Month: January 2012

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Vinyl Flooring Is Great

Remember how The Apartment’s tile floor broke my French press recently? These are not ceramic tiles but rather the kind I dub to be school tiles. I’m not sure what they are made of, but they are 12″x12″ and very thin.

Anyway, I was in Miranda today rearranging some things on the top shelf of the cabinet above the sink when I dropped this mug:

(this cabinet doesn’t look like that anymore!)

I broke another mug this week while rummaging in the rig (hint: do not hit the handle of one mug with the handle of another), but this one would have annoyed me. It has a ceramic lid, so it keeps beverages hot longer and it’s also great for taking outside. Anyway, I caught the mug, but the lid hit the counter then jumped onto the floor where it bounced twice before landing safely. It made such an awful racket that I was certain it was a goner, but nope!

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Not Terrible, Not Great

The caulking I applied yesterday didn’t dry as smoothly as it had been laid out. It looks okay; better than not having a finished edged, but not as nice as having proper trim. I will try to even out the edges with a straight edge and a razor blade and see if that makes a difference. Another idea I have is to put the caulking behind the wood trim to fill in any gaps. In that case, I would go with the paintable kind.

I can live with this better than I could with the unfinished edges, but I still have a ways to go to get a truly polished look.

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An Afternoon at Home

The promised thaw arrived today, right on schedule. I headed down to Miranda after lunch with a bucket of hot soapy and vinegary water and spent about an hour scrubbing every inch of the front room, including the inside of the cabinets and the ceiling.

The only lingering project in the rig is the $(%*) trim. What’s there looks great and what’s not there is because of odd angles and uneven flooring. I decided to try a cheap solution and bought a container of brown caulking. I applied some under the vanity in the dressing room and along the shower as an experiment. I’ll see how it looks once it has cured. If I like it, I will do the rest of the trimless floor. I really wish I had thought of this idea sooner. Caulking is super cheap, easy to apply, and if I hate the results, it’s easily removable. I’ll go check out the results tomorrow and try to remember to bring the camera. 🙂

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A Touch of Cabin Fever

The week has been bitter cold, with day-time temperatures dipping into the mid negative 20s, with the windchill nearing -40. I don’t even want to get into the nighttime temperatures! I went for a quick walk on Monday afternoon, but heeded the frostbite warning the last two days and limited my outdoor time to running around between my buildings. I’ve also had a huge transcription project the last three days that ate up the rest of my days. So I haven’t had much of a change of scenery for four days. Today, it’s a balmy-feeling -18, so I’ve decided to walk the two blocks to Montana’s for dinner!

In the RV, having to do several days of hard work with no real opportunity to go outside hasn’t made me feel claustrophobic. I get to prepare and have my meals in another room and at the end of the day, I can retire to the front room to decompress before moving to the loft. In The Apartment, I have to stare at the same four walls all day. It’s slowly becoming an insufferable situation. While I am thrilled to be in a warm place this week, I am very glad I only have about eight weeks left to go before I can move back home. This winter has proven to me that it is the number of rooms in my home, not the square footage, that determines how happily I can live there. If I had to stay on in Lethbridge in The Apartment for any longer, I would be quite content to remain there, but I would get furniture that would allow me to separate my spaces. Not that I need to think about that!

One of the things that I will doubly appreciate when I return to Miranda is the fridge. Do you housebound folks have any idea how LOUD a compression fridge is?!

In other news, a tenant must have noticed that I was working late this aftenoon and brought me a cup of tea and a slice of banana cream pie. There are perks to working here. 🙂

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Reason # 1,423 Why I Can’t Wait to Go Back to the States

Look at what I found in my mailbox today:

toasted coconut marshmallows

In Canada, we have a choice of marshmallows: jumbo or miniature. In the US, I’ve discovered they have gingerbread flavoured marshmallows (mmm…) and now toasted coconut (oh!). I’ve never been much of a marshmallow fan until now, now that I know they are divine with a bit (lot) of flavour infused into them!

Looks like chocolate and chips aren’t the only thing to have more variety in the U.S.