The Coffee Trap

My sweet lady wife moved into my (our!) apartment right after our wedding. So far Robyn and I are pretty good roommates! We share the chores and are good at living together in a tiny space.

Since we pledged our eternal love for one another, Robyn has been setting traps. All over the place. Traps that didn't seem to spring up when my ex-roommate lived here. Items tumble out of cupboards, or fall off our tiny bathroom shelf into the toilet. Mmm, toilet aspirin.

She denies setting these traps but the evidence keeps piling up!

On Monday she set a trap that will be hard to top. Robyn covertly decided that our electric kettle needed cleaning because it supposedly had too much calcium in it.

Cloaked in silence, she filled the kettle (I can only assume, to the brim) with vinegar, boiled it down (I assume) to a thick vinegar syrup, and planted it in front of the sink for me to find during my morning routine.

The next morning my alarm went off at 5:00AM and I set about my automatic morning routine. Bathroom, shower, get dressed, grind coffee, fill kettle, boil kettle, pack lunch, put coffee & water in french press, eat breakfast, brush teeth, press coffee, pour in travel mug, add milk, depart for carpool.

In the carpool I sipped my coffee and was shocked wide awake. But not due to caffeine. Oh no. I thought my brain might be melting in those early morning hours, so I took another, smaller cautionary sip. I could ONLY taste acetic acid. This was alarming because I brew strong coffee. I thought the milk went bad. Very, very bad. But that didn't compute, because I had a glass of milk with breakfast.

When I got to work I poured my coffee down the sink. The bottom third of my travel mug was filled with a spongy disconnected mass of stinky curdled milk globs. It was super gross. Some people who saw (and smelled) what I was doing mug helpfully commented, "that's gross."

I texted Robyn and asked if she filled the kettle with vinegar, and if not, to watch out for the milk. She texted me her confession and apologized profusely, but I can only imagine that she was clasping her hands together, laughing maniacally and laying her next trap.

I have insider intelligence that she will be blogging her side of the story. I'll leave it to my discerning readers to evaluate the facts for themselves.

Sound wall deflects sound, not vehicles

Behind my crappy apartment there is a sound wall. Behind the sound wall there is Idylwyld Drive. Apparently sound walls are not very good at deflecting cars.

That's what I found last Saturday when I walked out of my house. I sleep with my window open - I am surprised I didn't hear this. Nice big set of skid marks on Idylwyld to match, and the wall looks a lot worse on the other side.

The McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie

Most mornings in Montreal I grab a medium coffee with two milks from the McDonald's in the mall below my office. Plain McDonald's coffee (not the fancy McCafe stuff - I haven't tried it) is actually pretty good. And cheap! And all the cups have an air insulation layer inside. And the lids don't suck, like Tim Hortons.

Anyway.

Recently McDonald's has introduced what - to me - looks like the most vile and disgusting product ever to hit the shelves: The Oreo Pie.

Each day when I order my coffee, I have to look at a menu like this (this is not the exact menu, just an image that showed up on Google):

(image source)

Maybe it's just me, but that picture is GROSS. Yeah yeah fast food is all gross etc, but come on - this is especially unpleasant to look at. The exterior cake looks overly moist while the cake near the frosting looks rock solid.

And the frosting... I can't look at it without thinking of this:

(source)

There you have it: The McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie. Am I insane though? Does that picture look gross, or am I overreacting? I can tell you that the idea of an Oreo pie sounds great, in theory. It's just when I gaze upon the menu picture in the morning, I suppress the urge to gag.

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Bonus: while searching for images for this blog, I found this insane cake recipe that combines ice cream sandwiches, Cool Whip, crushed Oreos and Jello chocolate pudding. Strangely, this homemade gargantuan calorie feast looks much more appetizing than McDonald's Wet Chocolate Caulk Pie.

Blog link: http://justuskuhns.blogspot.com/2012/01/oreo-fudge-ice-cream-cake-and-friday.html

The Shit Night Before A Midterm

Some people haven't heard this true story yet. I think it's a story told best with rhymes.

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'Twas the night before a midterm, little Brahm sat in his house,
Reading textbooks on Hertz, Maxwell, Ampere and Gauss.

As the clock struck ten-thirty - the signal for bed,
Little Brahm packed up his books, and laid down his head.

Little Brahm drifted asleep, but a sound jolted him awake!
A drip-drip-drip in the bathroom - did the plumbing break?

He threw back the covers with a frustrated wrath,
But found no leaks in the shower, sink, toilet or bath.

The drip-drip-drip continued, and little Brahm's eyes grew wide,
He pressed his ear to the wall; the sound was coming from inside.

What did this mean? Had a pipe split in the wall?
The apartment was ancient, so the odds weren't so small.

"I SUMMON YOU, DAVE!" Brahm bellowed into the night.
Well, 'twas a phone call, and it was slightly more polite.

As Landlord Dave confirmed he was on his way over,
Little Brahm mopped the water that was pooling on the floor.

Landlord Dave burst through the door just in time to consume
The sight of water pouring from the light switch in little Brahm's room.

Little Brahm pulled the breaker and Landlord Dave ran out back,
To turn off the water, disabling the aqueous attack.

While Dave was out, little Brahm knelt to feel the pool,
Trying to glean whether the burst pipe was hot or cool.

As Brahm arose, Dave returned to give him a scare;
"It was the toilet," He exclaimed, "It was the toilet upstairs!"

The neighbours above had plugged the toilet before sleep,
The water in their unit hadn't roused them in the least.

Little Brahm looked at his hand, which he'd just dunked in shit,
Shit water from the walls, simply a maelstorm of shit!

Brahm cleaned up the shit water with his trusty mop and pail,
and washed the shit from his hands, trying not to inhale.

So if you hear dripping in your walls, there's a lesson, of course:
Don't touch the water to diagnose the source.

Typical

This happened a year ago.

This happened last night:

Text from my roommate before I rushed over: "OMFG! The bathtub is filling with shit! What do I do!?"

I ran over and thankfully it was just dirt. Lots of dirt. And it didn't go over the edge of the tub. Very lucky, compared to last years' big flood (see link in first word of this blog post).

The Year of the Flood

Woke up to this on June 30th (my room, view looking in): 

Outside my room:

Bathroom... Just lovely.

I TRIED TO ROTATE YOU WHY DON'T YOU ROTATE!!!!!!!!

Kitchen

The scariest thing: the water line in our entryway during the flash flood. This must have happened AFTER we got home from a concert at midnight and BEFORE we woke up at 6am. Thank goodness the door was mostly sealed shut.

The only, ONLY thing that got damaged? My friggin' laptop that I BARELY ever use. I started using it again recently to write blog posts at the kitchen table instead of in my room. When it didn't turn on, I let it sit in a container of rice for 24 hours. But because it had been plugged in while sitting on the dining area floor, something was fried. I opened it up and took it apart to find the damage:

Alas! I believe the only damaged chip is the one that makes the laptop not broken!

After the clean-up:

Looks good, except for the floors. 

In the end we lucked out, the only damage to personal belongings was my 6-year-old laptop (which I have been secretly itching to replace) and a few cheap floor mats. Plus my room-mate's room was completely unscathed. Plus it was dirt, and not sewage. Maybe this makes us the luckiest of all.

We have it better than what my landlord will have to deal with (considering the floors) and a heck of a lot better than a lot of people in Saskatoon had it, from what I heard on the news.