So, here’s the new place. Yeah, it’ll be a bit of a change from the Downtown Eastside. Thanks to Madame Metro for the photos of the place upon which I, myself, have not yet laid eyes.
KVR trail
This is the trail that goes directly from the cabin to downtown and beyond, the Kettle Valley Railway trail.
Panorama Palace 1
The palatial gateway. Vineyards on the left, horses on the right.
Panorama Palace 2
Panorama. Lake to the left. And also to the right. Panorama Palace just off to the right of the centre line. So, yeah, bit of a change from this.
T’is no surprise to regular readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog that we have piratical instincts at Operation Global Media Domination HQ, formerly Mildew Manor, soon to be TK. So it should be no surprise that as we slowly pack up for The Grand Migration, we are finding buried treasures of all sorts.
Shahee must have stowed them safely away in one of his cleaning frenzies while I was out of town, because I found them in the storeroom on the very tip top of a bunch of shelves. God only knows how I’ll get them down now that the construction guys have stolen my ladder (and, incidentally, thrown out my Starbucks table; still, it’s worth it to me just to get the deck cleared off, and I DID catch them before they threw out my $500 bike and my slab of Carrara marble) but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Today I snagged about two dozen sturdy new boxes thanks to a friend who has just moved herself, so tomorrow is packing day. I had arranged for Robert to come over and help me with the heavy stuff, but now I’ll defer that to next week once all the shelves are emptied and he can help me chuck out the old particleboard bookcases. I’m sure I can build something better quality and cheaper than moving the lot of this water-logged crap. I’m not taking anything that’s broken or waterlogged, and the only shelves I’m taking are solid wood.
Also, there are great benefits to having friends who are cheap, as they are relentless at finding me bargains. Bargains? Try a truck rental for a buck plus mileage and storage at $35 a month, that’s how much of a bargain. I may be able to afford this move after all!
The Place is 14 acres of vineyards and horse paddocks on a major scenic trail, a ten minute drive from downtown. It is a one bedroom cabin with a full basement and about 25% more space than I have in Vancouver, for exactly the same cost. Every horse owner I can entice to board his/her horse on the property lowers my rent by the amount the board brings in. If I feed and muck out, that amount is doubled.
Since I got fat, I’ve been looking for low-impact ways to get some physical work in, given that my career involves sitting on my ass typing, and since I was a groom in a hunt stable right out of school and have been pining to get back into the horse world for years, this seems ideal.
So the plan is to move my stuff into storage on Feb 25, either here or (more likely) up in Ruralopolis where it’s cheaper, and then when I get to move in, on April 1 (no joke) bung the lot in and sort it out later, acquiring or building more bookshelves as may be.
Maybe I should tell The Sister I’m moving out of Vancouver, after 32 years ( HOLY FUCK I AM OLD) but I don’t want to shock her.
Well, I haven’t gotten the final word but so far so good. It seems that they’re amenable to my compromise, providing I get the paperwork done, which I’d always assumed was a condition of the whole deelio.
Three people volunteered, out of the blue, to meet me at noon and come help me pack up the apartment. How many showed up? None.
So much for NannyLula‘s desire to take one of my workshops, ever. If she showed up with Julian Assange hanging off one arm and Bono hanging off the other, covered in diamonds and waving fans of $10,000 bills, I’d turn her away. I was wrong about Nanny Lula: turns out I didn’t give her the time/place deets. All the above now applies to the others. As for the others, well, I’m sure the universe has something in store for them.
Tonight is the Big Meeting with the co-op board. They’ll want me to have $3000 and/or gotten my tax assessments up to date and correct for the last (I dunno, every time they mention dates they add years retroactively) five (currently) years. Given that the burglars took half my papers (thank GOD not the T4 for the work I did in Yellowknife) and I was stuck up in Penticton until a few days ago, and that since I got back I’ve been trying to pack up my apartment in case I get evicted effective tonight, that ain’t an option. Not in any universe governed by the laws of space and time.
Oh, and my very nice potential business partner insists on a meeting this afternoon. Like I’m gonna be any use at that.
Yesterday I did fifteen, count ’em, fifteen loads of laundry, since it doesn’t make sense to pack up dirty clothes. Today, the task is going to be bunging all of that into boxes since I don’t exactly have the time to curate my collection and will have to do a huge editing session wherever I end up.
Which brings me to Union Gospel Mission. A multi-service nonprofit on the Downtown Eastside, they have done great work and I’ve always been a big supporter, so when I realized I was going to be offloading a lot of things like my old bookcases, my hideabed, and some bedroom dressers, they were the first people I called. We organized a pickup time, and all seemed well. They’d even take the clothes that didn’t fit me anymore, provided they were in good condition. SUPER!
When I said three people bailed on me yesterday, what I meant was “three people and one multi-service nonprofit.” The driver emailed to say they were short-staffed and he didn’t want to put the volunteers to work helping him load my donation. That they are short staffed because they don’t have nice donated things in their shops to sell to raise the money to pay salaries seems not to have occurred to him. Seriously, after four or five days of emailing to organize this pickup, to bail on the afternoon before? UGH.
In any case, without a car, and with no working buzzer to let people in to pick things up, the donation scenario becomes complicated. Nigh impossible, particularly by the 31st. I may just toss it all out onto the sidewalk and watch the scavengers take it away.
In any case, I know by March 1 I’ll be in a better place one way or another, a place where the guy at the next table doesn’t pass out reeking of vodka at 10am) with or without my stuff (if the co-op decides to somehow hold it for ransom). There really isn’t any point holding on to my stuff, since I don’t have and am not likely to get $3000. And if they keep it, they have to store it somewhere more secure (Hello, break-in and flooding!) than the apartment anyway. Thank god I got the jewelry out when I did.
raincoaster 