Life: The Holidays Beckon

It's been a couple of very busy weeks at work leading up to the Christmas to New Year's break here at the university. There are labs moving over the holiday, and they all want their 20+ year old chemicals removed from the old labs. And, of course, they all waited until this month to do it. We're still not done with them, and won't get to them until the new year now.

Waste shipments always make for extra icing on a busy week, and with our desire to clear out as much from our building as possible, it meant that we shipped out more than 70 drums worth of waste in two shipments on consecutive Fridays. Thus, last week was a blur as we hurried to process everything we picked up. I can fit a lot into my days, but some days it just doesn't go fast enough anwyay.

I have gotten some fun in too. I got in a couple of games of Flames of War last weekend. I have also had the chance to sort through some more of my stuff to figure out what else I can do in terms of getting things finished on the miniatures front. I hope to concentrate on assembling all that I can over the winter. I have been working to settle on some armies to try, and will fill in gaps as needed to get things painted and playable over the spring and summer.

So now that that insanity has slowed, it's time to gear up for the trip to Edmonton to visit the families. No doubt there will be way to much eating and sleeping, but both Aerin and I are looking forward to some slack time. Tonight we finish getting everything packed up and ready to load into the car tomorrow afternoon. We both have to work the morning, but that will be mercifully short and filled with things to kill time. I will get my pickup stats done between now and then, and do a corrective inventory for our beyond frustrating online waste system.

Christmas Eve dinner with Aerin's family followed by present opening with my family will lead to a late night, and we will both sleep long on Christmas Day. We're having an early dinner with my family, and my grandmother and uncle should be there too. The rest of the day will no doubt be spent eating yet more food and sweets interspersed with games and movies. Boxing Day is presents with Aerin's family and then yet more food, and hopefully some bargin shopping.

The rest of the time is pretty free form. I will be working on a proposal for a game project I am collaborating on with another Flames of War player. There is also some final proofing to do for a guy from Italy that has been patiently waiting for me to finish since August. I may actually get some Flames of War in too.

Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!

Life: Settling In

Two weeks go by very quickly these days. The last week of November is almost a non-existent blur in my memory now. Where did the year go to already?

With the arrival of the freezing cold weather (-40C with windchill) I am very happy that we got our move done when we did. I can't imagine trying to load and unload a truck in these conditions. The people we were going to rent from originally were hopeful they could move before Xmas, but the long term weather looks none to promising for that even though they have a company doing the move for them. When I stopped by to pickup some mail that had made it there before our switch in residence they had all kinds of boxes stacked up waiting to go. I'm glad Aerin and I managed to spare ourselves that fate right now.

Have you ever heard the phrase "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"? That's the way things have headed the last week at work as everyone that is moving labs over the holidays wants old chemicals and waste containers dealt with before they move. Our team leader's last day was on Friday before his three and a half weeks of vacation, so we're now short handed with more than enough on our hands to keep us busy. We sent out our 9th waste shipment of the year (compared to just seven last year), and we make one more the end of the week to clear our things so they are not sitting around for a couple of weeks unattended. Certainly never a dull moment at work these days, and I'm certainly looking forward to the time off between Xmas and the New Year we get while campus shuts down.

So the last couple of weeks have been busy with work by day and settling things into the new house by night. Aerin has had some busy nights doing shiatsu treatments for clients. We spent the Monday night after our move at Ikea spending a good chunk of our security deposit on new furniture that we needed but didn't have space for in the old apartment. So we got a new bookcase and a kitchen island amongst others.

The living room and dining room here are as big as the old apartment kitchen and living room/dining room put together. Unfortunately the kitchen doesn't have as much counter space or drawers/cabinets as we had before. The kitchen island has helped a little, but isn't going to quite get us there maybe. We'll continue to look at how to deal with that at a later date once we see how things are going for use with the current setup.

I have a room all to my self for my game stuff. I'll be reorganizing a few things in there, but for the most part I can start setting aside some time work on things without worrying about our tripping over everything or having it out for a few days between the time I have available to work on it.

We have a spare bedroom still that is currently a collection space for everything that hasn't found a permanent home or just needs to be sorted out. So we can host a few more bodies than we could before. Our old place was pretty tight with just the two of us; it was downright crowded once you got to three or four people. And it'll hold all our (mostly my) outdoor gear.

And the bedroom is quite nice too. We got the blackout blind hung yesterday, so that helped me sleep a little better last night. The street light is pretty bright through the existing blinds, so it was nice to have it a little darker for sleeping. I just have to remember to close the spare bedroom door if we plan to sleep in since it's across the hall and lets in a lot of light.

As a bonus we can now have a proper house warming, or even just have a few friends over, since we now have actual space to host people without sitting in each others laps. The house warming will happen some time in the new year.

Time to get some things done here. Cheers!

Life: Move Complete

So the big day arrives for the move. We've got a lot of boxes loaded with stuff, and could have loaded more if we'd actually had space to put them.

So Saturday started out spectacularly. Apparently a reservation with Budget for the truck isn't actually a reservation - it's a go to the front of the line, first pick that expires if you don't show up immediately upon opening. When I arrived to pickup the truck, there wasn't a single one in sight. I talked to the guy at the desk, and was informed that since I wasn't there at 8am my truck was gone. Needless to say I was pretty mad and used a few choice words.

The thing that steams me the most is that even when I said to the guy I made the reservation with on the phone that I needed it for 9am, all he said was the reservation was for 8am and didn't mention a single thing about it being 8am or nothing. Needless to say I will be writing a not very nice letter to Budget about their policy and inability to communicate that policy.

After a call to Aerin, she quickly had a new truck lined up from Discount. I had to go back to the airport to get the truck, but I can't say enough about how much better my experience was with them. And I saved at least $60 over Budget's gouging. We could have gotten a bigger truck since we couldn't quite fit in all the furniture, but it was a short trip to get the rest moved. In the end it took a little longer to move with the late start and second trip, but we were done in about 4 hours with the help of our friends and co-workers.

So a big thanks to all that came out to help!