Sorry for being so slow, everybody. I’ve started posting catchup blogs again. See my post for August 14th for the first one. That reminds me. I bought some sambal badjak “extra heet” the other day. Really looking forward to it. Who can guess how that reminded me?
September 9. I had my first class, and then went to the coffee shop in the computer science building.
September 11. The digging has started in Skeleton Park [small & big holes]. I asked one of the archeologists what they had found so far. She said some broken glass, bricks, and lots of mud.
All of the drywall at the house has been put up. Now they are filling in the seams, and they’ve started building the basement walls. Somebody abandoned a bike in the yard. It was there for almost a week, and then disappeared.
We found a letterbox at Fort Henry. Banjo liked playing by the water. He was mesmerized by the pigeons that live in the East Tower.
September 12. We went letterboxing at Kingston Mills. I had fun wading to a big rock in the middle of the river. The current downstream from the falls was pretty strong! Celine made a little friend.
September 14. I bought my textbooks. They were a real bargain at only $600!
Well, here I am in Toronto. I am staying in a dorm room until I can find a cheaper place to live. I’m looking for a room in a shared house, hopefully with grad students. We’ll see what I can get.
My residence is right downtown, about a 10 minute walk from campus. It has a gym, pool, tennis court, and convenience store in the building, and each floor has a shared kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and TV area. My room is on the 14th floor. I have a bed, desk, closet, and sink. I’ve got my own telephone and the room is air conditioned, which I like. But the best part about the building is the talking elevator.
Celine and Christine came to Toronto to see me off. We did a bit of shopping and exploring, and visited a couple of patios. Celine picked a very nice bottle of wine at one of them.
Yesterday was the first day of the fall term and I spent all day on campus. I did some administrative stuff at my college and got lost in the brand new computer science building. I also got my new student card. Wow. What a difference from the picture on my old card!
I am moving to Toronto in an hour or two. My first day of classes is Thursday, and I’m coming home for the weekend on Friday. I’ll bring the blog up to date by the end of the week.
September 2, geocaching with Binrat: elusive tag, Binrat, Spy Rock, Binrat’s fancy GPS, pond, ferry, mud.
September 4, at the house: brickwork, another view, garage doors, garden, gaps, drywall, door openers, downstairs.
August 15, hiding a geocache in Frontenac park: swamp, wobbling, rickety bridge, scenery.
August 19, the limestone arrives.
August 22, relocating our geocache in Frontenac Park: heading out, broken bridge, repairing the bridge, waterfall, insect, junction.
August 23. Our local park used to be a cemetery until 50 years ago or so. About 10 years ago it was discovered that the boundaries on the old maps are not so accurate, and there are still some graves under there. The city wants to dig up the road to replace some sewer pipes and decided to commission an archeological study first. [old stones, paint markings, dig site]
August 25, at the house: limestone, drywall, upstairs fireplace, insulation, downstairs fireplace.
August 26: engraving at the house.
August 27: masonry.
August 28, Wellesley Island, New York: Thousand Islands Bridge, border crossing, hamming it up, cooling off, butterfly house, decrypting the clue, rock face. For some reason, somebody hid a letterbox behind the utility box across the road from the US customs booths. We went to get it and the border guards didn’t think we belonged back there, so we had to wait for an hour while they read the letterboxing website, trying to decide if we were terrorists or not. The state trooper was very friendly and everything turned out fine in the end. Except they confiscated the rubber stamp!
The other night I was almost asleep when Celine nudged me and whispered, “There’s a bat in here.” We watched it fly around the bedroom for a few minutes and then turned on the lights. That’s when it decided it had visited for long enough and went back outside. Celine figures it must have used the gaps in the wall behind the bookshelf to get in and out. We took a blurry Roswellian movie.
August 5th: More work on the ducts and wiring.
August 6th: The drywall was put up on the interior walls of the garage, and there is also now a doorknob on the front door. This means the house can finally be locked. Two vents were installed on the side of the house. They are connected inside. Gisele’s peppers are looking pretty good.
August 9th: Holes were cut in the showers. Something is happening with the front steps. A pipe labeled “gas line” was put in. One of the vents has been moved to the other side of the bay window, and the hole it left was patched with a sheet of aluminum.
August 11th: The concrete was poured for the steps, porch, and garage. There is a bathtub in the master bathroom, and the taps have been installed in the showers.
August 12th: A whole bunch of fiberglass was delivered today, and some of the wooden frame was removed from the porch and steps. I just noticed that the blue cables that run throughout the house are cat 5 cables. At first I wondered if every room will have an ethernet port in the wall, but Celine says it is probably for the alarm system. Maybe.
August 17th: The insulation is up. They must have used this scaffold to reach the ceilings. Celine says somebody came into the house through an open window the other night and pulled down some of the insulation. They also tried to break into the shed. This has something to do with it, but I’m not sure what. The flowers in the yard are pretty.
I guess I’ll get started posting about all the stuff we did before I moved to Toronto and never had time to write about. This is most of August and the first few days of September. There are also some new things happening, but I’ll wait on those until I’m caught up. School has already swung into full gear, but I’ll try to be fast.
The Mexican restaurant on the corner finally opened. It’s called Sol Latino. We went with Thesia and the kids last night they were here. Mark, the owner, is a friend of Jonathan’s and he came over to say hello.
The first Saturday in August we went geocaching on Perth Road, at the Purdy Water boat launch. We drive by this spot all the time and have always wanted to check it out. We think we’ll have to go back one day with a canoe. Afterwards, we drove up to the Depot Lakes Conservation Area for some more geocaching. We only found one of the two caches, and the geocoin was missing, but at least we enjoyed the hike. We were really impressed by the handiwork of the local beavers. On the way home we stopped by the cottage and were happy to see that the septic tank had been emptied. Sunday we went geocaching again, but this time stayed in Kingston. We’ve found almost all of the Kingston caches now.
The following Saturday we rented a canoe and headed to South Lake for (what else?) more geocaching. Banjo was really excited about the boat ride. He loves the water. Unfortunately, this lake turned out to be stinky and polluted. We named one part of it Pus Bay. I took a neat picture of a garter snake.
Things are starting to get kind of hectic around here. I only have 13 working days left at the lab. Yay! My registration at UofT is complete and I have booked a dorm room for the month of September. I will find a better place to live once I am in Toronto.
Thesia let me scan in some of the pictures she took with her film camera before she went home. My favourites: tubing, Peterborough. It was really nice to spend so much time with Thesia, Sheera, and Fizi. Too bad they only visit every other summer!
Last night I spent a couple of hours playing a flash game I found on the internet. My best score was 91 meters.
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