Archives for February 2007

A nice Sunday morning — the migraine that felled me yesterday (the acupuncture has been SO great, I was super disappointed) is gone, although Lala is sick as a dog and has gone back to bed. Poor thing.

But the day is pretty and sunny and warm enough to sit out on the porch, and the dogs seem to know that there is a new dog park opening today and we’re going to the party for it this afternoon (Joaquin Miller park, yo, off Sanborn, party till 2pm), and we’ve heard there might be an agility demo, which Clara really wants to see.

I feel like today I should finish knitting the There But For The Grace of Flashdance gansey that is NOT off-the-shoulder anymore, and I should work on getting some other things out of my To Make basket. It might be a purge week, actually. There are some projects that I know with all my heart are going nowhere, and I don’t even like the yarn enough to rip. We’ll see. I don’t feel like starting that right now. But maybe tomorrow. I can just imagine — me throwing all my yarn into the center of the yarn and starting from there. Doesn’t that sound fun? Overwhelming and fun?

Hey! Have you seen Emily’s new site and the fabulous scarf pattern she’s posted? She does the site and photography for Knit-One-One, and she’s just such a cutie-pie. Go say hello, and keep your eye on her!

And for your weekend fun, a picture of the picture on our fridge — Joni with godkid Dylan (months and months ago — he now has total control of his head) wearing the matching aran sweaters I made them. The picture was taken on her boat where she was living while she was pregnant, and it’s attached to our fridge with Maori haka magnets from New Zealand, which was unintentional but apropos — both Dylan and I are half-Kiwi.

I’m off to go check on the sickee. Enough Emergen-C will fix anything.

It’s very, very weird to be sitting in my condo which is rented out to someone else.

It’s been a bad week, condo-wise. Granted, it could be worse, but this last week required a major transfusion of money, into the new deck and into some work on pipes. Now that the pipes have been worked on in one part of the house, though, my unit has stopped giving hot water to my tenant, and the plumber who WAS working here is done with his part of his work and doesn’t want to be bothered.

As my unit is the only one affected now, it’s on me to get another plumber in, which is a pain. The pain is a bit lessened because my super-nice tenant is out of town and I can take care of this without inconveniencing her any further than she’s already been.

But that means I’m sitting in my old home surrounded by things that aren’t mine. And I have to say, she’s done a stunning job of decorating. I loved how it looked when I lived here, and this is just as nice and comfy. I don’t know if she gussied it up because I was coming (I would have, but I hope she didn’t feel she had to), but it looks so great. Makes me proud of the place. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, so her decorating style is a high-budget, pared-down Cost Plus aesthetic. It’s spare, and interesting, and there’s so much more ROOM here than when I lived here and all the yarn got in the way.

The sound is the same, though, that constant whooosh of the freeway outside, and interestingly, the smell is the same. It’s the smell I smelled when I first opened the door, the moment I knew I would live here, and it’s a mix of old wood and paint and fabric that’s been stored for a long time. My gaze falls on the walls the same way — the spatial relations make sense to me, but where I’m sitting at her table is where I had a bookcase before, so I’ve never sat in EXACTLY this place before.

Okay, the plumber just called and said he was on his way over. My biggest fear is that the problem is too big, that it won’t get solved before my tenant comes home on Monday, and that she’ll have to be inconvenienced some more. Last week there were two days when she had no water at all, and she had the flu, and her mom had a heart attack. And her power was briefly out, and I still don’t know how that happened, but thank god it came back on. That’s too much for anyone to bear, and she has been really good about it. (I did take two days off her rent. While that helped, it doesn’t take the sting out of showering at the Y, does it?)

So. Here I am. Waiting. More to follow.  (No internets here, so I’ll post this later.)

Later – Okay, now I’m home – and I’m SO HAPPY. He totally fixed the problem, and I got to call my tenant and tell her that it’s all fixed, and she was so happy, and I’m so happy and I want to spread the love so not only am I writing this little blog, but I’m writing a post (the one below this) that will be of no use yet, but someday might be where some people find good people to work in their houses.

