House update: Tuesday

Yesterday for dinner I had lasagna. I also unpacked more boxes and put out lots of recycling while waiting for the Direct Energy person to come and turn on the hot water heater. He didn't show up until 9ish, which meant that I didn't make it to a movie with K, but I wanted hot water more than I wanted to see The Da Vinci Code. Turning on the hot water appears to involve doing what I was doing already, only more so. Although he may have done something mysterious that I didn't see, and is of course more qualified.

I also built a shelf, which now needs to be attached to the kitchen wall. I am producing quite a long list of things that need to be done that I cannot do on my own.

This morning I had a bath in Jen's bathtub (after wiping it down) and applied a second coat of oil to part of my kitchen counter. I also had breakfast.

Accomplishments:
- We have hot water!
- I found my cutlery, which means I can eat.

Nothing is Ever Simple dept.:
- Plug in Jen's bathtub needs attention or a gasket or something. The seal is quite ineffective.
- Also, the cap on the U-bend in the drain from the bathtub is leaky. (Don't worry, it was just a trickle in the basement, not a flood. I put a waste bin under it. One of Jen's boxes did get a little damp but it's marked "Vases and glasses" so I'm assuming that the contents will be OK.)

(no subject)

This Making Light thread took off on a tangent about history as she is taught, mainly in the U.S. but also elsewhere. I consider myself a reasonably knowledgeable, well-educated, well-rounded, widely read person, but I've become increasingly aware of late that I am a history ignoramus in many ways. The thread got me thinking about my own formal history education; it goes something like this:

No courses in history until Kenya -- I think Standard 5, which I would have started when I was 9 years old. History was prehistory -- Olduvai Gorge etc. Next year we did it all over again. Then in Standard 7 we started on history with actual modern humans in it; I remember something about Arab traders on the coast, but that's about it. Left the country halfway through that year and went to the Netherlands just in time for final exams, which I took for placement purposes. Their history exam involved the Renaissance, I think, about which I knew nothing. If memory serves, they put me into EMS 1 (English Median Stream, a precursor to the International Baccalaureate). I'm sure I took history that year, but I can't think what the topic was.

Went back to Canada at the end of the school year and started Grade 9 in the fall (age 12 going on 13, at this point). Took my one required (in Ontario) history credit: Canada from Confederation to as far as we could get, which turned out to be the Depression. That was it for high school history. Also took four years of Latin, which involved occasional digressions into Roman history and was awesome. Some references to history in English classes. Possibly some in economics. Probably the usual references to discoverers of this and that in various science courses.

University: one course in the history of medicine, my final year. Loved it. Don't think I took any other history courses.

Aside from that, I've picked up what history I do know from reading (1066 and All That, historical fiction, fantasy, other fiction that alludes to historical events, random non-fiction) and travel (yay for interpretive plaques!). I don't exactly have what you'd call a coherent overview, which is unfortunate. Looking at my educational history, though, I'm not really surprised.