This weekend we celebrated our ten year anniversary.
Just as we sat down to order our food at the restaurant our wedding song started playing completely randomly (Chris swears he did not arrange it). How neat is that!
A project planned for a decade
We’ve been living in Ottawa for over twelve years now and over this time we have accumulated a huge mess of things. A first we did not have much furniture, then we moved houses, then I just did not have time to do anything about it. I was working and going to grad school, then I was working, going to grad school and had small children. Generally, I was so busy sorting and organising those three things I had no time for the mass of things accumulating in the basement, the bedrooms, closets, corners and finally passageways.
This summer, when we came back from our three month vacation, we walked into a clean house. During the summer, Chris was the only one around and the cleaning lady has been able to clean all the bits that she can’t get to every week. However, as soon as we started to live in the house, it became utter chaos. Things were perched precariously and as soon as we started to look for, move and use things, all the clutter fell in. I have officially been putting the sort and purge project off for too long. I have some vacation left until the end of the year so I have been taking a day or two every week to decrease entropy.
I’ve swept through the basement and last week and took two days for the office (still not done…). I am almost done with the rest of the main level.
Sorting toys took a whole day. I’ve left enough toys in the living room for kids to be able to have fun and still clean up at the end of the evening without having a tantrum because there is just too much mess that it can’t possibly be tidied up. The small toys, seen here on the second shelf, are sorted, labeled and moved to the older boys’ bedrooms, the rest can comfortably fit in the cupboards and in front of the fireplace.
No loose toys in the TV room!
To be read books are politely waiting their turn. I debated putting the bibs away (top left) as Markus no longer needs them (read, has a screaming fit anytime someone even suggests fitting one on him as he is a tidy eater, thankyouverymuch) but I have a suspicion that it is a bit too early for that.
I’ve been having trouble figuring out what to store in the TV room puff when the most obvious answer came to me – media!
This drawer was the most troublesome drawer in the house. And now look at it – batteries, picture hooks, tape (sticky and measuring), glue, pens and pencils, enough screwdrivers for most quick household uses and a few expired coins, for old time sake. Nothing else allowed in here.
Where chaos is imminent, I’ve resorted to labels.
Notice board is ready for artwork.
I wish I could say I am done, but I am only about one third through the project. I am hoping to get the next third done by the end of the year when my vacation resets. The final third will be an on-going thing and I have no specific plans as of yet. Next step? Getting rid of that beer bottle on the fridge.
Neboderi
Having grown up on the “old” side of the Sava river I always looked on the New Zagreb sky scrapers as ugly necessary evil. Towards the end of the 80’s the architecture started to look pretty, even exciting, but the 70’s splotchy gray incited in me only pity. That is until I saw this diorama.
The model misses both the human element (flowers, curtains, laundry, balcony mods, graffiti…) and the weathered effect, but it underlines the sense that this is someone’s (many someones’) home and it has elegant design after its own fashion.
The Sopot appartement blocks were part of the exhibition by Klub Kockice.
Summer reading
There are two weeks left of our vacation and I have even managed to read! From the contemporary Croatian selection I’ve read the usual suspects, Tomic and Baretic and even a bit of Rudan.
Tomic’s “Punoglavci” is apparently not only a novel but also a commissioned advertisement for Podravka (Croatian food industry giant). The novel, a nostalgic recounting of a summer vacation, peppered with many mentions of Podravka delicacies is a fun, quick read.
I was excited to get Baretic’s “Hotel Grand” from the library. His “Osmi Povjerenik” is very well written and absolutely hilarious but for the life of me I can’t remember if makes a point. “Pricaj mi o njoj” has a very strong central story, but I felt the writing itself to be a bit weak. In “Hotel Grand” he gets it right with both strong central story and strong writing. I usually dislike reading about criminal goings on, but the characters are so alive and the storyline so interesting, I could not put it down. The novel is written in a blog format which makes it even more interesting and funny.
I’ve had to put Rudan’s “Strah od pletenja” down despite the promising title. The foul mouthed, whiny narrator complaining about unimportant things when there is plenty of real problems out there to complain about grated too much.
In the completely opposite gene of foreign classics, I have got through the first quarter of “War and Peace” inspired by recently watched play. Apparently, there is still some Napoleon fighting left to do so I better get back to reading.
Let the helmet wars begin!
The most anticipated (for me anyway) event of the Ontario summer has occurred – the office of the chief coroner has released the cycling deaths report.
The report had a particular privilege of being misinterpreted by the press – please give a hand to the Ottawa Citizen for giving the Ottawa Sun a run for their money in poor journalism. In fact, the report does not recommend mandatory helmets for adults, it recommends mandatory helmets given that further study can prove such law will not be detrimental to cycling participation levels. Since no such study could prove this, the report merely states that it is a good idea to wear a helmet – a reasonable and well documented assertion. I sincerely hope that some silly-billy does not pass general mandatory helmet law in Ontario based on this report.
But enough about helmets and bad journalism, the report is quite interesting otherwise. The most significant recommendation is to develop provincial cycling plan that includes “complete streets” approach. Ottawa has had a cycling plan for years but it does not do enough to make cycling more palatable in my neighbourhood. This is an important recommendation and I hope it will be implemented soon.
Things that were interesting about the report itself include the fact that overwhelming number of accident deaths were of men and particularly of men aged 45 and above. There was no suggestion as to why this is the case.
The report also divides cycling into recreational, sport and commuting. I would have liked to get a better breakdown on where the accidents happened, the speed of the bike as well as the type of bicycle used. Apart from confirming that there is an increase in the number of commuting cyclists, I am not sure what the commission learned from type of cycling data.
In any case, this report was very reasonable and I hope there will be positive change as a result of it. Less frothing about the helmets and more infrastructure and education. I can only hope.
Super bikey weekend
After not biking for far too long I finally had a few days of good bikerides. We biked to Bundek one day and to Jarun the next.
This year, after decades of hiding, the old black bicycle has re-appeared in the shed. My sister had found a good bike mechanic in Cakovec (the guy rewired my dad’s overworked back wheel with motorcycle spokes – genius!) and got the bike working. Cakovec is apparently where it’s at as far as bikes are concerned. Last weekend my sister took the old bike to the Critical Mass ride. I wanted to take some photos of the ride but could not get there in time. Instead, I tried out riding the bike the next day.
Alas, I could not ride it! Apart from not being able to brake (I am sure there is a trick to it) the set-up was quite awkward. I kept hitting my hands and handlebars with my knees, the bike was just too small for me. I remember my grandfather, who was the original owner of this bike, to be quite tiny but apparently in the fifties, when he bought the bike, he was very tall. We think that the handlebars were adjusted much higher as the bike mechanic in Cakovec originally suggested we do. We don’t have the tools to readjust the handlebars at this time so a test ride will have to wait.