New Roommate

My new roommate moved in today! I feel like this one's a keeper, or at least, I feel like he'll be sticking around a bit. As opposed to that last couple's five day stay.

He had more stuff than he'd estimated, which is to be expected. People generally don't realize how much stuff they own. I remember mentioning on this blog how, moving into student housing, all I had were two suitcases and a backpack, but moving out, I had three suitcases, two backpacks, like six garbage bags full of clothing, and several bins. And this is when my only living space was one room and a kitchen cabinet. I'd stated before that I only ever owned what I could carry on my back, and this was still true, but there's no way I could carry all that on my back at once. I even abandoned a mattress, night stand, and bookshelf (I'd later get my mattress back)

I moved that couch bed into my room. For the past few years, I've only been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. This seems to be an indicator of your socioeconomic status. Soon after we first got our furniture at the place I'm staying at, I ran into someone I knew, whom I'd seen when I didn't have furniture, and told her the good news. Her first question was "Do you have a bedframe?" When I told her I didn't, she said "That's okay, I don't either" kind of like saying that I'd risen to her socioeconomic status but hadn't surpassed it.

And I know a couch bed isn't the same as a proper bedframe, but I was talking to a friend who is a floor-sleeper like me, and she was quite proud of having adopted a couch bed as well (through the same people who were moving out), denouncing the mattress she'd been sleeping on. This tells me that a couch bed is a step up from a mattress, even if it isn't the same as a bed that was constructed to be a bed.

But to be honest, I don't know what society's obsession is with slightly elevating yourself above the floor. Me and my old roommates got some furniture from a secondhand store, and they disassembled the legs. We never bothered to put them on. Why would we? Just creates a trap for dust and miscellaneous items that might get kicked under there. Same concept for a bed, why do people need to feel like they're hovering above the floor?

But the truth is, with all the new furniture being moved in, as well as the influx of furniture I received not long ago, it's hard to find a place for everything. So just in the interest of space, it makes sense for me to use the couch bed.

Moving the couch bed was pretty exhilarating. I don't tend to ask for help when I need it, and moving a couch up a flight of stairs with a landing in the middle is easily a multi-person effort. But somehow someway I managed it on my lonesome.It isn't something I brag about much on this blog, because I've done little to maintain my bragging rights, but I'm pretty physically powerful just naturally. Even for my body type, which suggests I'm pretty strong, I beat expectations. It almost feels like cheating. Like, I'll look at something like that couch bed and think "I need another guy to do this" and then I'll think of a number of people I might call, and then I'll think "Oh wait, I forgot, I'm Gryphon" and then I'll just do the whole job on my own
 
I've been looking around for posters to cover the hole in my bedroom door. Wal Mart only had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle poster, and while I've nothing against TMNT, I don't know if I want to put it on my door, telling anyone who may see that I define myself as a TMNT fan. Other places I've seen posters are movie stores for the most part, and the same issue arises. I don't want to define myself by a band or movie. . I've got a number of paintings that are scenic or nature-focused, but posters don't like to do this. But I don't want to fix a painting or mirror to a door, since it's a swinging surface and might come off.

I'm probably going to have to get rid of a couch and loveseat, which is fine. New roommate has better stuff than my older things. I'll get rid of the old batch left from my old roommates and keep my new stuff. With the sudden influx of new furniture as well as the new roommate and his stuff, my place is looking way better than it has a right to, considering my income. I do hate throwing things out though.

After my initial 4 responses to my room for rent after the first night of posting it, my add was pushed back by newer ones, I stopped receiving responses and forgot about it. Recently though, I started getting a bunch of emails, as people became more desperate and started digging through the archives. I admittedly left my advertisement up, seeing how many responses I could get even though I've recently made a commitment. I'm like an unsatisfied and insecure girl on a dating website.

We found out why that one unit got raided a while back. Murderer in Montreal was on the lam and subletting from someone in my complex. Here's an article on the topic:

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ferdinando-belmonte-shooting-death-laval-kitchener-ontario-1.3793623

New Furniture 2

Today I scored a free dining room table, four dining room chairs, two loveseats, with one extending into a bed, and a reclining chair. And later, in the same day, someone offered to deliver me a free Lazyboy chair. I don't know what this is, October 22nd, the Day of Furniture I guess. The unit's going to be crowded, but everything being offered is better than what I currently own, and it's so against my nature to reject opportunities of great value.

I have a roommate for next month. An acquaintance from Conestoga's Social Service Worker program, same as me, but he was from a different year, So now I've got his furniture moving in as well as all the new furniture I just got.

It was kind of fun doing tours of my unit. I've been in the position where I was looking for a place to live inside the second half of the month with no fallback solution twice before, and I gotta say, it's a lot more comfortable being the one offering a space in their home, than it is to be the one hoping to find a space in someone else's home.

Everyone else is like "Please, I need a place ASAP, or I won't have anywhere next month" while I'm all "I need someone by next month, or I won't have a place to stay... in four months."

Okay, it's a little depressing because I can relate with some of the people that I need to reject, but it's still nice to see the challenge present, without addressing itself to me.

