Friday, April 20, 2007
Avoiding traffic signals - not quite

Well, my ride home yesterday wasn't successful. I did get home, and it only took twice as long as usual, but sadly my first attempt to go traffic-light-less just didn't work out. Even though I had a pretty useful scrap of paper with cryptic notation concerning the streets and intersections I planned to use (nose in the map is not allowed, but consulting a scribbled sheet on the fly is OK)

I did reduce the number of traffic signals to six, but also including a few non-legal maneuvers. My real failing was in my clever attempt to avoid traffic signals by (legally) riding in parks. However, I failed to notice that nearly all of the park entrances were protected by traffic signals (so that park users can enter and leave safely, I guess). This was even the case where motor vehicles were quite clearly prohibited. My no-backtracking rule also left me at two park exits, facing a traffic signal, and unable to backtrack and try a different exit.

There were also a couple of places where bicycle riding isn't quite kosher but this is not apparent from the map. Mostly pavement/sidewalk riding, albeit very briefly (e.g. Woburn Walk, which looks like a road on the map, but is quite obviously pedestrian-only. I should have remembered this, working just around the corner. Or another road which dead-ends, and the only place to ride is across a pavement/sidewalk onto the adjoining road). The only other rule-breaking occurred when I saw a traffic signal ahead and had no place to go but the wrong way on a one-way street (maybe a very good possibility in the other direction, though, as long as I can solve my "park problem").

So yesterday's score is 5 traffic lights, 4 riding in pedestrian areas, and one "wrong way". I think I can do better, but some more obsessive-compulsive behavior will be necessary.

bike
Friday, April 20, 2007 4:18:50 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, April 19, 2007
Avoiding traffic signals
Red light jumping is probably the most hotly debated issue on the cycling forums I read, and it's no wonder with the huge number of traffic signals in most British cities.  My own commute is just a little bit over six miles, and includes a massive number of traffic lights.

Going to work in the morning I face exactly 50, and my usual route home includes 25. No, I don't use time warping technology, it's just that my commuting demands are different and different times of day. In the morning my aim is to get to work as quickly as I can, possibly with some decent exercise along the way. I'm not so interested in scenery or anything nice, just blitzing down the road to work. From our new house the quickest route by far is on the main roads, which have a lot more traffic signals.

On the way home I'm much more inclined to take quieter back streets at the expense of speed. And also to avoid three very nasty traffic-snarly areas (turn at Camden Town, Nags Head area just after Holloway Road, bus stops at Finsbury Park station and just thereafter), areas that are not bad at all in the other direction in the morning. But 25 traffic signals are still quite a few. And there are any number of them that I'm tempted to jump now and again.

The only solution, really, is to devise a cycling route that avoids all traffic signals. Then it would not even be possible for me to jump a red light. Of course this would be a trivial exercise if there were a canal route or converted rail line between work and home. But there isn't. It would also be trivially easy if I permitted myself to break other traffic laws in order to avoid red lights. For example, every time I approached a traffic signal, then mount the pavement ("sidewalk" in US English), go around the corner and cross the street away from the signal. No, this cycling route needs to be a legitimate cycling route (thus ruling out pavement riding and off-road riding).

I've looked carefully at maps and I think it's possible. London isn't exactly conducive to planning convenient alternative routes, at least anything remotely direct, but it appears that I can take advantage of numerous back streets in a winding homeward journey. The real difficulties are all related to crossing major streets (especially when there are major intersections involved). I see quite a lot of occasions where I will have to enter a main road from a small side street, then divert quickly down another side street before reaching a traffic signal.

Finally, I shouldn't be riding with my nose in a map, so there's every chance this will fail on the first attempt even if the route itself is workable. Just for sanity's sake (if sanity can be said to relate at all to this challenge) I'll also forbid direct backtracking. Chances of success? Not great.

bike
Thursday, April 19, 2007 4:35:34 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Monday, April 16, 2007
house swarming party
Well, we managed to get a plumber to pop round the morning of the party. It only took him 15-20 minutes to make things right, and now we have a nicely functioning kitchen sink, with hot and cold water coming from a single tap, and not a drip in sight (knock wood). Which allowed us to get things set up for the party with plenty of time to spare, and with no visible signs of the previous days' plumbing problems (except for my excessive tendency to turn on the kitchen tap and admire the smooth flow of water). I popped by the pub to collect some ale and then we were ready for guests to arrive.

