Thanks for the Great Stuff!

Things are a bit congested and confused here at the ScrimChateau. Manon and Kaye, Drexel's former custodians have moved here and they brought a lot of stuff with them. While I managed to unload a bag or two of clothes and a broken TV before they came, I had a pretty full house to start with.

But I'm happy about the new stuff. For example, Manon has a much better tree-pruner than I did. Kaye especially has great stuff, and although I'm not allowed to use most of it, it is good to have here just in case, like the Zombie emergency box.

So, when I saw this really cool General Electric toolbox on the porch, I thought it was Kaye's and felt really jealous. To the point of wondering how I could trick her into letting me have it.

It wasn't until two days later that I noticed the thin aluminum box. Wait a second, I thought, that is exactly the sort of box I've told people to give to me instead of throwing out. I looked at the General Electric toolbox again and noticed the lamp next to it. I didn't remember ever seeing that lamp at Manon's place and I remembered that I've also asked people to give me broken lamps.

"Manon, do you or Kaye own this General Electric toolbox?"

"I thought you owned it," said Manon, "I was going to ask why you were putting that great box out with the recycling."

So that is when I figured out that a kind soul had left me three excellent things. I am looking forward to making excellent use of all of them.

Thank you. If there are stories behind any of the items, I'd love to hear them.

A Groundhog, Lost Teddy Bears and 2 Licence Plates

This groundhog patrols the grass on the south-east corner of Booth Street and the Transitway.

Look! On top of that roof! It's teddy bears in trouble!

Somerset at Lebreton. If you can do anything for them...

This plate is sort of a "do as I say, not as I do" sort of thing.

Is this a car that a parent gave to their child? Is it a car that a parent drives and doesn't let their child drive because the kid was caught smoking dope behind the garage?

Or are they talking to me?

DeCluttering

As part of the decluttering, I emptied some book shelves tonight. The books on the shelves were not clutter, but they took up space that some clutter can go. Among the books were university textbooks that I didn't read when I was in University. And I'm not talking about the recent time I was in university. It's been more than 25 years and I must accept that I'm never going to be an expert on Generative Phonology. Or the conflict in the Middle-East as it stood in the late '70s. So it doesn't hurt to part with those books.

But I am having a hard time parting with my big fat Webster's Collegiate Dictionary with the scooped out tabs for each letter of the alphabet. I used to use it frequently, but now I have a dictionary widget on my iGoogle page.

I'm not ever going to need a dictionary again unless the internet goes away.

And while I think it is entirely possible that circumstances could arise in which the internet goes away, I can't imagine a dictionary being useful in any of those circumstances.

Still, it was a good dictionary.

Lightbulb Art - Giant Squid

I was playing around with putting dead lightbulbs in liquid instead of putting liquid in dead lightbulbs when I noticed something about one of the skinny bulbs that Manon gave me. It looked a lot like the head of a giant squid.
And Manon likes giant squids. (Well who doesn't, but Manon especially likes giant squids.)
So I made her one to go on her desk. All the parts were scavenged except the mineral oil.
The tentacles are copper wire (from a broken slide projector power supply) and broken glass (mostly smashed windshield from an accident on Gladstone, and a few pieces of assorted glass collected at the Westbound bus stop at Lebreton Flats).
The sea floor is marbles that a nice fellow gave me at the Great Glebe Garage Sale and more broken glass.
I think the jar used to have pickles in it.
The liquid inside is mineral oil. I used mineral oil because:

• It has an index of refraction of more than 1.4, this means that it magnifies better than water or alcohol;
• It is relatively nontoxic (this was all baby oil, therefore food grade); and
• The metal bits will not rust.

Unfortunately, it's hard to scavenge mineral oil. I put a fair bit of effort into finding a good price for it. Mineral oil can be bought in bulk. Not at a hardware store, not at a paint store, not at a drugstore. At least none of the many that I tried. But at the Petro-Canada bulk oil depot on Merivale Drive. When I last spoke with them, they had one 20-litre bucket of food-grade low-viscosity mineral oil priced at $3.99 per litre or $79.80. (I wanted low viscosity because it pours faster and there isn't much difference in the refraction index between the lowest and highest viscosities.)
But at Dollarama, you can buy a 266ml bottle of baby oil for $1.00. I believe that works out to $3.76 per litre. You wind up with a whole lot of little clear squirt bottles to re-use or recycle, but you don't have to buy 20 litres at a time. (This project required 3.5 litres of oil.)
Links:

• Giant squids on Wikipedia
• My other lightbulb art

Saying goodbye to the past

In the past week, a bunch of the blogging demi-gods have been promoting Peter Walsh's decluttering book, It's All Too Much.

