Selenay's Ramblings

Best Friend in America arrived on Thursday and we had a fabulous visit. I was sad to see her go yesterday :-( Flights between our cities are so insanely expensive that we're making plans to meet up somewhere in between (maybe Toronto or New York) next year. The cost of flights plus hotel room will actually work out less than the cost of a flight between our cities. It's insane.

Anyway.

On Friday, I managed to work through lunch and get out of work early so I hightailed it home to pick up BFIA. She'd spent the day reading, playing with Kate and Annie and going for a short walk. Apparently I live in a really lovely place :-) The weather was gorgeous, warm and sunny, so we went down to the beach and spent lots of time paddling in the ocean and walking along the beach. I really must remember to do that when the weather is good :-) Then it was off for yummy sea food for supper followed by a cup of tea with my aunt, who was eager to finally meet the fabled BFIA!

On Saturday we set out for a drive down the coast, planning to visit Lunenburg and Mahone Bay. Incredibly, I didn't get lost! There was a craft fair at Lunenburg so we ended up with rather a lot of fudge and jam :-) We ate sandwiches on the waterfront and watched the sailing ships. Then we hopped into the car and drove back to Mahone Bay where we had tea (and amazing chocolate shortcake) at the Biscuit Eater Cafe and I got to pop into Have A Yarn. I emerged with some 2.5mm Addi circs, some 4ply alpaca to make something for a friend's baby and a skein of Tanis sock yarn in a gorgeous shade of blue - score! The drive back to the city was smooth and easy, despite the Paul McCartney concert, and after a bit of time to read and relax at home we went out for a sushi supper.

BFIA's main comment was "OMG, it's so fresh!" She adores shrimp and my sushi place does amazing shrimp tempura. I've never tried shrimp tempura rolls before (although I don't know why!) and I may have discovered a new favourite :-) We skipped dessert at the restaurant in favour of the insanely indulgent ice cream that I had at home and, sadly, concluded that BFIA will have to visit me if she ever wants that ice cream again as it's a local store brand. Heh.

Sunday was grey and rainy, so we decided to have a lazy day at home. We did venture out long enough to check out the local touristy gift shops and pick up some Tim Horton's (she needed to see why TH is so popular here) but mostly we read, watched TV and played with kittens. Supper was pizza and salad, which was just right and it was great to just sit around gossiping.

I took a long lunch yesterday to take her back to the airport. Apparently she's gone home with tales of beaches and amazing food, to persuade her husband that they need to take a trip back here because he'll love it. Yay!

It was great having her to visit and I've finally been able to persuade an old friend that moving here was a great decision. So many of my friends don't really know why I'd wanted to leave England and can't understand that I don't miss it. Of course, BFIA is probably the most likely to understand seeing as she left England years ago and now has a wonderful life in America. Perhaps if I can bring other friends over to visit and show them what my life is like, they'll understand better.

I suspect that the weather probably helped :-) This place in gorgeous, sunny weather is amazing. The days of fog and ick get a bit wearing and it's harder (but not impossible) to get out and enjoy the beach and the scenery. But BFIA pointed out that the ocean is always pretty spectacular whatever the weather, and she's right :-)

I've been thinking a bit about the move this weekend. When I was planning it, everyone kept reminding me that it wouldn't solve all my problems and I shouldn't expect to suddenly be amazingly happy just because I'd moved. So I set my expectations for how the move would affect me pretty low and it's turned out to be a much bigger thing in the end. There weren't any problems that I was running away from when I left, but I did leave behind a crappy job and a country that I didn't feel offered me much. Coming here, I've gained a great job, better prospects for housing and life quality, surroundings that I love and a new group of friends that I love spending time with.

I've got a new life that's quite different from what I had in England and, despite all those dire warnings, overall I'm much happier and more content than I was. So actually it has been the fix that everyone was warning me it wouldn't be - how amazing is that?

I'm sitting in my kitchen feeling very slightly disconcerted. I got home from work nearly an hour ago, the recycling has been put out, a cup of tea is beside me and I've spoken to my aunt yet it's only 5.30pm and the sun hasn't even begun to set yet.

Hmm.

Obviously I'd been a little lax about this 'getting home at a sensible time' thing before I went on holiday because I'm not used to having this sense of tons of time in the evening. Or possibly it's because I usually have several chores to do when I get in and today I have none. Whatever. It's quite a nice feeling to have sometimes.

