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I used more toothpicks today than I have ever used in my entire life! (Now there’s a sentence you don’t get to say every day!)
First of all I used the tried-and-true toothpick method to see if the chocolate zucchini loaves I baked were done. Last time I tried this recipe I thought the loaves were done and was dismayed to discover they hadn’t been cooked all the way through when I tried to take them out of the pan. It was an icky mess! So, today the toothpicks came in handy for this purpose and the loaves turned out great.
I think everyone knows the toothpick-as-baking-aid trick, but did you know that you can actually use toothpicks in home repair projects?! Until today neither did I!
Last night as I was cooking dinner for friends one of my kitchen cupboard doors fell off. Just fell right off. (Why do these sorts of things always happen when company is over and dinner is just minutes from being served?!) I grabbed my trusty screwdriver and popped the door back on. I won’t get into just how un-handy I am with Do-It-Yourself projects, but those of you who know me in real life will not be surprised to learn that the cupboard door didn’t stay put and it fell off again today. (insert giant sigh here)
So today brought a frantic round of googling as I tried to figure out what the heck I was going to do. Immediately I started fantasizing about the new cupboards I’d be forced to buy and how nice my new renovated kitchen would look. Ha! Ok…I just bought a new furnace and hot water heater, so kitchen renos are not in the cards right now. But seriously. I’m an art historian, not a cupboard fixer and I was quite flummoxed by the whole thing.
The problem appeared to be a few stripped screw holes, and my googling quickly produced two types of advice on how to deal with this. One group of online handymen and handywomen suggested filling the holes with a wood filler, letting it dry and then putting the door back on. The other suggested jamming things like toothpicks into the hole and then putting the door back on. I went out to get the wood filler as I thought the whole toothpick thing just sounded a little too ridiculous for words. But after I got back from Canadian Tire with the wood filler (and an inflatable boat…don’t ask…), I started thinking more about the toothpick solution. Many, many sites seemed to suggest this and I decided to give it a try. I didn’t really think it would work, but I thought it would be hilarious if it did. I figured if it didn’t work I’d pull out the toothpicks and give the wood filler a try. What did I have to lose? The basic idea is to jam the toothpicks in the hole, break off the excess bits and then re-screw in the screw. I did, and the long and the short of it is that my cupboard door is still affixed to the cupboard. We’ll see how long it lasts!
-Last night I watched the first two episodes of CBC’s The Great Food Revolution. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but the TV stayed on after Jeopardy and it only took me a few minutes to get hooked. In two hours this show covered many interesting topics — cooking schools, celebrity chefs, how sushi became popular in North America and the “behind the scenes” processes that go into the development of President’s Choice products. (and, yes, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a slave to the PC brand). Anyhow, this was a very interesting 2 hours of TV-watching and I’m looking forward to the remaining two episodes.
-I have finished the latest round of edits on a major research project that I’ve been working on for many, many years. I packaged it up and sent it off this morning. I’m still thinking of ways to celebrate the occasion. Suggestions welcome.
-I am supposed to be getting a new hot water tank today. Why does this fill me with dread? I think I’ve convinced myself that it will be more complicated that it is supposed to be. This aspect of home ownership (the upgrades and renovations that I can’t possibly fathom doing myself) freaks me out. Still, I want to avoid the situation that happened in the last rental house I lived in. In that house the bottom of the old hot water tank rusted right away and flooded the basement. It was an old house, so replacing the tank was not a straight-forward job (something about an old chimney and no chimney liner) and we were without hot water for days. I sincerely hope that I got all of my bad hot water tank karma out of the way that time and that things will be uneventful on this front today.
[Update: so, when the LivClean guy was out here setting up this whole new hot water tank dealio the other day I specifically asked him about the chimney liner, given the last experience I had with a hot water tank. He, apparently, checked and said I have a proper liner and everything would be fine. The technicians just stomped in and out of my house and couldn't do the install because, you guessed it, I didn't have a chimney liner. Whatever.]
On my travels through and near UVic I’ve found a number of great examples of graffiti. In addition to the example I blogged about the other day I found two more activist-themed examples on and around campus. The third example comes from Botanical Beach. I’m loving the West Coast Graffiti — keep up the good work!
I’ve posted before about the interesting things that can be found scrawled on the walls of bathrooms on campuses or other student hangouts, so I want to share this wonderful example from The University of Victoria.
Does it still count as graffiti when it is scrawled on a sticker instead of directly on the wall?
-It is raining today and there is a noticeable reduction in my allergy symptoms. I feel better than I have in weeks. Hurrah!! I also had a couple of Sapporos last night. Who knows? Maybe that helped too.
