etc.

• borrowed from the library: Middlesex and The Muse Learns to Write
• shopped for: a couch
• had success in: couch-shopping
• eaten: fajitas
• read: mental floss 2.3
• watched: the Wild beat the Canucks and Identity
• prepared, just in time for Spring: meringue pie. Get some.

I have fairly strong political convictions and the husband, bless him, does too. But sometimes these inclinations lead us to the proverbial bumping of heads. On a social level, our beliefs aren’t dissimilar: subsidized housing for the underprivileged, government provided health care, pro-choice on the abortion front, public education, government funding for the arts, employment equity, etc.. These are all good things. But when it comes to economics, we part ways. If there was a card he could carry to declare his essential capitalism, he’d be carrying it. I think I can say, without misrepresenting his opinions, that he firmly believes that a fully-functional free market is the best possible economic model, that the strong weeding out the week will make us all stronger, and all the rest of those law-of-the-jungle adages that would make Milton Friedman proud. I, as you will know if you spend any sort of time around here, don’t buy into the notion that laissez-faire economics is good for anybody (never mind everybody) because I have an essential mistrust of corporations and their motivations; I don’t think things like the environment and social/public good are protected in any sort of market economy where profit and endless cycles of consumption are the driving forces, and I don’t think that a purely demand-supply model is equitable in any way. And I certainly put very little faith in the functions of government and extol the virtues of libertarianism (a point that we do agree on).

So with the recent talk of Provincial elections, much heated discussion has transpired within our modest walls (and when I say “heated discussion” you must understand that we have nothing but respect for each other’s opinions and we both relish the educational nature of these discussions, and only one of us likes to debate for the sake of debating). He tells me that if I plan to vote Liberal, we shouldn’t bother voting at all because we will essentially cancel each other out. And then there is The House. Recently circulated rumours have the current Progressive Conservative government making the interest paid on household mortgages tax deductible. Now, setting aside the fact that this could well be, and mostly likely is, another empty election promise, this is suddenly meaningful to me. Because if I choose to vote with my conscience, I might well be voting my husband and I out of a fairly consequential tax break. So, all of a sudden, the waters of my political conscience have become muddied. Either I was never meant to be a home owner, or I am destined to join the ranks of the politically disillusioned who don’t vote and still choose to complain about the state of our society and/or economy.

The value of my blogshares spiked just around the time that we bought the house. Coincidence…? If you like pretending at playing that cornerstone of capitalism, the stock market, you might consider investing. This is only my second foray into trading, my first venture was into the real stock market in 1999, during the giddy height of the dotcom days, well before the bubble burst, when a few hundred shares in this company afforded Michael and I a cruise in the Caribbean. I’m hoping for as much good fortune in the Blogshares market.

But speaking of The House, the home inspection last week went well, the only two major upgrades required are upgrading the electrical from 60 to 100 amps (mostly to appease the insurance company) and redoing the roof in a couple of years. We also learned that the house was built sometime between 1900 and 1930, with our home inspector leaning towards the mid teens to early twenties. The current owner has done all sorts of work on the place, from adding a pantry to lowering the floor, underpinning the foundation and completely finishing the basement. He mentioned that during one of his upgrade projects he removed from the walls crumpled newspapers, dating back to 1911, that were being used for insulation.

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Apparently things are worse than I thought they were.

Faithful readers have had to put up with two recent preoccupations of mine: weather and The House Hunt. Well good news, faithful readers. First of all, as you will have realised from yesterday’s post, good weather has arrived and acerbic complaints about copious amounts of snow and hibernating tendencies have thus been mothballed for a few months. Even though this week’s forecast calls for freezing rain, I will bite my tongue and hold my breath until the sun returns next week.

And secondly, we bought a house, yes we did! For those of you who know Toronto, it’s in High Park, one of two neighbourhoods that was high on our desirability list. The house is probably over 70 years old although we should get a better idea on that after the inspection, which is to-morrow afternoon. It’s a tiny little row house, the lot measures a diminutive 14.25′ x 73′, but it’s got all manner of living space inside, is warm and bright and filled with light, and I for one couldn’t be a happier camper! We move in on June 12th and pictures are sure to follow shortly thereafter.

So thank you, gentle readers, for bearing with me through all the kvetch and occasional vitriol that has plagued these pages for the past few weeks. Good times are indeed to come!

• Birkenstocks without socks.
• Carrying my fleece, not wearing it.
• Eating supper outside while watching hacky sack matches.
• Funny campus-unicycle-guy riding his unicycle without the parka and snowboots.
• Toe jewellery.

