Godgirl

While I was getting the Christmas decorations out from the cupboard under the stairs in the basement last week, I found a small box at the very back, underneath the very bottom stairs. It was very dusty, and when I showed it to my mom, she figured it had probably been sitting in that spot untouched since we moved in, in about 1988.So in a way, it was like a time capsule. Unlike intentional time capsules, however, it was all basically junk:
-spare kite parts (my dad had a kite)
-air mattress
-blue rubber hose and pump to pump up air mattress
-radio from the truck, with cassette slot
The coolest thing of all was a Zenith Royal 400 All Transistor Radio. It looks just like this but green and sliver, and on the back is taped a piece of paper that says "May 31, 1974" in my dad's writing. Knowing the Kay propensity for fastidiousness, that date is probably the last time the batteries were changed. The rest of it's going in the trash, but I'm keeping the radio. If I take it apart, maybe I can get it to work...
EDIT: The cardboard box was actually labelled "JUNK".

Current Location: The Basement, of course
Current Mood: amused

Today was the big day of the yard sale. It was actually a porch sale, because it rained overnight and continued to drizzle for most of the morning. Thank goodness we have such a big porch. I think for a first attempt it went pretty well, especially considering the weather. I made more than the ad in the newspaper cost, which was my first goal. I sold a bunch of books, CDs, videos and records, and some of my odds and ends, but none of the clothes. From what I can tell, that's about par for the course with yard sales. I also learned that most of the people who come to yard sales are veteran yard salers who will try to bargain for everything, so always price things higher than you'd like to get for them. If you put out a table that says "everything a dollar", expect to be offered 50 cents (or even 25!) for many of the items. And there are also people who go from yard sale to yard sale looking for specific things, like jewelery or antiques, so don't take it personally if they look things over and leave quickly.

Probably the most beneficial aspect of the yard sale process wasn't the bit of extra cash made. It was gathering together a lot of things you don't want or need anymore, with a view to getting them out of your house. Everything we didn't sell today has been boxed up and will be taken to charity on Monday. It's not going back down to take up space in the basement for even one more day! And that's a really good feeling. One of the sad things, funnily enough, was seeing all the National Geographics go. We had every issue from January 1979 to December 2000, and most of the ones from 2001-2006 when we declined to renew Dad's subscription. There were also a lot of Canadian Geographics from 1980 onward. That row of yellow spines has been a feature in the basement my whole life. But now I am looking forward to using those shelves for something else.

Current Mood: relieved

Aug. 18th, 2009 09:06 pm A more mature quiz... from pere_chan

Tired of all of those surveys made up by high school kids?! 'Have you ever kissed someone? Missed someone? Told someone you loved them? Drank alcohol?'

( 35 questions for the people who are a little older... )

The newest craze in our house is home brewing. And by home brewing, I mean going to one of those "brew your own" places and ordering big batches of wine or beer, and getting a great bargain from buying in bulk instead of paying Beer Store and LCBO prices. I was looking through the Pennysaver one week, since I hadn't seen one since I'd been away, and there was a coupon for $10 off at Just Brew It on Lawrence Ave. So Alex and decided to go and check it out. The deal is, you technically have to purchase the ingredients that go into the beer or wine, before they are mixed together to form alcohol, and the place you're buying them from provides the facilities to combine them. So we ordered 50 litres of a mock-Canadian lager, and two weeks later, came back to bottle the stuff after it had fermented in the keg. The owner was really nice, and gave us a little tour of the whole operation, the stills, the cold rooms, etc.

The 50 litres of beer worked out to 100 half-litre bottles. You buy the bottles for about 50 cents each the first time, and can re-use them for future batches to cut the cost. The whole thing was about $130, for the equivalent of 151 bottles of beer of the size you'd get from the beer store. And it's pretty decent beer; I'm no connoisseur, it's perfectly drinkable.

My brother Jonah thought it was a smart idea too, so I took him there the next day and he ordered 50 litres of mock-Stella, same price. We just bottled it today, and it is also a decent beer. We now have a full sized fridge here in our basement, full of beer. It looks hilarious.

My mom had been saving up all her old wine bottles for some time, with the intent to go and do a batch of wine at one of these places, and had just never gotten around to it. So I drove her down there last week to finally get the ball rolling. She splurged on $145 worth of Merlot, which for 30 bottles works out to just under $5 a bottle, which is cheaper than any wine store, and was from their more expensive line that takes 6 weeks to mature. It'll probably last her a year.

