This looks familiar, vaguely familiar.

For you Dani.

Ok. I have no excuse for not posting. Thats not true, I have lots of excuses for not posting, but none of them are legit except overenthusiastic exploring excitement and the resulting fatigue. So let me fill you in on the last three days.

Ferrys are HUGE. Sarah put it best, she said "Basically its a floating airport." And it is. Shops, cafe's, business lounges, a movie theatre room thing, an arcade, etc. I ran around like a puppy on too long a leash, while Michael and Sarah were all cool and savvy and obviously not tourists while I made a bouncing fool of myself. Poor Cam does not like boats of any description, even Really Big Ones, so he stayed in the pet area with the cats and read a book.

Its a surprisingly short ride, about an hour and a half. Barely enough time for me to explore anything. Sadly no whales, but some local literature filled us in that its actually a little early for them, and that by late May there will be 67 orca whales in the Cowichan Bay for us to go look at in awe.

And then, we were on the island. Specifically Victoria, which is again eerily like Traverse City MI.

Lots of small fantastic shops. Our hotel was actually in the perfect location for us, because right across the street were three comic book shops, a bead shop, and an Indian restaurant. An Indian restaurant which the concierge told us was actually the best in the city. Guess what we had for dinner?

A really cool indoor/outdoor market

So we went for a long pretty walk in Victoria, and then went back to the hotel and made all the businessy-adult-bamfing phone calls we had to make regarding power and internet and moving vans and stuff, before crashing hard. Long journeys have their own sort of sustaining energy which like the momentum of a billiard ball does eventually slow to a stop as it reaches its destination.

For you mom.

The next morning was the long drive up the Malahat road to Duncan. I apologize for not taking pictures, I was very much a space cadet during a lot of the drive from pure sensory (scenery) overload. The drive is astonishing.

Duncan is a lovely town, like Leeland without the lake. We live just outside of the big box section of Duncan, about 2 kliks off the trans canada highway, putting us in biking distance of Wal-Mart (where'd you get a tank? Wal-mart. Oh.) Home depot, canadian tire, rona, etc. Downtown is all artisan shops, cafes, niche stores for tourists. I LOVE it.

The reading nook/music room. Piano +Cello=Awesome!

One side of the living room, also one side of Cam.

So, the house. We arrived, took stock, and everyone claimed rooms. The house, btw, is HUGE. And we are all thrilled. Below, some pictures.

Welcome!

The other side of the living room/Cam.

My Favorite Doorknob

As much of the master bedroom as will fit in a picture.

The soon to be office/command centre.

Someday Sarah's room. 

This was at roughly noon. We met the lovely Aafine, our landlady, and she filled us in on the workings of the house and a little of their lives. She is a really great lady, we all like her a lot. Also, she gave us ketchup. After settling in for a little while, we made our way into town to hit Wal mart and get necessities like milk and eggs and cheetos. After dropping those things off, and a little bit of a rest, and getting sick of sitting on our memory foam pillows, we decided to go out and search for furniture.

I know its always the last place you look that you find the thing you need, but looking for furniture was just silly. We went to a local place first, where everything was marked up by at least $500 higher than its actual value, so we said no thank you and walked away. The second place was the Brick, where we chatted with a very condescending salesman who informed us quite glibly that anything we wanted to buy would take at least a week and a half to deliver and that they had no delivery service, we would have to rent a uhaul and do it ourselves. When we expressed our surprise, his response was "well, you live on an island, what the heck did you expect?" Well we expected a nicer salesperson for one, thank you very much snarky Brick person.

And then we discovered Merits. It was glorious. Everything was reasonably priced and glory of glories, we hit them during an HST free sale, which for those of you reading this in the states is a BIG DEAL. No Tax sales are a way bigger bonus here than they are in the states. So, not only did the extremely nice and useful salesman make us a deal on an awesome curved sectional couch, he also told us "Well, if you're going to buy a couch, I can do you $200 off a coffee table too." "OOoh," said we. "Coffee table awesome!" So we found one. At which point I pointed out that we will also desire a comfy chair. "Ah, " said awesome salesman named Roger "Well if you're going to buy a comfy chair, I'll throw the side table that goes with that coffee table for free." "ooOOh!" said we. "Free side table!" All told, we wound up with 4 awesome pieces of furniture, brand spanking new, for $2,200. No taxes. But what about moving it in? "No worries" says awesome Roger "We do free delivery.""ooh, but it will take so long," we bemoan. "No no," awesome Roger says awesomely "It'll be there tomorrow, is noon ok?"

EPIC WIN. Take that snarky Brick dude. Next time we need new furniture, totally going to Merits.

So having bought furniture, and food, and done a little exploring, we returned to our new home where I ran up the stairs and indulged in a clawfoot bathtub bath. My new favorite thing ever.

Day 2

FURNITURE ARRIVES!

VERY pleased with ourselves.

And it is COMFY and FUNCTIONAL and FITS PERFECTLY. We are all extremely pleased with ourselves. We agreed to chill out and not move for several hours. Around 3 I got antsy, so Sarah agreed to come and explore downtown Duncan with me. We found a couple of really nice new age shops, a pharmacy with friendly helpful staff, a really lovely bookstore with novelty items for writers, and an interior decoration shop with amazing rugs. I need a full time job so I can buy rugs. This must be what being an adult feels like. We then went to the Safeway where I got a discount card, and we brought home roast chicken dinner. I spent the evening running around making lists of things that need mending or fixing, took another bath (I know, I'm becoming hedonistic) and we all generally hung out. I bopped around online hunting for jobs, Sarah started her prep work for Colt, Michael and Cam did...boy things. Video games. Who knows. There were two beds that came with the place, so Sarah Michael and I crashed on those upstairs, while Cam (very happily) slept on the new couch downstairs.

Where I am right now.

Early to bed, because we were up early this morning. This morning we went to Shawnigan Lake to wheel and deal for the theatre building Michael and I want. We walked through the building (which was as perfect for our purposes as Michael had described) and put together a battle plan for obtaining it. So when I'm not blogging, guess who is going to be writing a business plan?

We spent the morning at Shawnigan, and are now home enjoying grilled cheese and potato salad before we wade back into the exploring/job hunting/house furnishing/hardware store/dollar store/ fray.

A word on the kittens.

They spent the first half day hiding in an upstairs closet. Why, we don't know. Hotel rooms were no problem, but put them in a bedroom in a new house and they both go foxhole. After a few hours and some coddling, we let them out of the bedroom to explore the house, which they did over the next several hours. Skip ahead a few days, and they are now happily chasing each other around the house and leaping off the stairwell and generally being cats.

A final word on the house, the renovations, and the blog.

So I've been given carte blanche to paint, which I will do with a glee normally ascribed to Scrooge MacDuck diving into his pool of coins (which, for the record, Mythbusters busted. Doing so would be fatal). So the pictures you've seen of the house are the before pictures, I will be including after pictures as things come together. This will also be how we communicate whats going on in the house to Sarah while she's gone to Colt for the next three months.

I'll also be renovating myself. New house, new province, new circumstances, time for a new start. My father recently completed the Couch to 5k running program, which I have now taken up. I won't tell you how much I weight right now, just that I look in the mirror and I know I have to get back under control. There are a lot of reasons for the weight I put on, but many more good reasons to take that weight back off. So today I went for my first run.

And I feel like hell. But this is what I was told to expect. So I will provide you with a before picture, and lets see just what I can do with traditional dutch stubborness and a pair of cheap running shoes.


Is there more to tell you? Yes there is. But it will have to wait for tomorrow.