We scheduled our house warming party to start at 2pm and continue "until late", with a vague sort of idea that people with small children might prefer to come earlier than those without. Only one set of small children managed to get there, so perhaps the early start was a bit of a mistake. In any event, people started arriving at nicely staggered times from about 3pm. The weather was perfect so most of the party occurred in the back garden (Mrs. Dunce and I spent a lot of time running up and down stairs to answer the front door). A good combination of friends, work colleagues and neighbors ended up coming round, although the early start meant a somewhat early finish (a lot of people came by early so they could make something else later on). At the bitter end, the last few guests headed down the road to continue the festivities a nearby nightclub. We were strongly encouraged to join them, but we were quite ready to collapse into bed.

house
Monday, April 16, 2007 1:58:53 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Friday, April 13, 2007
Hulk Mad!! HULK SMASH!!
Last night Mrs. Dunce and I came home about the same time, arms laden with all sorts of groceries in preparation for our house-warming party tomorrow. We had ambitious plans which included some preparation of snack foods, some last little bits of organizing and perhaps a teensy bit of cleaning. But we were both hot and tired after our respective shopping trips, and both really needed a big glass of ice water (not the same big glass, mind you. One each). I filled up the glasses and turned off the water. Or at least that was the plan, but instead I failed to recognize my own strength, as the tap handle snapped in my hand and water started gushing everywhere (fortunately, "everywhere" really just meant "pouring at maximum rate through the faucet into the sink).

Our previous plumbing adventures had somehow not been sufficient to inform us about the location of the main water shutoff valve in the flat (previous workmen had shut off the water outside, where it leaves the pipes and supplies both flats), so our first step was a panicked run around the house, feeling the various pipes for coldness/signs of flow. A likely suspect appeared in the toilet (separate from the bathroom, in that traditional sort of English style), but of course the handle was immovable (and I sure didn't want to break it. Water spraying into the sink is one thing, water spraying all over the toilet room [WC?] is quite another). I must admit I was in full-on panic mode as this was all happening. Some spritzes of (bike) oil and some (gentle) manipulations with a wrench, and the water was miraculously shut off. So the most urgent aspects of the emergency were thus eliminated. And after all, we did want to replace the taps on the kitchen sink (having two separate taps, one hot and one cold, both of them very stubby, seems quite useless for just about any kitchen purposes). But then the phone rang....

It was the downstairs neighbors, wondering about the water. Apparently our supply is also their supply. The cold tap in our kitchen sink is fed directly from that supply, with no way of turning it off except turning off the water completely. This returned the problem to "immediately urgent". Mrs. Dunce headed straight out to the building supply store to purchase a new set of taps (actually, two sets just in case one of them wouldn't fit for some reason), while I put on my plumber hat and went to work under the sink. In a jiffy, I had the taps removed and was waiting with a cup of tea for Mrs. Dunce to return. Or, more accurately, I spent a couple of hours awkwardly wedged under the sink with some assorted tools, first trying to figure out how everything was connected, which parts were meant to unscrew (and in which direction), and just how to remove those bloody taps. All the while knowing that our neighbors were also waterless until the problem was fixed (fortunately they were very understanding).

The new taps were indeed appropriate for the job, and I'd pretty much figured out how things went together. So with a flourish of the wrench, and quick as a jiffy I fastened them all back together (doing them both at the same time with one wrench in each hand). Or else I grunted and strained and muttered and fumed and sulked and sweated and so on, until they were finally connected right up. Wheeee, I thought. Time to turn the water back on. And I did, and it sprayed. Under the sink this time, where, errr, we didn't have the right sort of washers to go between the various fittings involved in the connections. So off with the water again, and a frantic rush on the bicycle to get to the home furnishings store for new washers before closing time.

Knowing me, you already know that the store was closed by the time I arrived (open till 9pm some evenings, 8pm others. This was an "other".), so it was a swift and disappointed bike ride back home with nothing to show for it. Sometime during this period Mrs. Dunce tried a couple of emergency plumbing services but with no success ("morning" was the best they could do). I was a little bit loopy by then and wasted a while tearing apart the old tap in the vain hope of finding a suitable washer there. Or maybe I could cut down a rubber washer from the old taps. Eventually I decided to replace the tattered old washers from the previous fittings, in the hope they'd be better than nothing.