-I love, love, love this piece by Todd Babiak on how walking presents opportunities to know a place in a way that just isn’t possible from a car or a bus.
-We went “over the river” last night and poked around Niagara Falls, NY. We had a delicious dinner at Michael’s. I also took this random snapshot. I’d love to know the story behind this window.
So, it is the end of the work week and I had plans to meet my friend at my local neighbourhood pub for some end-of-week drinks. When I arrived my friend wasn’t there yet, so I grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered a pint and began to read the novel I had in my bag. It was a Friday night and the pub was busy. As I sat at the bar a young lady came in from the patio and asked the bartender to turn up the music — “we can’t hear it out there,” she whined. The bartender told her it was as loud as it would go and that the pub had to be respectful of the people who lived in the neighbourhood. The young lady made a face and said (no joke) “That’s gay! Who cares what they think!?”
Seriously!?!
It was all I could do not to turn around and give her the lecture of a lifetime. Perhaps I should have.
In my academic work I focus on a range of topics, but, in general, the historical period that interests me the most is the end of the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th. I often find myself in archives, reading letters and diaries of historical figures who are significant to whatever research project I am working on at the time. This process of discovery through the day-to-day writings of my research subjects is, perhaps, one of my favourite things about doing academic work. These brittle and stained pages contain so much information and tell stories in a way that official history textbooks can not.
I wonder what will become of our day-to-day archives. It is rare that I sit down and compose a letter on paper (with a pen!) these days. Correspondence happens by email or by IM. Sure, we can save copies of emails in folders, but what happens when the current software and operating systems we use become obsolete? How many personal stories will be lost from our generation? What kind of archive will we leave for those curious about the world in the early decades of the 21st century?
This year is the first year since I was a kid that I have had a real Solstice/Christmas tree. When we were little we’d get lovely small trees for our bedrooms (usually the top of a larger tree) and I just loved it! I would cry and cry when it was time for it to be taken down. My poor parents! They compromised by letting the trees sit in the backyard for a few days so we could still play with them and enjoy them.
I haven’t really bothered much with festive trees in my adult life though. Somewhere along the line I got one of those fake plastic trees that I put up a few times, but I stopped doing that a while ago. It seemed like a lot of bother and I have to admit that I find the plastic trees a little disappointing in terms of ambiance.
So, this year’s tree is very special. It is a beautiful fir tree, small enough that it fit in my Honda Accord, but big enough to be festive and lovely. Because I am currently sharing my house with my sister’s insane kitten we decided that it wouldn’t be very much fun to put the tree in the house. (I’m sure that there are only so many times a person can pick up a Christmas tree off the floor before going crazy!) We decided to put the tree in the backyard and decorate it with treats for the birds and the squirrels. We’ve decorated it with suet cakes, bird seed, popcorn, nuts and cranberries, and my friend Linda has nicknamed it the “happy bird tree.” Part of the fun is that we keep having to add more “decorations” as the old ones get munched away.
I just got back from a conference in Montreal — it was a very interesting event and I’d like to blog about it in more detail once I’ve unpacked and had some sleep. As I unwind tonight, however, I want to blog about graffiti. Specifically, I want to blog about how interesting graffiti in the bathrooms of campuses can be. I’m not talking about the boring “AB + DC = 4-EVER” kind of graffiti but, rather, the scrawled dialogues about politics, the environment, gender, etc. that are often found in campus bathrooms. (Perhaps this happens in other locales too, but in my experience this tends to be a university or college phenomenon.) It is especially fascinating when one person’s scribbles spark a whole range of replies. I remember one particular bathroom at the U of A in which two sharpie-wielding members of the campus community carried on an extensive debate about abortion for weeks. It was fascinating — more so for the venue and manner in which this debate was carried out than in what was specifically being said.
I noticed this weekend that the bathrooms at Concordia had some pretty interesting material as well. Environmental politics seem to dominate these bathroom walls at the moment — a reflection of the greening of political debates in a wider sense? As I read the Concordia graffiti it struck me that I haven’t encountered this sort of thing at Brock. At first I wondered if it was maybe a phenomenon exclusive to large urban campuses, but then I remembered that Queen’s University had its fair share of politically-engaged bathroom graffiti. Now, I’d never suggest students vandalize campus property, but I sure am curious about the reasons for this absence. Maybe it happens, but just not in the parts of the campus that I tend to frequent. Perhaps I don’t see this kind of graffiti because we have an especially diligent custodial staff at Brock. Are Brock students finding other fora in which to express their political views? I believe I may have to conduct some research into this.
