Ugh.

[the_siobhan]

Beeg coffee and a yummy bagel. My world is complete.

Coffee is the saviour of my sanity. I swear I made it through years of self-abuse without any addictions except for the coffee monkey.

the_axel is on his way home, and then we head over to the new place for the house inspection. This is the deal-breaker, folks. Wish us luck.

This is also the point where we find out what walls are load-bearing, in preparation for our much-anticipated house-warming and sledgehammer party.

----------------------------

Due to lack of sleep issues, my crap is still scattered all over the damn house. the_axel and zero_gravity are remarkably tolerant about it, but it's making me feel guilty.

Maybe next week. And sorting out the camping gear for the Vegas trip. And getting the mortgage finalized. And, and, and...

Ugh.

----------------------------

One of the big things that drives me nuts about the midnight shifts is that I can never get to the gym. How the hell am I supposed to get my middle-aged ass back into a pair of jeans -- not to mention resist the urge to strangle large numbers of people -- if I can't go lift heavy things on a regular basis, dammit?

I have an LJ that I've set up specifically to record my outings to the gym. I've been vaguely toying with the idea of creating a friends list strictly for people who want to post their workouts and/or progress. Friends-only, because it would be boring as snot for other people to read, but it would be moral support for each other. (peculiaire, I'm looking at you. I know you mentioned something similar.)

Comments

[peculiaire.livejournal.com]

Yes, I ended up creating a friends list for people who were interested in my workouts, and it does help - I feel like I have to justify it somehow if I don't at least do some exercise and post it, so that gives me the kick I need to actually go do it.

I'd be interested in reading your exercise posts if you do decide on that.

...

mmmm. sledgehammers. :D

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

good luck with the inspection! mine's tomorrow - eek! I'll have to remember to ask about the load-bearing walls, since I'm looking at a little rearranging myself. =)

guilt free zone

[zero-gravity.livejournal.com]

sorry 366 is a guilt free zone.
you can even eat my bread.

[lisiblac.livejournal.com]

I'm totally in on the workouts anonymous list if one comes into existence. This summer I will reach 145 pounds again. Period. (Heh, there's a long way to go.) I'll start my own friends filter with you and peculiaire if that's what you plan on doing?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I had planned.

The lj name is sios_gymdiary -- I'll add you both to the friends list on it.

[ex-electroly478.livejournal.com]

if i proved anything in the foundry today, it was that this astrid can still swing a sledgehammer. just let me know when. i'll try to build up some frustration. :)

sledgehammer party!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

The house passed with flying colours -- well actually, with everything wrong with it that we expected.

"And the part of Stress Release for this evening will be played by the south wall in the living room."

Stuff wrong with the house

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling - our place is about 140 years old, and I'm painting over all the wallpaper, because I learned the hard way that to remove the wallpaper in an old house just lets you know your plaster is rotten (fortunately, I learned that in someone else's house).

There's a wall that we are pretending isn't disintegrating until next year when I have some extra cash.

And bizarrely, the last owners removed a wall that I would like to put back in.

How cheap is $200 K for a house in Toronto? Cos with current over-inflated house prices here, our dump is worth rather a lot more than that - maybe I could convince Jason he wants to move at last.

Re: Stuff wrong with the house

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, the fact that we will be ripping down walls will come in really handy when I'm re-wiring.

House prices in Toronto are all over the place.

$200K is cheap for Toronto proper -- there are lots of places for under $300, but they are tiny, or need a lot of fixing up, or are far from public transit or are in otherwise undesireable neighbourhoods.[1]

Our last place we asked $350K and got more than we asked, but it was in a trendy neighbourhood and was a lot bigger. Houses the same size and condition in even posher neighbourhoods just a few miles away are going for $450-$600K.

If you get out of the downtown core, prices drop like a rock. For the price we paid we could get something quite nice if we wanted to live out in the 'burbs[2].

[1] undesireable translates into "scares people from the suburbs. Because there are hookers on the corner or half-way houses down the street. Stuff that dosen't really bother the crusty old punk contingent.

[2] AKA, "the bad place".

House prices in TO

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Weird. When I was last looking at property in TO (just after C8), there wasn't much that I could see under 300 even out in the outer burbs (burbs=out of the question. I'm desperate to return to Toronto, not to sell my soul). My main problem being, my friends mostly live in Parkdale/High Park and I would want to be close to them.

As to tiny, I've been living in England for 12 years, so tiny might be relative. I also don't care about a lot of the things that apparently make a house desirable in North America. I'm probably more open to "bad" neighbourhoods than the other half is, but close to transit is essential.

One of my friends is looking into buying a townhouse in King West Village -relatively cheap, she's single and has little rotator cuff muscle left so can neither mow the lawn nor shovel snow, but she doesn't want an apartment. Even though I really want an old house, she nearly talked me into it.

Re: House prices in TO

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Well our place is in Parkdale, and we saw a few others either in or near the neighbourhood.

The trick seems to be whether or not you are willing to take a place that needs a lot of work. Ours is structurally sound, but suffering from many years of neglect, so it's going to need some time and energy thrown at it. Most people seem to want something that they can just move into and not worry about it.