Words are inadequate

Back in September 2020 I was getting annoyed by my thrift-store dining room table. So I figured I'd solve the Table Problem once and for all.

In the event I bought two tables for way too much money. The first, a Transformer Table, showed up maybe a month later. It's plain and blocky, but it gets the job done: it came with a half-dozen (!) leaves and can expand to I think ten feet long. It also came with a coffee table / end table that doubles as leaf storage. It is well designed but not as well constructed as I'd like for the ridiculous amount of money I spent on it. Also my terrible movers banged it up a bit in transit.

It's served me well for coming on four years as my main table. I usually have one leaf in it to make it a square, and on Wednesday nights for RPG I add another so we can fit all five of us around it.

So, if the plan was to have the transformer table as my main table, what's with this other table?

Well. I couldn't decide, at the time. Fancy boardgaming tables had just started to become A Thing, and I still had dreams of being a fancy boardgamer. A table with removable leaves on top covering a thin-padded surface, one where you could just put the top back on it and leave the game set up, seemed like a neat thing. And a lot of them had attachments for the sides of the table, things like cupholders or game-piece-holders or writing surfaces. That would be really nice to have. But having an expandable table for larger games, or larger gatherings, would also be good.

Then I found a company that was making a fancy boardgaming table that could convert to a (square) coffee table. At which point my master plan settled in: use the fancy boardgaming table as a coffee table, unless I was having people over for games, and then just ("just") put the leg extensions back on. Brilliant.

There were two problems with this. The second was that this plan required substantially more space than I have in my current apartment. (It also required there not be a plague on that makes me less comfortable with hosting larger boardgaming get-togethers.)

The first problem was that the table wasn't shipping for another year at minimum.

But, whatever, it's not like I had people to come over for boardgaming while I was living in Fort. This was about planning for the kind of life I wanted to have at some point. So I ordered the transformer table, and put money down on the "Megan X" table from Geeknson. And as noted the transformer arrived in a reasonable timeframe, and my old table went to Erin where it is still in use as a Flat Surface Holding Things, a job at which it excels.

And I waited. And waited. And October 2021, the initial projected ship date, came and went. Tables slowly started trickling out to people in Europe (where the company's based), then in the USA.

In February 2022 I got a call from DHL saying they had a big package for me. This seemed promising. It ... was not. This was a large package containing ... all the cupholders and game-piece-holders and writing-surfaces and such miscellaneous accessories. Less useful without a table. I started a long email conversation with the people at Geeknson, and later with the people at DHL who had apparently lost the other boxes that should have gone with that one.

In the middle of this I moved back to the lower mainland. I am in retrospect glad I didn't have my expensive fancy gaming table, as there's a nonzero chance those assholes at 2 Burley Men would have broken it.

In late April I got another DHL delivery. This one included the legs for the table, the leaves for the top of the table, and a box to hold the leaves when they're not on the table. Notably missing: the actual table itself. Also one of the leaves had been sufficiently damaged in transit as to be unusable, and one of the legs had gotten dinged up.

So I went several more rounds with Geeknson and DHL, and eventually Geeknson wrote the table off as entirely lost and offered to make me a new one, and a replacement leg and leaf as well. This, they said, would take 5-6 months.

It finally shipped three weeks ago. There was further nonsense with trying to get the shipping company to deliver here instead of to my apartment in Fort, but long story short ("TOO LATE!") my tabletop arrived shortly before 7:30 this morning. I spent about an hour trying to attach the legs, which are really not designed to be at all easy to attach, particularly if you have short stubby Shackelford fingers like I do.

But: it's up, and it's very pretty.

Remember point 2 above, though? Honestly this table is a bit big for the space it's in; the transformer in square shape is about six inches shorter on each side. And now I have two tables, in a 500sqft apartment.

Luckily the transformer collapses down to side-table-sized when it has zero leaves in it, and I do have a space under the bar for it to hang out and be mostly unobtrusive. Still a bit silly to have two tables, but whaddaya gonna do. (I could put it in my storage unit but I would have to rearrange a great many things in the storage unit, and it fits alright here.) All the miscellaneous accessories fit in the well under the table leaves, which is great until I want to use my nice gaming table; I'll need to get a box to put them in, and find a place for them.

