Greg and Kat's blog

As many of you know, we will soon be heading out to attend Oli and Tina’s wedding.

They are having the wedding in Montreal on August 19th in Montreal. Big, festive, Ukranian Orthodox. They are having a second reception in Nova Scotia the next weekend. Small, casual, pot luck. Come to think of it, any ideas of cool things we can bring to a pot luck while on the road?

As we were invited to both, we decided to make a vacation out of it:

Aug 16

Fly to Montreal.

Aug 16–19

Staying near the Montreal Airport and Tina’s parents. Not many plans for Montreal. Mike may be road-tripping from Ottawa to say hi.

Aug 19–20

Chateau-Vaudreuil, where their reception is. We’re staying there that night for convenience of it.

Aug 20

Fly to Halifax.

Aug 20–21

Staying near the Halifax Airport. Just a place to sleep.

Aug 21–23

Staying in Charlottetown and seeing PEI for a couple of days.

Aug 23–27

Staying in Lunenburg, which is near Oli’s parents’. I’m looking forward to a quiet couple of days. Maybe with some lobster.

Aug 27

Fly back to Vancouver.

I put together a Google Earth tour of the vacation. Open this file in Google Earth. To take the tour, double-click on each placemark in-order. Make sure you double-click the blue link for each placemark: this will check the placemark (so you see the label and marker), and fly to it (so you see it in the map window).

As most of you know, I’m working at home while in Chapel Hill. I’m grinding away on revisions on the CMPT 165 distance ed materials, and a few other things. I’m starting to get bored with working at home—I have to remind myself to go outside every day or two.

So, what does one do when working at home? Well, watch TV on the side, of course. Daytime TV isn’t generally all that compelling, but I have settled into a routine:

10:00–11:00: Maximum Exposure (on Spike)
11:00–12:00: World’s Most Amazing Videos (on Spike)
12:00–1:00: World’s Wildest Police Videos (on Spike)
1:00–2:00: Cops (on FX)
2:00–3:00: The New Detectives, Case Studies in Forensic Science (on Discovery)

Mmmmm… trashy. I think “Wildest Police Videos” is probably my favourite. It would be a definite win if not for the lame opening where they claim to be trying to educate people about… blah, blah, blah.

We have now moved into our third new place this summer.

It’s a nice one-bedroom. Maybe a little tight with both Kat and I here, but it will be nice when Kat is here alone. We took some pics when viewing the place. We will take some more once we’re settled a little more.

As you can see, it’s kind of log-cabiney. I thought the all-wood interior would be a bit much, but it’s actually not bad with some furniture to break it up. It’s about 3 blocks from Kat’s office, which is also nice.

Thus ends the summer-of-many-moves.

That’s it… I’m moving to England. And buying a bat. “Lecturers allowed to use force on … students”

As frequent readers know, we, with some pain, bought a car shortly after we got here. This car is a piece of shit. But we knew that—we are just hoping it’s a POS that will get us groceries for two years. On that front, so far so good. There are apparently several patron saints of automobies—any Catholics, I’m just that desperate.

Anyway, recently the trunk latch stopped working. The trunk key has never worked: all we got with the car was a valet key, but at least the little lever opened the trunk. Eventually, I figured out that I could put down the back seat, crawl in, jam a screwdriver in just the right place and pry to release the latch.

Since that hardly qualifies as “working”, I decided to fix it.

Now, I’m well aware I’m unqualified to fix, say, the transmission: I think I know what a transmission does, but I have no idea how. But, I figured a trunk latch was within my skill level. How hard could it be? When there is a little piece of metal in front of the other, it’s locked; move one of the little metal pieces and it opens.

Long story short: After I fixed what I thought was wrong, crawled into the trunk, and unlocked it the hard way a few times, I started to wonder if I was retarded. Once again: two pieces of metal; one has to move out of the way.

On about the fifth try, I realised that the bar that is supposed to go to the key thing (that doesn’t work anyway) has fallen off, and was eventually giggling to the “lever locked out” position. It turns out the trunk latch is a relatively subtle mechanism. When one little piece slides an eighth of an inch to one side, the latch won’t work.

Solution: a zip tie to hold that piece to the left. If anybody else ever takes that trunk latch off, they’re going to think I am retarded. But, my trunk works, dammit.

My parents were in town for this (artificially-long) weekend. That was nice, with the usual stress of a parental visit: they are nice people that I’m glad I don’t live with anymore. But, I don’t want to talk about that…

On Saturday, we went to Greensboro. We went to Stamey’s BBQ for lunch. Kat and I are now officially proponents of the western-North-Carolina-style BBQ. After lunch, we went, somewhat randomly, to a local museum. My parents were very alarmed that the museum wasn’t in the AAA Guide—they also marvelled that there was a hotel near their’s that wasn’t in the Guide.

The museum primarily commemorated some battle in the Revolutionary War. Here’s what I learned about that battle:

The Americans outnumbered the British. The Americans were led by a brilliant tactician who arranged the troops in three lines. The British broke through the first line. The British broke through the second line. The third line was made up of the most experienced and skilled fighters. They bravely retreated and lived to fight another day (except the ones that died before they retreated, presumably).

So, the British technically won, and captured the courthouse, or whatever. But they suffered heavy casulaties and some had to go back towards the coast for supplies. Pussies.

There are, like, three local museums to this battle. They named the town after the brilliant tactician who lost despite having greater numbers and the home-field advantage. Sigh.