And they were. Once I (re-re-re-)reassembled the taps and turned the water back on, the leak had slowed to a regular drip (about 1.5 drips/second most of the time). Good enough to place some pans and towels, clean up, and go to bed leaving the water on (one of the downstairs residents gets up before 6am, so the water needed to be on by then, although they generously offered to collect water in kettles for the morning if necessary). We got up many times in the night to check and/or empty the accumulated water (I should note that water leaks have already been a nighttime obsession for me, long before any of our plumbing problems started), but there were no real problems otherwise. well except that my back, shoulders, hands and forearms are ridiculously sore from my amateur plumbing efforts.

This morning things were relatively fine, though I had to hang around for the expert to arrive. He did fix the leaky problems in the pipes, but sadly an additional leak was revealed in the tap once the pipes and connections were repaired. Taps themselves are not covered under our service arrangements, so that remains unfixed at the moment. Fortunately the expert did us a real favor and installed a shutoff valve on the offending pipes, so that they can now be turned off without affecting the water elsewhere in our flat (or indeed, in the neighbors' flat). So we are currently dripless, but also without a working kitchen sink.

And it's only 24 hours to the housewarming party, with a mountain of things still to get done by then. What else could go wrong? It's not like it's Friday the 13th or something. Stop by and check out the carnage!

house
Friday, April 13, 2007 1:09:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Absent-minded? Me?
Lest anyone think of me as an absent-minded professor type of character, let me share a tale that will fully debunk that notion.

Today is officially a holiday at my workplace; it's the midst of the week-long Easter break during which everything is shut down. But not completely shut down; employee access cards still give access to those buildings a particular employee is normally permitted to enter (complete shutdown only happens on Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, during which only the most extreme and unusual requests for access to any buildings will even be considered). This way workaholics, obsessives and swots can get their fix. So of course I decided to come in today and get some work done (perhaps also influenced by the fact that Mrs. Dunce had to work today [and before you ask, yes I can be trusted at home alone]).

We said our goodbyes at the front door and headed to work, me on my trusty bicycle and Mrs. Dunce heading for the perhaps-a-bit-less-trusty Piccadilly Line. After an uneventful journey I stowed and locked my bike, and headed to my office in an otherwise totally deserted building. Of course I became antsy after less than an hour of so-called "work" and wandered out of the building for a coffee (making doubly sure I had my building access card with me so that I could get back in). Yep, I sure could get back in, right up to my office door which had closed and locked behind me when I departed.

I checked my pockets a few times, but I was quite confident that my keys were with the rest of my things on or near my desk, and thus securely locked in the office. The door is not exactly the most secure (doorknob can actually be unscrewed by hand) but the lock itself, quite so. I took a tour of the building, finding that I was still alone there, and that (for once) every door in the place was securely locked. So I wandered back outside, first checking my bike in case my keys had been left in the remaining pannier (a complete violation of my dual-pannier mode of operation, where locks and bicycle items are stored in one, and other personal items in the other... but it couldn't hurt to check). Then it was off to the security office to give them my sob story. Someone was contacted to send someone else around to let me in the office. So all I had to do was return to the front door and wait.

Of course the minute I returned, one of the directors showed up, with a master key, and let me into my office. I called the security office as their help was no longer needed, and then decided that maybe I ought to put my keys in my pocket right away to prevent further grief. Only... the keys were nowhere to be found. Could I have somehow made it all the way from home to work without them? Maybe.

Leaving the house doesn't require use of keys; the door can shut behind a person, possibly even locking them out (this is how I met the downstairs neighbors: standing in my socks on a chilly evening after taking out the garbage, not yet realizing the doorbell needed a new battery). Locking the bike doesn't require keys, if the locks are being carried unlocked in a bike bag. And the enclosure is locked with two combination locks. Front door of work requires an electronic key-card, so only my office door actually needs a physical key to get in. And it's often left unlocked (the door is warped and it's hard to lock [although this now seems to have been fixed]). So it seemed that somehow I had left the house without my keys.

