Blessed by the Potato

Well, tonight was my last “regular season” curling game. Playoffs next week, and then that’s it for the season!

It was a bit of a strange year. On the one hand, curling was a lot more relaxing since I dropped out of the competitive league — the relaxation came more from only having to keep track of two leagues whose schedule was at least correlated than from playing in less-competitive leagues. I also stuck with the same position (vice) in both leagues I was in so I wasn’t constantly confused about when it was my turn and where I was supposed to be on the sheet. On the other hand, I was also thinking I’d be a good (as in talented) curler this year and try to get into some competitive spiels, in addition to trying out for varsity. I didn’t make the varsity team, and I didn’t play in any spiels at all — competitive or otherwise. Moreover, I played really poorly even by the standards of the recreational leagues I’m in, so I’m rather disappointed in myself. Tonight, for example, was one of my better games this year, and it featured making one shot, then being asked by my skip to repeat the feat… and throwing a full 12′ too heavy. Then missing two wide open takeouts the next end… (though I did make both my shots in the end following that one, which is part of what made it one of my better games).

Anyway, hopefully next year I’ll get my act together and start living up to my true curling potential :)

The news is reporting that Arthur C. Clark died today. Which reminds me: a few years ago there was a sale on his massive short story collection at Chapters. I was using it as bed-time reading for a while, but had to stop: not because I wasn’t finding the stories interesting or because some of them were repetitive, but because the book was freaking huge and it was a pain in the ass (well, wrist) to hold it up in the awkward angles generated by bedtime reading. So I set it aside, meaning to read it that summer… but I haven’t seen it since. Did I loan it to anyone, or does anyone know which book I’m talking about and want to loan it to me so I can finish what I started?

Good idea: Set up a battery deposit-return system to ensure that the ubiquitous toxic devils are returned and recycled properly, rather than going into a landfill. Particularly handy when properly recycling them is a major pain in the ass (no blue box collection; return depot is not technically in the city where I live, nor open at convenient times) — thankfully some retailers (e.g.: Best Buy) are starting to accept batteries and electronics for recycling. While we’re at it, let’s bump that beer bottle deposit up by an order of magnitude.

Bad idea: Set up a battery deposit-return system for Toronto only. This isn’t like driving hours to take your giant load of pop cans to Quebec for a nickel each: there are a lot of people who live really close to Toronto. And while Toronto is a big city, I don’t think it’s quite big enough to warrant making the battery manufacturers stamp “return for refund in Toronto” on the batteries destined for the Toronto market, but not the 905 market. As if Toronto didn’t have enough budget troubles…

While I don’t usually like to hit things just to try to shake them up into working, I’ve found percussive maintenance to be particularly handy of late. Both my computers at work and at home have some fans that are getting buzzy and annoying, particularly at start up. A couple of quick bangs on the case and they seem to settle back onto their bearings and quiet down. And the security light, which has given us no end of grief, has gone on the fritz and is now only turning on a few nights a month seemingly at random. I gave the light detector box a good bang after sliding my way through the icy parking lot in the dark tonight, and what do you know: the light comes on.

In other news, someone tried to hack the blog here today. Thankfully, they were unsuccessful (through no effort of my own), though I have no idea why someone would want to bother with a little old site like mine.

So, shortly after Netbug’s hot water heater woes, my own has decided to give up for the winter. I went to wash my hands for bed and found no hot water forthcoming. In the midst of coming down with a cold, I took some ny quil in the hopes of waking up healthy tomorrow (note to self: shingles + karaoke to 3 am is not a sound health plan). I thought for a few minutes that the ny quil had broken my brain and that there had to be hot water coming out of the tap, and that I was quite possibly burning myself with my hand under the freezing cold water. Then I went out to the kitchen and heard this eerie wailing sound, like a cross between a tea kettle and two raccoons “fighting”.

It was coming from the basement. I went down there with a creeping, knowing feeling washing over me. Yep, the hot water heater was busted, wailing and dribbling water all down itself from the cold water intake at the top, all over the floor… and flooding the basement up to a depth of just over a centimeter. I then went to wake up Wayfare (who was not happy to be woken up suddenly in the middle of the night) before cutting the water and power (I didn’t want to step into the flood without someone else awake in case I electrocuted myself). Unlike Netbug, I have a cutoff for just the hot water heater, so I’ll still have at least cold water in the morning, but this is still going to suck. It also showcased how the foundation/basement tiles of old homes like this can be laid wrong or shift over time: the water pooled like crazy in the laundry room, but the only floor drain is in the furnace room, and there was at least one hump in the floor keeping the water from flowing out into the drain. It instead decided to move under the walls dividing the rooms and flood our storage area and the bathroom (and having the walls/gypsum drywall soaked through is going to suck come mould season). Even what water did meander its way over to the furnace room drain didn’t go in smoothly, instead choosing to overshoot around one side flooding our old window air conditioners before circling back around to the drain.

Oddly enough, the worst of the flooding went away all on its own as we started to shovel. Without the water continuing to flow to top it up it just seemed to seep away somewhere. Which, while saving me some of the effort of cleanup, just can’t be a good thing.

Of course, my landlord is in New Zealand for 3 weeks (I think this is the last of the 3 weeks), so this is going to be a nightmare to fix. The water heater has a big (recent-looking) sticker on it that says its the property of Union Gas… but calling them lead us no where. They couldn’t find a record of who owned the water heater, and unless they knew it was theirs, they weren’t sending anyone out to help us. I know I don’t pay a rental fee on my bill, and after putting me on hold a few times (though the lady on the phone was quite nice, as was their other 24-hour service person I had to call a few weeks ago), finally determined that my landlord had bought out the water heater, so it was up to us to get our landlord to fix it. Ugh.