I moved into the large room. My first set of roommates were a couple, so even though I found the unit, and even though I was the largest, I got put in the small room. At my interrim sublet place, my roommates called dibs on the larger rooms and I got put in the small room just the same, since I was away for the Extend-a-Family Summer Program Overnight Program when they found the spot. In my current place, after my roommates moved out, I was planning on subletting to an elderly woman in the community, which would have required me to give her the larger room out of respect, but  that didn't work out because of lease agreement technicalities, and then after that another couple, but that didn't pan out either. When things turned into me trying to sell the room without leads, I realized it was ridiculous that I was still sleeping in the small room despite having been the only person in the unit for a month and a half. So now I'm in the larger room and I feel like a king. I haven't had such a nice room since I was in highschool.

I still need a coffee table for the living room... And I guess kind of a coffee table for my room. And I need two more paintings of faces in the landing between floors. I have a painting of an elderly Native Canadian man, and a painting of a young African female. I want two more belonging to different demographics so that I've got a hallway of faces.

My old roommate once knocked in his bedroom because he'd locked himself out of it. By the time that I am currently occupying this room, the hole in the door is still a reminder of times past. It was my most difficult explanation for tours of the unit. I found a Bob Marley poster from my old roommates, and wondered what was more acceptable, having a suspicious large hole in your bedroom door, or being a Bob Marley fan.  Despite Marley's popularity, I decided to hold off my poster in favour of something a bit more generic.

Remember how I made a big deal out of curtains? How I'd accidentally bought a set that advertised their patterned side, but had a light pink underbelly and were too short for the living room windows to boot?And I had to buy a complete new set for the living room because of this. Well, because the larger bedroom has posts to attach the curtain rod to, it invites curtains to be hung, while the smaller room only has a few bent-up nails in which you can place a curtain rod, but the metal rungs of a curtain will be incompatible. My solution when living in the small room was to sling an elephant-patterned sheet over the curtain rod set by the pair of upturned nails. In the larger room this wasn't an option, so I wound up using those detestable curtains.

I had the choice of setting the curtains so their desirable, advertised side faced me inside the room or alternatively to the rest of the world. I got to choose who would be subjected to the nauseating, Pepto Bismal colour. Would I choose to prioritize how I saw myself, or how the world saw me? It was quite a poetic conflict.

In the end, I chose to set the cool-looking pattern to face inside the room, and the Pepto Bismal to face outwardly. Quite like a Social Service Worker, to take care of what is happening internally as the first place to look

Coffee Filter Baskets and Coffee Basket Filters

I've lost the coffee filter basket for my coffee maker. That's the plastic bit that holds the coffee filter. It's different from a coffee basket filter, which is the filter that goes into the basket. Plenty of people sell coffee basket filters, but no one seems to sell coffee filter baskets. I accidentally bought a reusable filter because of the similarity in name. The only place online I've found that sells coffee filter baskets is Mr. Coffee. You can get this part directly through their site, or over ebay. But the part is $3, and they charge $15 shipping and handling. I mean, I can afford the part, but I could buy a whole new coffee maker for that price. My pride won't allow me to buy a part that's transportation fee is five times its value. But I also can't bring myself to buy a whole new machine for a piece of plastic when I've got a perfectly fine machine otherwise.

So in the meanwhile I've bought one of those single-serve coffee things. You put the grinds in and pour boiling water over the top. It's as fast as instant coffee, but it's made from legit grounds. So long as I'm living alone and not entertaining, this is a decent substitute.

I've started advertising for a new roommate a couple days ago. First night, and I get four responses. I've got one view set up next week.

Here, you can take a look at my advertisement. Bump up my views:

 http://www.kijiji.ca/v-room-rental-roommate/kitchener-waterloo/looking-for-roommate/1208020922

 I started using the bread maker my neighbour gave to me. This thing must be ancient. It's instructions are on a VHS tape, which means it must have been constructed from before DVD technology was introduced. That means it must be over 20 years old! But I'm pretty sure no one has ever used it. It sounds like it kept changing hands between people who liked the idea, but never used it and eventually realized they were never going to. Until it reached me. Just finished my third batch tonight.

From one perspective, it takes four hours to bake one loaf of bread, while I can bake six loaves in half that time by hand. From another perspective, it takes a degree of attnetiveness across several hours to bake a batch by hand, while with the maker, I can literally just put the ingredients in and forget about it. It does all the mixing, kneading, baking, it decides the necessary temperature and amount of time, and it even turns itself off after it's done. You can set a loaf to bake, go to sleep and wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread.
 It's pretty cool.

I think in the past, I've mentioned that Kitchener has the largest Oktoberfest celebration in Canada, and second largest in the world. This year, Justin Trudeau came to do the honours at our Tapping of the Keg. I had forgotten that it was Oktoberfest, and I hadn't heard Justin Trudeau was going to be there until day-of. By some quirk of fate, I happened to be in the area he would show up, around when he would show up, when I heard about it. So I dropped by and got to see J.T. Not a great view, I kind of had to squat to see him, and I had to leave to catch a bus for a work shift before he tapped the keg, but at least I got to snap a pic of the crowd where I saw him before leaving for work. Second time I've seen Trudeau in person (first time was at Conestoga, where he did a speach before he was elected).