Although this wouldn't pose any problems for me during the "work" day, great inconvenience would result later. I had planned to do a grocery run (bike + panniers = great carrying ability), but without my keys I couldn't unlock my bike. Never mind the inability to get in the house upon arrival at home, I'd have to wait until Mrs. Dunce's arrival (I'd planned to leave early today). And I was also rather inappropriately shod for a journey home not involving a bicycle (hard-soled bike shoes with SPD cleats which are no longer recessed, or my "lab slippers" which are a pair of plastic faux-Birkenstocks that have seen better days and are practically useless for walking).

So I rang up Mrs. Dunce to tell her the bad news, and perhaps to try and come up with an alternative arrangement of some kind which would suit us both reasonably well (perhaps I would come to her office, collect her house key, then go home & change my shoes, pick up an extra key, then go shopping, etc.). While telling her the sad tale, though, I got the feeling that something was just not right. After all, all the doors in my building had been locked down, a very unusual situation indeed. And I vaguely remembered that I had actually unlocked my own office upon arrival, so I couldn't possibly have left my keys at home. This train of thought ran in parallel to my recounting the morning's events to Mrs. Dunce, right up until the moment they reached the (then)present time. At which I noticed that my keys were indeed sitting there on my desk, right in easy view.

So yes, I had locked myself out of my office. But all the rest of my hand-wringing was unnecessary, brought on by my inability to notice a big set of shiny keys less than six inches from my keyboard. At least I remembered to put on my pants this morning.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 11:10:19 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, April 05, 2007
Negation gone wild!

I heard the most amazing sentence on the bus this morning. It was good enough I had to write it down immediately. Have a read and tell me what you think she was trying to get across.

"I couldn't have forgotten not to tell her don't need to quit work."

Of course there's a missing pronoun between "her" and "don't", but it's really the complicated mess of negations that does my head in.

language
Thursday, April 05, 2007 4:01:31 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Pizza Time?
I've had plenty to say in the past about unusual and/or unpleasant pizza toppings, but I'm afraid an even higher standard has been set. Without further ado, let me show you a pizza flyer that recently appeared at Dunce Manor:

pizza_lime.jpg

Yes, it appears to be an ordinary pizza, topped with pepperoni, green peppers, onions, and GIGANTICALLY HUGE SLICES OF LIME. A very unpleasant combination indeed. Oddly enough, lime does not actually feature in any of the pizzas on offer. So I started wondering why someone might have decided to call their company "Pizza Lime" if lime cannot actually be purchased as a pizza topping.

Googling the phrase "pizza lime" gives very little info, except that "Pizza Lime" is apparently the name given to the monthly discussion forum held by the Trinidad & Tobago Computer Society (originally held at Pizza Hut until the computerers were forced away by price increases). I didn't think that helped all that much, so then I turned to my old friend the OED. Maybe there's a sense of "lime" I'm not aware of.

Starting with the verbs, there are all sorts of senses which could, in principle, be applied to pizza. But most of them less than appealing. There's Lime(verb, 1), 2a: "To smear ... with bird-lime, for the purpose of catching birds", 4: "to foul, defile", and any number of other senses related to CaO. But not really anything you'd want near your pizza (the citrus version a far lesser evil). Or maybe Lime(verb, 3), "to impregnate (a bitch)". Hmmm... a home-delivery pizza might be an aphrodisiac in certain circumstances, but I doubt this is their intent. Or else Lime(verb, 4), "to hang about the streets" (all examples of this term in the OED come from Trinidad, Tobago or Barbados). Pizza you eat while carnally loitering, befouled in bird-lime. Mmmm good. So maybe "lime" is a noun.

I think I've already safely ruled out Lime(noun, 1): CaO and other various noxious substances you really don't want to have on a pizza. Lime(noun, 2) is the citrus fruit (Citrus Medica, var. acida, and some of its relatives), which is the leading contender so far (I've ruled out the sense of lime as a lime-green color since the pictured pizza is not green). Lime(noun, 3) is no better: the tree also known as linden. Maybe the obsolete sense Lime(noun, 4) "Limit, end" (one solitary example in the OED, from ~1420), or the only remaining one, Lime(noun, 5) "colloquial abbreviation of 'limelight'", mainly Australian. This is quite tenuous but is at least a better possibility than carnal befoulment.

