Good Things Come in Threes...

Three is my favourite number.

Where possible, I always adopted it as a jersey number for various sports teams over the years. A triangle is my favourite shape. The Holy Trinity. Three cheese pizza. Three’s company. Once, twice, three times a lady. Three blind mice

...wait, what?

Never mind, the point is this: Good things come in threes, isn’t that what they say? I presume, then, that the fact I’m turning 33 is a VERY good thing. Two three’s sitting right there next to each other? BAM! Bring on advancing age, I say.

I've just come away from a great home cooked dinner with friends and family, all on the heels of a satisfying day at work. It all makes a guy pretty thankful for where he's at (editors note, third small child in photo below belongs to one of said friends. we haven't recently spawned a random third child...).

Things don't generally stay the same for long, though, and as much as I like how things are, I suspect—check that, I know—33 will be a year of much change. Our house is about to start getting torn apart for a big reno in a few weeks, so we’re moving into a rental space for a while as we get the work done (living in five months of construction zone with two small children + dog just to save money = totally false economy!) . So in mere days we’re moving the whole house out so work can begin, only to move the whole house back again in five months or so when the work is done!

At some point in the next year, I’ll need to change jobs again—I am only in a maternity leave coverage role right now, and as much as I love what I’m doing, I have to give the job back to someone else!

My son is in preschool now, but come September. 2013, he’ll be a kindergarten kid. As well, our daughter will be old enough to start some preschool after her third birthday, so these two things in combination will be a big change to the flow of the household movements.

There is one more change coming--doesn't feel so good--that at best we can only slow down, but not stop, much as we might want to. Facing up to the reality of mum’s situation has been tough this past year, and it will only get tougher. If there’s something from the past year that doesn’t need to change, it’s the steady stream of positive thoughts, prayers and white light that everyone has sent out in mum’s direction. It has worked well so far, no need to change anything in that department.

Long story short, good or bad, here is to change. 32 came in like a lion but (generally) went out like a big fluffy lamb. Here’s to more 'baaaaa' in year 33!

What lies beneath....

Gentle readers, you may recall an installment in the not-too-distant past concerning a resident skunk who decided that the underside of our porch was its new home. This past weekend (knowing full well there was no creature of the night living there), we decided it was time to make the leap, get under there ourselves. As much as we want to make the space inhospitable to any more urban pestage, we also thought we'd take the time remove 100 years worth of junk that has been piling up for literally 100 years, as our house turns a century old this year.




The list of fodder that came out from under there is near endless. Crawling into the space in the first place seemed horrifying enough. I couldn't decide if the dark, dank, musty pit felt more like the setting for the scene in 'The Grudge' where the ghoul girl eats the face off of another girl after jumping out at her from the dark of an attic, or more like the basement in the final scene of The Blair Witch Project. Either way, my love of the horror genre had me envisioning all sorts of uses for this space. As I unburied an ages-old, thin, rotting child's size mattress, and unearthed pieces of a tiny bed frame, I imagined this pit being used to punish a Victorian-aged youth, locking them in the dark for their failure to sweep the kitchen floors... or... something.

Otherwise, I found ( in no particular order, and as some of the photos will point to):
- pop bottles and beer bottles of all sorts from the last several decades, including
some Expo '86 branded Coke and Labatt's bottles
- A Kamloops connection has been found in this house! Several 'Cooper's pop' bottles... I had no idea they used to bottle their own Soda.
- A mummified rat

- the bottom of an old wooden barrel
- Garden hose
- forementioned bed frame and rotten mattress
- an endless supply of construction end pieces from when this house was first being built in 1910/11
- plastic club head from child's golf club
- skunk poo, skunk poo, and more skunk poo
- old, fallen down insulation, more recently used as nesting sites for some nature of foul rodent.
- three of four short table legs.
- sledge hammer head. Just the head.
- a trailer hitch--portion of bumper still attached.
- various chunks of linoleum from previous owners' floor jobs...

...and that's kinda how it went. It had to figure that all of this miserable extraction in full coveralls, bandana and particle mask work was happening on the warmest day of our year thus far. But it's all gonna be worth it. our final step is to re-insulate, brighten it up under there a bit, throw down some crushed gravel.




