Posts tagged with "vent"

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.

Holiday Hell

Nightmare. The word almost every­one has been using to describe this hot water sit­u­a­tion. From my friends and cowork­ers, to the plumb­ing tech­ni­cians, to the sales reps, to the con­trac­tors.

When the con­trac­tor came over to make holes in my ceil­ing, he brushed against a pipe that went to the hot water tank, and since it was almost rust­ed com­plete­ly through, it snapped and start­ed leak­ing. Water shoots out of the hole any time I turn the water on, so I’ve had to shut off the main valve. Now I have no water. I can’t wash my hands, I can’t go to the bath­room.

The exhaust pipe that goes to my fur­nace isn’t up to code any­more either, so even if I get all this work done on the house, my ceil­ing would have to be ripped up again when the fur­nace goes. And since mine is 12-years-old and rat­ed for 15 years, it could die on me as soon as three years (or soon­er). So I’ll be get­ting the fur­nace pipe replaced too, which essen­tial­ly dou­bles my pipe instal­la­tion costs.

In addi­tion to mov­ing as much fur­ni­ture out of my room as pos­si­ble into my guest room (there­by rob­bing me of my pho­to stu­dio, Tai Chi prac­tice area, bed­room, and main com­put­er), I’ll have to cov­er the remain­ing things in sheets to pro­tect them from the dust. When the pip­ing is all replaced1, the con­trac­tor needs to come in and patch up the holes, scrape all the stip­ple off my ceil­ing, respray the stip­ple on, and repaint it. I don’t even have an esti­mate of how much that’s going to cost.

The house is my one area of sta­bil­i­ty. Where I retreat to when every­thing else is falling apart. The one place I need to be con­stant. I won’t feel set­tled until it’s all been resolved.

And to think that I was look­ing for­ward to the hol­i­days. I was pic­tur­ing myself enjoy­ing my well-earned time off, eat­ing bacon and eggs, play­ing a few games, and start­ing some new projects.

How far away the image seems now.

  1. And with luck, they won’t refuse to do the job because they don’t have enough clear­ance. [↩]

Walk It Off

Sometimes, I have to get out, even when it feels like it’s 40°C out­side, because I need my music loud, and I need to fuck­ing strut, and the birds clear the way cause they know it’s seri­ous, cause the pic­tures are fuck­ing killing me, so I’ll just keep skip­ping songs until it hits me then I’ll CRANK IT until it hurts, walk­ing it off like it’s nobody’s busi­ness, danc­ing inside to the bass pound­ing in my ears.

A Truth is Worth a Million Words

You inter­pret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from inse­cu­ri­ty. Other times, from a fal­la­cy of pro­jec­tion as some peo­ple igno­rant­ly, and mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal­ly, believe that every­one must think and act as they do. There are a few oth­er cas­es that don’t fit into either of these cat­e­gories though.

An exam­ple: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He did­n’t believe I would have giv­en it to him oth­er­wise. It was a per­fect reflec­tion of his dead­beat friends who expect­ed you to eat before com­ing to a par­ty, and he had nev­er known any oth­er type of peo­ple. A more extreme exam­ple is if you offered to feed some­one at your house and they got insult­ed because they thought you were imply­ing that they could­n’t afford to feed them­selves. Some peo­ple see things that aren’t there. It’s an amaz­ing sub­con­scious sign of their char­ac­ters.

The way some girls inter­pret things is also an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Some of them think a guy who’s talk­ing to them must be hit­ting on them so they drop the b‑bomb in ran­dom points of con­ver­sa­tion, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up mak­ing a big­ger deal about it than you do. I want noth­ing more than to tell these girls to get over them­selves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embar­rass­ing them­selves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a per­son is so pig-head­ed and stub­born that they see every­thing through a fil­ter, inter­pret­ing your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they sub­con­scious­ly refuse to see their own mis­takes.

The old me would have been insult­ed when some­one assumes I’m a cer­tain way. Nothing would anger me more than some­one pre­sum­ing to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care des­per­ate­ly what they thought, even if I knew I was just mis­un­der­stood. It’s an inter­est­ing feel­ing to be passed that now1.

The truth leaves no room for bias, only inter­pre­ta­tion.

I’ve learned nev­er to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­er peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions. Only take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your intent. You learn a lot about a per­son from the way they inter­pret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks.

With the truth on your side, noth­ing can go wrong.

  1. It’s actu­al­ly been qui­et a few months since I wrote this entry. I did­n’t post it at first because I want­ed to be absolute­ly sure that it was­n’t a fick­le feel­ing, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more rel­e­vant than ever. [↩]

Antipathy Never Came So Quickly

Try to put me down and make me feel bad. Do your best to make your­self look good.

Throw some advice my way (I’ll leave it). Assume you know me bet­ter than I know myself (what arro­gance!). Give me some food for thought, and believe you were any­thing more than a pass­ing fan­cy (but try to get over your­self).

My god, how wrong I was about you.