Words are inadequate

Massive flooding in North Dakota caused our train to be rerouted south and delayed by about seven hours. (This is better than the train that left Sunday, which was caught in the flooding and delayed by a whopping NINETEEN hours.) Or, as noted elseweb:

Tucker: FLASH FLOODS in North Dakota! All trains lose 1 turn and 1 load.
John K--: Lose the luggage and keep Emily. Or did you pick up a cheese to throw away in wisconsin?
Jerry H--: If you didn't pick up a cheese I'm okay with retroactively assuming you picked up a cheese.

We were so late that they offloaded us in Everett WA and put us on a commuter train that runs twice a day from Vancouver to Seattle and back. Said train has wireless, so for the first time in several days I have internet with a keyboard and a large screen. (The Device is a wonderful thing but it's no replacement for a full-sized computer. I very slightly regret not getting either an iPad or a tethering plan for the Device; then again, we were without signal often enough that it wouldn't have made that much difference.)

The trip itself was a lot of fun, despite the ongoing and repeated delays. We stayed in a "Superliner roomette," which... the line drawing on the Amtrak website doesn't do it justice. It's two extra-wide seats that face each other, with a decent bit of legroom. At night the seats collapse into a twin bed. Another twin bed folds down from above, with some heavy-duty cargo straps you can hook to the ceiling so you don't get jostled out of bed during the night. There's a very narrow closet, and room under the seats to slide small luggage, and... that's about it, really. From an efficiency standpoint it's quite impressive. I think two days is about all I could stand.

The roomette had an electric outlet, but it's positioned so that I couldn't plug in my laptop charger, so I spent some amount of time in the "observation car." Bigger windows, including ones that run up and over part of the ceiling, and seats that face the windows, and usable outlets. Good light, during the day.

The food was decent, and provided free with the room. As you might guess I'm not a huge fan of the "seat four people to a table" idea; we had some good conversations, and some sort of strained ones, and some awkward silences.

Much of the midwest looked about like Tennessee, only with more standing water and happy ducks. Then when I woke up this morning we were passing through Libby, MT, and the terrain turned from 'generic farmland' to 'the Rockies.' Enormous hills and obligatory snow-capped peaks and scrub sage yielding to evergreen forests and rushing waterfalls. Nice countryside. I'm glad we got to see it in the daytime, though I would have liked to get a glimpse of Glacier National Park as well. No pictures, at least not from me; the camera is among the things that got inadvertently packed, along with the crepe makers and all my jacket-like objects.

We passed by the Peace Arch about thirty minutes ago, which I guess means we're officially unofficially in Canada. uilos is dozing next to me. In another half hour or so I'll wake her up and we'll go tell the Canadian border folks that we're here to apply for work permits, and we'll see how that goes.

Then tomorrow morning we go to take possession of the apartment, and tomorrow afternoon we open new bank accounts, and sometime after that our stuff shows up, and I start work on Monday.

This feels more unreal than anything I've done in a very, very long time, possibly as far back as "going to college." It still hasn't sunk in yet. I don't know when it will.

I'm safely ensconced in the Outer Banks with John K-- et al, and am roughly half as stressed as I was when I got here. Since very little has actually been resolved I suppose this is progress. The bed is perhaps the least comfortable bed I've ever slept on: it crunches when I move and presses into my spine in curious ways. There has been a great deal of gaming, and some amount of hanging-out, and intermittent hot-tubbing and such.

Plans
We leave the beach tomorrow (boo) to spend a day or so with uilos's folks. Then it's back to DC. During the first part of the week I'll be selling Straylight (hopefully to Stef), bequeathing my aged stand mixer to A--, and generally running around like a madman trying to squeeze in last-minute au revoirs.

On Thursday afternoon we fly to Madison for Wiscon. There we shall have an amazing time for three-plus days, and then wake up too early Monday morning to get on a bus to Chicago. Once in Chicago we board the Empire Builder (no, not that one) for Seattle, where we'll change on Wednesday for a bus to Vancouver. At that point life becomes a blur of moving-in for several days before I start work on Monday the 6th.

holy crap this is actually happening

Moving
We left my mother with instructions to go to the apartment on Monday morning and oversee the movers as they loaded all our stuff onto a truck. She called on Monday afternoon to say that the truck driver had forgotten zie needed to be in DC and was instead hanging out in Minneapolis. So our stuff's getting loaded, um, today, actually. I hope. Delivery date's still sometime around the first or second. I hope we can get a more firm date soon so we can tell the apartment when to reserve the elevator.

Miscellaneous Other Nonsense
I still haven't received the final immigration forms to sign and send back (there have been all manner of explicable delays on both sides, but right now it's in their court) and I'm getting a little anxious about that. Work had a temporary shortage of laptops last week and will be shipping me a machine to arrive on the 2nd or 3rd of June. Due to scheduling my parents aren't able to come visit us in June and bring the cats so we've yet to work out how they're getting out to us.

A dear friend has taken time out from being a new mother to write me a reassuring and very helpful letter about myriad small immigration-related things, and I've been a horrible correspondent and not said thank you. So I'll go do that now.

And then I shall have breakfast, and maybe go walk on the beach.

Just under six and a half years ago, I'd been quietly talking about fleeing to Canada if Bush won a second term. An acquaintance posted something to the effect of "hey, all you people talking about how you'd move to canada if bush won: put your money where your mouth is and shut up about it and just go do it."

