Plumbing, House, and Another Wedding Update?

The plumber came and went. Actually, the full story is too long and stupid but suffice to say that the toilet will not leak anymore, which may have been the cause of a huge, long, pipe-shaped brown stain on the ceiling of the living room. Now to paint over it...

With all the whining, some of you might be thinking, "Is it a good time to buy a house?" It's a pain in the ass with all the self- (or paid) maintenance, but the Bank of Canada is making it pretty sweet to get in the mortgage deal. In our last bank (sorry, caisse) notice, our interest rate dipped to 1%, and with this latest update it might even fall to 0.75%. Jorghnassen reported that we've already paid for about a third of the house. (Of course, this also means we're getting squat from bank accounts for interest.)

I'm not worried about paying for the wedding though. I have a modest amount set aside for things like this event (and other stupid expenditures like yet another plumbing mishap), that is slowly... taking... shape... and... sucking... the money... out... of... me...

I'm still looking for entertainment because now the cost of just hosting it (and not hiring it) went up. I have the option of adding a dance floor, even though the first manager I talked to said no and the second one said maybe and now this third one said it could be included. I also have the option to rent a/v equipment, which then we could hook up an ipod (or actual DJing equipment) for cocktail hour.

I also have the privilege to pay a fee for SOCAN if people perform music at the event, and the distinction that the musicians must be from the "Montreal Guild of Musicians".

Which means you can't just hook up and ipod to the speakers and not pay a licensing fee.

All I can say is: AAARGGHH >:(

Wedding Planning - nobody's counting

Just to give you an idea what I have been doing so far. Expect something else even bigger later! (When I'm done vectorizing it, that is.)



Bonus: Here's my idiot time wasting drawing:

A Wedding, a Newspaper, and a Plumber

Wedding planning part 2
I tentatively have a meeting room at the Holiday Inn Select, next to the metro station in Chinatown. Hence, the reception and the ceremony are merely stone throws away from each other. However, I still don't have any idea what to do for the officiant since everyone we asked said, "Uh... let me be plan B, ok?"

I just want to point out that not everyone can be plan B. ;)

Moral of the story: people are reluctant to do anything that sounds bureaucratic. :(

The National Post
Since my last post, my feelings for this paper have swelled and grown to the fanaticism that permeates the entire paper like the conservatism dripping from the editorials and letter writers. And Financial Post is the most illuminating thing ever.

Just kidding, I still hate the paper. In fact, I had the following conversation with Jorghnassen yesterday:

Ms C: God I hate this paper. I want my money back.
Jorghnassen: But this is a free subscription.
Ms C: I feel sorry for the trees that were sacrificed for this atrocity.
Jorghnassen: So wait, you want to cancel a free subscription?
Ms C: I'd call them just to do that if I didn't have something to do during the day. I'd imagine that they'd try to argue with me to keep accepting their free offer, but if they realized how crappy their paper was, they'd be paying me to take it.

Anyway, moral of the story: don't accept just any free shit.

Plumber
When you buy a house for the first time, you're a clueless homeowner. Nevermind what your background is (except maybe if you built your house with your own two hands and no help whatsoever, like your friend the invisible unicorn), you're obviously going to have things go wrong with your house in the first few years of owning it, and you're not going to have any idea how to fix some of them.

Which is why when the faucet in the kitchen suddenly stopped working last night, Jorgh called the plumber this morning. Super nice guy with lots of experience, I suppose. I watched him take apart the faucet and fiddle with a bunch of things; then he concluded that the spout was blocked and told me he'd go find a supplier with his workplace to replace the spout.

When he left, I proceeded to take apart the faucet and fiddle with a bunch of things; then I poked the blockage, and suddenly the spout worked again.

The plumber returned from his search for the part without luck. He told me that the faucet was only available at one supplier in Ottawa for $1000, while the part itself was $250 and would have to be on order. However, since I had unblocked the thing myself (which I had told him over the phone earlier) he didn't think we'd have to get a new part. Then I got the bill. $_____$

Moral of the story: hire a professional once for a very expensive lesson on how to fix your shit.

