Words are inadequate

ME, TURNING OFF MY SUNLAMP AFTER USING IT FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS WINTER: Cripes it's dark in here.

I don't know that the lightbox will save me but I am no longer surprised that I've been doing so poorly.

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In other news, I've started getting strata council email. Yesterday included one from a woman who wanted someone to come open the bleeder valve on her radiator. I considered volunteering but decided that messing with finicky mechanicals was not how I wanted to start my tenure. Another guy on council said he'd go take care of it.

A couple of hours later we had a flurry of emails regarding a massive water leak in that unit.

Apparently the bleeder valve snapped, and when they tried to activate the water shutoff in the unit that also broke off.

I am feeling only a very little schadenfreude that this is a unit belonging to someone who voted Against having more hot water in the building, because it's a) a crappy situation for her (now she's got no heat in her unit at all), b) not great news for units next to or below either, and c) ultimately problematic for everyone in the building.

But still.

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.

So, after all that ... I have a condo.

Woke up too early on Thursday morning, drove to the airport, flew out. Hand-delivered the signed and notarized documents to the lawyer, got "breakfast," and meandered over to Rainbow House where I proceeded to nap for three hours.

On Friday I went over to the new condo to get the keys from Rhonda and poke around inside.

( condostuff etc )

Current state: being extremely stressed out over condo-related program activities.

( stressors )

Time is getting away from me rapidly, so have some odds and ends before I forget them entirely.

Last weekend I failed to find a condo in Vancouver, after looking at a half dozen. There's one that might work out; it's not yet on the market, but Rhonda the awesome realtor sold the person into the condo so she wrangled me a sneak preview. It's in New Westminster, which is Not Ideal but maybe less Not Ideal than other options. Bah. All were either too expensive or not pleasant to inhabit even for the short time I was viewing them. I hate house hunting in Vancouver. I don't know if I hate it elsewhere but in Vancouver it is a constant source of frustration.

Other living options might include "renting," which is problematic because the places in Van I know of to rent from are even less convenient than New West; Victoria, which might be fine and would certainly be cheaper but would entail starting over again on the social front; possibly somewhere with Erin?; and just staying put and being depressed. Always an option, that last.

Other than that I had a good weekend in Vancouver, crashing in Holly/James/Zee's new house (which they bought with Rhonda, whom I recommended, so I can take some small pride in that). It's a Vancouver century-old house: it has high temperature gradients and questionable remodeling choices, but it's also quite pretty. It's in the same neighborhood as my old condo. I miss that neighborhood.

As a consolation for house-hunting nonsense I bought myself a magnetic "wallet" (credit card sleeve) for my phone, because I wanted a better solution for transit passes and hotel keys. The wallet is pretty neat: it connects solidly and is mostly unobtrusive. It also, unsurprisingly, includes a location tag, so I can theoretically find it again if and when I leave it somewhere. No speaker, so I can't make it make noise, but still.

My new Macbook arrived. As noted elseweb, this computer cost more than my first car; to the left, the car caught fire after I'd had it for three years, whereas the Macbook boasts some significant advances in heat dissipation. Its footprint is very slightly smaller than that of my current machine despite having a larger screen (15" vs 16"); it's slightly thicker and not-slightly heavier. Other than that I have no opinion of it just yet, since it's still in the process of restoring from backup. It does look pretty; I'll certainly give it that. I don't expect to be using it nearly as hard as Pelorios, my current machine, so here's hoping it lasts longer than five years.

I finished Wyrd Sisters last week but it's being stubborn about being written up.

Snow and ice this week. Winter would appear to be here.

November has been a shitshow. To some extent it's been a continuation of a shitshow that started in October due to some of my own poor choices (deliberately vague), but it's also had Just Too Much going on. And work has been ridiculously busy as well, which means I don't have that time as downtime to sort through the Just Too Much.

But some of the ridiculousness is finally starting to let up. The condo sold a couple weeks ago, at asking, more or less immediately. Not as much as I'd hoped to get, probably not as much as we would have gotten if we'd sold in the spring, but eh, it's still free money. And now I have my home back, for a little while.

And I took my citizenship test last Tuesday. Twenty questions, multiple-choice. This was the last real hurdle in the citizenship process: now I just wait for "two to five months" for the actual ceremony.

---

I also now own a car, for the first time in seven and a half years. I recall the process as being less stressful last time, but then last time I knew I'd need a car and was willing to finance it, and also I knew what kind of car I wanted (Saturn 3-door coupe) and had found a bunch of them around the DC area. This time I didn't really have a sense of what I wanted other than "under $7500," "traction control," "fun-ish to drive," and "not white or brown." Paradox of choice.

So I spent a lot of time last week and the weekend before poking on Craigslist at used cars, trying to get private sellers to respond to messages, and visiting sketchy used-car dealerships. Among other things I test-drove an Infiniti, which was perfectly nice and had no soul, and a Ford Fusion, which was tempting but had a lot of cosmetic issues that suggested the potential for more serious underlying problems, and an Acura that's basically a Civic that I really wanted to like but that I just couldn't get comfortable in. And a Toyota Solara convertible that was seriously tempting, but taking a ragtop up to the land of ice and snow seems like an exceptionally poor life choice, especially when I don't have a garage for it.

I developed a solid distaste for used-car lots, which surprised me until I remembered that all my previous car-buying experience had been a) at new-car dealerships and b) with Saturn dealers, which were notorious for low-key sales and customer friendliness. This came to a head on Saturday, in the rain, at a used-car lot that appeared to be run out of the back of a minivan, where I tried out a very cheap SUV that was cheap for a reason or rather several, did not test a Mazda because the guy gave me the wrong key and I didn't feel like arguing with him, and sat in a too-expensive white Volvo and ... didn't hate it.

