Stronger

I bought a bike back in June and have been riding it around downtown ever since, mostly to get to work and back home. I can now get to work in about 10 minutes, faster than if I ride the bus.

Two weekends ago, Lyndsay and I did a cycling tour of the Sunshine Coast. We took the ferry to Langdale on Saturday morning, then cycled about 30 km to Sechelt. The purpose of the trip was to attend a wedding reception, and unfortunately we missed most of it due to the longer than anticipated time it took to get to Sechelt.

Because it was starting to get dark after the reception and we would be riding on a highway with no streetlights, we threw our bikes on a shuttle and took the shuttle to Roberts Creek (about halfway back to the ferry), stayed in a B&B overnight, then rode the remaining 15 km back to the ferry terminal on Sunday. We went up and down many hills. I looked at Google Map's terrain prior to the trip and noted all the hills I might encounter, but those were only the super-big inclines and declines. There were many smaller ones that I didn't see on the map.

Here's a map of the Saturday trip, which took about 4 hours. The Sunday return trip took about 1.5 hours.

Since that trip, I've noticed that it's just a bit easier to bike around, especially going up the same hill on my way home from work. I don't have to gear down as far to avoid fatiguing myself.

In just over a week, I'll be moving out of my home and living in West Point Grey. My plan is to bike to work in the morning (~45 min and mostly downhill) and ride the bus back home with the bike on the bus' bike rack, at least for as long as the weather holds out.

Time to sell

I'm pulling the trigger and selling my home. It's unfortunate that I never really had a chance to fully enjoy living downtown with being sick, but property values are on the decline and it's looking like I'll be stuck with this place for a long time if I hold on to it any longer.

The MLS listing should go up next week with open houses the following weekend.

Flooring

I have some water damage on my hardwood floor from a few weeks ago when I flooded the bathroom. I've been looking at my options, and have been considering replacing the entire floor. Since I moved in, I always believed that my living room floor is a laminate and never thought anything more of it, and I was planning on going out tomorrow to buy new replacement laminate. However, I looked more closely at the flooring tonight, and it's actually engineered hardwood. It has a top layer of real wood 2 mm thick on top of a 10mm thick backing. It appears that it might be glued to a 1/4" plywood base. It's hard to tell if it's floating or glued down.

I'm definitely not replacing this with laminate, and so now sanding and refinishing the floor might be an option to get rid of the warping. I never liked the colour of the floor anyway, so this might be an opportunity to stain it darker.

This is also an opportunity to get rid of the electric fireplace and replace it with a wall-mounted TV. I already pulled the fireplace out of its enclosure and just need to remove the enclosure and finish the wall behind it. I've attached a picture of the enclosure without the fireplace insert. The wall behind is finished, as is the floor. The enclosure is glued on the inside and caulked on the outside to the wall, so I will need to fill any damage to the wall from removing it, and then paint the wall the beige colour seen around the enclosure. I still have some paint left from when I painted the apartment in 2006. Once the fireplace enclosure is removed, I'll gain about 5-6 sqft of space that is presently wasted by something I'm only using as a stand for my stereo.

Network

I've always had an idea in my mind how I want my home network to work since I moved into my apartment, but never got around to drawing out a diagram. My goals are to move as much as possible into the closet where there is ample space, keeping the living space as clutter-free as possible, and serve multimedia content to the XBox from a file server in the closet so that the workstation doesn't have to be turned on and making noise. This is it.

Another one year milestone

Today marks one year since I moved into my apartment.

Gated communities

The fitness centre in my apartment is open until 11pm each night. It is located on the fourth floor, and requires going through an access-controlled elevator and a few access-controlled doors to get to the gym and then back to my apartment. Normally, elevator access to the floor and all door access on the floor are cut off at 11pm, but for some reason some time last week, access is now disabled 15 minutes earlier. That means the only way back to my tower is a trip down the elevator in the south tower to its lobby and going down the street outside to get back to my north tower if I miss the cutoff.

It reminds me of a conversation I had earlier this year before I went into the hospital. I was at a comedy club discussing politics with someone who was sitting at the table next to me. He was very articulate and had some interesting ideas. For some reason, we started talking about safety and my apartment complex. I was telling him about everything being access card controlled and that we had a 24 hour security guard/concierge. He referred to my building as being a vertical gated community. I had never thought of it that way before that.

Would you like an extended warranty with that?

I picked up a plant for my apartment today. It's a 6 foot tall tropical Yucca with four canes in a 14" pot. It really adds character to the apartment, and it looks really cool walking into the dark apartment at night and seeing the silhouette of the plant against the window.

I noticed a sign when I walked into the nursery that all their plants come with one year warranties. I forgot to ask what the terms were, but I thought it was odd that a plant would come with a warranty.

I stopped at IGA last night to get some groceries for dinner. They had these boxes of frozen breaded fish fillets for $4, and if you buy a box, you get a free 1kg bag of frozen vegetables to go with it. That's enough food for at least 4 meals. You really start to realize the value of things and eating out becomes more of a luxury when you have a mortgage to pay.