Obviously I got home safely, although sadly I was felled by the return of the stomach bug on Monday (that didn't really go away over the weekend if I'm honest) and thus the end of my vacation wasn't quite as planned. It also made my flight yesterday a little less fun and I was so tired (lack of food more than anything else, I suspect) that I was in bed by 7.30pm last night. Thankfully I'm feeling better today, tired and wobbly but better in myself anyway.

The thing that I'm realising is how nice it is to sit in this kitchen in the evening when the sun is still up. I'm looking out at the ocean from where I am, enjoying how beautiful everything is. There are only a few traces of snow in the yards now and it feels like Spring may just be around the corner. It's reinforcing that the things I miss about England are people rather than things, because I couldn't swap this view for anything.

I do miss my parents and sister right now, but thankfully not much more than before I left and I know that will settle back in a few days. If I could have Canada with my parents and sister living right here then it would be perfect. It's not going to happen, I know, but it would be lovely. At least I'll get Canada with my parents living here in a couple of years.

The cats have mostly forgiven me for leaving them and I'm looking forward to getting settled into my life again. Tonight I plan to do a bit of writing, have some supper and then watch some TV (Holby City and ER, I think) before having another early night. Tomorrow is knit night and it's the birthday of a good friend there, so it won't be an early one I suspect! Then it will be Friday and my weekend, hoorah! I need to get to the farmers' market on Saturday. The green veg in the store was dreadful (I've resorted to broccoli again as the only halfway decent veg) and I have no eggs. Then I need to stop into the library and Bulk Barn because I have an overdue book and I'm almost out of pasta. My aunt is staying over on Saturday night so I'll be going through my recipe books to figure out something yummy to feed her.

Yeah, I think things are going to be OK. And the ocean really is beautiful.

My furnace has been repaired. Apparently whoever did the servicing in the summer didn't do a great job of it because the filters were clogged, something fell apart when he touched it and it was a miracle that it had been going at all.

Yay.

Very glad to have a working furnace heating my house again. Today, at least, the temps were just above zero so it could have been much worse. As it's going down to 15C tonight, there was no way that I could be left without heating!

Unfortunately, that totally foxed all my plans for the day. I'd planned to go to church, pop to the library and then do some bits and bobs around the house before talking to the parents. Instead I curled up under blankets with tea, kitties and a book to wait for the furnace guy and then he took an hour to fix the furnace. So I've talked to the parents and made jelly. That's the sum total of today's activity.

I'm thinking about trying to start my Big Bang fic. It might be a good idea :-)

Is there anything I can bring from Canada for people who might actually see me while I'm over? Apart from snow boots and snow shovels - Mum already tried to persuade me to bring some and they just won't fit in my luggage :-)

I had a whole thinky post about tomorrow being my six month emmigraversary. I'll post it tomorrow because it will be more appropriate :-)

*gulp*

We had a snow storm last night. A big one. An unusual one for this early in winter.

It's at least a foot deep with drifts that are much bigger. Sadly a large part of my driveway was one of those deeper drifts :-( I have shovelled my porch, path and drive, though, so I'm feeling quite proud of myself. And rather achy. My neighbour opposite was lovely and came over to give me a hand when he'd finished his drive so I have now met and been introduced to my neighbours. Hooray!

I've just never seen this much snow before. I'm hoping that the ploughs come through soon because I'm trapped here until they do. I'm supposed to be bringing my aunt over to stay the night later but that's only going to happen if I actually get ploughed out.

I feel so glad that I have winter tyres on my car. So, so, so, so glad.

It looks like I'll have to insist on getting the log-ons to work from home because even if the office doesn't close on a day like this, I may not be able to get out anywhere until ploughs come through. Hopefully it won't be much longer: there are a lot of people living up here and we have a hill to conquer in order to get in or out. Surely the authorities won't leave a couple of hundred people unable to leave their neighbourhood for a few days?

Apparently it's going to warm up and rain next week so this isn't going to last.

Hey, I'm going to have a white birthday!

ETA: The cats are loving this. They've been sitting on the windowsill watching everything for hours. My neighbours think my cats are gorgeous. It's so exciting for them!

For the curious, I passed my test and now have a Nova Scotia driver's licence :-)

After worrying, stressing, and ending up at the stage of being ready to throw-up by the time the examiner came to my car, it turned out to be much easier than I thought. In fact, he just had me drive around the block and then passed me. No manoeuvres, nothing difficult, just a quick trip out and we were done.

Apparently he can usually tell the good drivers from the bad or so-so very quickly and he knew that it would be good before we got to the first stop sign. So he passed me despite me mucking up parking at the end!

