Category Archives: Condo Living

Falling backward

  • My upgrade went well, albeit a bit differently than I’d planned.
  • Apparently, there isn’t an upgrade path from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional, so I had to do a clean install. (As in… format and install.)
  • How happy was I that I had the operating system isolated on its own partition?
  • Pretty damn happy.
  • True, I’ve had to reinstall a lot of software that lost registry keys and settings during the format, but it’s definitely not as bad as I feared it would be, based on my Vista experiences.
  • Make sure you have a good backup (preferably not compressed, in case you need little bits of things) before you start such a project!
  • I know that I was very, very grateful that I did.
  • Windows 7 is so much faster than Vista, it’s almost like I have a new computer.
  • *happy dance* My downstairs neighbor moved out over the weekend. (Backstory here and here and here.)
  • Please cross your fingers and think good thoughts my way for a sane, pleasant, non-smoking downstairs neighbor next time! Thank you.
  • Oh, how I love the extra hour of sleep when Daylight Savings Time ends.
  • Oh, how I hate the first week of kitty dinner time after Daylight Savings Time ends.

“Starving… to… death… Dinner… late… Not… going… to… make… it…”-Chaos

Ok, so the snow was gone by the end of the day yesterday, but still…

…it’s just so, so wrong to have snow this early.

“Big kitty, look! Look outside! Thousands of little white birds falling out of the sky!” -Mayhem

“Mayhem, that’s snow. We go through this every year.” -Chaos

“Hmph.” -Mayhem’s tail

“Definitely birds. The big kitty’s just dumb. Mom, why won’t you open the window so I can get closer to the pretty fluffy white birds?” -Mayhem

In which we get a new toilet at Casa de Chaos y Mayhem

The old toilet was original to my condo, complete with a 1968 date stamp in the tank. The old toilet worked ok most of the time, but would periodically decide not to shut off and require manual assistance to do so. I vaguely remember it working a bit better before I got Chaos.

You don’t see the connection? When Chaos was a wee youngster (only 9 or 10 pounds), he used to chase his tail on top of the toilet tank while I took my shower. This bent the tank against the wall; I ended up sticking some felt pads back there to keep the tank from thunking against the wall.

I guess the tank always had a hairline crack from the handle around the side, but over the past several months, the crack got wider and water started to leak out of it. Hmm. Very inauspicious, that. I started shutting off the water to the toilet whenever I left the condo, just in case. Hmm. The shutoff appeared to drip. Very inauspicious, that.

Tuesday I finally got around to calling the plumber to find out when he could come and replace the kitchen sink shutoffs, the toilet shutoff, and the toilet itself . (Disclaimer: Yes, I know I could’ve done it myself and saved some money, but I am so, so, so unhandy it was worth the money to not have to deal with the frustration. There would’ve been blood, too.) Anyway, he had an opening Wednesday morning. Um, ok… so I bought a toilet on my way home Tuesday night, and by 10:30 am Wednesday… Ta-da!

“For all the noise and commotion, I expected more than a new litterbox for you, Mom.” -Mayhem

Hopefully I adjust to this new, taller toilet without too many painful middle-of-the-night incidents…