Still no laundry baskets...but new IKEA furniture

I have some photos to showcase in this post. Perhaps I won't write much, just captions of the photos. I will, however, say this: Umberto FAILED the stupid bullshit BC Inspection. He's obviously too good for Vancouver. I have to get a new set of tires, and then I get their stupid sticker so I can get stupid plates. So now on top of the unpacking painting organizing buying furniture agonizing crap that is my life right now, I get to shop for tires. Fortunately, I have a lovely brother and father who were both gracious about giving me advice on what to do. Ultimately, I ended up picking some from Canadian Tire (where I happened to have been earlier and almost lost my shit in). Maybe I can pick a day to go to Canadian Tire AND IKEA in the same day!!! And then I'll slit my wrists! Maybe I can fit in a trip to Wal Mart before I bleed to death.

On a better note, I found a horse that I'm going to try out for a month and see how things work out. She's lovely (though she is a mare, and we all know how ladies can be...) and reminds me a bit of Hijack, though a bit smaller. Still the giant hooves and head and nice soft eyes though. I'm going to take her on some trails on Saturday with a couple others from the barn! Exciting! The barn is totally nothing special, and I'm a bit worried about the lack of a good arena to ride in, but everyone seems SO nice and laid back and casual that I'm totally drawn to it. I emailed the coach that I will be taking lessons with and she said I would just pay as I went, lessons are $30/hour for a private, and we could start whenever. But at the same time, they are laid back but really attentive with their horses upon my initial impression. So wish me luck with that!

Here are some photos! They span the past week.

This is Josh in a sushi restaurant down the street from my house. Sushi in Vancouver is like pizza in most other places -- there is so much of it that it's really cheap. So far I've only been to this one place and it was average to good, but cheap! $1 miso soup!


This is Josh in the Tsawassen ferry terminal. We were on our way to Victoria to stay with lovely friends and then heading to Nanaimo the next morning super early for Josh's conference. We missed the ferry and had to sit there for nearly 3 hours total.


Fortunately, Josh is a card shark and we had some heated games of Gin.

Gratuitous ferry shots


Rosie the wire-haired fox terrier! She is the cutest, most well-behaved dog EVER. She slept snugged up against my bum all night!


While Josh was at the conference all morning and some of the afternoon, I took a walk along the harbour in Nanaimo.

This is a past mayor of Nanaimo. He was nicknamed Black Frank, but I forget anything else. I guess he was a pirate.


This cat followed me for a bit of the way. An older lady stopped and said that she sees that cat often. He was stalking mice, and at one point jumped 3 feet into the air after one!


We went to deep-fried heaven, a place called Pirate Chips. They sell fish & chips but the rest of their menu is vegetarian and involves deep fried goodness with stuff on top. I got chili cheese fries and Josh had nacho fries. They also had deep fried chocolate bars, bananas, ice cream AND deep fried nanaimo bars. I had a non-fried nanaimo bar earlier in the day and it was totally underwhelming, I must say.


The ferry ride home was also full of Gin, with a power nap thrown in at the end. We drove home from Horseshoe Bay in rush hour, so what should have taken 15 min probably took around 40. Did I mention that I hate driving in this city? The next night Josh came out with Colin and I to a couple of bars. Then he had to leave!! Suddenly!! Well, sort of. He was meant to be leaving on the Sunday, but on Saturday I got a text message that he was at the airport and all the flights on Sunday were full so he had to go then. It was bogus, but it wasn't going to tarnish the rad times we'd just had. PLUS, MY CATS WERE ARRIVING THAT AFTERNOON!!!!!!!!

They love their catnip pouches! Colin and I got them (along with a whole lot of other stuff!) at a lovely pet store near our house called Tisol.

Mom and Dad obviously fed Monster well while he was staying with them!! Cute saggy tummy! Actually, to be honest with myself, he totally has had that tummy for ages. This is just an extra flattering shot of him.

I SWEAR ON MY LIFE that is not a Starbucks coffee in my hand.

Our cozy bedroom, which looks totally crooked in this photo but you get the idea somewhat. Stuffed animals reprasent!!

I will showcase the rest of the photos tomorrow. Halloween! Maybe I will take photos of cute children to whom I will be handing out candy. Or maybe I'll just give them rocks.

Where are the laundry baskets?

