Entry tags:

books, earthquake, toilets

Found just enough space in the toilet-room to put it while letting the door still open and close. Reread all the instructions, pulled everything apart and put it back together, and finally felt confident enough to pour the chemicals in the waste tank and the water in the water tank. Spilled splashes of both. Hopefully this isn't an omen for when it comes time to empty the tank.

Have now used it a couple of times. It's kinda cute: one sits as normal, then once you're done you close the lid and pull out a lever on the front, which opens the bottom of the bowl and lets gravity do its thing. For extra cleaning power, you can pump a pump which squirts more water into the bowl. Then you push the lever back in (thus closing the bottom of the bowl) and pump the pump, which puts water into the bowl just like a regular Western-style toilet.

When the waste tank is full (or not yet too heavy to carry and it's a convenient time of day so you're not too worried about people staring - I'm still pondering this; dawn might be okay if that's before kids start leaving for school, but I haven't kept up with the sun's peregrinations recently) you unclip the seat/water-tank combo from the waste tank. (It's automatically closed because the lever's pushed in.) It's got a handle for carrying and another opening for pouring into the waste emptying silos on every other street. Then you clip it back together, add more chemicals to the waste tank and water to the water tank and you're good to go.

In the night, the city council sends tankers along to empty the silos. It's terribly ingenious and depressingly older-than-medieval.

In other news:

• washed hair and clothes and dishes and put a bowl of soapy boiled water in the sink outside the toilet and filled more bottles with boiled water and bleach. So much water! Water's terribly useful, when you come to think of it.
• sunburn has graduated from yesterday's lizard-skin to itchy itchy itchy! Continuing to moisturise
• dropped another bunch of books at the busstop around lunch, all gone by evening
• sister gave me a romance novel called "Capturing Annie" and I read the start of it. It's so terrible it's hilarious. We've agreed it's especially fun if I only read it while she's in the room so she can enjoy the noises I make when the captain's muscles contract at Annie-disguised-as-Jem's bold gaze. (Important note: I know not all romance novels are terrible, even the mass production ones. But this is one of those which is. I have a couple of others on my shelf - well, on the floor - though I have a special fondness of the science-fiction one where occasionally the author remembers that this is a science-fiction novel so you can't have just a mirror, it's got to be a bit of technology called a reflector, and then in due course our Hero and Heroine heal a world with the power of their love. I mean, literally, they heal everyone on an entire planet with this power generated by their love. It's awesome.)
• got unduly distressed at a headline reading "Anzac Day in park". I thought, "What, have I lost track of time so much I missed Anzac Day? But no, that can't be right, we'd have got the day off work. I distinctly remember not getting the day off work." And then I read the article in which they were talking about plans to celebrate Anzac Day next month in the park (rather than at the war memorial next to the Cathedral).
• brought home 4 of the jars of peaches Mum and I bottled before the quake. I see peaches in my future!
• aftershocks continued through the afternoon, a bit more than most days. Wobble. Wobble bang. Bang. Wibble. That kind of thing. They're mostly background noise, which some people don't even notice, some notice but don't care (mostly this is me), and some have their stress levels ramped up by it.
• So apparently Earth Hour was this evening? They didn't really advertise in Christchurch but Twitter was full of comments about how we've turned off the lights enough to last us until 2018, etc. My favourite tweet was a suggestion to celebrate Earth Hour by going outside and spitting on the ground.