Greg and Kat's blog

So, I’m very nearly done packing. The movers are coming tomorrow morning, so all is well. I think I have one more trip to make in the car (with stuff that’s easier to move myself than to pack properly).

As many of you know, Kat and I have some… tension surrounding the amount of stuff we have in the house. I think I’m fighting a belief that if it’s in a box, it doesn’t count as clutter.

I knew packing was going to pour salt on that wound. I must say, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But, I did find:

• Bags of bags. Probably a half dozen of various kinds: gym bags, shoulderbags, gift bags, clothes-store bags. In all cases, a bag of type X seems to contain many other bags of type X.
• Three Bon Jovi tapes. We don’t own a tape player.
• Two breakfast-in-bed trays, which can have photos put in the surface. So, it’s like eating off a multi-opening picture frame. Ain’t nobody getting breakfast in bed as long as these are in the house.
• A DVD player that I had forgotten about. It’s for Kat’s mother, but we hadn’t given it to her because it’s dirty. I offered to get the lens cleaner out… no … it’s just dusty.
• More craft stuff and picture frames than I knew about.

Update: I just counted. 72 boxes.

As some of you know, we have a large Ikea Pax wardrobe in our bedroom. The astute will also know that it is too big to be tilted or removed from the room (because of our low ceilings). It had to be assembled standing up, and would have to be disassembled to be moved.

I decided to tackle that tonight, figuring I would just follow the instructions backwards. The nailed-on back popped off no problem. When it let go, I quickly realized things were about to turn.

The back was the only thing keeping it square: if I let go of it at that point, it would shear and tear itself apart. I managed to get it against a wall, so it didn’t have to be held every second.

I decided the best course of action would be to pop off one side: I unscrewed the little worm screw things and figured it would pop off. The top popped off. Then, I had to hold both the top and side to keep it together. The bottom had to come off, but despite being unscrewed, it wouldn’t budge.

This is the point at which I thought “Didn’t Kat have to help me get this thing together because I couldn’t hold everything myself?”

I didn’t really have any choice but to give the bottom of the free side a kick and hope. The screws pulled out the wrong way, tearing the particle-board. I manged to pick up the screwdriver with my foot and unscrew the other side of the top and get it off.

So, I’m going to try and patch the one side up somehow. I suspect I may need a new wardrobe frame, though.

Otherwise, I think I’m making reasonable progress packing.

[5:30am EDT/2:30am PDT]

It was my fault for listening. The airline says to get here an hour and a half early for an international flight. I phoned the cab company, told them when I wanted to get to the airport, and they gave me a pickup time.

Of course, they were generous with the drive time. (There wasn’t much traffic at 4:15.) No sane person would be at the airport that early. So, I got to the airport, and through security with… an hour and a half before my flight.

Had breakfast. That killed some time. Now I’m blogging. I’ll be damned if I’m paying $8 for wireless, so posting it will have to wait.

[9:00am EDT/6:00am PDT]

Sitting in Toronto now. Once again, I have an hour to kill.

I love Canadian customs—no guns, they all look like summer students. “What was the purpose of your visit?” “My wife is working there.” “Do you stay in a hotel, or does she let you stay with her?” “uh… ?!?!” “Just kidding, go ahead.”

I thought about asking if I could chop off the Calgary stopover and go straight to YVR. Then it occured to me that my luggage wouldn’t get there if I did that. One more stop to go…

[12:50pm MDT/11:50am PDT]

Here I am in the Calgary airport. Guess what? Yup, I have an hour to kill. But this time, I have already had lunch. The novelty of hanging out in an airport is starting to wear off. At least they have Tim’s in the Canadian ones.

There’s a flight to Vancouver leaving right now. I asked this time—they don’t have a friendly answer to switching flights. Apparently flying me to Vancouver in an hour is much different than doing it now.

[8:15pm PDT]

Alright, I’m back. Got to Vancouver, Oli and Tina picked me up, went to see new place (nice, but that’s another post), went to Surrey to pick up the car.

To summarize: Today, I have been in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Raleigh … Toronto … Calgary … Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Burnaby.

I’m back on the road in two senses…

First, we finally have a car: a 1994 Corolla that we found on Craigslist. Is it pretty? No. Is it rusty? Yes. Will it run for two years, given some minimal maintainance? I certainly hope so. We’re meeting the sellers to sign the paperwork momenarily.

Second, I’m on my way back to Vancouver tomorrow. First priority is handling the move to our new place—the movers are booked for the 5th, and I’m packing stuff up myself. That will probably suck, but at least it’s a well-defined amount of suckage, unlike buying a car or finding an apartment, either of which could have gone on indefinitely.

The timing of it all means I’ll be able to go to the SFU Open House on Saturday. I thought I was going to have to miss it, but it looks like I can go. Bonus: since I didn’t think I was going to be there, I’m not committed to actually do anything.