Hellooooooooooooooo
Today will be another day of organizing. We are getting cable and internet sometime today! (Right now we're stealing it) Then I have to sort out getting BC plates for Umberto. Sigh. I think I have to get the stupid new ones that say "the best place on earth". I'm going to stick a label on before Best saying "Second". Do you think that's against the law? License plate tampering? I guess I'll find out. Then I have to get new insurance, and maybe a parking permit. The streets around our house are pretty sweet cause you can park for free 24 hrs a day except one half of the street in front of our house, where you can buy a permit and then only residents of 2300 block (we're 2322) can park there. I think it's like $10 but really I'm just making that up. So yeah we don't need a permit unless we want to be able to park right in front of the house.

I rode my bike yesterday for the first time since I got here!! Twice! Once to EQ3, where we realized that biking on West Broadway (the main street) is stupid because the traffic lights here change about once every 5 seconds to red. Driving in this city SUCKS but that's another boring story. So on our way home we went via side streets and it was sooooooooooooooo much better. There are very few 4-way stops here, which I'm still getting used to -- it's just ingrained in me to stop at every freaking intersection -- but there are a lot of little roundabouts. And there are a lot more hills here. So far I haven't encountered one that I couldn't make it up, but I've seen them out the car window and it doesn't look pleasant.

Soooooooooo MY KITTIES ARE HERE! Yayyyyyyy allergies, how I missed you! Just kidding, of course it's a small price to pay for these little bundles of furry love. We went to get them on Saturday from the WestJet cargo building, as my parents put them on a plane in Toronto for us to pick up. We'd decided to put them in the same carrier, which some people seemed a bit worried about, but I knew they would just keep each other company and it would be fine. Monster looked pretty traumatised when we got the cage but Grumble was all "what's up guys?" and was ready to come out and see the world right away. We got the carrier to the car and opened the door and they both came out right away -- Monster hid under the seat the whole time and Grumble sat on Colin's lap and looked out the window. Once he decided to be a dashboard ornament and laid up beside the windshield for a bit, but the slope probably made it a bit challenging. Then when we got them home, it was the opposite. Monster was all about exploring, whereas Grumble headed for under the bed and hung out there for hours. They kept us up the first night, but the past two nights has gone back to the normal Grumble spooning with me for the first part of the night, then he gets up and goes somewhere else, and then by the morning he's sleeping on top of me somewhere. Monster wasn't big on the co-sleeping thing before, so I'm not surprised that he's not been sleeping with us yet. We don't know what to do with the litter though...we only literally have one closet at this new place, and that'll be holding a lot of clothing. So far, we've put it in the 2nd bathroom, but that happens to be down with our bedroom, so we've woken up once every night to litter box scratching. Maybe we'll have to build a little cupboard for them or something. I can't find the camera cable right now so I can't upload any of the cute photos I took of them with their halloween catnip pouches.

I can't type much more because I'm sitting on the hardwood floor and my butt is going numb. I could maybe stretch it to the futon, but that's almost worse. We need couches SO BADLY. I think we might have to get a cheap one off Craigslist to tide us over while we wait the 4 weeks or whatever that the order takes to arrive. Not that we've even ordered anything yet, but let's not discuss that.

Two more things though: having a dishwasher is so fantastic. I can't stress it enough!!! It makes cooking more enjoyable, and cleaning up so easy, and I think it might save some relationships out there somewhere. You should all look into it. It's lifechanging. :)

Second: GET SKYPE!!! Seriously!!! And keep it signed in when you're home!!! My mom keeps hers on and yesterday I called her randomly, just like a normal phone call! Jen and Carla and I chatted and I got to see them too! I can give you a tour of my house with the webcam! You can say hi to Monster and Grumble!! And it's all free. FREE. So get yourselves a webcam or headset or whatever, and SIGN UP. You can search for me with my gmail address.

Okay breakfast time.
bye for now :)

Kinda like in the old days

So!
Today was a pretty good day. Last night was our first official night in the new place! And I can't stress enough: Having a dishwasher is awesome. It almost makes moving worth it. Okay not really, but Marie said it would change my life and I believed her, but I didn't realize how right she was. I don't have to wash dishes anymore (for the most part)! It's great. Also last night, I did a load of laundry, which was fine but will be even BETTER now since the dryer got serviced today and should be in total working order again (an upstairs roommate said that it wasn't working properly so we got the landlord to fix it). The downside is that the laundry is shared between the whole house. I'm not sure, but I don't THINK that'll be a huge deal. Our bedroom is beside the laundry room, as opposed to the rest of the house which has to go outside to the door there to get in, so it's really easy to get to the machines, plus they are "industrial" machines which I guess makes them more efficient/faster? I don't know. These will all be things I will figure out over the next little while.