Finally I took a wander over to a less exhaustively researched realm of linguistic information, the Urban Dictionary. The very first entry, well.... "A fanfiction or chapter of a fanfiction in which characters graphically fool around, but do not actually have sex.". But most of the rest come back to Trinidad, not just loitering, but in a pleasant sense of hanging out. So maybe it's like a Trini pizza party (in that case, it's too bad they didn't have any Trini pizzas on offer. The Lime Special contains mushroom, fresh garlic, pepperoni, spicy beef and red onion).

Of course one other possibility is that the term "lime" is a last-minute adjustment of some kind. Perhaps the shop was intended to be called "Pizza Time" but had to change its name due to an already-established competitor by that name or something similar. It would be quite easy to change a "Pizza Time" sign into one that says "Pizza Lime".

The one other odd thing about the flyer is that they give no physical address. I'm always very hesitant to order from a place whose location is totally unknown. I prefer to know which grim industrial estate is the source of my dinner.

consume | language
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 4:15:12 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, March 22, 2007
When you're a builder, you're a builder all the way!
Whose side are you on?

vs.

On my way home from work yesterday without anything to read, I resorted to having my intelligence insulted (then insulted some more, than spat and defecated upon) by picking up one of London's terrible free daily newspapers (see what I mean here). Turns out that it reported a news story directly relevant to my new neighborhood, where a large number of teenagers violently clashed in an after-school frenzy of fighting, stabbing and who knows what-all.1 There's coverage in our local newpaper here, but it fails to mention the most curious part of the story I read yesterday in the lighter-than-light free newspaper (which curiously seems to have only appeared in print, not in the online version available now [unless I hallucinated the whole thing. I know, I know, I should have kept a copy.]). According to my memory of this article, they reported that the conflict occurred between two main groups, one Turkish or Kurdish and the other Jamaican. Further, they reported that these groups were distinguished not only by their national origin, but by their choice of fashion accessories; one group favored Bob the Builder hats, and the other Thomas the Tank Engine.

Perhaps this detail is not factual, but I really like to think it is: thugs self-identifying with popular characters for the preschool set (for reasons completely unknown to me). And I'm very much looking forward to the extension of this trend to other groups and other characters. Care Bear Crips? Weeble Latin Kings? My Pretty Pony El Rukns?


1Readers of a nervous disposition may be relieved to know that this didn't actually happen on our doorstep, but instead near the movie theatres at the main shopping centre area some 15 minutes' walk away. Shopping malls are evil and dangerous; that's a take-home message we all can live with.

Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:45:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Monday, March 12, 2007
good neighbors!
This weekend saw really nice, springlike weather so we finally got around to cleaning up our shed and back garden a little bit. We also had big plans for the cat: after just over two weeks being cooped up inside, it was to be her first day allowed outside. So we opened the door and waited for her to follow us out. Instead, she just peeked out the back door, then immediately scrambled for safety under the recliner in the living room. Where she stayed for the next five hours or so. Poor kitty.

But that didn't stop us; we lounged around the back garden reading the paper, moving plant pots around, and planting some tomato & zucchini seeds (the previous owner left all sorts of gardening goodies including one of those little portable mini-greenhouses, so we figured we may as well put at least a few of them to good use). Also found a stack of 33rpm records in the shed, unfortunately suffering badly from the shed's missing window (now temporarily repaired). An assortment of classic works including some classical (Beethoven, Chopin), some musicals (Mikado, Oliver!), and quite a bit of folk and traditional songs. We arranged them to dry out; surely some of them can be salvaged.

While we were puttering about in the garden, we got chatting to a neighbor who lives a few doors down (but whose flat shares a wall with ours... explain that if you can!). He's a very nice guy, even invited us over to his place for a BBQ. Conversations with neighbors?! Quite different from our previous homes around London. Turns out he works in the building trades, and bought his flat three years ago for pennies (it was a derelict wreck). He's put thousands into it, and loads of work, and there's still plenty to be done (attic conversion, roof replacement, never mind front stairs and front rooms which are still totally unfinished). But the rooms he's completed (lounge, kitchen, bathroom) gave us all sorts of large-scale ideas we might be able to think about doing sometime in the future (way, way in the future, though). All in all, a very nice meeting-the-neighbors occasion.