Then, a week or two to unpack and get a little work done, some meetings on the 15th and 16th, and back to NC.

The car that Kat wrote about yesterday didn’t happen. (For the record, it was from Sam Auto Sales, 1634 Capital Blvd, Raleigh, NC.)

When we agreed to buy it yesterday, they needed to change the tires, and get a state inspection done on the car. The tires because they said they would; the inspection because they are legally required to.

We returned a few hours later to do the paperwork and pay. No problem. When we had signed everything and paid, we went out to the car. “Oh,” the guy says, “we couldn’t get the inspection done this afternoon. You could take it now and come back, but you might have problems with the expired inspection sticker.” I refused to take it, pointing out that it would be illegal for me to do so. (I think it was illegal for them to transfer the ownership without the inspection done, possibly even illegal for me to test-drive it.)

They phoned back this morning… The car didn’t pass the inspection.

At this point, they didn’t want to sell the car because “it might look bad on them.” My interpretation was “we did something bad and want to back out now, before you tell anybody.” To give you an idea of how badly screwed they seemed to be: they didn’t even try to sell me another car after refunding my money; they were just happy to give my money back and get me out the door. Just as well. I wouldn’t have bought gum out of their vending mahcine at that point.

I’m still fuzzy on why it didn’t pass—the guy’s English wasn’t great and he didn’t have any motivation to be really forthcoming just then. Our mechanic’s inspection was okay (not stellar, but not bad for a car of that age). Oh well, it probably got us out of a lemon.

As many of you know, Kat doesn’t drive much. It’s a positive feedback thing: she drives less, get less accustomed to driving, navigating, etc, and then wants to drive even less. She’s going to have to drive, at least occasionally in NC, so something had to be done.

One of the problems can be solved with technology: navigation. We just got a Garmin StreetPilot c340 GPS navigation thing. I have to say, it’s pretty cool. Basically, you suction-cup it to the lower-center windshield, plug it into the cligarette lighter, and off you go.

So, you’re driving around and it says things like “In point-two miles, turn left onto Main St.” Very handy. it has been named “Blinky” after a damn fine Simpson’s episode. “Old Blinky here will find a way.”

It also has a big list of built in destinations: stores, attractions, etc. We realized it had already become very integrated into our lives today (day one of ownership). We knew we were somewhere in Raleigh, and were about to get to a Starbucks. We had no idea where we were, and would have been hard-pressed to find our way out, but there was the Starbucks.

Advice: Don’t get a built-in GPS in a car. The one we bought is easily small enough to pack if we’re going somewhere and getting a rental car (say, Oli and Tina’s wedding). I also read a review site somewhere that the built-in ones tend to have less features for more money.

Many thanks to Kelly and Paul for working out the final details of our new place. I was right: she didn’t really know that I wasn’t in Vancouver. After some explaining, they managed to convince her that I was alright and she took my deposit.

My old landlord had an in with movers and offered to get me a good quote. He emailed today: $2600 for moving and packing, $1300 for moving only.

Considering we paid $400 when we moved into that place, I don’t really think $1300 for the move only counts as a “good” quote. I’m pretty sure I could pay anybody I know $1000 to pack everything I own into boxes, and the same company $400 to move it four blocks. Look, I just cut the price in half.

Seriously, what would the packing be? Maybe two days work (alone) if you had all the boxes and stuff?

I have asked for a couple of other quotes online. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll end up packing everything myself. [shakes fist again]

I am cautiously optimistic that we have found a new place to live in Burnaby. It’s only about 3 blocks from our old place. Kelly and Paul looked at it tonight: 2 bedrooms, (small) kitchen and living room open to each other, shared laundry, clean, to be painted, etc. Cheaper than our current place too.

All that remains is to get the landlord a deposit—Kelly and/or Paul should be dropping it off tomorrow. The landlord is an older-sounding Chinese woman. Communicating by phone has been a bit of a challenge, but I think we understand each other. I’m still not sure she totally understands that I’m not in Vancouver, though.

That’s a load off. Now, all I have to do is get a plane ticket, book movers, forward the mail, buy a car (for NC), figure out how to get to the airport, and actually get some work done at some point. [shakes fist in the direction he imagines his current landlord to be]

Okay, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we should do very often, but we thought a good chunk of our friends should watch the Evolution of Dance. (6 minutes)

Kat suggests picturing me doing the dancing. I don’t understand why that would be funny. It’s a good thing I didn’t have anything in my mouth to spit at my screen around 2:45, though.

We’re here now. My blog has been combined with Kat’s and I’m hosting myself with WordPress. Sorry if I’m breaking anybody’s bookmarks–any of my students know I hate that.

It still needs some gussying-up, but that’s the easy part, right?