Because it’s hard! I don’t know what the hell pipes are doing under my house, and whatever someone tells me, I’ll believe. I don’t know how to DO things around my house — I’ll give it a good shot, and I’ll get out the home repair book (thanks, Becca!), but in the end, I’m a knitter, people. Not a painter/plumber/spackler. Although I can spackle with the best of ’em sometimes.

So when I find someone I want to recommend, I want EVERYONE to use that person. My new plumber, Abraham Tingey, of Mr. Rooter in Berkeley, is the BEST. He was on time, he gave me the best and worst case scenarios right up front, outlined the cost before he started doing any of it, and then he TOOK THE TIME to explain everything he was doing as he was doing it. Seriously, I dogged his heels in the house and under it, and he pointed things out to me, explained what had happened in the past, speculated on what could be done in the future, and when I got a blank look on my face, he slowed down and explained the words to me. And brass nipple is always going to be funny to me, because I’m 12 years old that way. I don’t think he saw me giggle, though. 

And he was so sweet! And nice, and smart, and he’d lived in New Zealand for a year, and he put booties on every time he entered the house, and he charged me for fixing the garbage disposal (a separate problem) but he explained that he was actually charging me for the lesson, because then he showed me what to do next time.

So. I trust the guy. And he fixed a problem that I wasn’t sure was fixable (only triaged, actually, will need new pipes, but they live to serve another day). So I’m posting the post below, which will eventually, as it is found on teh intarwebs, bring a bunch of comments together in one place on good service techs and how to find them.

That was so long! If you made it here, you deserve a cute animal picture or two!

    Adah, in her bed which is ON THE FRIDGE.

    Cat-of-my-heart, Digit

    Boy-of-my-heart, Dylan on elephant.

Welcome!

This will be a little space for the residents of Oakland, Berkeley, and the East Bay to come and leave comments, recommending people and businesses who do home repair. It will not be moderated or sorted, so please keep the format established here.

To post a review/recommendation:
*Click on Comments.
*In the comment box, please type what type of repair-person you’re recommending (plumber, handyman, contractor, painter, etc.).
*Then go down a line and write your review. Include a phone number for the service, and first and last names for the workers, if you have them, and any impressions of the work they did. 

I’d like these mostly to be positive reviews, a place for people to promote the good service they’ve had. However, if you’d had bad service from any of the people listed here, please let us know. Negative reviews of a company that is not recommended here should go to the Better Business Bureau instead.

Now click comments, and let’s get started (I’ll post the first two). Good luck with the work you’re having done!

Valentine’s Day, for me, is not that big a deal. In fact, this one kind of slipped me by. Yesterday I was driving around and noticed the impromptu flower stands that pop up around any Hallmark holiday — vendors hawking their bouquets to cars idling in traffic, caught at stop signs. I wondered, "Huh?" Then I realized that it was the Big Day of Love in consumerland.

But really? Love is good stuff. Love is good stuff every single day, and I don’t need a special day to remember that. I’m lucky enough to remember that all the time, as often as possible. Today I won’t see Lala at all, actually. I left for work at 5am (she won’t be home until after I’m asleep tonight), and as I kissed her goodbye, I said, "I love you," as I do every morning. Usually she doesn’t wake up at all, just kind makes a sound that could be translated as "sheep" in some languages, but today, she kicked her feet and yelled "I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUU!" And I’m sure she doesn’t remember that a bit.

Heh. She’s totally gonna be embarrassed by that little story. That makes it more fun! Now, THAT’S Valentine’s day. She can share embarrassing stories on her own blog (only she doesn’t, luckily, not often), and all I can say now is:

    (from bachelorette party last year)

Love is good stuff. No matter where you get it.

I got a ukulele!

