Aha!

Well, there we are, photographical evidence of the bandit who keeps climbing the fire exit in the middle of the night! Caught red-handed (they don't have paws, they have these weird, furry people hands) the perp then...

...ignored me completely and just kept climbing around out there. Well, they do get kind of large, this one is about 1.5 times the size of a common house cat, though at this time of year they're eve fatter than usual. The reluctance of people to properly dispose of garbage because it's cold and the raccoons eating more because it's cold go well together. Almost symbiosis. And here is a little teaser of the Lake Huron Hike, just so you don't think I made the whole trip up. I've uploaded 300 photos I still had on my camera to the PC now, and will be sorting them out, uploading them to the net, and then commenting them, this takes time, and time is what you'll give me.

Or, well, no photos, which would suck.

Later!

Well lookit that

My cardreader is back. It cleverly hid itself under the packaging for my cellphone charger. I'll try and get some of the Blue Mountain photos online later today (tonight?) for your viewing pleasure. Before that, a photo, not by me, that is very dear to my heart for obvious reasons.

I call it "Man in Nature, Blue. #1"

Things that go jump in the night.

Sooo, we have ourselves a situation. The house is, according to what came out during the house meeting, infested with fleas. Bummer. Several people, including me, haven't noticed anything, thankfully, despite hanging out with the cat a lot, so what is becoming increasingly likely is that the fleas came in from elsewhere. We DO have a family of raccoons living under our balcony, and we do have a lot of squirrels that are so bold that we had to chase one out of the kitchen last week, so there are some possible infection vectors other than the poor cat.

There is, thankfully, consensus that we do not want to get rid of the cat. BUT if we report to Coop that there are fleas in the house, and that we would only do if the situation got so bad that we would need to fumigate, they would likely argue that the cat has to go regardless. That would cause some bad blood for sure.

As it stands, we got some flea spray and hosed down all the furniture in the common areas, closed those off for now and took everything we could outside before spraying it, and the cat got two flea-baths already and is wearing a collar. The only step we could still take would be to put collars on ourselves...hm...no. Nono, bad idea.

In any case, I hope that this works, otherwise we are looking at Operation: Overkill as the final scenario, which would mean flea bombs. Which would mean clearing all foodstuff out of the house, opening all doors, applying the bombs and then leaving the house for at least 48 hours. For half the house population that would mean moving to hotels for the time, because we're not exactly in a position to go to our parent's places.

Excitement and adventure in the not-so-high north. Oh, also, everybody is really paranoid all of a sudden. Like, staring at people when they scratch themselves paranoid. This does open up an all-out riot as a possible final scenario, which I shall now name as Operation: Lord of the Fleas, and thankfully that is about as likely as Operation: Flea King Takeover, but still, everyone is a little on edge right now.

Oh well, keep calm and carry on. I have an itch. Oh my god.

To set our house in order pt. 2

Well, don't I feel accomplished. This house is a DIY dream come true (or nightmare, depending on your opinion on DIY) and even though I never was in the good old Bundesheer, I do adhere to the "Pioniercredo" which, according to somebody I know, goes: "There is hardly anything that cannot be fixed with an application of WD40 and a good whack with a wrench." Alternatively, refer to this flowchart:
So I managed to fix a bunch of creaky doors, repaired my window, drank a lot of coffee, read some more books for my literature classes and that was pretty much my Saturday.

As with any DIY day, it also included injuries, as I managed to slam my own fingers in the window I was fixing. Vicious victorian counter-weight windows.

Related note: It's raining cats and dogs outside, I'm bored as hell, and my cardreader seems to have hidden itself in an alternative dimension.

Hell, it's about time.

So, the internet is back, for parts of the house at least, and I am happy to say that I am included in those parts, obviously.

What it looks like is this: We have a new modem now BUT, for some odd reason we already have a wireless modem, which is hooked up to ANOTHER modem, which is the one that broke. So to say it in the words of the Rogers repair guy: "You took your network, and you stuck it into another network, and the result is that you got two networks, none of which are working right. That aint right." But since the security keys for the new modem are held by Campus-Coop, who were of course closed for Thanksgiving, we have to tunnel to the Internet via the old modem, which uses the new modem as both a crutch to reach the internet, and a very effective downstream brake. Seriously, I can't be bothered to try and fix that now. /nerdtalk

Other than that, Thanksgiving weekend was BORING. Everyone went back home, except for me and English girl from Scotland and Scottish girl from England, who apparently had her mother visit her. I have seen nobody all weekend, so yeah, the test for staying home alone went through and I can say that having the house to myself is more than just boring, it's a chore. Speaking of chores, nobody did theirs this week, so the house looks like a warzone in places, mostly the bathrooms. But the fire alarm went off twice in the last hour, which tells me that at least Megan is home again, and cooking.

My suspicions on another thing were confirmed: There ARE two cats at the house. Franco, the dude living on my floor, borrowed his mom's cat because he has a mouse problem in his room. So do the two teenagers from across the hall, and Rebecca across from me as well...I have no mice. I searched the room up and down and there is no sign or trail. This worries me. Why are the mice avoiding my room, out of all rooms? Better get a chem-sniffer. /conspiracy

Finally, the weather is looking good these days in Toronto, one perfect cloudless day after the other, with the Indian summer in full swing outside. Which leaves me with a weird sensory disparity. It looks like autuum out there, it smells like autuum out there (rotting leaves and wet mulch never smelled so good, I tell you) but it just doesn't feel like it. I mean, I have my window open 24/7 because the comrades at soviet Coop turned on the central heating stroke midnight on October 3rd, as commanded by the five year plan of Comrade Campus, but even at night it's barely necessary to put on a sweater right now. Nice, I gotta say.

So nice, in fact, that I went for a walk on Friday, down to Danford Square, which is the heart of downtown, to sort out my mobile phone contract. From there, I thought, hey, might as well walk down to the lake. Went down there, cursed myself for not bringing my camera, went for a two hour walk, and then back. All in all a four hour journey with some breaks for lunch (roast beef sandwhiches by the lake, jewish Delikatessen chain stores ftw) and cigarettes. Back home, asked where I'd been all day, my story was met with amazement, and the fact that I willingly walk even if the journey is more than 4 city blocks has earned me the title of most outdoorsy person in the house. Canadian Murica, fuck yeah.

Info:

Für alle Daheimgebliebenen und andere Gäste, das Internet bei uns im Haus ist kaputt, darum werd ich die nächsten Tage eher weniger online sein, also nicht wundern.

To everyone who stayed at home and all other guests, the Internet at our house broke, so I wont be online much the next couple of days, so don't worry.