But at least I have my table. And a reminder that life usually doesn't look like what I expect it will three years later.

(Hoping to have Rainbow House over for a test run this weekend.)

I have made it to Niagara for the Gathering, a week-plus of gaming. Also of sleeping in a real bed. I slept for ten hours last night, more or less, and it was wonderful.

My stuff did in fact arrive Friday morning. A couple of things were minorly damaged. Four bookcases (of eight) were completely destroyed and the backs of the other four came off and were probably damaged. I have begun the process of talking to the claims department (aka "Cheryl") about that. I am not optimistic; the paper I signed explicitly says they're not responsible for damage to particleboard furniture. If I had known that ... well, I probably still would have gone with them, because seriously, I've used four professional moving companies and three of them were careful and didn't break anything (the fourth broke one and a half bookcases out of fifteen, which is a high but acceptable attrition rate). Bah. Soon this will be only a bad memory.

Anyway, everything technically fits into the apartment. I'm in Niagara for a week now, and when I get back I will attempt to make the kitchen work and see what if any repairs can be made to the surviving bookcases. Then it's buying and building replacements and playing Rush Hour with the living room to get the bookcases into place and the contents on the shelves.

"April to move in, May to settle in" feels doable.

Also, as with last year I have acquired several boxes of frosted brown sugar/cinnamon Pop-tarts, which are inexplicably unavailable in Canada. Most of them are to go home; some are for breakfast while I'm here. I have no toaster in the room, so I eat them raw. Or, for the cultured, Pop-tartare.

After I found out that the movers weren't coming today I called Erin, who talked me down and through it. Which was very much appreciated. I'm glad I still have Erin.

Aspects exists. I just got an email saying that my ebook preorder has dropped, and my hard copy is en route. (Should be here mid-next-week, so, either it arrives while I'm in Niagara or I have a long-awaited book to read instead.) I am holding off on reading it in ebook; for some reason I want to read it in hard copy first. That seems important. Also I lack the brain and emotional resilience right now to read The Last Of Mike Ford. (mrissa has some impressions of it. I am very much looking forward to this.)

Back in I guess November, when Kelsey came to visit, Erin rediscovered and introduced me to Bengal Spice Tea. Cinnamon and cloves and yum. So now I have a tasty thing to drink in the evenings. And I have my travel hot-water-pot, and the travel mug that my ex-company sent me a couple of years ago when they handed out swag in lieu of paying bonuses. So I have tea.

Laundry two doors down is not the same as laundry in the apartment, but it's a sight better than "laundry at the end of the hall and down a flight of stairs" or "laundry a twelve-minute drive away," which were the last two places I lived. (Technically the last one was "laundry at the end of the hall, also costing $4/load payable only in loonies," which is why it was a twelve-minute drive away instead.)

I went out this evening and bought myself a chair for the porch and a tray-table-thing, so now I have some furniture. The bar stool is good for perching on but no good for actually trying to work or anything. And sitting on the floor was getting old.

On Thursday morning my electric razor popped open and I lost one of the blades. I could order more, and will, but like Aspects they'd get here next week at the earliest. I could buy a new razor but I did that once already, my spare razor is packed and I don't need a third one. I could use an actual bladed razor but that is just an invitation to a whole lot of blood. So I'm experimenting with beardedness. It itches less than last time, at least so far. I doubt I'll keep it but it's nice to change things up from time to time.

The Indian place around the corner does a decent korma. The poutine place over the skytrain (less than a half-mile walk, though coming back is up a Significant flight of stairs) still has a delicious buffalo chicken poutine. River Market exists and I'll get down there eventually and have some barbecue from Re-Up, the only good barbecue I've had north of the Mason-Dixon line.

I have pots and pans. Mya, who came by to check on the place once a week while I wasn't there, found a decent set on Craigslist and left them in the apartment. I've also got an assortment of utensils: cheap measuring cups and spoons, a couple of forks from takeout, some misc stuff from the thrift store. So I can make breakfasts at least, and whenever I go grocery shopping for real I'll be able to make a few other things as well.

I don't like my situation at all, but it is not the worst situation I've been in.

