A Sign that Winter is Nearly Over

The person who tossed this empty coffee cup on the ground littered.

But they had the courtesy to toss it in a way that left the rolled-up rim with "play again" showing.

What could be more Canadian?

Table Art: Finished

I decided the ocean and the giant squid needed some paint. Just to make things "pop". Then some Mod Podge to give it all the wet look.

And clear silicone caulking to hold the glass in place and possibly keep spilled milk from pouring into the art.

Table Art

The next time you are melting glass with a blowtorch in the dining room and inadvertently burn a hole in your Ikea table top, you don't have to throw out the table. You can do what I did.

1. Find a piece of glass that is somewhat bigger than the burn area and scratch lines in the table around the edge of the glass.
2. Peel off the surface of the table with a pair of pliers and remove the torched bits of cardboard honey-combing underneath. Vaccum out the bits of ash and cardboard.
3. Gather up plasticine from the craft cupboard and your the little toy pirates you've been saving on the windowsill along with a piece of the honeycombing and a smooth surface that is about the size of the hole in the table.

4. While you watch Project Runway Canada, make a sculpture of a giant squid attacking pirates in the ocean on the smooth surface. Use the honeycombing as a maximum height guide.
5. Sneak downstairs and use a spatula to place the sculpture in the hole.
6. Cover the hole with the piece of glass.
7. Go to bed and patiently wait until the next morning to be told that you are brilliant.

If you're not into sculpting a giant squid with pirates, you could instead make this into a tiny terrarium and keep little animals in there.

the Broken Glass Chandelier

This is the light shade I made for the light outside the bedroom door.

On a cylinder of metal screening, I've hung pieces of broken glass that have been melted together. The glass chunks are attached to earring hooks, so they can be removed and worn as earrings. Or they can be re-arranged if you want the light to look different.

I've discovered that it is easy to melt glass with a blow torch and make clumps of different colours. However, glass that has been melted together is awfully fragile. I expect that within a few months, half of these chunks will have to be remelted.

Another thing I've discovered is that a 1-inch thick piece of rock is not thick enough to insulate your table-top from burning through if you are heating glass with a blow torch on top of the rock.

A 3-inch thick brick is thick enough.

Valentine's Day Round-Up

I'm glad that Bob LeDrew sent me a link that tells you how to turn boring old "trombone" paper clips into heart-shaped clips today. That is because I almost spent the evening messing around with melted glass instead of sharing pre-Valentines advice with you.

First, while that heart-shaped clip idea is bound to bring a smile to the face of your sweety, don't forget the power of the binder clip.

Our friend La Canadienne was out this week and met a young man who had cleverly made a teabag for loose tea with a hemp sack and a binder clip. Directly from her blog:

Me: Liam, is that a binder clip?!

Liam: Uh, yeah.

Me: Can I make out with you now, please?

I love a man who can use a binder clip.

Ladies, you should know that there are also men who appreciate a woman who can use a binder clip.

Of course, binder clips are already Valentine's Day friendly:

1. You can buy binder clips with heart shaped handles; and
2. You can decorate them with messages of love instead of messages of efficiency.

If you're trying to think of things to do with your sweety this weekend, you might look at the suggestions given to K in A Reader Seeking Advice, or consult my famous romantic things to do in Ottawa post or Marcie's 101 Things to Do in Ottawa (12 anyway). [Followup: K reports that he met his date at a downtown Irish Pub. Unfortunately, although K is exactly as he described himself, she expected he'd be different and she's too busy for a relationship anyway.]

Useless Signs

The Loblaws on Rideau Street has two huge moving ramps to bring shoppers and grocery carts from the parking garage up to the store level and back down. A cool thing about the ramps is that they have a special feature that locks the cart wheels so that the carts cannot role down the ramps, even when they are completely loaded.

Today I noticed they have new signs at the top and bottom of the ramps that say "Caution! No Restricted Traffic".

They are nice big signs. Even if there is someone out there manufacturing them in bulk, they must have cost $100 each with the mounting brackets and installation. To me, it's a lot of money and effort to convey absolutely no message.

Here are my theories on what the signs might mean:

• We are not supposed to interfere with the movement of people and carts on the ramps. (Like by leaving a grocery cart at the ramp entrance and walking away.)
• If we have trouble walking, we aren't allowed to use the ramps.
• We are not supposed to take certain wheeled objects on the ramps (strollers? personal grocery carts? bicycles?).
• At some point the locking system for the carts failed and they haven't removed the signs now that the carts are locking to the tracks again.

My experience with pointing this sort of thing out to people is that because they know what they mean with their sign, they figure I am stupid for not knowing. So I'm not going to write a letter to Loblaws suggesting they change their signs to something that actually communicates to people.

However, if by some chance, you've googled something like loblaws ramp caution restricted traffic because you had an unfortunate experience with the ramps at Loblaws and the authorities there told you that you should have known better because they had the CAUTION sign, you can say, "I know a lawyer with a degree in cognitive science from MIT who spent half a day trying to figure out what your stupid signs mean and he came up empty."

View out the Window

I just got wowed by some free software. Here is a picture of a bird that i took through my window (not very clean and with a screen):

Now here is another picture of the bird taken at the same time, but after clicking on "Method 1" in Photoperfect Express:

I could maybe have achieved the same result in a 30 minutes or so with GIMP, and maybe I'd do better if I put in a couple of hours. But this took about 30 seconds. And that includes downloading and installing the software.

Those bright little spheres are mountain ash berries. They are edible, but I don't think they taste good even to birds. The birds cleaned out the grapes by the end of October, but here it is February and there are still mountain ash berries on the tree even though they do eat them.

The berries definitely don't taste good to me. Maybe I need to try some different preparation methods.

Roller Derby Advice

If you want to see the Roller Derby in Ottawa, do not arrive without tickets after the doors open. A better plan would likely be to check the Blackhearts schedule and acquire tickets in advance.

I hope that the next time there is a roller derby game here, I will follow the above advice and then I will be able to give you more advice, like where to sit, what to watch for, and good things to yell out to support your team.