Month: January 2013

I’m just curious and you don’t have to identify yourself publicly but who do I know that’s in Florida right now? I know I have readers that span the globe but it’s always nice to know who is where.

So the notice that you see above was posted inside the elevators of my building last week (click to enlarge). Someone decided to flush kitty litter down their toilet. It clogged the pipes and caused their unit and dozens and dozens of other units to lose all use of their plumbing for almost a whole day.

I’m puzzled as to why someone would think that was an ok thing to do. The majority of all cat litter must be disposed of through the garbage. Even the supposedly “flushable” kitty litter can still clog pipes according to many articles on the Internet. Most litter bags warn people not to flush used litter down the toilet.

Even if you didn’t read the warning, you’d think people would figure out not to dump it down the toilet. Kitty litter clumps when it gets wet. It turns into a solid basically. The cat owner’s cat demonstrates that every day when it urinates into the litter. I’d make the assumption that the daily reinforcement of what happens to litter when it comes into contact with moisture would rub off on the cat owner but I guess it didn’t.

Now this wouldn’t really bother me but as you can see on the note, the repairs were not paid for by the offending party. As it currently stands, the strata council had to pay for the plumbing work which means some of my money had to go fix the problem. If this forces my maintenance fees to go up next year, I’ll be angry. I hope the council bills the unit instead.

There aren’t too many weird quirks to my apartment but there is something that has stood out since basically I moved in almost four years ago. I noticed that my apartment accumulated a lot of dust quite quickly any and every time I did some cleaning. I have a few pieces of furniture that are black, like wood or leather, and against the black the dust shows up easily. I’d wipe off a surface and then within days, there would be a decent layer of dust all over it. I understand that things can’t stay dust-free forever but it seemed like a lot of dust in a short amount of time.

I’ve come to the conclusion the dust is coming from the massive amount of air floor that passes underneath my entry door to my hallway. There is a large gap of about 3/4 of inch at the bottom of the door and this allow a forceful amount of air to flow into my apartment twenty-four hours a day. The air flow is fast enough to blow around an empty plastic bag if one were placed near the gap. While this gap does allow circulation of air into my apartment at all times, this air must also being carrying the massive amount of dust into my home. Once I made this connection, I noticed the some units on my floor had devices installed on their doors to block this gap.

I decided to do the same and bought a door sweep from a hardware store. It’s essentially a piece of metal that goes along the bottom of the door. A flexible bit of rubber is attached to the metal and it’s this that forms a seal against the gap. It was quite easy to get into place.

I’m curious to see how this affects the dust buildup in my apartment. Will this allow me to go longer without wiping off dust from my belongings? I hope so? To make up for the loss in free-flowing air, I’ve opened up my windows a tiny bit more.

While everyone has been watching YouTube magician Rahat’s invisible car driver trick, I actually think this other trick of his is better. In the above video, he more traditionally uses sleight of hand to impress the drive-through workers.

So while I’m happy to report that I’m no longer peeing out of my butt and don’t have nausea and the chills anymore, I still haven’t returned to my former self. I didn’t eat a whole lot today or at least as much as I usually do. All day, all I had to eat was one cookie, a granola bar, three pieces of California roll, two potato chips, and a chicken drum stick and a thigh. Now that might seem like a decent amount of food to some people but for a roly-poly dude like myself who enjoys food, this was a lot less food than I consume on a daily basis. I didn’t even have the chicken until around 8pm this evening, so up until then, I had very little to eat throughout the day.

Now the reason for eating so little is two-fold. First, I didn’t want to eat a lot of food and stress my digestive system, so soon after being sick. It just seems like a good idea to let that whole area down there just settle down and have a bit of rest. Second, I honestly just wasn’t hungry today. Normally by lunch time, I’m just ravenous and ready to eat a decent-sized lunch. The granola bar and cookie was enough to keep me going well into the late afternoon. Though I did wonder if this reduced food intake is having its consequences. By the time I left work today, I felt exhausted and I fell into a fairly deep sleep on the commute home.

I’m looking forward to stuffing my face again with copious amounts of food.

So I didn’t go to work yesterday nor did I go to work today. I was still losing a lot of fluids because I was peeing out of my butt. I didn’t really feel like taking a chance on the commute to work. Even I did get to work safely, I didn’t want to run to the bathroom all the time anytime I sipped some water.

I’m feeling much better now so I’m very confident I’ll return to work tomorrow. Things seem to have solidified and I’ve been able to somewhat hydrate myself again. Damn, food poisoning sucks!

So I got quite ill last night and I’m pretty sure it came from some questionable seafood I had at dinner. I felt fine until around 9pm when I detected the slightest bit of nausea which increased in severity over the next few hours. It never got to the point where I felt like vomiting but it sure was uncomfortable. A slight headache then set in as did the chills. Sleep was almost impossible to get as I felt quite ill throughout the night. The pooping started overnight as well.

As morning arrived, the level of discomfort was high enough that I could not go to work so I had to make it a sick day. I finally felt good enough to get some sleep in the late morning. I woke up sometime after 1pm to somewhat lesser symptoms. By late afternoon, I was able to eat something, almost 24 hours since consuming my last meal. Surprisingly, the tiny bit of food I ate stayed in my body and did not choose to exit my body in a violent and forceful manner.

As of this evening, I still have a slight headache and a bit of a chill but I think I’ll be able to go to work tomorrow. Though this was definitely not fun, this was far from the worst food-borne illness that I’ve suffered. If you want an account of my worst experience, click here. At least this time, I didn’t projectile vomit green beans through my nostrils!

I received my 2013 property assessment in the mail this week. Between 2011 and 2012, my assessment value increased less than $2000. This year, the value jumped up by about $12,000.

Now I suppose that should make me happy since I’ve talked to two other property owners and their assessments all went down, one by $30,000. I written this before though, and I’ll write it again, it only really matters when you sell. I’m not looking to sell this year, so this is just a feel good story. If there is anything tangible to grasped from this new assessment it’s that my property taxes might go up by a proportional amount.

If you’re interested in the assessed value of any property in the province of British Columbia, please click here. Find out what your friend’s home is worth! This link is only valid for first few weeks of January I believe so be quick about it!

I had a great bout of insomnia last night. I’m not sure what caused it. I didn’t have any more caffeine than usual and I didn’t have it any later than usual as well. I went to bed at a reasonable hour and I felt wide awake. I felt refreshed and energized actually. Two in the morning rolled around and then came three. I thought that maybe I was too dehydrated to sleep so I went and grabbed a glass of water. Not sure if that helped. I finally popped a sleeping pill but by that time I knew it wasn’t going to pretty the next morning.

I eventually fell asleep but morning came way too soon. I dragged my ass outta bed and got to work at a normal hour. I slammed the green tea right away but that still didn’t prevent a massive low around 2pm. I felt like napping at my desk but I soldiered on.

I am hoping to get to bed a bit early tonight. On a totally unrelated note, this would be make for a hell of a vacation.

This is one of my favourite Jimmy Fallon skits on SNL. Fallon seemed to have a good comedic rapport with Ben Affleck on the show. They were also quite good in “The Boston Teens” sketches. As usual though, Fallon nearly cracks up in this skit as you can see him smiling at Affleck several times.