The National Post

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a freebie from Redflagdeals.com: a 90-day subscription to the National Post. Actually, the freebie seems to turn up often, and every time I attempted to sign up for it, they never seem to find my house.

Last week, there was an automated phone call that reminded me that I signed up for this thing (which by then I had totally forgotten due to not remembering what I do a few minutes after I do them). After chatting like a confused old lady with the service representative, I was told that it comes from Monday to Saturday until the 90 days are up.

Anyway, the whole point of the National Post being given away is because no one gets their news from "dead tree" media anymore, so they're hoping that you would get used to accepting their newspaper long enough that you'll want to pay for it over the longer term.

However, as soon as I received the paper for the first time last Tuesday, I immediately saw a problem:

It sucks. Itsucksitsucksitsucksitsucks it SUCKS.

A newspaper that has a decidedly conservative view is already unreadable to me. It's difficult to take any articles seriously when there's a definite slant to reporting (after a week, I can probably point out a dozen articles); as a critical thinker, it's enough to make my head asplode.

However, discussions on the editorial and letters pages are infuriating; besides editors driving a wedge between Canadians with "western" and "eastern" values, it's the delayed discussion between letter writers (by several weeks sometimes), that in the age of high speed internet, I'd rather read flame wars in real time between people who actually read the news in not the National Post.

It's not a very large paper; national papers need an extremely wide daily circulation and making a hundred pages an issue isn't really cost effective. So what could this paper publish daily that would ensure affluent people would buy it? Financial Post. Half of the paper is composed of a thick blah about numbers that are already outdated by the time they send the pages out to print. And I don't care.

So now that I've killed several trees, I can save you all money by telling you that it's easier, saner, and less headache-inducing to read the news on the internet. However, I admit sometimes it is nice to be able to pick up a physical newspaper and read, but don't pick the National Post.

A Conversation with the Afterlife

It's been nearly six years since my dad passed away. I often have dreams where he appears as he was when I was younger - sometimes even in his twenties or thirties, when only photos could have showed me how he looked. Nevertheless, my belief when he died is that he exists in an afterlife, where neither God nor Devil nor Buddha exists. It would be where people's souls exist on a plane different from ours, and we could communicate with them somehow, in mystic or an indirect manner. He was not a believer of any sort of religion as far as I knew, and this belief in a non-denominational afterlife comforted me when I woke up in tears from seeing him in dreams after his death.

Once I fell asleep and dreamt I could talk to him. In life, we could not speak directly as his English comprehension was not complete and my Cantonese comprehension is laughable; but to my knowledge, we were able to speak freely with complete understanding. An exchange could happen:

Me: Dad!
Dad: How have you been?
Me: Pas pire. You?
Dad: It's good. Nothing to complain about.
Me: ...
[Awkward silence.]
Me: So... did you hear about that Hockey Night in Canada theme controversy?
Dad: I heard. >:(

Wedding Planning - Part 1 of a gazillion

Date:Saturday, 15 August 2009
Place:Montreal

Completed checklist

• Reception: Kam Fung, full 10 courses of awesome

That's it.

To do

• Everything else

Possible Venue Locations for the Ceremony

• Holiday Inn Select - downtown Montreal, has a lot of rooms for meetings and closest to Kam Fung


• McGill University - some bookable rooms like the swank Faculty Club and Thompson Hall, but I'm sure we're all looking forward to a meaningful ceremony in the deep dungeons of the Burnside Basement, eh? BONUS: Alumni rates?


• Parc Mont-Royal - the Smith House has a room that is rentable with up to 120 people


• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - as far as I know from the web site, the only room that is available at possible times is the members' lounge at the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion


• Jardin Botanique de Montreal - expensive as #@$!

Who Gets to Marry Us?

• A judge


• Clerks and Deputy Clerks


• A mayor


• Certain councillors


• Certain notaries


• Absolutely anyone else you want (as long as they're old enough and not in jail)

MMOArrPG

My Portrait