They are making a big fuss over his premise that it's time we stopped trying to organize our stuff and started getting rid of it. Or at least a lot of it.

I figure I don't need to read Walsh's book because I have seen him in so many episodes of Clean Sweep that I know all his techniques.

One of those techniques is to take a photo of something that has sentimental value but you have no use for. In my decluttering on the weekend, that's what I did with my C.C Raiders pennant. It was in a box in the basement. Given that I didn't go to Raiders' games when I was a student at Cornwall Collegiate, it is not likely that I am going to start. If I do, I'll recreate the pennant from this photo.

A lot of other stuff that used to be in the basement is no longer in the basement and in fact no longer in the house. 2008 may be the year that I perform the "clean the basement" resolution.

Links:

• Merlin Mann and Kevin Kelly on Peter Walsh
• Will Wheaton on Mann and Kelly on Walsh
• Unclutterer on Mann and Kelly on Walsh

I think there is a bat in my chimney

10:45 Okay, it's not exactly the chimney, but there's this air vent that brings air warmed by the fireplace in the living room into my bedroom. And somehow, bats manage to get in there every few years. Just now, while I was blogging about index cards, I kept hearing this scritching sound, and once there was a thud, like the sound of a small animal dropping. Thing is, I'm pretty sure there is no cat in the room. (Maybe I am hearing a bat because I read this news story earlier: Teenager finds baby bat in her bra - Telegraph - 8-Jul-2008

10:49: Here is my plan. I am going to put on a shirt (I already have some pants on). Then I will find my bat catching gloves and a screwdriver. I will close the door to my bedroom. And remove the cover on the vent. Then I will catch the bat, take it outside and release it. Possibly I will scare it by introducing it to Drexel.

10:51: It is skritching again. I'd bet a hundred dollars it's a bat.

11:12: Too bad nobody took me up on that bet. It is a tiny little bat and it has crawled into this little crack that is just out of reach and I can't drag it out with my bent coat hanger. So. I have rigged 3 little traps for it. Two are metal pots that it will have trouble crawling out of if it falls in and I have put a bag down the main vent hole that it might find tempting. In the meantime, I'll play mumu or something until I hear it skritching again.

11:34: I didn't even get to start my mumu game. There was a bunch of skritching and then it stopped. Meanwhile, I had opened my door and a certain feline came in and then planted herself and stared intently at the vent. I unceremoniously carried her out of the room and then removed the vent panel. Metal pot #1 - empty. Metal pot #2 - empty. Bag - wiggling around! One of my traps worked perfectly. I took some video and some photos (yes, once again, I profit from another's misery) and then released the bat into one of the wood piles outside. Alas, the feline doesn't seem to realize that the bat is gone.

More photos on Flickr

Videos:

Bat in a bag - Exterior

Bat in a bag - Interior

2 New Creations and an Old Standby

1. Index Cards on Stove Hood: Whenever I cooking for a bunch of people, somebody the recipe. Or they want to know what's inside because of diet restrictions. So I go, "uh... let's see, olive oil, onion, um, green peppers..." But not on Canada Day this year! Because I had the brainwave of putting index cards on the stove hood, held in place by a fridge magnet. (They're not just for refrigerators, you know.) Every time I added something, I wrote down what it was an how much.
2. Rhubarb Date bars: As far as I know this is something I invented. All because I like date squares but am too lazy to make the oatmeal crust that goes on the top and bottom. The recipe:

In a pot, mix while simmering

• Chopped dates (1 pkg)
• Orange juice (not much)
• Rhubarb (a lot, at least as much as the dates, probably more)
• Strawberries (I used about 500g, you could use less or more)
• Chopped walnuts (3 handfuls, or 2 handfuls if you have normal sized hands like I do)
• Chocolate powder (I just sort of dumped it in. For you people who need measurements, it might have been as much as half a cup.)
• Oatmeal (1 cup? 2 cups? I'm not sure)

Stir around for awhile, then transfer to a baking tray and bake in oven at 375 F (probably, my oven thermostat could be completely off, for 30 minutes

3. Breakfast Chile - really just a new version of my old good morning breakfast beans using canned kidney beans and mild herbs.

Rainy Day at the Skatepark

Once again, someone's misfortune has allowed me to get pictures that I like. This time I got to take photos of the skatepark from inside. I never go inside when the weather is good because the skaters are zipping around and while I'm sure they would avoid me, I don't think they would consider it cool for some old guy to be wandering up and down their ramps taking photos when they could be zipping through the space I occupy.

I wonder if someone was trying stunts with this trike. If so, is that how it lost a wheel? Or were they trying the stunts with a broken trike. I'm guessing it didn't work out, else they wouldn't have left it behind.

More photos of the park in the rain at Flickr.