Secret Songs of Silence

xmas iCandy

I wouldn't mind having found this in my christmas stocking...

have a jolly bolly christmas

A Very Merry Christmas to all my readers

2 cute guys and a dog

Canadian MP, Scott Brison, sent a traditional family Christmas card to his Nova Scotia constituents this year.

Except that his family is what some would call "non" traditional.

Some of Canada's wingnutters (yes, we do have them, sadly) have had conniptions.

I mean, honestly, how could you have conniptions over this:

Two cute guys and their equally cute dog.

Merry Christmas all.

away in an aeroplane

Today, I'm en route to Tenerife for my third consecutive Christmas holiday.

I don't expect that I'll have an internet connection this year. I'll leave a couple of posts ready for autoreveal but other than that I'll wish everyone a Happy Holiday...

(pic via Andrew Sullivan)

bare boards

As is always the case, I am suffering from renovation creep.

Knowing that a new floor was needed, my thoughts inevitably turned to the stairs.

The carpet had to go. It was the same as in the living room: old, ugly, and dirty.

It's gone.

The wrought iron balustrade has to go. If I don't, it will only annoy me every time I look at it.

I have no idea what the $$ consequences are.

I'm starting to worry a little about that.

Yesterday, the particleboard was remove so, now, my living room floor is own to the bare boards...literally.

I'm told that the diagonal cut is a sign of quality!

strip the halls of all and sundry

No sooner had I posted yesterday's entry than Brendan arrived to start his day's work. And what a day's work it proved to be.

But first...

I hopped into the shower, washed and shaved. When I was dressed, I heard a voice.

"Hello". The voice came from downstairs.

"Hello", I responded, and went down to find out who was calling me.

It was a different guy who I had first seen the day before. He wanted to change his clothes. After some dithering on my part, I told him to change where he was and to holler when the coast was clear. He did.

When I went down, he told me that he'd just been to the hospital for an ultrasound.

"I had one of those", I said, "they're not too bad".

I was about to ask whether he had a gall bladder problem (as I had) when he mentioned that, in fact, it was 'the wife' who had the ultrasound. And, with evident pride, he mentioned, the healthy little girl she was carrying.

* * *

The email was short and to the point:

Brendan will talk to you in the morning about installing hardwood floor.

This was not part of the plan.

The plan was to refinish the hardwood floor under the ugly carpet that was to be removed.

The assumption was that there was hardwood floor under the ugly blue carpet. After all, there was hardwood flooring upstairs, and hardwood flooring in the dining room. Why not in the living room?

But no.

No hardwood. Just uglier particle board. And some very ugly linoleum.

Look's like I need a new hardwood floor for Christmas.

* * *

The ugly blue carpet covers the stairs, too. It's got to go. It's clearly got to go.

I dread what's underneath.

* * *

So, a week before Christmas, this is my living room:

'twas the week before christmas

"Can you clear the living room by tomorrow?"

I was standing in the living room when my contractor posed this question last monday. At the time, I had exam booklets strewn all over the floor sorted into piles according to which question had been answered or marked up to that point.

My contractor must have recognised the dismay on my face.

"By Wednesday", he then asked.

I knew this would happen.

One week before Christmas and my contractor wants to tear my living room apart.

It doesn't matter that I will be away. What matters is that I wanted this all done last september so that it would be finished by Christmas.

As I started to move my belongings and tidy up on tuesday evening, I decided that I was not going to rush this. My contractor hasn't exactly pushed along, after all, and I asked myself what were the chances that he would really be back on wednesday.

Sure enough, there was no activity yesterday.

And, I see no signs of activity this morning.

The living room is mostly clear except for the TV and armchair.

I refuse to move those until I know for certain that he's really about to start.

canadian autocracy

A big fuss in Canada this week has been the provision of documents on Afghan detainees to a committee of Parliament. The Government of Stephen Harper has refused to provide the documents in anything but a highly redacted form. The House of Commons has passed a motion commanding that the documents be produced. The Government is still saying no. That's tantamount to giving the finger to Parliament. I agree with those who believe that our current government is dangerously autocratic and undemocratic. This cartoon from Today's Toronto Star sums it up perfectly:

(hat tip to Impolitical)

housesitting; dilemma or solution

"Do you need a house-sitter?"

Such an innocuous question.

But one full of unintended consequences.

It came in an email yesterday morning from a good friend. He was seeking a place for his brother to stay over Christmas.

My answer had to be 'yes'.

Now, I have to tidy the house and hide any obviously gay things (books and DVDs), among all the other things I have to do before I leave on my Christmas trip. A good tidy up is long overdue but I don't know where I am going to get the time to do it in the next ten days.

With ongoing renovations, my house won't be all comfort and joy in any case. But, having someone stay is probably a good idea as long as my house does have the exterior air of not being quite whole. Plus, as I also discovered yesterday, my next door neighbours will be away too.

On the bright side....my friend's brother will be in charge of snow-clearing duties!

vicarious visit to Heligoland

Daan at zephyr files runs an occasional series "Where the Hell is Willem" in which he takes a close up picture from Google earth and asks his readers to identify where in the world it is. Some are easy and some, such as the most recent, are hard. I was sure that the latest pic was from some tropical isle somewhere, such as the Bahamas, Netherlands Antilles...

...but no...

...it was a picture of Helgoland (or Heligoland if you prefer) a small island in the North Sea close to the German coast.

One of the commenters talked about the famous red cliffs which you can't see on Daan's picture so I surfed over to Wikipedia....and discovered that Helgoland is a very interesting place.

• It has an unusual climate for where it is located

• It's something of a geological oddity

• The two islands used to be one until a major storm separated them in 1720

• They speak Frisian there (and not German)

• The Brits tried to blow the whole island up after the second world war

• The famous physicist Werner Heisenberg first developed his Uncertainty Principle while on vacation there

Fascinating what you can learn from a whimsical blog entry!