So yes, we've met the 3 people upstairs, but not the mom and her small child downstairs. However we haven't heard a thing from the downstairs at all. One day we thought maybe she was cooking fish sticks, but that was just a guess. The people upstairs all seem totally chill, which is good and bad at first impression. I won't say any more about that, because I'm trying not to be judgmental. Yet. :)

When we first got this place, Colin was worried about it. He had to be convinced that we should take it at all. I didn't understand why until the first day we had possession and we went to check the place out and decide on paint. Suddenly I couldn't see what was so amazing about it...the aesthetics were really great, but there were a few gaping holes in functionality that I hadn't even noticed before. For example, there are no screens on the windows. This means we will have to be really careful about which windows we open and stuff, because of the cats. (Who are arriving SATURDAY at 1:30pm!!!!!) Colin is convinced there is a solution ready-made, because there must be a lot of crazy cat ladies who live in super old houses like ours. I haven't looked into it yet. Fortunately, it's going to be winter here soon so no windows will have to be opened more than a sliver. Wow, I just used the words "fortunately" and "winter" in the same sentence. Anyhow I was concerned, but our boxes arrived on Monday and we unpacked the kitchen that night, then set up the bed last night, and things are starting to take shape. The bedroom is a far cry from our old loft-like bedroom, but instead of light and airy it's cavernous and comfy. This is actually what I've been used to pretty much since I moved out of my parents' house, as I spent years living in basements. It's sort of cool, actually, to get back to basement dwelling. To a point! I'm glad the rest of the house is above-ground. Especially the kitchen. It's a wonderful kitchen so far. So sunny and spacious and full of storage! And did I mention the dishwasher...?

Today was a bit on the slow side, but it turned out that that wasn't in a bad way. We rolled out of bed around 11am and Colin went out to grab food to make breakfast. I had a lukewarm shower (and then emailed the landlord to turn up the water heater) and straightened out the kitchen a bit more. Colin came back singing the praises of our neighbourhood stores and how great a place we live in, and then I realized that I couldn't eat without ketchup (Ian, I hope you're reading this!) so I went out in search of some. The shops in this neighbourhood are SO nice that it was actually hard to find ketchup. There is a market with lovely mostly-local produce that is both organic and non (and the organic isn't much more money at all), and a Greek supermarket with a whole aisle of sauces and oils, and then an actual grocery store (Safeway) within a few blocks. Finally I came home with some, and we dug the dining room table out from amongst the boxes and had some food.

Then, more unpacking. Boring! At one point I got sick of being at the house so I decided I'd go down the road to Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware. I picked up Venessa and we headed there. I looked around for a bit and then I realized: I would never shop in these stores back home. Why the hell am I in them now?? There was nothing in them that I actually LIKED (aside from a doormat with an owl on it!). I'm glad I realized that before I spent $50 on a toothbrush holder. So we left, and on the corner of Cypress and Main, I found a forlorn-looking boy sitting on a bench. I pulled up beside him and beckoned for him to come inside, and, lo and behold, it was JOSH SMITH! He hopped in and we headed to the liquor store and then back to my place!!

Man, was it fun seeing Josh. (The best thing is that I'm going to see him again tomorrow and Friday!) It's funny because it's almost so soon that it doesn't feel weird at all...it's like he just dropped by and we've just been too busy to hang out for the past 3 weeks. I hope that it will be like this whenever I see friends (because I know you will ALL be visiting soon, RIGHT?). I don't see why it wouldn't be...why would it be awkward anyway? But I guess you never know...just one of the many things I worry about on a day-to-day basis. Anyhow, Josh, Venessa, Colin and I went to Kitsilano Sushi on the corner of our block (it's so cheap there!) and had some food and booze, and then chilled for a bit on our front porch.

