am I a Manitoban yet and if I am not then when will I become a Manitoban?". From that moment on I watched for signs of my induction into Manitoban life.

By geography it was at 3:30 on the 23rd that I became Manitoban.

It was not until the plane landed that the pilot of the airplane said "... and if you are from Winnipeg: Welcome home". A dubious welcome at best.

Several days later (the 27th I believe) I obtained Manitoba's most revered membership and identification: a Safeway Card. Unlike anywhere I have lived before, Manitoba (and Winnipeg especially) believes that there must be a discount on something before it can be purchased. This coveted membership card enables me to get points when I buy groceries, obtain discounts and perhaps even get coupons to get more money off at safeway gas stations. Note: that all gas stations I have seen give 3.5 cents per litre off the listed price!

On January 4th I gave up my Ontario Driver's License for a Manitoba Driver's License. This event replaced my oldest provincial identification so perhaps that was the moment I became Manitoban. (Don't get me started on Insurance, Driving here or perception of the amount "traffic").

Of course I will have to wait until three months after I have moved here to get a Manitoba Health Card. In the meantime I hope I don't need a hospital, because it isn't until sometime around April Fool's Day that I officially become Manitoban, at least according to the province.

Keeping a blog without an Internet connection

Just a comment to anyone that might be listening... don't start a blog and then move. The problem is that you don't have reliable internet when you move somewhere. Certainly we arrived in Winnipeg safely and our relatives here all have internet connections, but it is an uncomfortable thing to ask someone to use their computer to enter your blog. This is exasperated if you already have to ask people to visit their house so you can use their computer to enter grades. So the blog has been out of date and there is a lot of news and events in our lives but they have had to wait until now because it has taken 2 days of work (Tues and Wed) to get a connection to the internet here at work. Oh and I did bring my own laptop, it just took 2 days to find the right person to register the MAC address and thereby enable my internet capabilities. More soon.