All in all, it was a relatively interesting anthropological dig under the house. Especially where the pop and beer bottles were concerned, I couldn't help but think this is the sort of gold mine my dad would've had polished and on display before anyone else in the house would be able to blink an eye. We'll save a couple for ya, dad!

So, enjoy the random assortment of photos. There'll be some finished product shots in the near future.

OH, and to Pepe the skunk and all your friends? we bid you a fine adieu.

Life is Good

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature.

Like these days, I’m wondering about work; about how I can please all my masters, from the internal ones (AKA The Boss) as well as the external ones like the producer who needs me to lock down filming dates ASAP but I still don’t have my cast and the script is still too loose. Or there’s the printer who has fiscal year end billing cut off deadlines and we don’t have our project to them yet. Or there’s the web development company that should’ve gotten back to me by now about my website glitch, but they haven’t.

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature. Like these days, I’m wondering about the kids, about Sacha’s foot, upon which he ‘landed funny’ jumping off a chair this past weekend which prompted a visit to the ER and now Sacha may or may not have a wee crack in a growth plate. Or, I wonder about Heidi and how now that our almost-one year old is eating all sorts of solids, are we feeding her enough? The way she knocks back her meals and snacks, you’d think not!

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature. Like these days, I’m wondering about house stuff. Like that DAMN skunk living under our porch and why we can’t get rid of it no matter what we try, and will it spray our dog again and if we should just kill it somehow and be done with it, or will I actually feel bad about killing off a creature of that size? But if I don’t kill it and we successfully get it to leave, then it will just become someone else’s problem. As for the porch it’s living under, I wonder if it’ll make it another year without caving in on us. Our house is 100 years old in 2011, and beautiful as it is, it shows its age here and here.

And I wonder and I wonder and I worry and I wonder.

And then I open the freezer. And there, tucked in to the right corner of the bottom shelf, is a half-full Ziploc bag of homemade snack mix. It’s been there since we moved in. Chex, cheesy bites, cherios, etc. And before it was in this freezer, it was in the freezer at my last house. And in the freezer at the place I rented before that. And before that, it was in my freezer when I lived in Edmonton.

And now you’re worrying about my mental health, and why I have an ancient bag of homemade snack mix in my freezer all that time.

It’s part of the last batch of snack mix that my friend Colin Cooper ever made, a week or so before he died in his sleep, his various health issues catching up to him when he was barely into his 20’s. March 8th is the anniversary of his passing. I keep that bag of snack mix in the freezer for…well, a lot of days only God knows why. But days like March 8th, I know why. It’s to remind me that I’m so lucky to be 31 and have all those worries on my mind.

Colin knew well enough about worry, and several years ago I noted on this blog that he survived a cancer that took his leg at the age of 13, and in his late teen years, he contracted a rare disease that I can’t even hope to pronounce that reduced his vision, hearing, robbed him of his voice and forced him to walk with a cane much of the time. But Colin rarely if ever complained about his lot in life, saying often that there was always someone worse off than he was.

2003 was a while back now, so I’m not about to crack into that bag of snack mix in my freezer. But I’m glad its there. A lot people miss you, Colin, and we’re thinking of you. On March 8th and often otherwise. Thanks for reminding me about the good life. I'm sure you'd be tickled at the thought of being memorialized in the existence of your snack mix ;)

You can donate to the Colin Cooper Award, which was established at the University of Alberta by friends and family, and is now handed out annually. you can contact the awards office by emailing awards@ualberta.ca or calling them at Phone: (780) 492-3221

(A renovated) Home for the Holidays

The time of the year has again rolled around where the morning finds drivers must unhappily scrape frost off their windshields, and where puddles underfoot have the ice cracked off the tops of them as walkers trod over them, as though they are servings of nature’s crème brûlée...except they're flavourless, infinitely colder, and considerably more depressing... (PS, I don't like winter...)

While things may be chilly outside the Chase household, it’s certainly warmer inside, thanks to the arrival of our fantastic new fireplace! Yahoo! At long last and by popular demand, it’s time for a little before-and-after of the rooms in the house that we’ve been transforming.

We’ve slacked off a bit in the last while, in that the rooms are now totally liveable, and we have lost the motivation to do the finishing work like mouldings and baseboards… we’ll get there though!

