Wednesday, June 23, 2021

One week. Just one more week until we move out of this shithole. Seriously can't wait! We finally secured a place to rent, and we'll be moving in on Canada Day! And when I say shithole, it's almost quite literal.

Two weeks back Onion used too much tap water and caused the sink to flood, causing a portion of the kitchen to flood. It's not her fault. Let me explain. Since the very first day we moved in, the sink has been clogging, long before we ever did any heavy cooking. Our landlord called a plumber to fix something in the early months and it cleared the drain. We could turn the faucet on at full volume without any worries. Over time it'd clog again and again, and our sink would slowly take a longer time to drain until at one point it was more or less stagnant. Plumbing made things worse because our landlord is a so-called DIY handyman, and as a result of his handiwork, the air-conditioning/heater drips into a small hole that leads to the same pipe as the sink. So whenever we plunged the sink, the water would come out of that small hole and flood the floor below the aircon/heater. The washing machine, which is shared by all tenants, also shares the same pipe as the sink and the aircon/heater, so the hole it leads out of floods too. So if I plunge the sink, filthy water comes out of the aircon/heater hole, and the washing machine hole. And the hole for the washing machine is right next to the kitchen, so when that floods, the water leaks into our kitchen. Bloody hell, we dealt with this for almost 2 years. So sick of it. We complained to the landlord and he didn't do much the first time. He basically poked holes into the washing machine hole and called it a day. He also cleared our sink pipe and saw a few grains of rice, blaming us for causing the blockage. Later on, when we complained again, he rented a drain cleaning machine, and cleared the blockage, but it came back after 3 months. He said he would no longer help us because the fault lied with us, for our few grains of rice that dropped into the sink, calling it "improper use". Um, excuse me? It's not like we pour rice down the drain. When we wash plates and utensils, a few grains of rice will drop down occasionally. How can a drain not handle a few grains once in a while? Obviously the problem lied with prior tenants building up, and we happened to deal with the end result. What kind of drain can't handle three grains of rice?

So anyway, since the sink was clogged, we ordered takeout most of the week and washed our utensils in the bathroom. But also we got sick of doing that, plus as we were moving out soon, we didn't want the next tenant to deal with this bullshit (also didn't feel right to leave a place like that), so we decided to clear it ourselves. We rented the same drain snake machine and cleared the pipe. A lot harder than I expected. Due to the metal snake, it was tough to angle into corners, and it took forever for me to get it into all the various holes. I cleared up quite a bit of gunk, but not enough for the sink to work perfectly fine. I thought we might as well get dirty. I told Onion to handle the plunging for the sink, while another plunger would cover the aircon/heater hole and I'd plunge the washing machine hole. Yes, a filthy threesome. The waifu would turn on the tap, plunge, and I'd plunge at the same time too. Since the aircon/heater hole was sealed with another plunger and I was plunging the washing machine hole, I was betting that the water would be forced to exit the normal "path" and clear up whatever was blocking the drain. And it worked! Holy crap, we were so impressed with what we did. We did what the landlord couldn't (wouldn't) do, and we did an even better job than we thought we would. We've used the sink faucet on full blast for two weeks now and it's been working perfectly fine. We are Mario and Luigi. Master plumbers. Itsa-me, Mario! Either way, yeah. Considering the shit I pulled out with the drain snake, shithole is very apt.

So anyway, moving out. Like I mentioned, my cousin Chloe is a real estate agent and listed a few places for us to check out. Onion and I viewed 4 places, and eventually settled on one, making an offer along with another person at the place we wanted. Fortunately, we got it! Landlord took his own sweet time deciding though, 'cause we found out only an hour from the deadline. I suppose us and the competing offer were near identical and it was tough for the landlord to decide. We got a place at Avondale. A really nice condo overlooking a nice park. The food selection around the area is pretty nice too. We spent all of last weekend walking all around. We spent Friday night walking throughout our soon-to-be neighbourhood, seeing what was available, the distance to the TTC and all. Spent 5 hours walking. The next day, we spent the entire day at Eglinton, checking out Kitchen Stuff Plus and Structube to see what to add to our new place, as well as walking around to some areas we hadn't explored before, and we came across Abyssinian YYZ, an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant. We'd already been fans of Lalibela, another Ethiopian restaurant my ex-colleague's sister owns, so we thought we'd take a look since we were hungry from walking all day. Delicious food, and the owner was very friendly. Had some small talk, and when I mentioned the stone church in (the geographic) Lalibela, she seemed surprised, asking if I'd been there. I haven't, no, lol, but I read a lot. The Sunday after that was spent at Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill after helping out with the church service livestreaming. Checked out Homesense and Indigo, to get an idea of what else we might want, and to see what books were available. Indigo had a section where you could buy a book "blindly". They wrapped it in brown paper and wrote 3 points highlighting certain aspects about the book, without giving away too much. All for under 6 bucks. Quite an interesting idea! Our feet were bloody exhausted after walking all weekend. I prepared an Epsom salt foot bath for the waifu. Spoiled little cutie pie (added by her) Onion =D.

This weekend was a little less eventful. We got our second vaccination. Woots. We got our first Pfizer vaccine a day before my birthday, because Onion managed to secure a pop up clinic nearby for our area code. It was much sooner than the date we were given by the provincial booking system, so we went for it instead. Now that second doses are ramping up, we were notified we could apply for our second dose through North York General Hospital, the one that set up the pop up clinic for our area code. I'd been reading that a lot of people had stronger reactions to the second dose than the first, so I thought Saturday would be good so we would have time to rest. We got it done pretty quickly and had lunch at 3 Coins later on, doing some minor shopping before heading home to rest. Both times I only had a sore arm (a very minor headache for a few hours for the second dose) but the waifu had a really terrible reaction late at night. At 3am, she woke me up and mentioned she had fever and chills, pretty bad, so I got up to give her some Advil and water before dozing off back again. The worst of it was over by Sunday evening and my arm was fine by then, so all in all, very grateful to be fully vaccinated. There's this huge sense of relief. Of course, still need to take precautions and all, but considering the perks of the vaccines, obviously the relief is warranted. My awesomestastic babelicious (also added by her) babe more or less gave me a vaccine as an additional birthday present, lmao. She's awesome like dat <3 (yeah, guess who wrote this too). (You don't agree?????!) (Yeah I do)

Oh, speaking of relief, great Catwoman (another one added by her our slavemaster) Toshi didn't die. Okay, let me back up a bit. Last week I woke up to find Toshi heaving and choking. Like, holy shit. It sounded like a human. I'd never dealt with anyone choking before in my life, much less a cat. I yelled "TOSHI?!" And of course I woke up the waifu too. I picked Toshi up and tried to give the feline equivalent of a Heimlich maneuver. I'd never done the Heimlich maneuver in my life before, and the first time I do it... it's to a cat. Pfft. Something to add to the list of things I never thought I'd do. I managed to get whatever it was out, and she freaked out, running away (breathing fine). I took a look and it was a small brown spider she tried to eat, wet and half dead. Same size and colour as one of her kibble treats. Aye! No wonder. She's never eaten spiders before. She's killed 7 so far, leaving their bodies around on the floor but she's never eaten them. I guess this time the spiders got their revenge. Catwoman - 7, Spider-Man - 1.