I have just fired off an email to accept that job. Da thinks that I'll survive comfortably on the salary and I trust him better than my own estimates of bills! There are good benefits (including full medical and company pension) although the holiday is only two weeks :-( Damn UK holidays getting me used to five weeks holiday! I'll have to find out whether the medical will cover EDS bearing in mind that it's my biggest expense, but I'll be happy if it includes drugs, optical and dental because those are likely to be my biggest bills right now. Any dislocations and doctor's appointments etc. are picked up my the state medical coverage anyway.

That is why I sputtered incoherently when McCain tried to accuse Obama of bringing in socialised medicine "like they have in Canada and England" as though that's a bad thing!! WTF world does he live in?

Anyway, that is the news and knowing that I've got myself a job does relieve some of my worry. Today I am going to do some cleaning in preparation for paranoidangel42's arrival tomorrow and then curl up with some DVDs and declare a veg day. I really need one after the last couple of weeks!

BTW, why did no one tell me about season 4 Gray's Anatomy? Why did I have to find out about in on a Butch/Femme board on Ravelry? And, um, why did I order the box-set just now? *is puzzled*

So I'm nearly done with my dw_femslash fic (I should make it just under the wire). Hitting the word count has not been the problem. *Stopping*, that is proving to be the problem. What is it about ficathons this year that is making be break the 2,500 word mark when I hadn't managed that for eighteen months before?

In other news, I had a day out at Mahone Bay which was fabulous. There were books and yarn and amazing chocolate espresso cookies and then we went to my favourite steak place in the evening for supper. It turns out that a watched job board never produces jobs: while I was taking a day off, several jobs got posted that I could apply for! So today has been a bit more productive on that side than it has been.

Merlin has just finished downloading but I really need to finish the fic and then go out to the store. I'll definitely be back for my regular chat with historyterry unless the sky falls in. I'm starting to feel much more confident about driving on my own and, at the weekend, I finally seemed to get the hang of four-way stops. Go me!

Note to self: book driving lessons after lunch to make sure of stuff for driving test. Also, book driving test.

Now it's back to the fic with some sustaining tea. Why is my throat sore?

I've been updating my Flickr with the photos from my first couple of weeks in Canada. The little camera that I bought for Snowdon has been living in my messenger bag so I managed to catch some good moments.

You can see the rest of the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archerygirl/sets/72157606619235779/

Yesterday was as lazy and relaxed as I'd hoped for. I went to church with Mum at the little baptist church down the road in the morning. Everyone was really friendly - the geniune sort of friendliness - without being pushy and signing me up for three committees and the choir before I'd sat down. They are starting up a walking club and I put my name down - the people seem lovely and it would be a good chance to meet new people and keep up my walking.

I suspect that I'll be alternating that one with Safe Harbour (the LGBT church over the harbour) once I'm more settled. It's certainly somewhere that I felt comfortable. The service was informal without being happy-clappy or unstructured, so it's just my level. I'll have to see what Safe Harbour is like.

Most of the afternoon was spent reading, knitting and generally relaxing. I walked down to the mailbox to post some letters just before supper and, post-supper, we sat in the rec room to watch some Olympics. I finally caught five minutes of gymnastics! I saw the final floor exercise by the winner of gold in the girls floor category. She really was amazing and I could see why she'd been given the gold.

Today has been busy busy. Mum and I got up early and got the trim painting done in my room. The carpet went down at the end of last week but our painter hadn't got around to painting the skirting boards or door trim. As he's a very messy painter, we didn't trust him to do it so we got out the tools and did the job ourselves. I've now got sheers up at the windows (still need to make some curtains) and we've even put the bed in. The bed is on a temporary frame until my real one arrives, but it's great to get it up and made up (complete with beautiful quilt!) so that it looks like a real bedroom. Mum and I also put up the Cheval mirror. We're productive when we try to be :-)

This afternoon we went to the store, planning to make a quick stop to look at furniture for the big rec room on our way.

Readers, I bought some.

On Friday, a new (three seater) sofa, coffee table and two recliners will be arriving. By Friday evening we shall be sitting in comfort to watch TV so we'll be able to relax properly in the evening.

The other good piece of news is that the lumber for the new deck will arrive on Wednesday and we won't have to carry it into the back yard ourselves, as was the original plan. With any luck, we should have a new deck by mid-next week.

Today was much more successful than some days have been. The second insurance company has faxed their letter to my new insurers so that just leaves the pain in the butt insurance company. Grrr. I'm praying that will come soon but not expecting much because they take so long to get their finger out and actually do anything.