And oh yeah, we did have a new hot-water heater installed on Saturday. They arrived bright and early to do the work, and blazed right through without taking a break or anything. Before noon they'd installed the new heater, carted the old one away, and cleaned up at least a little bit of their mess. Except, well, one of our towels was full of solder and filth, assorted icky bits of residue could be found various places, and worst of all they'd made a mess out of our bathroom wall. The old heater had a very large hole for the flue; the new one required only a small hole. So they had to patch the remaining gap, which they did very poorly. I think they just used a large chunk of something wider than the brick in the wall, because it protrudes into the bathroom (giving the wall a lovely bulge). And outside is equally foul; they just did an extremely slapdash job on the wall (quite consistent with the stereotype of the British builder, I'm sorry to say). I really started to regret going with a local company to do the work, but it appears we will get some satisfaction after all; they have pledged to make the job good at no further cost to us. I will, however, reserve judgement until this actually happens.

beasts | house
Monday, March 12, 2007 4:58:57 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Thursday, March 08, 2007
Caught holding the bag.
This afternoon I got to spent an hour or so idling about my department's common room, for entirely legitimate work-related purposes1 rather than simple laziness. A young gentleman of American extraction was also idling nearby, chatting to his girlfriend in a loud voice that practically demanded to be eavesdropped upon. Since my reading material was a complicated and dull paper I'm reviewing, I was quick to comply. Apparently some of his mates had recently seen him holding her purse, and quite clearly he was feeling hurt and defensive about their ridicule. "I was only being chivalrous, and you'd asked me to do it. I sure wouldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me to. And it's not like guys don't sometimes hold their girlfriend's purse for whatever reason, it's just something you've gotta do having a girlfriend." And so on and so on, listing other guys he knew who had, at one time or another, been seen holding their girlfriend's purse. He never actually came out admitted that the boys had seen him holding a purse and teaased him for being gay, but this was strongly implied throughout: "it would be different if I had a purse and was holding it, but it wasn't even mine!". He was getting so angry just discussing the topic I wished I had a purse, so I could bring it up to him and ask him if he'd dropped it by mistake. Unfortunately, eventually the girlfriend decided enough was enough and told him to shut up. Which meant I had to resume my reading.

1Helping to herd undergraduates between one of three testing locations, because today was our lab's annual oppportunity to test a large number of students at once without paying them. I was mainly responsible for the main waiting room, directing people to the right testing areas if they got lost, and making sure nobody wandered off in between sessions. Which meant occasionally standing up and telling one group to go down the hall, and otherwise sitting around reading (and eavesdropping).

Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:35:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Ah! the perils of the landed gentry
Since we moved into the Dunce Arms, posts here have been few and far between. Things have been really busy at work, and there's no shortage of things to do at home. As I mentioned in my last post, we started off with some bold plans, but reality quickly intervened. Instead we've been focusing on doing things gradually, focusing on those things most necessary to quality of life (facilities for eating, bathing, lounging, laundry and sleeping, perhaps not in that order). We've finally reached a point where most of the boxes are unpacked, though many things have not yet found their ideal locations yet. And a few windows are covered now (a couple of blinds, one set of curtains and another set hung temporarily in the living room so that "they" can't see in so well. And we've moved a bunch of luggage up to the attic, and moved items of furniture to their (mostly) permanent homes. And the cat seems to have (mostly) calmed down about all the new smells, noises and general strangeness.

There are still quite a few things still to come, such as a new bed (arriving next week, until which time we will get by with the sofa bed). And we still need to find more curtains, and down the line there's some really nasty wallpaper and carpets in certain places that will need to go really soon. And the back door frame is doing very poorly and needs to be replaced at some point. But then on Friday we had our first real fun excitement as homeowners... the lovely 30-year-old water heater decided to give up the ghost. Well, not exactly giving up the ghost, it just started spewing water (or at least a fast drip). Turns out an old repair on an old heater had finally given way. Fortunately this is an "instant" heater using only gas and not electricity, so it wasn't like a huge water tank suddenly gave way, but a continuous drip is a bad, bad thing. Plumbers jerked me around all day on Friday; eventually (at the end of the day) they claimed someone had left a message earlier in the day saying that no one would be able to come to my area that day (of course this happened at the end of Friday, when presumably they hoped to get me on a weekend call-out). The drip was slow enough we went through the weekend with the bucket system, and today a plumber (from a different company) finally came round to check it out. His opinion was that it must be replaced, and soon. To the tune of £1600, but fortunately for us they can do it in a day, given a day's notice. Can we say OUCH? The cat cowered under the chair at the sound of that, and I would have too if there was room for me. So it looks like we're going to be spending a hefty sum in the next few days. Looks like those jewel-encrusted bicycle tires will have to wait another week or two.

house
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:25:00 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Monday, February 26, 2007
Moved in!