Tomorrow, Josh and I are going to head to Vancouver Island! He's actually here for a work conference in Nanaimo, and has "hired" me to drive him there and back, courtesy of his company. The conference is really early on Friday, so rather than get up at 4am for the 6:30am ferry, we're heading there tomorrow, late afternoon, driving to Victoria, and then hanging out with/staying with the Ellsworth's for the night (my parents' bestest friends and my favouritest friends), and THEN heading to Nanaimo. It will be a whirlwind trip, but it'll be fun for sure. As I said before, it's still interesting for me to drive around and see places. Though that enjoyment is waning from day to day. But that's another blog post. :)

T minus 62 hours until cat pickup.

The dining room is Cranberry

I finished the dining room, after 4 days between Colin and I of painting it. We've gone through a journey with this room so far...first we thought it was hideous after the first coat, and decided it was the colour of Hooker Lipstick. Then by the second coat we decided it was more Classy Lady Lipstick colour. Now the third coat is done, and it's a solid Cranberry. I can live with that! It'll be interesting getting furniture to somehow "match" it.

So I've had a pretty hard day. Now, I'm not very smart but I'm starting to see a pattern: Last time I remember crying this much was 2 weeks ago on my brother's birthday. Today? My dad's birthday. I can't WAIT for November 2nd, my mom's birthday. But at least it means that I'm guaranteed to get to talk to at least 2 family members at a time in one day!! Today was extra-special: I got to see Monster and Grumble on the webcam!! I like to believe that I saw Grumble's ears prick up when he heard my garbled Skype voice that not even most humans can decipher, it seems. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET THEM!! My mom is going to look into shipping them THIS WEEK!!!! Oh man. It'll be amazing when I go greet them at the airport. I can't WAIT to see their carrier approaching me on the Oversized Luggage carousel! I've decided not to drug them because it's too risky -- I've never done it before and don't know how they'd react, and I think they are tough enough that they can endure one day of stress and misery. Actually, reading that sounds horrible. Maybe I should just drug them?? Maybe I should ask Colin's cousin and her husband, who are both vets.

I don't really feel like describing my day in detail and describing why it was horrible, because if you look at it totally from an outsider's perspective, it sounds great: I got up, went for a hike around this little harbour town called Deep Cove with Marley the dog and Colin, then I talked to my family and saw my kitties, then I went to the new house and painted for a few hours, then I went out for dinner with some nice friends of Colin's, and now I'm here, and I might do some colouring. But overall, everything seems SO HARD right now. Getting through every hour is really hard, and I feel like everything I'm looking forward to is a one-time event and then I'll have to find something ELSE to look forward to. Does this make sense? I guess I mean it'll be short times of happiness spread between many long times of sadness. But those happy times are going to be INTENSELY good! Seeing my kitties! Finding a new horse to ride! Seeing my parents in a month! Coming home for Christmas in 2 months! So I'm thankful for that, truly.

Anyhow in this time of inertia, I've made a vow: I will become a GREAT Mario Kart player. I will strive to at least come in SECOND to Nick and/or Tom. More than once! Toadette and I, we will go far.

xo

And the painting begins...

So today, I felt well enough to go out into the world again! Unfortunately for Colin, he did not fare so well. I just MIGHT have given him my little stomach bug. Oopsie. Lucky for him, no puking has taken place. Just lots of sleep.

I left for our place in Kits around 11am, by the guidance of my trusty GPS. It took me smack into the middle of downtown. Hmmm this wasn't the way that Colin usually went. But right now I'm still in good spirits when I get stuck in traffic for the most part because it's usually new and interesting to see where I am and what's around me and gives me the time to take mental notes for later.

After swinging by the paint store to pick up some stuff and the paint we'd decided to start with, I headed to the house. I set up the iPod speakers, hit shuffle and off I went. Quickly, I realized that I was missing some key things...like a screwdriver to take off the electrical outlet covers, newspaper to cover the floor, and a bucket in which to wash the brush after I finished. But all of that was sort of not a big deal, so I just made do with what I had. Which was a lot of grey paint. We're starting with the middle room, which is the biggest and most challenging because it has panelling, a shelf thingy, and then a normal wall surface. This photo will probably explain that better:

The plan is to do it dark red on the bottom and light grey on the top. Right now, as you can see, it's a pea soup green. Apparently red is a really challenging colour to paint (go figure...) and so we needed to cover the green with a primer. However, the grey for the top works just the same, so that's what I'm using. I spent some time putting tape around all of the edges because I'm not exactly steady of hand, plus it gives me more leeway to be sloppy! Because of the different sizes from the panels, that involved more than just a strip of tape along the top and bottom. Rather, it involved about 30 different strips placed along each surface. It's always the prep that sucks the most, isn't it. Then I set about doing the top and bottom of each section. In about 2 and a half hours, I had finished one coat on half of the bottom. Yep, I have a long way to go. But after seeing those first results, I'm confident that it will be worth it.