Well. Actually I write this sitting in the living room on the floor, back against the wall, next to where the couch will eventually be set.

My stuff is not here, due to the movers arbitrarily deciding to reschedule my delivery. I was surprised and displeased when I called them on Friday morning to see what time they'd get here and was told "Monday." I'm mostly calmed down about it now. It would be nice to have furniture, though.

(In a nice change of pace, the internet install that was also scheduled for Friday morning went quickly and smoothly.)

I still like this condo. The dishwasher is Really Loud but it's, you know, a dishwasher, which is an improvement. I'm still nervous that I won't be able to fit the bookcases in, and more nervous that I won't be able to fit the kitchenstuff in. I have also developed a fear that the bookcases will be destroyed in transit: the move-out movers were pretty skeptical that they'd survive. They're Ikea flat-pack particle-board and they've already made it through seven moves, so they're certainly beyond life expectancy, but still.

Erin rode down with me, through the fire- and flood-scarred landscape. I am genuinely impressed at the civil engineering done to reopen the highway through the Fraser Canyon after last November's flooding. They have entirely rerouted several sections of highway, including at least one railway underpass, and put in a temporary bridge that seems to be holding up well.

And now Erin's flown back north, and I spend my first night on my own in the new place. On an air mattress on the floor, same as the last couple of nights. It will all normalise eventually.

Only the margins left to write in now. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Boardgames easily fit into the twenty-three-ish bankers' boxes they came in, with I think two leftover boxes, so that's nice. (The counting's a little weird for games: three of the boxes are not quite twice as long as standard bankers' boxes, one game [OGRE Designer's Edition] comes in its own packing box, and there's still a couple of large-but-not-OGRE-large games to be packed somehow.)

My game library's been shrinking for years. I'm getting pickier about what I keep, and what I might want to play, and what I'm willing to teach over and over again. A few years ago Joe Huber wrote something to the effect of "these days I ask myself 'Why should I keep this only Pretty Good game' instead of 'Why should I get rid of this Pretty Good game,'" and that's an attitude that's stood me in good stead.

So: boardgames fit onto two full-size Billys with an extra shelf, and there's still a bit of room for more. I'm pretty happy with that number / volume of games, I think. It's generally speaking the ones I actively want to play.

---

I am slowly adjusting to new-work. It helps that India doesn't observe DST, so starting this week and lasting another, what, eight months?, my early-morning meetings will start no earlier than 7AM instead of no earlier than 6AM. (DST is still the devil, though. Blargh rant timechange rant blargh.)

Not that I'm doing any actual "work," it's all training and HR and such. That may change this week with the team meeting tomorrow; I guess we shall see.

In other news, my previous workplace paid me a full paycheck for my last pay period there. The payroll guy is not responding to me or to the HR person who I initially contacted about it. I suppose it's possible that my leftover vacation just happened to exactly be the number of hours to make up a full pay period but I suspect someone screwed up. At least I didn't get paid by them for this most recent pay period.

---

Sound of Music was mostly good and I want to write more about that but my brain has been mush.

The last time I got a FedEx package I put my PO box number on it, and FedEx complained and nearly didn't deliver my package because they wanted a physical address. So when I told work my address I told them to put the apartment number on there if it was going by not-Canada-Post. And of course FedEx decided to deliver to the post office this time, so my work laptop has been hanging out in the wrong PO box for nearly two weeks. I picked it up yesterday and it mostly seems to be fine. I say "mostly" because I'm getting a Trusted Platform Module error, which sounds like it's either irrelevant or going to break everything and I don't know which.

Meetings have been in the early early morning because they're with teammates in India.

I'm not nearly packed. I've got time but I wanted to be further along than this.

The last week or so I've been kind of shut down due to stress: not knowing what's expected of me from work, packing/moving, Sound of Music (which opened yesterday and went fine, but it is A Lot of time and driving and playing, so definitely stress there). This is not ideal but it's where I'm at for another month-plus, so.

I am, slowly, getting all the pieces in place for moving. Things like insurance, moving company, power, internet, all that stuff. I hate moving. Hate hate hate. I particularly hate doing it on my own. Last time I at least had the moving company in to pack the kitchen, and this time I'll have Erin which is much appreciated but still. There is just A Lot of everything.