"Fine," I thought (but didn't say), and started thinking more seriously about the idea.

It took some doing but in less than a month I will have pulled it off.

... just in time for the Conservative Party of Canada to have won a majority government after being found in contempt of Parliament, thanks to stupid awful first-past-the-post elections with one right-wing party running against three and a half left-wing ones.

The Liberal Party has lost more than half their seats, and the Bloc is essentially finished (down to three, I believe). Congratulations to the pinko commie socialist New Democratic Party on their amazing hundred-plus seats, and to Elizabeth May for winning one for the Green Party.

The trouble is, the collapse of the Liberals (and the Bloc) moves Canada much closer to being a two-party state. And coming as it does after a Conservative victory that appears much more decisive than it actually is (40% of the vote, 55% of the seats), I fully expect the NDP to tack more to the centre. They'll need to absorb the last of the Liberal supporters; in addition, well, where are the more left-wing voters going to go? In another twenty years Canada will look like the US with better health care.

(Of course, I'm very likely wrong on this. All I know is what I read on the internet. I'm just in a rather bad mood, and finding it difficult to see any silver lining at all.)

A Conservative majority also ensures that there will be no election for another five years. I suppose I might be able to vote in that one, at least. But really, what the hell do I do now?

Off for a week in Vancouver, wherein uilos and I will look at apartments, eat crepes, and curse the weather-related timing. Seriously, who puts spring thaw in the middle of February?

(Really, this is just an excuse to use a new userpic.)

It's easy enough to say "don't post on topics that may inspire lots of comments on a day when you aren't going to be around to continue a fairly fascinating conversation." Only, who knows what those topics may turn out to be? Which is to say, lots of good stuff from last Friday, and thank you all.

I ran off that weekend to have my shoulder looked at. The one that's been bothering me for, um, around eighteen months now. The physical therapist has me doing stretches and things to generally improve my posture, which can only be to the good. Having actual instructions other than 'don't slouch' (those being 'drop your shoulders' and 'tighten your shoulderblades together') is likely to help matters.

Also visited the Canadian embassy in DC and got told that only the Buffalo office handles immigration matters. Waste of a perfectly good afternoon.

After that, uilos and I headed off to the wilds of Pennsylvania for a weekend of camping. Said weekend mostly consisted of things that didn't work out quite as anticipated but were really good anyway. Getting locked out of one campground ("oh, we don't actually open for camping for another two weeks. yeah, you're not the first people to try this after reading the website. sorry about that") and driving another 30 minutes to another. A BRIDGE OUT detour that took us through crazy back roads (and thank gord for the Device, as without it we'd never have realised that the detour kicked us out further north on 82 than we needed to be). Enough rain that the picnic table oozed water when we sat on it, but still a mostly-dry Satyrday for hiking and campfire. (Which was its own Experience, as the wood had really only had time to dry out on the outside. I don't think I've ever had that much trouble making a fire before.) Also, protip: do not refrigerate the two-year-old marshmallows, as this causes them to become like unto chewy sticky rocks. Even after toasting.

The rain dripped through much of Sunday morning while we were breaking camp, and then opened up on us as we loaded the last of the things into the car. Rather decent of it, I thought.

Once loaded we met up with tamnonlinear for a run through the Brandywine Museum (a gorgeous converted mill), featuring various Wyeths and most importantly a wonderful Edward Gorey exhibit. Plenty of illustrations from the books; also, decorated envelopes from letters to his mother, a handful of sketchbooks, and Gorey's fur coat. Then lunch (french toast, despite the name, should probably not be made from french bread; the pancakes, on the other hand, were nothing short of amazing), and an enjoyable ramble through the Book Barn. And then home, through more rain. (We waved to elvenyukiryu as we passed Avondale but were too exhausted and wet to stop and say hi.)

In all, an immensely pleasant weekend. The tent has been set up on the porch since Sunday evening. At this point I'm starting to wonder if it will ever have a chance to dry out.

I've been sort of resisting writing up my week and a half of travel, because there was just so much going on (both physically and mentally/emotionally) that putting it into words will miss a good three-quarters of it. I had an amazing time despite the near-constant rain (and snow, once), and am in deeply besotted with Vancouver.

The easy facts: uilos and I flew into Vancouver on Thursday night the 12th, and flew back again on Monday night the 16th. I went to work somewhat jet-lagged on Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back to Vancouver on Wednesday (the 18th) to meet up with nixve. We hung out in the city for a day and then headed into the Cascades for a couple of days before I flew out again Sunday night, to return to work for a very jet-lagged week. It's everything in between that's difficult.

( Vancouver, to and in )

( Vancouver, from )

And really, that explains absolutely nothing. Vancouver felt freeing, in a way that I've not felt in years. The people are friendly and helpful, the bus system is pricey but it gets you where you need to go and runs pretty often, and the city's just. . . really nice. They stop for pedestrians and yield to buses. The SkyTrain works on an honor system with spot-checks. And Stanley Park and the mountains behind and all the water everywhere and non-neoclassical buildings and tea everywhere and crepes and new accents and fog and the intense brightness of the sun when it shines through.

Much of it is that I didn't feel tied down to a car. Living in the DC area has seriously broken me of much desire to drive places. I want to be able to walk to where I want to go, or take transit if it's a bit further. The sprawl, the distance between people, is killing me. As is the constant sense of rushrushrush. I expect these things are connected.

I miss it.

(Trip part 2, and photos, to come later.)

Update: photos now available.