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My Ideal House

According to Troy, we still haven’t found a house to buy after two weeks of hardcore househunting sessions because my standards are too high. I disagree with that. I don’t think my standards are too high. I just know exactly what I want.

In case you want to see whether my standards are too high or not, these are my ideal house criteria, in no particular order:

— older than your grandparents, because newer houses seem to be lacking character;
— detached, because I don’t want to have to share a wall with the neighbour ever again;
— spacious rooms, because we have way too much crap to accommodate; — at least 3 bedrooms, though if the house is exceptionally nice, 2 bedrooms would be fine; — good-sized, fenced backyard with mature trees; — smells nice/doesn’t smell like death by nicotine; — carpet-free, or at least minimum carpeting; — large kitchen, so I don’t have to be scared of being in the kitchen with Troy at the same time; — a bathroom on the same level with the master bedroom; — finished basement, though unfinished one would be fine as long as it can be used for (mostly book) storage; — good privacy; — porch or deck or sunroom for my plants; — gas heating, preferably high-efficiency; — newer electrical wiring, i.e. no more fuses, so the house can be easily insured; — private driveway; — friendly neighbourhood;

Um, I think that’s about all. Since we’re going to be stuck with the house for many years, might as well get one that’s closest to being ideal. I think it’s realistic. What do you think?

Prickly

Been more than a little bit obsessed with househunting lately. Hence the lack of post. I didn’t even bother to make a birthday post. I turned a year older on Monday. And yes, I had a good birthday.

I started a Flickr group called We Say NO to Photos and Videos on Flickr today. Join us if you feel like complaining about other people’s complaints about Flickr or if you’re just feeling silly. :)

Stale Weekend Wrap-up

In case you’re wondering about how the Picture the Cure Again show I was talking about last week went, it went fine. I got one picture sold on the opening night, which was cool. We got six friends showing up and some of them bought pictures. Even we bought a picture (for when we have a house because all the walls in our tiny apartment are taken). That’s the condensed version of how Saturday went anyway. The unabridged version is behind the cut.

Before going to the show, we went to the Royal Ontario Museum. We parked the car near our friends’ condo in Davisville then took the subway to the museum. Our friends let us use their subway passes so it was free subway rides for us! Yay! Before we entered the museum, we had some street meat (i.e. hot dogs) and I ended up having ketchup all over my cashmere sweater. Fantastic. The first thing I did once we got into the museum was trying to find a washroom so I could wash off the ketchup from my sweater since I didn’t really want to wear a ketchup-smeared sweater to the show. That’d be gross. Luckily, the ketchup washed off quite easily. No bleach required. Phew!

We only had two hours to check out the museum which we later found wasn’t enough. We spent most of our time checking out the skeletons of some prehistorical animals and reading about them. Have I ever told you that Pterodactyl is one of my favourite words? Pterodactyl, fjord, see the patterns? I like words started with two consonants! Anyway, we saw some Pterodactyls skeletons. They were cool. Trust me, our visit to the museum was a lot more interesting than this lame story.

After our visit to the museum, we took another subway ride and then walked to a Malaysian restaurant for dinner with friends. There were some Indonesian dishes in the menu but I wasn’t sure about the authenticity so instead of ordering any of those, I just ordered a Malaysian dish, Nasi Lemak, which turned out to be not as good as what I had in Vancouver. The anchovies or ikan bilis were buried deep inside the tamarind sauce. I actually had to dig for them. Still, it was a pretty satisfying dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy what they ordered.

After dinner, we walked across the Chinatown to the gallery where Picture the Cure Again was. Google Map said it was only a 0.6 km walk but it felt much longer than that. We had to walk back to the subway station after the show a couple of hours later and it didn’t take long for me to slow down considerably. My legs felt like they were made of stone. So heavy. So tired. Even the next day my legs still felt heavy. I walked a lot more than that when we were in Winnipeg but didn’t feel that tired. What’s up with that?

The next day, we went to a camera show in Thornhill and I scored 28 rolls of film — including 5 rolls of Agfa Optima that Lomography is selling for 16 dollars excluding shipping — for 15 dollars. Happiness! Then we went to IKEA to have cheap lunch and Troy bought me some cactii and daffodil bulbs. We spent the rest of the day thrift store hopping until we were thrift stored out. Then we went to a grocery store to buy the stuff I needed to make Rice Krispy bars because I was craving for those. I started making them as soon as we got home and they were so good! I made another batch yesterday but they weren’t as good as the first batch. Oh well.

Another weekend is coming up and it’s the weekend before my birthday! Yay! We’ll kick off the birthday weekend by having dinner at my favourite Mennonite restaurant on Friday night. Can’t wait! I’m hungry already. Mmm, broasted chicken…

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