Posts in category "Photos"

Got My House Back

House stippling

The house is final­ly back to its’ for­mer glo­ry. The exhaust pipes to my water heater and fur­nace have been replaced, the holes in the ceil­ings have been patched up, sand­ed, stip­pled, and paint­ed.

This means a few things of sig­nif­i­cance:

  • I get to dress based on mood again. I would come home and hang my clothes off the ban­is­ter, then put the same clothes on in the morn­ing, because my clos­et doors would be taped shut to pre­vent dust and errant paint/stipple from get­ting in there.
  • I get to sleep in my bed again. The entire bed­room was a mess, so I had been sleep­ing on the couch for almost three weeks. It felt weird to go back to a big mat­tress, like I was sleep­ing on some sort of unlim­it­ed sur­face area.
  • I get to use my photo/Tai Chi stu­dio. Almost all my fur­ni­ture was moved to the guest room. I haven’t been able to prac­tice my Tai Chi, or take pic­tures of things against a drop sheet.
  • I have the use of my main com­put­er. Playing games on a lap­top screen does­n’t cut it when you’re used to three 24″ mon­i­tors, and music sounds the way it’s sup­posed to when you have a decent sub­woofer.
  • No more time off work. I’m lucky in that I have such a short com­mute, but being there dur­ing con­struc­tion still meant that I lost two days of pay.

I spent most of the week­end wip­ing dust of every­thing down­stairs — walls, mir­rors, dec­o­ra­tions, counter tops. The splat­ters of paint were tak­en care of with a bot­tle of Varsol and a Q‑tip. A few paint touch-ups were need­ed too, but noth­ing too bad. Then the house got an over­all clean­ing, to get rid of the evi­dence of mud­dy boots, dirt, and ran­dom pieces of garbage brought in dur­ing the whole process.

My back and feet are still sore from rush­ing to get every­thing done, but it was oh so worth it to have the cozy com­fort of my house again.

Documentary Night

Picking vinyl

Thumbnail: Banister kitty
Thumbnail: CD rack
Thumbnail: Playing Wii
Thumbnail: Tree piece
Thumbnail: Stealing kitty
 

A cam­era to mask my shy­ness, a lens to hide behind.

At Audra and Jesse’s I felt like I was back in uni­ver­si­ty. Meeting peo­ple, learn­ing names, throw­ing in for some piz­za. Except this time, I was­n’t being dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing to the par­ty. Maybe I was just feel­ing social, because I had­n’t seen my own friends in so long.

I learned that play­ing Punch Out on the Wii is as nat­ur­al to you as it was back when you were in your room back in ele­men­tary school, cry­ing because you were no one’s best friend. That watch­ing Air Guitar Nation — when it’s hard to tell how seri­ous­ly the con­tes­tants take them­selves — is much more enjoy­able with sar­cas­tic com­ments applied lib­er­al­ly from the audi­ence.

I want to know these peo­ple.

I want to find out what dri­ves them. I want to know why they cre­ate, why they’ve cho­sen their medi­ums. Why they hang out togeth­er. Why they stud­ied what they stud­ied. Why they have the jobs they do.

They’re well-read, edu­cat­ed, opin­ion­at­ed, cos­mopoli­tan. I felt some­what out of place. Topics of con­ver­sa­tion weren’t even close to my inter­ests. Concerts aren’t my scene. Politics con­fuse me. Things are hap­pen­ing to oth­er friends I’ve nev­er met. But when there’s this much to learn, lis­ten­ing is just as good as tak­ing part.

It was past mid­night by the time I got home, but I had hard time falling asleep. My brain was buzzing, try­ing to take in every­thing I had just expe­ri­enced.

Back To Life

Christmas lights

Thumbnail: Present wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Cat under Christmas tree
Thumbnail: Scented infuser sticks
Thumbnail: Blue-pink gradient
Thumbnail: Powdered candy
 

The hol­i­days are over. I sus­pect that I’ve eat­en more choco­late over the last two weeks than ever in my life.

The two New Year’s par­ties were great, although I missed see­ing Rob at Aaron’s. I did get a New Year’s kiss though, some­thing I nor­mal­ly feel awk­ward about when the cou­ples are all par­tak­ing and I hide behind my cam­era.

The holes in my ceil­ings have yet to be fixed, and it makes me cringe every time I walk into my bed­room or bath­room, so I spent all my time in the liv­ing room. Every day, I’d wake up, eat, play games, watch movies, then fall back asleep there.

On occa­sion, I’d vis­it friends or see a movie, if only for the sake of get­ting out. Some nights, I’d open the blinds and let the burn­ing sky pour in, just so I could know that there was some­thing out there out­side of my lit­tle micro­cosm.

I’m glad to be back to life. I was feel­ing so lack­adaisi­cal and dis­con­nect­ed, drift­ing aim­less­ly with­out any rea­son or pur­pose. In a strange way, I feel recharged, if only because I had two weeks with­out a reg­u­lar sched­ule.

The Return of Water

Well, I have water. And hot water too. I’ve been doing loads of laun­dry and dish­es in the dish­wash­er. Not to men­tion sweet, sweet BMs on a toi­let.

Bathroom ceiling

Bedroom ceiling

But my bath­room and bed­room ceil­ings still look like this. Not to men­tion the coarse dust on every­thing and the uproot­ed fur­ni­ture. I had sev­er­al entries with pic­tures to post, but my colour-cal­i­brat­ed mon­i­tors are sit­ting in the spare room. I have no idea when the con­trac­tor is going to be back to get every­thing dirty again. Otherwise, I’d do some clean­ing.

Either the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny is on hol­i­day (which con­tra­dicts what the work­er said), or they’re dodg­ing me, because I haven’t been able to get a hold of any­one for days now. I’m stuck in lim­bo here, lit­er­al­ly liv­ing in the liv­ing room (what a fit­ting name). It’s left me rather sick and unmo­ti­vat­ed.