urban tapestry practice, postcards, magnetic walls

(Above photo: Allison & Jodi at an Urban Tapestry practice at Jodi's place. We were doing prep for our upcoming gig in Germany at Filkcontinental.)

Still in the midst of moving chaos and unpacking. Many thanks to Parki for helping move stuff from our mom-in-law's condo to the new house during the week! This weekend, we'll be starting to empty our two storage lockers (including most of the contents of my old home office which was packed up SEVEN MONTHS AGO, woohoo!) and getting more of our stuff from Ginny's.

Some more pics....

Housewarming gift from Jodi, which Jeff hung from my office tree for me:



Postcard from Julie:



Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville, PA. www.thecolonialtheatre.com. 610-917-1228. Built as a Vaudeville House at the start of the 20th century, the Colonial is owned and operated by the Association for the Colonial Theatre, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the full restoration and use of the facility as a centerpiece for cultural and civic activity. The Colonial appeared in the 1958 sci-fi cult film "The Blob." Davidson Neon restored the 50's neon marquee in 2002. Carnevale Eustis Architects of Phoenixville designed th new street-level facade.

"Just in time for Blobfest, a postcard from the theatre in my own hometown, where "The Blob" was filmed (well, the bit of it when they run out of the cinema pursued by Blob) Now refurbished & back in action. Love, Julie."

Postcard from Rand and Erin:



Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Cleveland. The building shape is a registered trademark of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

"Debbie -

We wanted you to have this to add to your collection! The Hall of Fame was fantastic - details to come! Hope the move went smoothly - looking forward to seeing the new house!

Love Erin & Rand :-)"

You can see my full postcard collection here.

A (much-needed) housewarming gift from Ginny:



We definitely plan on buying a barbecue in the near future now that we have a deck, so very much appreciate this housewarming gift from our friends, Alison & Jeff:



Finished painting the undercoats of magnetic paint on my office wall last night after going to see Batman Returns with my sister:



I plan to paint over with the off-white in the rest of my office and then paint something interesting over that (not sure what yet). Then I can stick up fridge magnets and photos, etc.! The fridge up in our kitchen isn't the magnetic kind, so this will be the only place in the house for our sizeable collection of fridge magnets and fridge magnetic poetry sets.

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garbage day!

First garbage day!

Don't worry...I'm sure the novelty will wear off quickly, but this is new for us. We got somewhat spoiled as condo-living types; we took our garbage to the chute down the hall anytime we wanted. There were two recycling boxes which were magically emptied every day.



Now we have to make sure the garbage can is raccoon-proof, for example. Some Toronto residents have been using bungee cords, but apparently the raccoons have figured out how to take these off unless the cords are fastened in elaborate and secure configurations. And the catch is that the trash guys won't empty cans with bungee cords, so you have to make sure you take the cords off before 7 am.

Ours passed the raccoon test, at least this first time.

Leaf and yard waste is handled differently in Toronto. In the summers, this type of trash is collected every other week, and has to be in paper bags or in a rigid open-top container. Cardboard boxes aren't allowed. Branches have to be cut up and bundled within a certain specifications (click on the close-up of the picture below for details), and yard waste apparently does NOT include grass clippings, which I find somewhat confusing. Not that it matters to us, since we have no grass. :-)



The recycling rules are somewhat baffling to me. The basics are easy, of course...glass and plastic containers, cardboard. It's the minute seemingly counter-intuitive details that continue to escape my memory. While some paper gift wrap is recyclable, for example, the type with a foil pattern is not. Plastic muffin trays are not recyclable, but margarine containers are. The list of exceptions seems endless.

Things are going to get more complicated in October, when the Green Bin program starts in North York. We're planning to get a compost bin as soon as we get settled (HA!!!) and figure out where to put it. Right now, trash is picked up every week, with yard waste and recyclables being picked up on alternate weeks. Once the Green Bin program starts, trash will only be picked up every other week.

Despite confusion over recycling and trash rules, I know this is all ultimately a Good Thing. I'm already much more conscious of the types of food product packaging I buy (whether it's recyclable, for example, and how much space it will take up in the trash can if it's not). I'm also making a much concerted effort in reducing the amount of trash that comes out of this house. And yes, I'm somewhat embarrassed by the fact that it took moving into a house to make me more conscientious about this sort of thing.



According to city stats, 43,000 residential tonnes of trash were recycled in Toronto last year, with 32% of residential waste diverted because of various recycling, green bin and yard composting programs. Toronto currently ships 120 trucks of garbage a day, which is down from 140 a day in 2003.

A survey: What are the trash and recycling "rules" like in your area? I'm curious.

Heartfelt thanks to Jeff in helping me set up my office space. I'm SO pleased with it so far. I still need some more bookshelves, need to paint my magnetic wall, a phone jack, a corkboard, set up my printer and scanner area, my craft table. But at least I can start working in my office!

Here are some pics...

My workspace, with a brand-new desk from IKEA. The bookshelves in my office were from our old living room. I'm going to line the wall on the left with corkboard, and put a shelf above the corkboard:



I bought the bunch of cloth sunflowers at Lewiscraft yesterday to add some corner colour, temporarily hung up the scarf from Andrea below the window. I'm going to have a shorter book shelf below the window, need a reading lamp, may put another shelf on the other side of the filing cabinet near the tree. The reading chair is from Jeff's office and is here temporarily while he gets his workspace set up. I'm on the lookout for a nice cushy comfy armchair:



Interesting to compare the above photo to the original room before we moved in:

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chocolate-covered ginger

(Above photo: My friend Cathy, who has known me longer than anyone except for family. She just moved out to Calgary this past weekend; I'm going to miss her. :-( )

Thanks to Mark Thompson for his mouthwatering housewarming gift of chocolate-covered ginger. A house really isn't home until you've eaten chocolate in it.