So I am getting through and getting by and barely functional, which is really not my favourite. I should have told BMC that I couldn't start until I was bloody well moved and if they didn't like it then they didn't have to offer me the job, but oh well. Maybe I'll remember that for next time: Do Not Do Anything That Adds Organizational Complexity During A Move, No Matter How Good An Idea It Seems.

Bah. I am short on sleep and short on rest, tired and cranky and barely holding it together. In six weeks this will all be a bad memory except for the parts that are a good memory; I just need to hang on that long.

Sound of Music is going pretty well and is mostly fun but also frequently difficult, and I want to write more about that. Maybe next time.

A couple of weeks ago my mother emailed me with "We're moving into a smaller place, so if you want anything from the house, now's the time."

I hemmed and hawed and talked to some people on Facebook (including my aunt Susan) and, well, now I'm at my parents' house in Burke, because they're moving out at the end of the week.

I'm still not sure what to do about my relationship with them. We had a long talk Monday night. The conclusion that I came to is that I am having a really hard time reconciling qualities like "love" and "empathy" with "votes Republican," because to my mind Republican policies are always implicitly and sometimes explicitly opposed to those things. And the end stage of that argument is "Yes, but Fox News is lying to you" and that is not a fight that I have anything like the energy to have.

I had dinner with Alison last night, which was a good re-grounding. The EPA is not in good shape, these past three years, and that's fairly typical across the board for government agencies; I'm not imagining it.

Oh well.

---

This (the second half) is a good description of what it's (still, to some extent) like to visit here. I can mostly fight it off or not succumb to it, but when I'm marinating in memories...

Tuesday I sorted through about half of my stuff, mostly saying either "I don't remember this, it can go in the trash" or "I remember this, and it can go in the trash." In some cases I'm a little sad that I'll never again have the memory triggered by the physical object. More often there's a sense of relief that it's okay to get rid of some of this now. I've kept a couple of smaller things, because they were important in some way, but far more of the Important things are ... not important enough to keep.

Wednesday night I got through most of the rest. This was harder, because as I dig through boxes I'm getting further back in my childhood. The 2.5 boxes of stuffed animals ("friends") in particular took, will take, some work. Or at least some mentally girding myself before being ready to dig into them. This afternoon, I hope.

The difference between "i will probably never see this again (but it's there if i want to)" and "i will never see this again" turns out to be significant. Which is also why I'm here at all, so.

---

Most of the stuff to be moved got packed yesterday or the day before. Now they're wrapping the last of it and loading it onto a truck, and then it goes away.

My parents built and moved into this house in 2000. Before that they (we) lived in a townhouse less than a mile away. I drove home last night thinking "I won't ever need to go west on Braddock and turn left at Burke Lake Road again," something I've been doing literally since I learned to drive. And it mostly doesn't affect me, except for how it does, and I don't entirely know how or why.

you packed up every room and then you cried and went to bed
but today you closed the door and said "we have to get a move on.
it's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead,
we push ourselves ahead."

Well. The kitchen's mostly in order. I've decided on a bookshelf arrangement (Erin suggested, and I moved bookcases into position and grumped, and slept on it and decided it was probably the best option): along one wall in the living room, then turning a corner and extending back-to-back to create a partition between the living room and the dining room. Gives me a booknook, which I like; gives me space to put up all my games facing the dining-room table, where they're most likely to get any use; gives me a wall to put the couch against. Unsure where the comfy chair is going, but I'll figure it out. My only complaint is the blocking of sight-lines from the dining room to the living room and to the big window with a view of the lake. Oh well; can't have everything.

The games are, as of tonight, on their shelves, which helps it start to feel like a home, to the extent that a place does. The living room is now only half piled in white boxes, which also helps. Tomorrow evening or Saturday will be books, and then the office, and then I guess I'll be moved in.

So far it's alright. That is: it's somewhat drafty and expensive to heat, and I need a rug or two. I miss the condo kitchen, at least on the occasions when it had a functional dishwasher. I don't know how the office will work out and I need to fiddle with the heat in the bedroom.

It'll do. As I said earlier today, if I'm still here after, say, eighteen months, something has gone Very Wrong Indeed.