Halfway through, I took a break and strolled up to W. Broadway, which is the main street near our house (one block away). I walked up to Shopper's (hooray, a Shopper's right nearby! Millions of dollars to be spent at that drug store in the coming months I'm sure...) and bought one of the things I'd decided I needed for a successful paint job -- paper towels to wipe up all my spills. The street has a lot of nice little shops and boutiques, a cozy yet spacious looking coffee/pub/food place called Calhoun's, lots of sushi, the aforementioned cupcakery, and a whole lot of other food places I can't wait to discover when I can eat again without feeling like puking. There's also a 2nd run cinema right around the corner but it doesn't look too promising...right now it's playing Wanted and two Brendan Fraser movies, and the upcoming sched didn't look too much better. But sometimes you just wanna go see crap, and if it's cheap, who cares, right? After a trip to the dollar store, I had a hot chocolate (in hindsight, not the smartest choice considering it's pretty much chocolate and dairy) at Minerva's Greek Emporium and listened to some Greek call in show that was on the radio yet showing on the TV? while reading The Georgia Straight, which is Vancouver's free Arts and Entertainment weekly. In it, I discovered two exciting upcoming events: The UBC Apple Festival, and that the Notwist are playing next week! It will be my first Vancouver concert. They're playing at the Commodore Ballroom, which sounds impressive? We'll see. Venessa says that I should take everything in Toronto and divide it by 10 and that'll be the size of what it is here. Not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to gigs!

So after my hot choco, I headed back to the house and resumed my painting. I decided I'd finish the first coat on that bottom half before going home, even though that would most likely have me leaving right during rush hour. Again, not a big deal to me right now because it's interesting to experience what a Vancouver rush hour is like. I heard the upstairs neighbours quite a bit...they like to slam doors it would seem. Good thing we decided against putting our bedroom in the front room right beside the entranceway. I'll meet them at some point...I think they are around my age or a bit younger. I looked around at my day's work and was pretty content. I look forward to returning tomorrow! It was also a really nice, much needed afternoon to myself where I could just explore and work at my own pace.

This evening I got to play Mario Kart with Michael, and briefly Aimee and Jen. I guess Rogers wasn't being very cooperative cause Andrew couldn't join up, and no one else came so maybe that was why? Michael and I also chatted on Skype while we played, so it was super fun. It'd be good to get a Skype conference/MK game going sometime with lots of people! Aimee -- get on that, would you? :)

Okay. Bed time I guess...still feeling a little off-kilter from my days of illness, so I shouldn't push it. Night night!

Media Blackout--over

I'm not sure if anyone will even read this since it hasn't been touched in ages AND was flagged as a spam blog for a while?! I've been laid up with a stomach virus for the past 3 days, and it's pretty much knocked me off my feet and put a huge damper in everything. We had plans to start the organization of the house/painting/furniture shopping, but all I've been able to do is puke, sleep and moan. Anyhow, today I went to the doctor, and as expected, nothing can be done pharmaceutically to ease my pain. It's pretty pathetic -- I can barely walk up a flight of stairs right now without sitting down, as I haven't been able to eat for 3 days.

As I write, I have a border collie alternately chewing on my wrist and his stuffed squeaky dinosaur. His name is Marley, he's 6 months old and just got his balls chopped off last week. So far, this hasn't made him any less rangy. But he's such a cutie!! But man, he makes me rethink the idea of having a dog. It's one thing for Carol, who is retired and has lots of time to deal with his craziness, but when we (hopefully) have jobs and lives, I don't know that there will be room for a dog just yet.

So yeah, we don't have jobs yet. I guess the economy pretty much sucks right now and the jobless rate is just climbing and climbing. For some reason I'm not worried yet, though I have times of total stress that come and go. Colin is a whole different story though. He once told me about when he went to the physiotherapist and they asked him his stress rating between 1-10 and he answered 1. So it's been really strange and a bit scary having him so stressed out right now.