We have high-speed access, woohoo! Embarrassing how much of a relief that is, really, like being allowed to finally use a ballpoint pen normally after being forced to write with a broken crayon held between my toes. How spoiled is that? I remember how THRILLED I was with my first 300-baud Hayes Smartmodem. Makes me wonder what my nieces and nephews are going to be using; one of my nieces already jokes about the "caveman days" when Jeff and I were kids. :-D

But I digress.

I mentioned before that I received some new postcards for my Flickr set. You can see the entire collection here or you can also see individual cards from Riley, Casey, Alan, and Helen. Thanks so much! If you have a postcard you'd like to volunteer for my collection, I'd be stupidly happy to receive it; please send it to me at:

Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
34 Eglinton Ave. W.,
P.O. Box 189,
Toronto, ON
Canada M4R 2H6

A few more office pics...

As you've already seen, I painted the outside of my office door with some weird-looking alien grass thingies:



It's not finished, obviously. I'm still deciding what else to add to it. Perhaps a moon floating near the top right. Perhaps the Tree of Gondor. Or perhaps a weird-looking alien creature peering up from behind the grass.

Here's the inside of my office door:



As you might have already guessed, my office is not going to match the rest of the house AT ALL. I want lots of bright colours and different textures and plan to gradually paint more of my walls with interesting plants and creatures. I tend to lean towards the goofy and colourful rather than elegant and pastel, if you haven't already guessed. :-)

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red balloons and waterguns

(Above photo: Edna with housewarming gifts from friends... a silk scarf from Andrea, and a Balloon-o-gram from Scott & Amanda & Zoe.)

Thanks so Scott, Amanda and Zoe for the wonderful bouquet of a dozen red helium balloons tied to a bag of jellybeans; it was waiting at our front door when Jeff and I arrived on Saturday for our first night at the house.

We're officially (and finally) moved into our new house! The move isn't quite finished; we still have stuff in two small storage lockers downtown as well as my mom-in-law's condo, but our home base is now in our new house. We had our first breakfast out on the deck beside the garden, beneath the crabapple tree.

Yesterday was crazier than we expected and we didn't get time to start unloading the storage lockers containing most of our personal stuff (including office stuff and summer clothes). BUT my office now has a new desk, thanks to Jeff's expert IKEA-assembling skills. :-)

A ton of things still to do and when we make the mistake of thinking about it too much, it's easy to get overwhelmed. We still have no shower rod or curtain, for example. Our washer and dryer need to be hooked up, we have no high speed access yet and there's only one phone in the house. The solarium is filled to the ceiling with boxes to be unpacked, and we both know there are at least four times as many boxes waiting for us in the storage lockers. Thanks SO MUCH to Ginny and Ray for helping move furniture around yesterday.

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday afternoon and unfairly took out some of my frustrations on Jeff, who was very patient; we've been taking turns supporting each other during these kinds of moments over recent months. Before we both got back to housestuff, he put on the new Riverfolk CD ("Meander") on our player; it's been our only CD in the house until just recently, and we've been playing it over and over again. It takes a lot of effort to feel stressed or unhappy while listening to this album. :-)

Jeff and I took a break from movingstuff on Saturday to attend Reid's and Luisa's annual watergun party. Great fun! Thanks so much to Luisa and Reid for hosting this. I'll upload some pics when we have high-speed access again. Luisa also lent me some small cans of green acrylic paint for more tree leaves for my office wall, yay!

I'll be going to my niece's birthday party on Wednesday night but those who are free should consider checking out the Heather Dale concert in Hugh's Room. You can find out more about Heather and hear soundclips here.

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STAYING AT OUR NEW HOUSE TONIGHT!

Looks like we've lost high-speed access at the condo during the move transition so I'm using dial-up, ugh. I'll post pics of the wonderful postcards from Casey, Riley, Helen and Alan when I can upload larger versions. Helen's postcard was from from New Zealand's South Island, which she says was the home of Rohan in LOTR as well as the major battleground scene in the upcoming Narnia movie. Thanks also to Peter Sheil (London) for his housewarming card.

The first part of the move went smoothly; we now have furniture, including our kitchen stuff! I'm embarrassed at how happy I was to see my wok again. :-) Felt like celebrating, so I went out last night with my friend Parki; we had sushi and then went to see The Island at the Varsity. Found it so-so (too derivative of Bladerunner and Logan's Run for my tastes) but loved Sean Bean and Steve Buscemi (sp?).

I missed Parki while he was away on his two-month trip overseas; good to be able to hang out with him again.

Other news: Rand's brother David recently received the New York State's Conspicuous Service Cross for his valor in combat. Thomas Woods posted an excellent entry on the topic.

I finally finished the Harry Potter last night! It's been a challenge, finding time to read during moving chaos. Very much enjoyed the book and now I can read Allison's review (LOTS of spoilers, so only click through if you've finished the book already).

WE STAY IN OUR NEW HOUSE TONIGHT! It's been seven months since we sold our condo; I can't believe it's finally happening, our final move. We'll be continuing to move the smaller stuff from our rented storage lockers and Ginny's condo today and next week, but from now on our home base will be at the new house.

We're both dead tired but very, very happy.

:-)

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