Well, it's done now... the Dunces have moved into their new home. We collected the keys a week ago today, and made our first visit to the flat right away. I have to say it was quite disheartening at first: Mrs G. (the previous owner) had lived there for 30 years, and with all of her things removed the whole place looked run-down, dated, and icky. And it didn't help that Mrs G had quite clearly been a smoker for many of those 30 years; white surfaces were no longer anywhere close to white. So quite clearly the first step was to buy a big-ol load of paint (lots of white, plus all the other colors for basically every indoor surface), and all the necessary accessories.

The next day I spent the morning tearing down a nasty built-in wardrobe in the main bedroom (revealing some serious nicotine coloration behind it), but had to go to work in the afternoon, while Mrs. Dunce slaved all day painting. In the evening we headed over to the old house to continue packing and cleaning (we'd finished most of the packing already, but it's amazing to see how many "left-overs" there can be. And then it was another day of painting. I seem to remember that I'm a very bad painter, but perhaps I'm mis-remembering the ineptitude of my brother (The Thief) as my own. After all, it is he who was well known for repeatedly "accidentally" stepping in paint trays so as to be barred from painting. In any event we proceeded slowly but surely, putting a few coats of paint here and there (the whole kitchen and bedroom ceiling, if you're keeping score). Our ambitious plans had slipped substantially by this point; we were instead focusing on the most urgent areas that needed to be usable by the time we moved in (kitchen and living room [UK "lounge"], the latter also serving as a bedroom until we buy a bed). I mention this like it was a very minor point and straightforward decision, but actually this decision process was full of anguish and despair as we wondered whether we would be able to manage even a tiny fraction of what needed to be done.

The next morning I had to work again (but really shouldn't have bothered as it turned out there was nothing urgent requiring my attention), and after lunch I headed out and collected the rental van. Let me tell you it's quite an experience driving a large van through the streets of London, especially if it's emblazoned with the name of a rental company, and also heavily dented and scratched already (it was that way when I got it...). Other drivers are amazingly polite in just about every way you can imagine, probably because they fear for their lives. We had some bold plans for the van: driving it out into the far reaches of northwest London to charity furniture shops which a co-worker (who happens to live in the far reaches of northwest London) recommended as fantastic sources of inexpensive second-hand furniture. We got an early afternoon start, but little did we know the journey would be long and arduous. We reached the first shop (in Kenton) about 3:30, but unfortunately it had practically nothing interesting (aside from a couple of dressers, but we were fully dressered already). And then we zoomed out to Watford, beyond the pages of our A-Z, only to find a nasty surprise: most of the car parks were multi-story, without enough headroom for a tall van. As we looped around a very unpleasant road system, the clock just kept on ticking toward the 5:00 closing time. By the time we found a place we could possibly park (perhaps illegally), it was too late. Talk about frustration; there we were, hours from home, without anything to show for it but a bag of subcontinental treats we collected at a fantastic grocery store along the way. The only thing to do was... a full-on trip to IKEA in Wembley. Maybe not the best choice after five or so hours of intense city driving but it had to be done. We staggered through, ending up with part of a wardrobe (the other part, we hoped, to be obtained from our local IKEA). And various other assorted necessities (and a few not-so-necessities). We really wanted a table and chairs, but IKEA's offerings were undesirable for various reasons, but we really wanted a table and chairs, so what were we going to do? The answer was to sleep on it.