As of yesterday morning, I am a Canadian citizen.

This is, I think, the end of a journey that started a little over fourteen years ago, in the wake of GWB's re-election. ("I think" because there's always the possibility that I'll renounce my US citizenship, though I'm not currently planning to. Too much hassle, no real benefit.)

I surrendered my Permanent Resident card and filed into a room with seventy-some other proto-citizens. We watched a video from Justin Trudeau (I may have sniffled a bit when he ended it with "Welcome home"), and heard a short speech from a judge, and spoke the citizenship oath in English and (bad) French, and sang "O Canada". And then they gave me a certificate and told me that I'm not allowed to apply for a passport for another two business days, which seems fair enough.

Erin was there for support, as was ex-roomie Mya, which was lovely on both counts. Emily and I were civil and courteous and not not-speaking, which was also nice. Emily's cheering section consisted of the two people who I know for certain took sides in the breakup, and they ignored me altogether, and that was alright too.

Afterwards Erin and I went for brunch at Chambar, where I had waffles with fancy syrup (very good maple, and I believe raspberry-caramel; Erin had something involving pistachio and rosewater), and acquired a nice cast-iron skillet from a thrift store.

Today I fly back north, and tomorrow I start making headway on unpacking my apartment. Kitchen first, I think, and then maybe trying to figure out where exactly the shelves of books and games are going to go. Wall space, as always, is a problem.

Onward.

So, I moved back in on Saturday.

That went remarkably well. Tranquility are still fantastic movers. Towards the end when I was starting to run down a few friends showed up to provide support, and we got the bookcases where I (think I) want them and the games on shelves.

Since then I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time and money getting the apartment, mostly the kitchen, to a functional state. I think it's nearly there: there's some random stuff I still want, like a dishdrainer or a trashcan (!) but it's definitely tipped over into 'functional.' And I need to do some serious grocery shopping, of the kind where I don't (wisely) give up halfway through because I'm hungry and tired and cranky. I also also need to get some spices, more than just "salt" and "pepper" and "cinnamon".

The spare room's a wreck, there are boxes of books all over the living space, and I still don't have a real dining-room table. But it's starting to feel like ... like home. Like my own place.

Still not sure how I feel about that.

Also I badly need a real bed. The queen-sized Ikea futonesque guest bed is alright but definitely not a long-term solution, and its replacement is worse. I threw money at Emily to buy a bed for the couple of months she had a renter in the condo, thinking it would be for longer. When I moved I left the other behind, planning to sell it to whoever moved into my room at Mya's. Turns out the new bed is a full-size not a queen, and it's the hardest and least-comfortable bed I've ever slept on. It's gotta go.

---

On Sunday the yoga studio had a special class and small party for people who'd done more than seventy-five classes last year. I was kinda startled to see that I'd done ninety-four, especially considering that a) I started in April and b) I'm gone one week in four or so.

I'm still enjoying yoga. Reluctant to quantify what precisely I'm "getting out of it" but ... I like it. I'm usually happier after a class, I like having a better sense of my physical body. It feels like it's worth waking up early for. And I may even be getting some flexibility in my legs, which is not something I ever thought would happen.

I suspect that my ideal yoga schedule is something like two days on, one day off. That keeps it fresh, keeps it from feeling boring or like something I /have/ to do, and gives me a chance to rest up a bit while not losing everything I've learned or developed.

---

I haven't been writing since I lost my writing group in the aftermath of the breakup. In fairness, I was barely writing for the first half of the year at all. But I signed up for the Rainforest Writers Retreat again anyway.

It's in mid-March; by then I ought to have my house in order (literally if not figuratively) and be able to settle into some sort of schedule. So if and when it provides me with a "right, this writing thing is actually pretty fun" kick, I can hope to be able to turn that into writing a bit each day. I mean, that or it'll convince me that fiction writing is, in fact, a thing that can safely be laid to rest by the wayside for now.

In some ways I don't feel like I'm in a holding pattern anymore, or not as much of one at least. Movement. Growth? Anchoring. Maybe having something that I can make into a temporary home, and doing the work of making it a temporary home, gives me the security to reach back out.