Little Miss Geek

I went to Montreal for a long weekend of hanging out with friends I haven't seen for a few years. Man, I had no idea how much I needed that, just being out with my people and cracking jokes and being stupid. I came home feeling a million times better about my life.

The entire trip was a much higher risk level than I'm usually comfortable with and it didn't help that we're in an infection spike. (OR that Ontario doesn't have the latest boosters out yet.) But I loaded myself up on mouthwash and Profi and the weather was nice enough that we did most of our drinking on patios and eating in restaurants with big open windows. I feel fine and I'll wait a couple of weeks before I'm around my vulnerable father and I'll test in the meantime.

Yesterday was my first day back. I took Lord Brock to the groomers because he's been developing mats in his fur again and they had to shave most of his hindquarters. (Mental note: Start taking him in for a lion cut every spring going forward, because it will be easier on him than trying to get the mats out after the fact.) Then I picked up my new orthotics, emptied my suitcase, and did laundry.

Today I put away laundry, took Lord Brock to the vet for his follow-up bloodwork, got groceries and broke down a huge stack of cardboard boxes and moved them out of my house. Then I went to the big hardware store across town with a tape measure and I think I've found some lights that will fit in the basement. I also picked up some trim to put under the doors because the contractor just left the big flooring gaps between rooms uncovered.

Tomorrow I'm back to work. The daughter is coming over in the afternoon tomorrow and Friday, so we'll work on getting the light fixtures in and fixing the wonky electrical boxes. If we can get that finished I can do the last bit of cleaning in the basement on Saturday and Sunday.

Am I forgetting something? I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting something.

I think taking the weekend off was a good idea. I feel like I've gotten a lot of my drive back.

Still alive. Haven't posted much, because really things haven't changed much in the last month.

The house stuff continues to be a labourious swim upstream against a river of bullshit. Final Boss contractor finished off the stairs and deck and honestly, he was amazing. Since the stairs were the last part of the work that I figured would be needed to comply with code I contacted the city about closing the work permits.

Turns out Original Contractor did not get the city to look at the foundations before closing up the walls. Which is a MANDATORY step. There also apparently needed to be an inspection of the drain that leads to the sump pump. I do remember the contractor talking about getting the engineer to look at the work, so I reached out to him to see if he could provide a report.

Engineer: You have to talk to [Contractor]
Me: [Contractor] hasn't returned any of messages for months. Did you do the inspection or not?
Engineer: I'll reach out to him.

So will I be able to close the work permits? Nobody knows! I'm hoping that the worst-case scenario is they have to knock a hole in the wall and feed a camera down. I have no fucking idea what I'll do if they have to rip up concrete.

Cry, probably.

Meanwhile, got the bathroom painted and managed to rescue most of the fixtures. Figured out that the wall lights are borked and tried to buy replacements without any luck - they have to be really short because of the tiny space they are squeezed into, but apparently wall lights are now something that you can only order online because none of the hardware stores I visited had anything on site. I was really hoping I could take a tape measure to them before handing over any money.

AND I tried to put wall-plates on all the outlets and switches and failed because out of 12 electrical boxes only 4 are set properly in the wall. So I have to pull the rest apart and re-mount them and fill in the gaps on the ones where they just cut a fuckoff big hole that the plate won't cover. How how HOW do you screw up such a basic fucking job?

I am taking next weekend off and I am going to visit friends. And there is a part of me that thinks I should stay here and deal with the electricals bullshit but - I have dedicated every single weekend to this fucking project for longer than I can calculate. I lost my entire summer to dealing with this. I deserve to take ONE weekend off, right?