The bathroom painting is done! We just finished applying the third coat, and three coats is enough damnit. Now all thats left is to take all the masking tape off, put the caulking tape on, put all the hardware back on the walls and leave Jen to add all the girly Martha Stewart touches.

We are never ever painting again.

Applied the second coat of Mountain Peak White this evening. It looks like it might need a third. Doh.

Al, our painting guy, is on vacation in Italy at the moment, so we decided we could tackle painting our bathroom ourselves. Bad idea. Whenever we paint a room, it ends with the decision to never ever paint again, then a couple of years go by and we think oh it can’t be that hard.. Well we are never ever going to paint again.

After taking off all the hardware, spraying the walls with TSP and washing them down several times to get it off again and taping up all the bits we dont want paint on it was finally time to paint. Yesterday we put the primer on, and today we did the first coat of Mountain Peak White. It’s a small room with not much paint area but still it’s a horrible job. Tomorrow I have to come home from work and do the second coat. Joy.

On a happier note, we just returned from a very pleasant evening at Cara and Tyler’s. A delicious meal of lime chicken, scalloped potatoes and yummy salad washed down by a very good bottle of Reisling and good conversation. Apparently I’ve been recruited into Tyler’s Magic: The Gathering group, with my first lesson beginning on Wednesday. The geek in me is very happy.

Our House is in the middle of our street. Sorry, channeling Suggs there for a second. We bought our house just over a year ago, a four bedroom cottage on half an acre of land in the heart of Beaconsfield. It’s a great house, the bedrooms are a little small but we have nice bathrooms, a very functional kitchen, a massive family room addition thingy and a cool basement. Out back is a big deck looking out over our country-like garden.

We both love living here, but owning a house is a lot of work! Gardening, cleaning, decorating, maintaining, it all takes a lot of effort, money and time. It also doesn’t help that we’re incredibly lazy a lot of the time. It’s all worth it though when we come back from a couple of days away somewhere and see what a great house we’re coming home to.

After a week on my own, Jen came home from Toronto today. I picked her up at the airport, which as usual involved circling around the arrivals area until she came out, because they won’t let you stop for more than a few seconds. We celebrated her homecoming with a sushi dinner then watched the Canadian Idol results show (yes Jen got me hooked, it’s all her fault).

It’s that time of year again. Part of Jen’s job involves going to trade shows, and August is the time for the Toronto gift show. She left on Friday morning and won’t be back until Thursday. I miss her already! The upside though seems to be that I am more motivated to do stuff around the house when I’m alone (ok not much more motivated, but a little bit). I finally got around to moving the server and router out of the closet in Jen’s office and down to my workshop in the basement, freeing up space for her and giving the computers a cooler (cooler as in lower temperature, although my workshop is very cool in the other sense too) environment. I also attempted to tidy Jen’s office, but that’s a daunting task and I gave up halfway through.

The other thing I’ve been trying to do is recaulk the bath as we seem to have had some leakage recently. What a pain in the ass that is! The strip stuff thats on there is nasty and sticky and refuses to come off cleanly. I may have to find a supplier of undiluted acid to help me out. I finally managed to get one small area clean, and attempted to caulk it with the ‘easy to use’ caulk we bought. Easy to use is a relative term I guess, I’m now giving up and resorting to the same strip stuff that was on there before.

Montreal, my city. I’ve lived here with Jennifer for four and a half years now, and I love the place. Montreal is a modern, cosmopolitan, vibrant and safe city with a long history in North American terms.

When I first moved here we lived downtown, which was a new experience for me, I’d never lived in the centre of a city before. I loved condo living, and I loved being so close to everything, but I guess there will always be a bit of country boy in me. Moving out to the ‘suburbs’, despite my initial resistance, has been just as good as living downtown. We’re not quite as close to everything, but twenty minutes isn’t that long, and the other advantages far outweigh that disadvantage.

We have a wonderful house on a large plot, which we probably couldn’t afford this close to any other large city. Although it is the suburbs, it feels more like living in the country. We are a short walk from Lac St Louis, a short walk from Angell Woods and a short drive from the Morgan Arboretum.

Every day I walk to work from the train station and back again, and I love the sights and sounds of the city around me. In summer Montreal is filled with festivals and a vibrant atmosphere. We’ve enjoyed the Comedy Festival, the Fireworks Festival and of course the Grand Prix.

Montreal rocks!