Living at his mom's place is really comfortable, but that's not necessarily a good thing. It is hard to be productive in the suburbs. And all the driving we've been doing to get downtown and back is like a knife twisting in my heart. I can't wait to get our bikes! Our stuff is being delivered on Monday, to our new house! We've signed a lease on an old heritage house in a part of Vancouver called Kitsilano, which is very near the beach. You can google map it! 2322 Balaclava Street. Our neighbourhood seems INCREDIBLE! We're one block from tons of shops and restaurants and bars and a cupcake shop. Seriously, Vancouver seems to have a whole lot of cupcake shops...not that I'm complaining, but it's a bit strange. However, because of this stupid stomach virus, I can't even look at a cupcake right now without gagging. Anyhow, I'm really looking forward to moving into the place and actually starting our lives out properly. Today we went and got some paint. Dan Oke, please fly to Vancouver and paint our apartment. It's so frigging overwhelming! Anyhow so far we haven't fought much at all about the colours, which is amazing considering our vastly different tastes. The hardest part about the new place is that it's totally WEIRD. The two front rooms are lovely and big, with a fireplace and stained glass. The kitchen is sunny and big. But then there's the problem of bedrooms. There are two small rooms that we will use for bedrooms, but they are oddly shaped and it's going to take some creativity to get the place in working order. But the kitchen! There's a DISHWASHER!! There are 2 bathrooms, one full and one powder room. I'm not sure how this will work out...I mean, I don't MIND cleaning the bathroom, but having two might not be as great as it sounds. The shower is big, but there's no tub. The sinks are both European old-style, meaning they have a separate hot and cold faucet. But it's an old house with a LOT of character, so it'll be fun once the overwhelming bit is over.

And the best part of moving into the new place -- getting the kitties!! Though I'm a little reluctant to take them away from their surrogate mommy (my real mommy) as she's been having a hard time lately. She had a routine surgery that didn't go as it should have and has been having a lot of complications from it. So the boys have been keeping her company, cuddling and purring and being their cute selves. Although I've been hearing that Grumble's been working pretty hard to get outside recently. I'm really nervous about putting them on a plane as cargo. Anyone who has a story about a pet they know of or have had who has gone on a plane, please tell me some good things! I'm going to order some of this stuff: http://www.rescueremedy.com/pets/ for sure. Maybe I'll get some for my own separation anxiety as well.

I booked my flight home for Christmas!! December 21st I will be in Oakville. And I'll be in Toronto for New Years Eve!! My flight back to Vancouver leaves on Jan 3rd. I can't wait to see everyone. I'm feeling so disconnected from everyone. I know that I just got here and stuff, but that's only a good reason for so long. Even if it takes months for things to settle down, that doesn't mean that I don't have 5 minutes for a phone call or an email. (psst and that goes for everyone else too heehee). I know we're all busy, but just a quick hello makes everything so much better.

Due to this virus, the horse trials have had to be put on hold. I found a lovely 4 year old Thoroughbred X called Pirate at one of the seemingly rare places with an indoor arena, and was meant to try him last night, but was obviously too ill. So that'll hopefully be okay to wait until Tuesday. Another lady offered me her Draft/QH X who has just started over fences. but in her email she said if I had a little bit of redneck in me, I'd fit right in, so I'm a little worried about THAT. Plus, they have no indoor :) And then there's another girl who offered me her young TB who "overjumps and gets rushy" at fences and she won't jump him but is confident that someone with more experience could. Thanks, but I can think of better things to do than visiting the emergency room routinely.

So anyhow. I'm going to attempt to eat some food now! You can't imagine what an event this is. WISH ME LUCK!

Day 8 - We're on our way "home"

Lake Louise, AB to Vancouver, B.C.
3950km-4780km
Buck 65 - Situation
M. Ward - Post-war
The Rosebuds - Night of the Furies (this one didn't last long...it's pretty terrible, as it turns out)
David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day audiobook
This American Life podcasts
Portishead - Third
Mates of State - My Solo Project
Broadcast - Tender Buttons
Final Fantasy - Has A Good Home