Imagine my surprise when I went into my amazon.com wishlist to discover that The Best of Cher was the last addition to the list, even though I know for a fact that the last item I added to the list was The Best Democracy Money can Buy: The Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters (nevermind the absurdity of the Cher addition to begin with). Things have been funky around Amazon lately. The Donnie Darko recommendation should have been the tip off, but it was the Richard Scarry’s Best Ever 1st Grade Starter Kit recommendation that finally did it.

By the way, I’ve redesigned and streamlined bibliolatry, my library blog. It should be more pleasing to the average Netscape user, finally.

After writing this entry yesterday lamenting my lack of concentration and all-consuming preoccupation with the house hunt, I headed straight into the bookstacks to find something to engage my recently flighty mind, if for nothing else than to prove to myself that yes, I still can get through an entire book without pausing intermittently to check the multiple listings service. I found this book, leafed through the first few pages, and was immediately intrigued by the premise. So I signed it out, took it with me on my lunch break and an hour later I was done, not to mention thoroughly relieved to discover that a book still could absorb my skittish brain, a feat I credited entirely to the quality of this particular one.

Afterword is indeed an afterword to a novel called The Deity Next Door. The kicker is that The Deity Next Door has never been written. So I fully expected the book to be a discussion on the literary process itself (which is a genre of choice for me), but it actually turned out to be an exegetical treatment of this non-existent work, and by the end of the book (which is short, I deliberately set myself up for success) I felt as though I had not only read Deity but that I had also achieved a thorough understanding of the author’s intentions in writing it. Clever, ain’t it? Deity is actually about a regular guy called Blaine (with no last name, and I can tell you all about why he doesn’t have one) who lives in an apartment building in New York City and one day discovers that he has certain powers. But they aren’t superhero powers, they are deeply religious powers (like omniscience!) and the whole novel rests on Blaine’s road to self-discovery. He immerses himself in the study of church history and theology and grapples with many of the questions with which Christ himself would have been preoccupied. So in The Afterword, Bryan compares Blaine to Christ and himself to the Gospel writers. Of course this must sound awfully presumptuous but it totally works and the result is an interesting little book that reads like a novel in a novel, one that is infused with all manner of compelling theological questions and good, solid attempts to answer those questions, with only a vague hint of occasional proselytizing.

I’ve clearly hit a reading dry-spell. And I’m inclined to believe that this is not the result of poor book selection as much as it is a symptom of an acute case of preoccupation. The last book I read was The Tipping Point, and I finished that on March 20th. I restarted Atonement a day after that and then the house thing started picking up momentum, and when I said it consumes you, you must believe me because it really consumes you. I’ve been eager to finish off Atonement for weeks but every time I pick it up and read a couple of lines, my thoughts wander back to real-estate: damn those were some nice baseboards; the hardwood sure creaked a lot, but that’s charming right?; I’ve never seen such an attractive door in my life; a couple of rugs on the floor in the basement would warm the place right up. And then all of a sudden the trials and tribulations of Briony Tallis and her mislaid staging ambitions can’t hold a candle to how to deal with knob and tube wiring.

Must. Find. House. Soon. Or. Else. Basic. Literacy. Will. Suffer. And. Lazy. Lexicon. Will. Result.

Later that day … I read a book!

The good thing about being a student for seven years is that you learn to live small, and if you’re lucky, you become quite good at it. This is coming in particularly handy in these looming-mortgage/downpayment-scrambling days. Recent high-level decisions include: going from two cell phones to one, switching plans on the remaining cell phone, and deciding that no long-distance travel will be undertaken for a few years. These decisions were fairly easy to make. The more difficult decisions have to be made on a daily basis, when you have to constantly remind yourself that you are saving your pennies for a reason and that reason is that you are tired of living in a two-room flat that sees no sunlight, because the body needs vitamin D, the soul needs flowers and light, and the cats would really like to be able to run and chase without colliding into bookshelves and coffee tables and other floor-laden miscellanea.

And even those daily decisions become easier to make the more you make them. And, is it all worth it? Yes. Because living small can also mean doing less damage. I don’t need to buy those handy anti-bacterial, conveniently-boxed kitchen wipes when a good old-fashioned towel and mild cleaning agent (vinegar, baking soda, whatever the occasion calls for) does the trick just as well and means that I’m consuming less, using less chemicals, producing less waste, and saving more money.