    My orange Mahalo Ukulele (chihuahua for scale)

I am SO excited. I didn’t even know I really wanted one. I mean, I saw Celia’s bass uke, and thought it was the coolest, but didn’t want to shell out the money for one right off the bat. I have a track record with instruments — I can pick out melodies badly on the fiddle. I can read music slowly and badly on the piano. I have played the same six or seven chords on the guitar my whole life and have never improved.

But the ukulele! It’s so not-intimidating! Only four strings, and it’s just so nice to me. Even if you hit a wrong chord, it’s pretty forgiving. I am having trouble with being able to play and sing at the same time, especially in a song with triplets like Crazy. The whole strumming thing is hard for me. But that will get better with practice, right?

I like how it just sits on my little desk next to my computer, so when the internets are being slow, I can just pick it up and play a little.

LOVING it.

In other news, I mopped. For some reason I always think the best time to do that is when it’s raining, which it is, and then I wait for an hour for the floors to dry.

And we went to the beach (before the mopping, thankfully), and I brought home a Harriet and a Sand Monster.

Imagine. Her whole body. Every, single time. Thank god for the Dyson.

The cats are good, for those of you send nice emails about them — Adah is still the neighborhood sweetheart, and Digit is still grumpy. He’s been grumpy since birth. But they’ve both finally recovered from the move (a year ago this week! Can you IMAGINE?) and they ignore the dogs as much as possible. Digit still gets in bed and sucks on the sheets. My big, grumpy boycat. Cat of my heart. I should go see if he wants in from this rain…..

UKE! Whee!

First things first: The Whoreshoes are playing in Santa Cruz this weekend! You should come! I’ll be sitting on the godkid somewhere in the audience, so I won’t be knitting that much, but me and my knitting will be there, and if you’re in the area, you should be, too!

Second: I’m seeing Merle Haggard and Neko Case at the Paramount tomorrow night. I am very excited. However, I’m not as excited as Lala, who stuttered last night, "It’s one of those things that I just can’t think about — what if it’s not real? I keep trying to forget it’s going to happen. Can’t think about it. Can’t think about it."

Third: You should go listen to the cutest new podcast, StashAndBurn. Nicole and Jenny do a bang-up job, and they made me giggle. Also, I was mentioned in the first episode, and OHMYGOD did Nicole make me blush. She also made the valid point that really, I hardly ever blog about knitting.

So fourth: Knitting. Sigh. I wish I had pics, but I’m at work, so nothing for you today. But I’ve ALMOST finished a lavender gansey. I’ve ripped the neck once, and redone it and I’m still not happy. I knit it bottom up in the round, attached the sleeves, and started a raglan decrease, thinking I’d just bind off when it felt right. Welp, it felt right too early. I put it on, and I practically had an off-the-shoulder gansey. While some might call that sexy, the folks that do also think belting an oversized sweater is sexy, and therefore they’re not invited to the sexy-knitting drink-up (which doesn’t exist, but SHOULD).

(Also, belting your knitting? Unless you’re 22 and sprig-like, it’s NOT okay. Even if you are, you’re only getting away with it because you could wear lycra overalls and get away with it. And more power to you. But I’m ready for this alarming trend to be over.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, the gansey. So I ripped, picked up, and started over, guessing I needed three more inches before ribbing the new collar. Did it, tried it on (I suppose I should have done that earlier), and it’s now too high. So it’s stuffed in my to-do box.

I also made a cute baby sweater and some booties for a coworker who’s meeting her baby for the first time today.

And I’m making socks, as usual. Also, after listening to that podcast yesterday, I had to dive in the stash and pull out some Kyoto from Artfibers, and I cast on for Stephanie’s one-row scarf, which looks FANTASTIC with this yarn. I hate knitting scarves, for the record. Don’t even wear them that much. But this, this is just knitting for knitting’s sake. Mmmmm.

And fifth: Enjoy your day.