Scary Moment

So, remember how I had two roommates moving out, and two roommates moving in? And I wasn't willing to elaborate on the reasons behind my old roommates moving out? Well, my new roommates didn't permanently move in, and I'm unwilling to talk about that, too. So it's just been me in this unit these past three months.

I hate to admit it, but being alone hasn't been very discouraging. The community I live in is very engaging and invested in what everyone is doing. If I come home with groceries, I can expect to be asked what I bought, and to have that information spread around the complex and repeated back to me by someone I hadn't told.

So I don't get lonely. I step outside the door, someone pulls me into conversation. I step inside the door, I'm left to my own thoughts. It's a pretty good balance, from my perspective.

The roommates that didn't stick paid for their stay (they stayed five days). They left behind a pack of pork chops, a pack of bacon, some chicken strips, half a box of those hash brown patties, and a dozen eggs. I didn't know how to cook the pork chops, so I contacted my mother. She sent me a recipe, I put it ina pan, and it exploded into a ball of fire.

I wanted to turn off the heat, but the path to the knob was too covered by flames. I wanted to take the pan off the heated element, but the handle was covered with sizzling, spitting cooking oil. I dumped out the kitchen garbage pail and filled it with water, but as I prepared to toss it on the flames, I noticed the fire was subsiding.

If a camera had been angling at me, and I hadn't dumped a trash bin on itself, the flaming pork chop may have been considered a culinary technique. You known how on those cooking shows, they have those chefs playing with fire in their pans? The end result was a delightful sear, but I chose not to be so adventurous next time, and with the remainder of the chops I just had them heat at the same time as the oil.

I am baffled how my technique wound up the way it did. Apparently my chops erupted because I'd failed to thaw them first. But how could ice, which is solidified water, result in fire? How could more frigid temperatures caused by being frozen, result in unexpected heat? I don't get it.

Recently, I became incapable of making pancakes. I don't understand. I used to find pancakes a fun and natural way to start the morning, especially if I was making them for someone else. But for some reason, now when  I try to slide my spatula beneath the pastry, it caves in on itself, unless I burn oneside to a crisp. I just purchased a waffle iron and am experimenting with it, but the first batch hasn't been promising.

My neighbours recently gave me a breadmaker. In the past, I've scoffed at people who own breadmakers (Do I need a breadmaker? I AM a Bread Maker!) but I never gave one of these machines a fair try. I will, and I will let you know.

They also gave me some board games: Connect 4, Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders, Trivial Persuit, and something called Shuttles. I love my neighbours  <3 3="" p="">
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I recently applied for several positions. I was accepted today as a Safe Management Instructor. I will be teaching courses on escalation and de-escalation, relationship building, enviro-scans, and self-defense techniques.

Recently, we had a really scary moment in our complex. It started (from my perspective) at the Talize (secondhand story across the street). Somebody walked in who I assumed was a police officer. Put someone to the floor without asking questions or reading their rights, went on pulling their pockets inside out. Person pinned was hollering that they didn't know what was happening, and the person applying force was putting too much pressure on their finger.

Someone I knew from college wandered over there and started listing things on his finger. I wanted to snoop, but they were at the children's section and I had no reason to be there. the authority figure is joined by four other people of his rank. I'm beginning to wonder if it's standard practice to have five people on one guy.

The officers pull him out on the street and pin him. Just so happens a Girl Guide is trying to sell cookies there. As the persecuted is being dealt with, the girl is shouting "Girl Guide cookies, five dollars!". I go up to buy cookies, but hope to overhear something from the commotion nearby. The girl tried to sell me three boxes for five dollars, several nearby people overhear this and take issue, since apparently she'd only given them one box for the same price. I don't know why she did that, maybe she was trying to pad her numbers.

So anyway, I go home with one box of Girl Guide Cookies and notice the same unmarked van and at least two of the same authority figures that were inspecting across the way are in the complex. Someone asks what they're doing and they say it's "So boring, you don't even want to know"

But they're in full defense gear, and they're carrying assault rifles.  Apparently at the same time as someone got pinned at Talize, someone else got pinned by the bus stop. Another unmarked van shows up with another group of authorities. In total, 15 authorities armed with assault rifles show up in undercover vehicles.

<3 p="">As soon as I see the rifles, I duck into my unit, deadbolt all the doors, turn off all the lights, curl into the fetal position and pretend I don't exist. I don't even peek out the window, because I'm afraid one of those guys might think I'm a sniper or something. In contrast to this, a group of my neighbors watched it all happen, sipping beer.
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<3 p="">Everyone in the unit got arrested. There's rumors surrounding the reason, but I don't think anyone really know. One of my neighbours who watched it happen while drinking beer on his porch said it was all an act to scare us. I don't really think they would plant undercover cops in a unit for months, then have 15 men  show up in full gear to stage a fake raid, so that they could spook some people living in a townhouse complex.