After I brought my boyfriend, my brother, and then my mom to this place, they said "what's with this family!?" I joked that we were clearly alcoholics, and he said he wondered if we were Irish or something. Part Irish, part Italian, we said, which explains a lot. But the truth is we are not alcoholics, we're just frugal!

I'm considering having a barbecue in a couple weeks, to help get some of this beer drunk. It doesn't have preservatives in it like Beer Store beer, so you have to drink it within, like, a month.

Current Mood: lazy

In my last post I mentioned cramming onto a schoolbus full of BraVura fans to go see them play at the El Mocambo in Toronto. BraVura is a metal band composed of my brother, Jonah, and 4 other talented musicians, who have been playing together for about a year now. Of course, most of that time I was living in England, so I was thrilled to finally see and hear them play live. Their set that night was spot on, and Alex got some great film footage to add to their youtube site. Out of that gig, they have now been given the opportunity to play at The Opera House in Toronto on July 17th.

But of far more immediate, and local excitement, is the fact that they are playing a short set before the first few showings of Anvil! The Story of Anvil at the Princess Cinema all this week. This upcoming event was covered in the Record on Saturday, and would have been on the first page of the Arts section, if a certain celebrity's death hadn't taken precedence.

So if you're looking for a fun night out tonight, Thursday or Friday, come down to the Princess for some live music and a good Rock-Doc.

Current Mood: cheerful

There's too much to write about. I've left it too long. But I've got to start somewhere.

I've been back here in my hometown for nearly two months now. Being back was really weird because things that felt like they ought to be familiar, like which buses go where, or how to get from A to B, weren't familiar. There is nothing more disconcerting than feeling lost in your own city. By the time I left London, I felt like a Londoner. Most of my friends weren't even born in London, many weren't even born in England, but by virtue of location, we could all be Londoners together. We could blissfully take the city for granted, never visit any of the sights or attractions, and complain about tourists. It's the kind of thing it's impossible to be conscious of when you're living it, it's only afterward that you know what there was to miss.

But a lot of nice things have happened since we landed in May. I went to my first wedding! Joel and Chantelle got married the weekend after we arrived, and we got a last minute invitation. It was a great opportunity to catch up with riizu (sister of the groom) and all the folks I know from growing up in the co-op. Then the very next weekend, my mom, Alex and I drove to the south shore of Montreal to visit the Kay side of the family, see my grandma, etc. Next, our 25 boxes of goods from our room in London were delivered a month ahead of schedule, and a frantic clear out ensued. I hadn't made any attempt to go through the contents of my basement apartment (in my mom's house), before leaving for England, so I first had to go through asking "keep, toss or yard sale?" to make room for Alex's and my new stuff. We did remarkably well, and now have a lovely living space and bedroom, and made the adjoining room into a dressing room where all the clothes are hung out on racks. Setting up the computer made it feel more like home again (funny, that), and we even got a free couch that Jonah found on the side of the road a block away from here.

Abbey the Cat survived the solo flight across the Atlantic ahead of us, and spent the month hiding in the basement. Mom and Jonah came down to visit and feed her each day, but Mom says she looks a lot happier now that we're here. That's so nice to know. Cats can seem so indifferent sometimes that it's interesting to hear what she's like without us around.

There was a lot of running around getting organised in the first few weeks. Alex now has a permanent residence card, a SIN card (which you need in order to work), we both signed up for OHIP (provincial health care... but it doesn't kick in for the first 3 months, so we're not allowed to get sick until August 3rd), and passed our G1s (provisional driver's licence). Resumes were printed, a number of jobs have been applied for, but so far we are both still unemployed. Last week we did both get a bit of work with the University of Waterloo, invigilating Accounting exams, which is fun but only a few hours of work twice a term.

There's other stuff too. allangelo came for a fun-filled few days. Alex and I joined a schoolbus full of BraVura fans to see them play at the El Mocambo in Toronto. We have a formidable vegetable garden growing in the backyard, but it's uncertain whether we may have planted too late to see much produce this year. But those will be the subjects of future posts. For now, here's a link to a public gallery of some photos from the past few weeks.

When all's said and done, it's good to be back.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: KMFDM - Juke Joint Jezebel