The next morning we got up, heading toward our local(ish) IKEA (the infamous Edmonton location no less) to buy the remaining parts of the wardrobe, and a crummy table and chairs that would make do until we found something better (or, possibly, until they fell apart). But on the way there, eagle-eyed Mrs Dunce spotted a small second-hand shop/house clearance company, which had all sorts of cast-off furniture stacked around. And it just so happened that some of that cast-off furniture was a nice dining room set (table + 6 chairs, all in very good condition). We headed to IKEA anyway, and let me tell you, it's a joy to shop there in the middle of the day during the week (unlike weekends which are dire, and evenings which are still quite busy). Then a big grocery run (taking advantage of the van) and then off to the old house for one more round of packing and cleaning.

Saturday was the day of the big move, and the biggest of the big move items was our brand new sofa-bed. Which we purchased back in the holiday season, under the assumption that we would indeed be in possession of the new flat well in time for the January 29 estimated delivery date. Which would have meant that professional sofa movers would be the people moving it up the stairs, through the narrow hallway and into our living room. Instead they moved it into the old house, so we had to move it ourselves. I'd been having nightmares for weeks about this, because it's really, really heavy. And just barely small enough to fit through doorways (never mind the curve at the top of the stairs). Fortunately we had some macho lifting power on hand, in the form of our friend MJ. With quite a lot of effort we managed to get the sofa into the van (along with other items of furniture which were like feathers in comparison). And with superhuman effort we managed to lift it up the stairs; MJ doing the hard work, lifting from underneath, and me lifting/guiding from above. Then carefully edging it through the door at the top of the stairs, then coaxing it through the narrow doorway into the living room, where it will remain until it's no longer usable.

We spent the rest of the day moving all the rest of our things, with the aid of the Landlord (now ex-), and the Lodger (now ex-). The last thing we moved was the cat: just grabbed her, popped her in the carrier, and took her to the new place just like that. The rest of the day we did a small amount of arranging things so that the living room was fully livable (including use as a bedroom, using the sofa-bed until we get a real bed for the bedroom), and the kitchen somewhat in order. Imagine our surprise when we opened the sofa-bed for the first time, and found a sheet containing simple instructions: REMOVING THE BED MECHANISM FROM THE SOFA IN SEVEN EASY STEPS. So our superhuman effort lifting the sofa-bed up the stairs could have been divided in two. I get the idiot-of-the-week award for that one. Anyway, the first night in the new place went fine, except for poor Zosi. She was very worried about the new house, carefully creeping around, sniffing everything, and starting or growling at every little strange noise. At some point in the night she started with a miserable crying/meowing sound and just wouldn't stop. Fortunately things have improved since then, as she's become more confident about the new flat, even finding nice places to perch and observe things.

Sunday wasn't a day of rest either, as it was the (ex-)Landlord's moving day. Fortunately he didn't have nearly as many things to move, and none were anywhere close to the sofa-bed (although a huge, huge carton completely full of books was not exactly easy to shift). And then we were able to retire to the new flat, loaded with aches and pains, and good for nothing except watching some of Keanu's finest work on TV (the Bill & Ted sequel whose name I'm just too tired to check on IMDB, and then Point Break). Oh yeah, one of the absolute necessities in the new flat is a shower. Mrs. G was apparently a bath-only person, and that just won't work for us. But the current taps and pipes look like they haven't been touched in years, and I'm deathly afraid of breaking something while trying to shut off the water to put in new taps. So for now we're making do with one of those shower heads that fits over the regular taps, and probably getting professional help. I've returned to work now, while Mrs Dunce is doing one more day of painting (bedroom walls).

There are so many things we still need to do; very high on the list being "post some photos". Patience, grasshopper; photos will come soon enough.
house
Monday, February 26, 2007 3:11:17 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Monday, February 19, 2007
New Flat!!
We just got the word, everything is finished and we can pick up the keys to the new flat this afternoon!  A good thing as we've been very busy packing up all of our stuff (and cleaning the house, the Landlord will be pleased to hear).

Pictures to follow soon (if I can see through the paint flecks/spatters on my glasses to post them).

consume
Monday, February 19, 2007 12:55:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   | 
 Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Spammer names
I get all kinds of spam these days, despite any number of filtering/marking schemes. But today I received a message from the best spammer name of all time: Firmness K. Joystick.

Three guesses what he was trying to sell me.

Other good recent names include Holden Burns, Bishop N. Desfunction [sic], Snider Mat, Frailey G. Neblett, and Hockaday U. Sunday.

meta
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 4:42:16 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |   |