So while I drove to another dealer who didn't actually have the car I wanted available yet, they were just advertising it, Erin found a different (black) Volvo that looked promising: all-wheel drive, traction control, heated leather seats, etc. On her advice I called the dealer to make sure they had the car. Which turned out to be the right decision, because it was at their offsite location. We drove out there, and they had it out and ready for me. And... it fit, and looked nice, and felt comfortable to drive, and was priced near the top of my range.

We went inside to look at the Carfax report (couple claims, but nothing too serious, and also pretty regular maintenance). The guy wanted to sell it to me for about $8000 after taxes and fees and whatnot. I hemmed and hawed and said something about how I'd take the night to think about it, and Erin came right in with "Our budget's $7000, total."

Ten minutes later he sold it to me for that.

So. I am now the proud owner of a black 2005 Volvo S40 T5 with, near as I can tell, just about all the options. The stereo is gonna require some additional parts to get it to talk to my phone, and either the wiper blades need replacing or the windshield needs some serious scrubbing. Plus proper winter tires and rubber floormats and such. So far, though, I'm pretty happy with it.

Its name might be Hactar. I'm not sure yet, and may not be for awhile.

Thoughts on completing my first yoga class in close to three weeks, and my fourth in the last six weeks:

1) Ow.
2) Damn I needed that.
3) Ow.

It's fall weather here. It snowed a couple of times last week up north, which seems a bit uncouth for "not even the fall equinox yet", but I'm okay with September acting like actual fall.

---

Results of various unpleasant tasks this morning:

1) Emailed Chris the accountant regarding what looks like an audit letter from CRA (Canadian for "IRS"). He got back to me quickly with "yeah, they send that to everyone who claims foreign taxes, send me the letter and any docs you've got and i'll take care of it." So I get to do that tonight.
2) Called the remediation contractor. They're still waiting on the strata management company to call them and tell them to start work, despite me having called strata management mid-last week to tell them to call the contractor. They kindly said they'd call strata management themselves and bug them about it.
3) Called the actual IRS about my %&$ tax return, which should have been deposited in mid-May, then by early September. Apparently there have been additional processing difficulties but it's actually through the system now, so I should have my money within four to six weeks, just in time for me to not travel to the US.
4) Have not yet emailed Emily with my last proposal for buying out the condo, but I am not convinced it matters much since I don't think she'll take me up on it anyway.

Regarding #4, even if she were to take me up on it, that would just shuffle the difficulty from "moving" to "finding a roommate," and it almost certainly makes more financial sense to sell the place anyway, and hey, if I'm not going back east in October I can use the time I've already booked to be off work to pack and find a place to live.

Thursday morning I woke up to a sink full of dirty dishwater.

"Must have backed up again when the dishwasher was running," I said.

( spoiler: no )

After all that, the weekend was pretty decent.

( people, housing, stuff )

I'm mostly adapted to being a one-cat household now. It feels like learning to live with and work around a missing tooth: it mostly doesn't matter, except when something slips and you realise that it's not quite right and hasn't been for awhile.

Kai is lonely, as expected. She's taken over the duty of sitting with anyone who's on the couch, and round midnight she complains that there's no one else in the cat-bed.

I don't know how I grieve, not really. I know how to hold together and I know how to be a sympathetic shoulder.

---

Other than that.

Viola: there is a marked difference between knowing what you're doing wrong, and knowing how to do it right. At my lesson on Tuesday I think (hope) that I've finally figured out how to hold my left hand properly and in a more natural / less tense position. Gonna have to drill that into me for actual playing of things other than scales, but it felt right enough that I couldn't go back to holding it the way I'd been at the start of the year. Progress, maybe. I'm also gonna have to learn how to play a close second finger: my hand doesn't seem to want to move like that in that angle. Carnegie Hall.

Also sometime in the last year I developed the ability to tune by fifths rather than by harmonics, which is neat. Harmonics: if you rest your finger halfway up one string, not pressing down to the fingerboard, you get a neat ringing tone that's an octave above the open string. If you rest your finger a quarter of the way up the next lower string, it makes the same tone. You can tune your instrument by making sure these tones are the same. Alternately, if you can hear perfect fifths, you can just play both open strings simultaneously and tune one until the chord sounds right. This is the 'normal' way to tune a stringed instrument, and I couldn't do it until recently. So that's neat.

Work: The act of deciding that I want to look for a new job has been remarkably freeing. Work is still stupid and slow but that bothers me way less. Partly that's because the awful IT guy is gone; partly it's because not caring and not feeling trapped makes the idiocies far more bearable. We're still not getting bonuses, we still haven't gotten raises in coming on two years, but, eh. Whatever. If it gets bad enough I can leave, and meanwhile there's breathing room here to work out some stuff.

Condo: Emily's put in a raised bed on the patio, using leftover 4x4s from when they redid the fencing in February. The kitchen cabinets are being put in late next week, and hopefully the counter will go in early the week after.

I am more and more convinced that this is an acceptable stop-gap place, and a fine place to make money on for no reason (we bought for $480 in October; a somewhat-nicer unit in this building sold in February for $600, and an only-slightly-nicer one in March for $570), and unsuitable long-term. I'd thought/hoped that it was just barely big enough; it turns out that it's a little too small. The lack of insuite laundry is getting to me, as expected. Etc. Oh well. Something else will turn up.

I'm also becoming less and less certain that I want to stay in Vancouver, but that's a whole different fishkettle.