SO!
1. The Study BEFORE, when it was our bedroom:




The Study in progress:



The Study AFTER:



2. The Living room BEFORE, when we didn't even know we had a fireplace:






The Living Room in progress:



The Living Room AFTER:


And last but not least, our happiest renovation, the bathroom.

The “bathroom” BEFORE, a la cramped shower and crappy 70's decor:



The “bathroom” in progress:



The Bathroom AFTER:


We’re most pleased by these developments. And, it’s fitting that this blog post come on the day that it does: we’ve been in this house for one year today, exactly. Happy anniversary to the house!

Time to get it all gussied up for the holidays!

Life is like a bowl of ice cream...

This week is a bit of a mix of ‘what’s been up’. A few scoops of Neapolitan ice cream, if you will. There’s been lots going on in the last bit, and here’s the report. With photos this time, I promise!

Hmmm. First, the vanilla scoop. White, pure, and well-intentioned. Kate and I spent our Thanksgiving weekend up in Kamloops, where we had lots of visiting with family of course, and eating turkey, but we got lots of work done, too! (this is the well-intentioned part) We raked leaves and pine needles, reorganized a few rooms at my moms house ( A little drilling, a few shelves put up, a bit of dusting, moving some furniture around, you know how it goes), and cleaned out my dad’s old workshop space, which resulted in several runs to the dump. My brother and I both worked at that task. A great man, my father, but a great packrat, too. For the five per cent of useful things he had in his workspace, the other 95 per cent was garbage, or things he thought were of value, dating back thirty years or so. Does anyone need an 8-track player for their car? How about a 15-year-old can of wood stain? How about a pile of extension chords, either male or female socket-less at one end? It was a trip down memory lane though, despite the oddities, like finding his old fishing gear, or the winter gloves he used, year after year, for shovelling the driveway. Even his ancient chorded drill could not help but remind Jamie and me of many years of shoddy home repairs. We miss you dad, but thank goodness your work bench is clean. Now mum can find a screwdriver if she needs one.

Next up, the Strawberry scoop. Sweet and light! Kate and I have had lots of opportunity to visit with our niece, Aria, in past weeks. Jamie and Dina came down to Vancouver recently, and then, as just mentioned, we were in the loops over the long weekend, and we got to hang out with the wee bebe again. Here she is, hanging out with Nanna Chase, and then bouncing around in front o her second cousin--she loooves that jolly jumper!--and then being fed by her father. contrary to the evidence in this photo, she does like her food, and most of it stays in her mouth.
she’s so darned cute, she gets her own scoop of ice cream, not to be lumped in with the rest of the thanksgiving weekend. Well anyway, she’s not so wee, actually. She’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 22 lbs., and she’s only 6 months old. She’s adorable though, and very happy. She makes it sort of a shame to live in Vancouver, because we don’t get to see enough of her! Mind you, my sister lives in England (sorry to rub that in, Kari), so I should consider myself as much a next door neighbour to my niece as anyone else!

And lastly, the chocolate scoop. Rich and indulgent. Kate and I continue to tear apart our house, and soon enough we’ll have a remodelled bathroom, a remodelled study, and our gas fireplace is being installed next week, just in time for the chilly weather. We know we’re pretty lucky to be able to afford to do such things, hence the indulgence part. It’s also a guilty pleasure being able to take sledge hammers and crowbars to one’s walls. That’s how I spent my birthday this year, actually! No joke! I came home from work, put on my grubbies, and we started tearing out the bathroom walls. Forget a nice b-day dinner on the town, we ordered take-away Indian food so that we could get to work!
This should also be considered as a chocolate scoop itemsimply due to the nature of all the stuff we uncovered, as most of the S*@t that we found in behind the walls was, at best, brown. usually black, however. and dusty and musty...hence the masks, need one ask.
In other indulgent news, I won some concert tickets for a David Usher show off of a radio contest recently

and we got to eat some tasty food, see a great show, and meet the man himself, too.