No word yet on when our new computers will arrive. The estimated delivery date is still showing as tomorrow on the Dell website, but they are also not showing as having been dispatched so it's anyone's guess as to where they are! I really want my computer because my dad's laptop refuses to let Skype work and is rather temperamental at best. Silly thing.

Still, everything is looking brighter today and the big bulk of furniture shopping is now over. That means I can turn my attention to the job hunting and I'll feel much more relaxed once that has been started. I can't believe that I've only been here for a little over a week!

I'm starting to feel a little more settled now. It helps that yesterday we got the Internet hooked up at the house. No computers yet, but Da has his laptop here (old and tends to get crotchety sometimes) so we can actuallly use the Internet without having toddle over to my aunt's house every time we need something.

How crazy is it that an Internet-less state of being can be so unnerving?

The computers should arrive early next week and then I shall have my lovely new laptop to play on to my heart's delight. We've even got the wireless network up and running on a D-Link box and it's great. We actually get really good signal strength throughout the house, much better than we get at home, and the Internet connection is lovely and fast. I'm a happy girl :-)

The other important thing is that we have a TV so now I can actually see news and Olympics coverage and so on. Somehow, just having those two things, helps me to feel much less cut-off from the rest of the world.

I also have airmail letter paper and envelopes (from the dollar store, where everything is an actual dollar rather than £2.50) so I can write snail mail letters to people as well.

After the triumph of finding a new car, there was the slightly less triumphal getting of insurance. I've found a company that will insure me and take into account my driving record in the UK (which really brings down the quote a lot - by $2000 over what most others were quoting) but they need letters from my insurance companies in England.

Huh.

So my fun job this morning was calling my old insurance companies in the UK. Thankfully I'd written letters to all of them at some stage in the past so I had the policy numbers lurking in my hard drive. Obssessive filing pays off sometimes! One of them had a fax with my new insurers within a few minutes of me calling. Another will be faxing on Monday.

Then there's the insurance company that I was with for a few years up to 2007. The ones who took ten months to sort out a claim that the other driver admitted liability for within a couple of weeks because they'd rear-ended me. The nightmare company that had to be called twenty times, with three written letters of complaint, before they finally sorted out the claim. They say that they cannot fax or email anything. They cannot post anything outside the UK. They'd really prefer to post to my old address, but I exploded a little at that one because, um, I DON'T LIVE THERE ANYMORE. So the compromise is that they'll send it to my sister and I'll hope that she can fax it.

They'll do it within five business days. Grump.

So I've told the garage about the delay and the reason and they're fine for me to pick the car up whenever. I've told them that I'm hoping for Wednesday but I'll keep them informed. That means that my parents will have to keep their hire car for an extra few days, which is annoying but not totally impossible.

I hate insurance companies.

Everything else has been relatively successful over the last few days. There was no shopping today (phew!) but we have been painting and cleaning lots. Yesterday I went out with Mum and picked out a quilt - it will be picked up tomorrow when my bank card has been activated. I made some changes to my bank account on Wednesday to get an account that doesn't have charges attached, but my card was going to take 48 hours to activate the changes. Bah. But at least it's nearly sorted and the quilt is absolutely beautiful. We also have curtain material and the carpet got fitted. That means there is a decent chance that I'll be able to move into my bedroom by the beginning of the week. Hooray!

I was out at the insurance office last night so I didn't get to go to the local knitting group, but I'll be trying to get there next Thursday. They meet in a local bar/eatery that apparently does great chowder and amazing onion rings. I'm going to have to be careful here or I'll end up the size of a house!

I was a little low last night after realising that the insurance would be more complicated than I thought, but I'm feeling much better now. The sun is shining, it's beautiful outside (windy and fresh and lovely) and I'm mostly just feeling impatient for everything to be sorted out. I knew that it would take time to get everything sorted out so it's just illogical that I'm feeling bad over not everything being done yet when I've only been here six days.

historyterry, feel free to laugh at me right now for all the times that I've tried to encourage you to relax when not everything is perfect immediately. Pots and kettles and all that :-)

Everything is starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere and I'm looking forward to being able to relax a bit at the weekend. I've decided that Sunday needs to be a proper "doing fun stuff" day rather than another day of shopping/fixing/calling people. We all need a break!

ETA: I actually have 90 days to get my new driver's licence. Phew! And I'm already half-way up the back of sis's cardigan and it's going beautifully.