So the morning started out with an argument, but fortunately neither of us tend to pout for too long after we fight, so soon enough we were smiling again. Aside from the fact that I was chilled to the bone, I was in a better mood. We were able to sneak into the Lake Louise trailer camp showers, and I've never been so happy to shower in a public washroom. The initial plan had been to go for a hike around the area before heading out on the final stretch of highway, but it was raining and freezing still, so we just started to drive. The view was totally breathtaking. The cold and rain had contributed to huge puffs of mist around all the mountains, and the drive through the mountains WAS really nice. But I saw NOTHING!! Actually that isn't technically true -- I think I saw a bighorn sheep, but Colin maintains that it was a fake. I'm not convinced, but I still feel ripped off!! I guess all the animals were hiding in their cozy caves away from the rain and cold. I think I preferred the Northern Ontario driving, but that doesn't mean I'm turning my nose up at mountains. We stopped at a few lookouts, and once I was SURE I was going to spot a beaver, but no. Umberto hit the 100,000km mark! What a great car.

My dad said to me that Kamloops was sort of desert-like, and I couldn't picture that, but it's true. The mountains are all brown and nearly barren of trees, and there are short bushes and sparse trees along the side of the highway. Again, I'm so amazed at the vast difference between provinces and even cities within the provinces. Maybe once I am able to upload this and add photos, I will do a cross-country selection of photos just to show the wide diversity.

The weather cleared up for a couple hundred kms, but as we drive through Kamloops, the clouds have gathered into a threatening sign of things to come. Hopefully not, but that's what I've been led to believe by basically every single soul that I've told about my move. I guess I'll be getting a whole lot of use out of the umbrella that Robin got us, which says "Shit...it's raining." Sigh. As I type this, the sky has opened up and our wipers are going at full force. What a welcome.

An hour later, we've got blue skies and fluffy clouds again. This is the way that I have sort of told myself that Vancouver will be -- rain for a bit, and then sun, or at least grey skies without sun. Seriously though, everytime I've been to BC the weather has been lovely and the rain comes in short stints. Granted, it's mostly been in the summer or springtime, but I'm sticking to the memory of being in Vancouver in February with only my spring jacket and a hoodie on. I might need to get Linh to send me an Adult Parka from Vietnam, but we'll see. First I need to find a job to commute to, then I will figure out HOW I will get there.

Venessa called me a few minutes ago and said she was so excited for me to get there and that she'd be there if things were hard or crazy, and would take me out with her friends, who are awesome. It was so nice to hear. I know that Colin's family is so happy he's coming home, and they are wonderful and caring and lovely, but I think it's only natural to worry about being the girlfriend tagging along, at least for the first while. Stuff will be different -- I know that. For example, the barn for me was always somewhere to go where I didn't have to be social and though I absolutely loved almost everyone I met and knew at my barn, it was so nice to have that place to go and be alone with only Jack. Now, I will be using the barn as a way to potentially meet people and make friends. That's obviously not a bad thing, but it's different. I will just have to adapt so that I can find another way to find that serenity. Maybe it will be through running...with Carol's doggie, Marley...right Marie? I know you're going to kick my ass the next time I see you if I'm not keeping up with my running. I mean, I know that riding won't be totally destroyed by social aspirations or anything, but I will just have different short-term goals in that realm of my life. It's going to take a while to feel comfortable with pretty much anything.

Hey! Guess what, it's raining again. I can't believe I just typed that...I've been so sick of people saying that to me about BC. Anyhow, it's been raining really hard, and the wind has been ridiculous, and I've been sitting in the passenger seat so stressed out that I've actually covered my eyes a couple of times. And just when I thought we'd gotten through the worst of it, we encountered completely dead stopped traffic on the highway, and watched as truck and car one after another did U-turns on the highway through the grass median. Colin didn't want to sit there and wait, so instead we also did a U turn and drove back through the pouring rain and driving wind to get to an alternate road to take us past the roadblock. God forbid the drive be easy for the last 3 hours or anything.

And now...after 3 hours of a hell drive, which fortunately I wasn't actually behind the wheel for and tried to watch episodes of Greek rather than concentrate on the death roads, we are here, in North Vancouver, at Colin's mom Carol's house. PHEW. Her dog is ADORABLE. She's wonderful. It's going to be hard living at someone else's house with little room for our clothes and other things, but all I'm thinking about right now is sleeping in a proper bed and having tomorrow to be somewhat lazy and get ready for the weeks ahead.

I'll put this post up now so you all know we've arrived safe and sound, but again, I'm too exhausted to get photos up right now and the cable is in the car, and I'm in this bed in my pjs and am about to pass out.

xo for now.