There you have it… hopefully by my next entry, we’ll have some of the reno’s done!

a little summer colour

alright, so here's the story on this series of pictures. It's short and sweet. When kate and I moved in here, one of the most common comments we got from passers-by as we would work on the house would be: 'whatever you do, DON'T touch the garden! just wait to see what come up!'

the previous owner of this house threw wildflower seeds all over the place. inside the fence, outside the fence. front yard, backyard, down the side of the house. she didn't do much else for the yard, though. We have two foot tall dandelions. everywhere. and stinging nettles. turns out Kate is allergic. weeds of all descriptions fill in any gap where a flower hasn't. No shortage of morning glory around here either, unfortunately. Nothing glorious about that frickin' weed, if you ask us!

aaaanyway, spring rolled through town, and with it came the flowers. No. pardon me. THE FLOWERS.Week after week, we've been treated to something different as various blooms have come and gone, and for all the weeds, the flowers have been worth it! Here's some examples for you! and you'll note these pics aren't all flowers--you'll see some berries int here too! no, they didn't grow here, but it's another sure sign of summer. we've recently gone out to some local farms and picked 40 lbs of strawberries, and 20 lbs of raspberries! that oughtta last us through the winter :)




the next entry will have more manliness to it--I'm off camping this week! yahoo!

Death of an Oil Tank

While it was an extremely exciting day for us at our house, those of you that are
A) not homeowners, or
B) homeowners that have a pristine house and property with no issues ( if so, I hate you)

Well then, you might not find this all that thrilling. BUT! If you’ve ever bought a house with a potential environmental disaster brewing underneath the property, then this series of photos is for YOU!
A recap: when Kate and I bought our house, we were aware of the underground oil tank, which is filled with diesel fuel and used to heat the house via oil furnace. What we weren’t terribly aware of, is the fact that a house with an oil tank—particularly of the underground nature—creates a huge hit on one’s house insurance, not to mention that with price of gas these days, it’s just a huge expense to keep using.

SO! We decided from day one that it would be coming out. Then we did the research on extraction of oil tanks, and read many horror stories of 50 year-old tanks that have been leaking for 47 of their years underground, thereby creating an environmental nightmare that requires tens of thousands of dollars to clean up, all at homeowner expense.


Now, we knew our tank was functioning pretty well, and by all accounts, no leaks existed. But it’s still been a bit tough to keep our fears in check while waiting to get this thing out of the ground. As you’ll recall, we converted to a gas line in past months, and since then have been gearing up to dig out the tank.

Well, yesterday was the day, and much to our relief, no Exxon Valdez-style damage existed underground! WeeHOOO!

The day was also a great pleasure for our young next door neighbour, Matthew, who at the age of two-and-something years old, has a healthy obsession with “big diggers” and firemen, both of which were on scene during the day (it is the fire chief’s job to inspect tanks once extracted). As an added bonus, Matt even got to sit in the cab of the backhoe.

So, with that job done, we can now focus on the much more enjoyable task of landscaping our yard! Heck, with any luck, it’ll look less (to paraphrase the Simpsons) like a full-scale Chernobyl, and a more like a mere Three-Mile Island in no time 

until then!

The EVOLUTION OF (our) FIRE(place)

okay, so the dramatic title is less dramatic than it could be. It's the sad realization that this update is about (groan) home improvement rather than (woohoo!) that scintillating phlogiston that so captures our attention, be it little campfire or a whole forest at once.

If nothing more, you're now at least curious as to what 'phlogiston' means.

BUT I digress!

It's been months since Kate and I started probing into our walls to see what lay beneath. we are but one step away from a completely new look to the wall that separates our living room from our kitchen.

Let me take you down memory lane for a moment...
You may recall that this is how our wall used to look, both from the living room side, and then from the kitchen side:



And then we went to work. There was limited exploration at first, just--much like the bear going over the mountain--to see what we could see. we quickly discovered that there was a chimney and a fireplace concealed within.

Exhibits C and D, for your approval:




unable to restrain ourselves much longer, we soon ended up tearing down walls, to reveal this crumbly, sagging, Gothic monstrosity:



But fear not! with the help of our chequebook and Bob, from cornerstone masonry, we now have this!


TADAAAAA!

we've just one step to go now: the installation of a gas fireplace. just as of last week, we have a gas line running into the house, so that'll make it easier to have a gas fireplace :) (this house has previously been heated by an ancient, unreliable oil furnace), and by then... well, by then, it'll be summer, so we won't use it... but... it'll be there, so.. yay.
so, for the moment, we have a lovely fireplace, and a more open floor plan. Swing by and take a look for yourself some time!