Well, I am posting this from my aunt's computer (800 x 600 display is painful!) so I must be in Canada! Yesterday wasn't much fun, but all the bits that I'd been worrying about went smoothly so I'm feeling much happier now. It's not really sunk in that I'm here for good yet, it still feels like a holiday even though I've been out to buy a TV and some telephones today.

After all the worrying about luggage allowances on Friday evening, I discovered yesterday morning that I'd left all of my medication and my teddy out of the cases. Oh noes! That meant I had to unpack some bits, leave a couple more things behind and re-pack and re-weigh. Everything came in just under the weight limits, which should have been a relief but somehow Da and I still felt very stressed about it all. I think for my part is was because I still wasn't sure that the airline would be OK with my archery equipment and Da was absorbing and magnifying all of my stress :-( The bit that really didn't help was that, five minutes before the taxi arrived, I discovered that I couldn't find my keys. I'd packed them carefully the night before, but I had no idea where they were now. Why were my keys important?

Because I'd put the keys for my archery box on the ring so that I wouldn't lose them!

Cue one almighty panic, complete with shouting and tearing of hair, on my part, until I finally worked out where the hell I'd put them. Basically, I turned into my mother having one of her 'moments'. Please shoot me if I do that again, people. Still, considering what I'm doing, I feel like one wobble insane moment is more than justified. It was all the stress being expressed in one awful moment!

The lovely gmul came to meet us at the airport and wave me off, so he was also able to direct us to our check-in desk. Thankfully the archery equipment was waved on without a hitch and no mention was made of excess baggage. Phew!

Then we wandered up to a coffee shop to relax with tea and coffee for a while (and a croissant for me because I went into starvation mode once the first stress was over). Our gate was called about two minutes after gmul toddled off and the sheer weight (and bulk) of our hand luggage made the traipse up to the gate torture. Thankfully we got there just before they started loading and my walking stick secured us early access to our seats.

The flight was unremarkable, but felt incredibly long to me. We pushed away from the gate late and we were almost an hour late getting to Canada. I did manage to doze a bit for an hour, but Da was too stressed to sleep. Poor man. He also got starved because the 'vegan' lunch they served was frankly inedible. Sadly, my lunch was perfectly edible and identifiable so I was fairly well fed. Oops.

The bit of the trip that had kept me in nightmares for days was the entry to Canada. Despite my citizenship documents, passport and SIN, I was still convinced that it couldn't possibly be as easy as everyone was assuring me that it was. Um.

The hardest bit was customs working out which form to use for my shipping goods. Heh. They spent a long time debating whether I was a settler or a returning Canadian. On the one hand, I've never lived in Canada before. On the other hand, I'm a citizen. In the end we concluded that I'm a returning Canadian and one of the customs guys (every customs officer in the airport ended up putting in their 2c) reassured me that I'm entering "by right as a Canadian!" so I'm wonderful. Yay.

Half an hour after getting off my plane, I was walking into arrivals as Canada's newest resident. Phew!

Mum took a photo of me as I climbed out of the taxi at the house so I'll post that as soon as I have my own computer :-)

The house is gorgeous. There is still a lot of working going on in it and it's going to be weeks before everything is done, but it's already looking fab. I'm currently just marveling at this concept of having a bathroom with enough drawers and cupboards to keep my toiletries in! I've lived out of a toiletry bag in my bedroom for as long as I can remember, always having to gather up everything I'll need and carry it to the bathroom every time I shower or even just want to wash my face. It's brilliant :-)

I'm sleeping in my sister's room, which is almost fully furnished (no chest of drawers yet), because my room still needs to have the floor fixed. As soon as the floor is fixed, later this week, I'll be able to set up my bed and new Cheval mirror and sleep in my own room. Sis's room is beautiful and comfortable, though.

Tea and pie were consumed when I arrived (to keep our stomachs from grumbling too loudly) and then I had a lie down to rest my back before supper. It was strawberry and rhubard pie, historyterry. I know how important pie is for you :-)

Supper was at Bookdocks with my aunt. This is a lovely restaurant just down the road from me and we sat outside eating lobster sandwiches while we watched the ocean. I'm going to love this kind of life :-)

It was early to bed then, but not before I pulled the door off the coat closet. It came off in my hand, honest!

Really, that's the truth. The bolt has sheered off and there is a lot of damage to the track that it ran on (it was a fold-in door) so Mum suspects that it broke when the tenants were here and she's just been lucky up until now. And then I moved in :-)

This morning I did exactly what I'd been promising for months. There's no furniture out there, so I had to stand, but I drank my morning coffee on the deck looking out over the ocean. It was just amazing, beautiful and serene, and I realised again just how incredibly lucky I am.