Greg and Kat's blog

[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.

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]

To recap: I was tired to start with, and had walked every single aisle in a Super Target by this point in the day. Super Targets are bigger than regular Targets, you know.

The two that were leaving the new apartment were having trouble getting everything packed up. We had already told them that we were coming into town with practically nothing, so we were happy to take their futon, desk, and whatever. They didn’t want to move it. Everybody wins.

This set off a couple of calls from them: do you want an old radio? a desk chair? Sure! So, it’s hard to say we didn’t encourage them to leave stuff. When we got there, the house had a bunch of stuff left, and the general appearance of clean. Not all useful stuff, but not bad.

But, the more we looked around, the worse it got. Everything looked clean, but every surface in the kitchen was a little sticky; all of the floors were a little gritty; the bathrooms had been cleaned in a short-term way (toilets, surfaces wiped down), but were by no means clean (built-up gunk around taps, mildewed shower curtain). Pretty much everything needed to be cleaned in one way or the other.

And the stuff! Every door and cupboard was a new surprise. Twenty different old crusty bathroom cleaners. A whole cupboard full of disposable plates and cups. Three boxes of wooden matches, a case of matchbooks, and a few other packs of matches (all in the same drawer). Three part bottles of hoisin sauce, and another three ketchups.

Two days later, and thing are looking a lot better. We still have a few things to take care of, but the place is definitely liveable.

To give you an idea of my status… we went to get a few more groceries yesterday afternoon. Actual groceries this time: food to eat, not to have stocked in the kitchen. We were in aisle 9 (of maybe 16) in this store, and I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the end.

I took the evening off, and I feel a lot better today.

I was already tired and well shopped-out when we realized that the 10% discount wasn’t just for the first purchase on the card, but the first day. We could still make another trip and get the discount.

So, at about 6:30, we unloaded the car and headed back to Target: did I mention that it is a “Super Target” that’s bigger than a regular Target (like a Walmart Supercenter)?

We needed bikes: it’s a very bike-accessible town, the buses aren’t great on the weekend, and we want to avoid buying a car. We don’t need quality, since they only really have to not fall apart for a couple of years of commuting. So, cheap “real” bikes at $300 weren’t worth it. To Target and the sub-$150 price point.

We ended up buying two bikes, a back-seat full of groceries, and some rope. Why rope? Two bikes don’t fit in the Kia Rio we rented. We had to take off the front tire and awkwardly tie the rest into the trunk. Of course, we didn’t have a knife, and about 50 feet of rope, so it took some time: 20 minutes in a Target parking lot, trying to secure them.

We returned and after all this, finally got into the new apartment…

I haven’t blogged for a couple of days: no time. It’s been busy. I’ll parcel out the story over a few posts.

On Sunday, we went to a local mall. This is the sort of thing that calms Kat down, and wears me out. After, we went by a Winners-like place or two on the way home and got a bunch of kitchen stuff.

Monday was our day to move in to the new place. We weren’t going to get in until the afternoon, so Kat worked in the morning and I drove around Carrboro to try to figure out where stuff was.

In particular, I was looking for a good grocery store. The only one I could find near our house was the Weaver Street Market. Vancouver types can think of Famous Foods–very granola-hippy-earth-loving. Lots of all-natural stuff that the biologists we met assured us we’d love. But sometimes, you just want to buy paper-towels without feeling like you’re personally responsible for ruining the planet.

After some effort, I found a Harris Teeter about the same distance from the apartment. It’s a nice, regular grocery store, maybe like a Save-On-Foods. I was pleased: I wasn’t going to be leaving Kat in a place without accessible groceries.

The people still weren’t out of the apartment, so I picked up Kat and we went shopping. We went to a Target (think: one step up from Walmart) about 30 minutes away. The goal was to get cleaning stuff, the last kitchen stuff, fans, and all the other stuff you can’t live without. Because we were buying so much, we signed up for a Target card and got 10% off. Nice.

Then, things started to turn…