That aside, the highlight of the museum was probably the coolest exhibit I have ever seen. It was a collection of US Bicentenial (1976) memorabilia that this museum took because nobody else wanted it. The brilliant part was that the descriptions of the “artifacts” were openly mocking of the cultural significance of the pieces. I snapped some pictures of the descriptions to give you an idea.

I talked to the guy working there. He said he has to fight with the manager to continue the exhibit as-is: “You can’t write that!” “Don’t worry, nobody reads them.” “So, why do we have this exhibit?” “For me!”

Bottom line: when you’re in Greensboro, go to the “Colonial Heritage Center”.

My Great Aunt Alice died a year or so ago. She had been in a nursing home for a while, and had lost the stubbornness, and irascible charm that characterizes my father’s side of the family. It wasn’t a sad before-her-time passing.

She left me some money that just hit my bank account. Not an insignificant amount of money: let’s just say it’s somewhere between “I think I’ll go out for dinner tonight,” and “I think I’ll quit my job.” More like “I won’t worry so much about the number of Vancouver-Chapel Hill trips we take.”

Now, “great aunt” isn’t exactly a close relation (by my standards anyway—Kat’s family would have them over for dinner every week). Why did Alice leave me money? The answer gives great insight into the woman, and helps explain the “irascible charm” I mentioned earlier.

You see, Alice was a bit of a bitch. She was quick to anger and blunt. These are considered positive traits in the Baker side of my family—phrases like “you can’t [complete that recent construction project] that way, you idiot” are considered acceptable Christmas-dinner conversation. Unlike the rest of the family, Alice held a grudge.

An old woman doesn’t have many ways to express her grudge. She didn’t have any direct control over anybody, and my family doesn’t respond well to guilt. But, she had a will and knew how to change it. My parents knew this and didn’t care—they were nice to her because she was a kindly old woman and my father’s aunt. They knew that her will was an unpredictable roulette wheel.

By virtue of being in Vancouver, I was apparently in favour: I visited when I was home, but wasn’t ever around enough to piss her off. I think she liked Kat too. I also “fixed” her TV one time (by centring the tint and contrast controls that she had changed accidentally).

Apparently there were around a half-dozen versions of her will in her papers when she died. Wisely, nobody is offering to detail the history of their changes. My parents and an uncle received the majority of her estate—they held her power-of-attorney at the end, and weren’t above telling her when she was being a bitch. I suspect she liked that.

One of the things I was eagerly anticipating with the (temporary) move to the U.S. was the possibility of easier online buying. We have all experienced it: “Okay, I’ll just buy that from this web site… my shipping address… crap, they only ship to the U.S.”

Now that I’m here, I can buy all of the things I always wanted. They’ll just ship them straight to me, no problem.

Well, one problem: I can’t remember what any of those things were.

So, an interactive blog entry today. What are those things that are only available in the States that I can’t live without and should get while I’m here?

So far, I bought a spare camera battery from B&H (I could have got it in Canada, though). I thought about getting a chunk of aerogel from United Nuclear, but I’d tire of that quickly. I also bought a box of Cookie Crisp, but I’m not sure if that counts. (It wasn’t everything I was hoping for.)

I haven’t blogged for a while, not having anything to say. Went to a couple of meetings; unpacked some boxes. I have posted some pictures of the new place in the gallery if anybody’s interested.

Today is the return trip to NC. I got up nice and early. Kelly was kind enough to take me to the airport. As usual, I had to connect in Toronto for a flight to Raleigh-Durham.

The flight to Toronto was uneventful. As some of you may know, you go through US customs in the Toronto airport, so you don’t have to at your destination.

In the customs line with an hour and a half to go. No problem.

A half hour in the line. No problem.

“I’m going to visit my wife in Chapel Hill.” “Yes, I work in Vancouver and have a return ticket.” “No, I don’t have the itinerary for the return, or proof of employment.” [My trip back to BC was a return, with the eventual return to Canada on the original ticket. I hadn’t printed it out since it wasn’t part of today’s journey.]

“Step into the back room, sir.” Problem.

An hour and ten minutes in a back room waiting to have the same 30 second conversation with another guy, and give him a business card. Problem.

So, here I sit in the Toronto airport, waiting four hours for the next flight to Raliegh.

Fuck the immigration guy and his short-man complex. Yes, I know why I’m here, asshole. Oh, I should have proof of a return ticket or employment in Canada in the future? I hadn’t thought of that during the last hour while I watched you stand behind the counter and play with yourself! I am forever in your debt.

Open question: how drunk can you be before they won’t let you on a plane?

One further fuck you to the Toronto Airport for carefully not putting any power outlets anywhere near a seat. That must save whole dollars over the course of a year.

Update (12:30am EDT): I’m here.

I just Swiffered and got the last stuff out of the old place on Pender. I just have to go back and drop off the keys with Scott.

I left the place really clean, if I do say so myself. There’s something satisfying about actually cleaning a place well, in a way that isn’t really possible when there’s stuff in it. He’s going to have to look pretty hard to keep any of my damage deposit.

It turns out that when you’re evicted for “change of use” in BC (which we were), the landlord owes you a month’s rent (for moving expenses, etc.). So, at least I get some money back out of the deal: a month-and-a-half rent, minus whatever damages he finds.

Now, all I have to do is unpack here. I’m increasingly thinking about how much I actually need out of the boxes. I think a lot of it’s staying right where it is.