Apartment Life Sucks

Hello again,
Like many young married couples my wife and I are saving up to buy our first home, hopefully within the next couple of years, but until that time we live in a spacious one bedroom apartment here in Victoria. It's a nice enough apartment, don't get me wrong (hardwood floors, clean building, good location, on a bus route, reasonable rent, and a friendly caretaker) but, as I'm sure many of you can agree, there are some things about apartment life that just suck no matter how nice your apartment is.
It seems that no matter when I want to have a shower someone else has the same idea and then it becomes a fight to maintain a consistent water temperature. The nice thing is that I live directly above the boiler room so I get the hot water first, but when the water is hot enough to blister the paint off the walls that's too hot! So I ever so slightly turn the hot down - and I mean just a tiny fraction of a turn people - and suddenly the water becomes so cold certain parts of my anatomy instantly disappear! I don't even think Mariah Carey could hit the high notes I hit when that happens!

I wish I could get these people back by starting a load of laundry, but unfortunately my apartment does not come with in suite machines so I have to go downstairs and use the common laundry room. This can sometimes be another adventure. First of all there are only 3 washers and 3 dryers. Of course there's always one machine that doesn't work as well as the others and after a while you start to strategize and try to time your laundry perfectly to take advantage of the good machines. It would be nice if the other tenants knew how to play this game but instead they come in willy nilly, take up all of the machines and seem to always forget they're doing laundry. I'm never comfortable with handling other people's laundry.

Perhaps even more unsettling is when someone can't wait and removes my laundry from the machine the second the cycle stops. I do my best to be in the room a minute before the end of the cycle, but sometimes things happen and I'm a few minutes late. By the time I get downstairs all of my laundry is in a big pile on the counter- beside my basket!

I could probably do an entire post about just laundry, and I know so many people that have similar complaints, but then you folks may get as bored as the Maytag Repair Man. Suffice it to say those of you who happen to have your own machines don't know how lucky you are.

I remember once hearing a famous Aboriginal author talking about how at one point in time his people lived in villages where everyone knew and respected each other and that nowadays nobody even knows who's living on the other side of the wall and he's really got a point. TV sitcoms would have you believe that everyone knows everyone else in their building, but it's just not like that for most people these days. All you get are fleeting glimpses of people quickly shuffling up and down the hallway before they disappear into their suite and hastily slam the deadbolt into place.

Some of my neighbors seem like nice enough people and I probably would get along with them, but in this day and age people just don't randomly knock on their neighbor's doors and invite themselves into their lives. Idle small talk when you meet while taking out the garbage is about as far as it goes these days.

Of course then there are those people in the building that can just get on your nerves. The couple fighting across the hall, the stuffy old woman who bathes in perfume and gives everyone a dirty scrutinizing look as they come in and out of the building, the person who's always doing laundry but seems to own only one outfit, and the guy who can't afford to fix his crappy car and wakes the building up bright and early with his noisy engine, squeaky brakes, and terrible power steering. Did I mention my balcony faces the parking lot?

Now I know that when I eventually own my own place there may be other issues with neighbors, but as long as I can have a nice shower, do laundry at my own pace, and not hear the upstairs neighbors walking around or -ahem- expressing their physical love for each other, then I'll be happy.

Quercus

What do I do?

One thing I forgot to add to my first post about myself is the answer to the question: what do I do? Well I do a lot of things, but if you're asking me what pays the bills I work for a painting company here in Victoria. I've been with my company for only about a year and a half now, but I can already look at a map of the city, point to almost any given location, and truthfully say I've painted there - or at the very least I helped out by doing prep work such as power-washing or basic carpentry.

I've actually only been a painter for 2 years (I painted in Edmonton for a while before moving to Victoria), and I may not do it for the rest of my working life, but I must admit it feels kind of cool knowing that I've had a hand in making so many different projects around the city "look pretty", for lack of a better phrase.

I'd like to share a few photos of one of my favorite projects, the Ogden Point Cruise Ship Terminal here in Victoria. I've added little explanations under each one.

I took this shot in 2007 from the end of the breakwater looking back towards the warehouse on the right and Pier B. I believe the ship docked there is the Mercury.

And this shot from 2008 (I think my wife took it) shows what the warehouse looks like today. The ship there is the Radiance Of The Seas. Can you see why I enjoyed working here?

During the time that my colleagues and I were working around the site, a group of carpenters came in and built this new structure. I was asked to paint the entire thing, except the roof which was fabricated on site from coloured sheet metal.

It was actually back-breaking work standing up on a ladder and looking up all day, but I had to make sure that I got into every nook and cranny. I put one coat of oil based wood primer and 2 top coats of weather resistant paint on this thing.

I took a lot of pride in this little side project so I signed my initials (and the year in Roman numerals) way up on the top edge of one of the rafters where nobody would ever see it, but I know it's there.

There are no less than 16 of these hydrants scattered around the Ogden Point terminal and each one of them is surrounded by those concrete filled steel bollards. I don't have a before picture, but believe me they were badly beaten from the weather and required a considerable amount of effort to prep and prime them before adding 2 coats of safety red and yellow paint.

The painting company I work for was actually commissioned to repaint nearly the entire facility from the giant warehouse you see there (with the Westerdam tied up behind it) to the maintenence buildings accross the parking lot. We did all of the lamp posts, fences, bollards, and of course my bright red hydrants.

And for no reason at all, here's a photo of our company's scissor lift. They're just fun to drive.

So there you go, a look into what I'm doing when I'm not writing or playing my guitar. And if my boss should happen to see this, I didn't take these pictures during work hours.

Quercus

Introductions Are In Order

Hello dear reader,
Welcome to The Wandering Oak. This is my very first posting here, so I believe introductions are in order. I don't really want to share my real name, but I will tell you that I'm a 31-year-old (32 in February) married man and I live in Victoria BC, Canada. I have no children, but we have a cat that's a real handful. I enjoy rock music and playing my guitar. I also enjoy photography and I love the beauty of Nature.
Most of all though, I really enjoy writing. I've had a few other blogs hosted by various sites before, but, aside from my personal Facebook page, I really don't use any of them anymore. I made a lot of great friends through my past blogs, but as time went on my readers soon dwindled to just those few friends so I eventually just said f**k it and jumped headfirst onto the Facebook bandwagon with, apparently, a few hundred million other people.
Nowadays the bulk of my writing has consisted of filling out those endless repetitive surveys that circulate around and I've got to tell you those are starting to get old. Whenever I do take the time to write out a note or an essay on Facebook, I find I can't say everything I want to say because, like many people, I have everyone I know in the real world on my friends list.
Lately I've been wanting to create a blog that's a little more grown up than Facebook or My Space. Something that can be taken seriously. This blog won't be a personal journal full of those "today I did this, this, and that" stories, though I may use examples and stories from my life to make a point about something. As I mentioned before I like photography so you will also see some of my photos here from time to time.
Now you're probably wondering about the title. I hummed and hawed over a title for the longest time until this one came to me. There are a few sources. I have always liked the oak trees that thrive here on Vancouver Island, so much so that I had one tattooed on my lower left leg (with one of my guitars leaning on a rock in front of it). I enjoy walking through the woods, so earlier this afternoon the light bulb went off in my head. The Wandering Oak.

I hope you will return, and join me as I wander.

Quercus