Category Archives: Condo Living

Condo Living, Randonymity

Falling backward

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  • 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

Condo Living, Tales of the Neighborhood

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

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…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

Condo Living

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

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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…