Almost unreal yet, its too soon to feel yet,

I think this is a good pattern, one blog post every other day. Its easy to remember, it means I'm never posting nothing, and it gives me an excuse to sit on the couch for at least an hour on the days that I run.

Which I did today. Go me.

Speaking of running, here is the view I watched as I hopped like a pathetic bunny to the cheerful techno.

Welcome to God's Country. 

So, filling everyone in. 

After I posted last, Sarah and I took a girls only trip into town to hang out and explore the shops. Duncan is a very unique town, a wonderful eclectic mix of artsy, down to earth, high end, thrift, big box and mom and pop. There's nothing you can't find here. It was too cloudy to take any decent pictures, so that will have to wait, but Sarah and I both found stores to love. Afterward we picked up Michael and brought him into town for a meeting with Alex the Realtor. We have some sad news- the building in Shawnigan Lake was bought the day we viewed it, so thats a very big sad for us. But, Alex the realtor found another building for us that is actually a proper theatre which might work. Fingers crossed. We bought more groceries, and things to eat from M & M meat shops, and cat food, and an awesome barbeque and generally acquainted ourselves with town. I fell asleep on the couch while Michael and Cam introduced Sarah to the joys of "Ghostbusters". 

Friday, everything arrived. Including the barbeque. 

Behold, the lives of four people and a theatre company in one room.

Not much got broken- one glass picture frame, the handle off my hope chest, some odds and ends. We did pretty well all things considered. I ran another Wal-marty errand to get a bath mate, some shower curtains, a pair of decent shoes for running, and STEAK. Thats right baby, steak dinner on the barbie!!

Sarah did the steaks, I did the veggies, Michael and Cam cleaned up. Emma was too tired. 

So everything is now here, and we are slowly but surely unpacking everything. It's kinda awesome unpacking a house, its like Christmas with no surprises. 

Today I was up at 8, done with my run by 8:40, took a shower, made pancakes and scrambled eggs, then went out garage saleing with Michael and Sarah where we picked up a few necessities. Like a medicine cabinet for the upstairs bathroom. I'll have to sand and repaint it, but it'll serve our needs well. Then we had leftover lunch, so basically a smorgasboard of everything in the fridge (mine consisted of steak, half a pasta shell, a pizza crust, and two pancakes with raspberry jam). Now we are all having a relax while I steal Michael's computer for blogging, and I prepare to go out and bamf some more. Sigh. 

Ms. Sarah continues her preparations for COLT, which is this awesome outdoor leadership programmy thing which will make her more awesome and difficult to kill by leaving out of doors. This is of great excitement, and we all wish her luck! 

Photos of a pseudo finished living room hopefully coming tomorrow. 

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.

Getting there is half the fun, come share it with me!

I know I know I know, I haven't posted in a day, almost two, I'm sorry. We've been a little busy navigating a HUGE city. How big is it? Observe. 

Everything building is Vancouver. See that little strip of buildings in the back edge of the picture? Vancouver. All of the little islands connected by bridges that you can't see in this photo? Vancouver. 

And Vancouver is AWESOME. 

Its clean. Its artisinal. Its unique. Most of it looks like this. 

No joke guys. Every street. Its like someone left a cotton candy machine on for a million years.

But, a significantly awesome part of our day in Vancouver was staying with Sarah's aunt and uncle, Peter and Natasha Mitchell, and their very savvy two-ish year old daughter Jasmine. 

Why is this picture of them on a boat? Because they have one! Not only do they have one, they have one of these. 

And they let us come out and collect their crab pots with them. In which we caught these

Which we had for dinner. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

More boating fun below.

Tash and Jazzy, being awesome.

Pete and Jazzy, also awesome. 

Paddle-boarding guy, being frankly crazy. That thing behind him? Yeah, thats totally a tanker.

Sarah being badass and steering the ship. For the record, she is generally badass and capable of doing all kinds of specifically useful things.

Michael, who if you cannot tell is actually thrilled to be on the water.

Leigh Paylor. Bringing sexy back. 

Here I will pause to make mention of just how cool this boat is. Its a floating hotel guys. 

So back to how big Vancouver is. All of the pictures below were taken from the boat. Vancouver, the bits that aren't being awesomely islandy, is one big half circle around English Bay, not unlike Traverse City. 

Way way way over on the left is where uncle David lives. 

For human interest, Michael's finger. 

After an adventurous afternoon of boating with our wonderful hosts, Cam and Sarah remained at their house for crab dinner, and Michael and I went and had a lovely visit with Uncle David wherein I met my other cousins Nate and Chris. At about 9 Michael and I were completely zonked out, and we crashed hard. The next morning we bopped around Vancouver for a little while, before hopping on the ferry. 

If the Mitchell's boat was a floating hotel, this was a floating AIRPORT. It had 4 decks available to passengers, including a full sized cafeteria, business lounge, movie theatre thingy, shops, an arcade, and various other awesomness. 

We were the very very very last car on the ferry. 

Seriously. Thats the gate closing behind us. 

But the best thing the ferry had were views. 

Eventually, the ferry slowed to a halt, and we drove off. We are now in Victoria resting, about to go out and explore this last city before we arrive in our new home tomorrow. More tomorrow morning. 

Footloose and fancy free!

I'm having a lovely breakfast conversation with two road workers, one of them from Scotland. I pinned his accent to the north, so I'm getting better at that, which pleases me.

All right, so let me fill you in on yesterday.

In deference to the time changes that we've been going through this week, we let ourselves sleep in. Which still meant that I was up and blogging at 6:45 local time. So you are entirely aware of my morning's labours. The blog posts take me about two hours to put together, because of course I'm on Michaels computer so I have to upload pictures through google plus instead of straight to the computer through a cable. Thank you apple for making life difficult.

After breakfast, we did this.   What is it? The EMP museum. It was AWESOME.                                                                                                                          

                                                                     

Inside we visited two exhibits- AVATAR, which was a fantastic interactive exhibit about the making of the AVATAR movie including real props from the set, some incredible high technology interactive attractions including a booth where you could invent your own Pandora plant, and an area where you can do some Motion capture, which I really enjoyed. It looks hokey, but hey, its fun. Here is a link to my youtube performance at the exhibit.

    

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55I2fKBmkq0

This was a fantastic thing. This is an enormous touch screen display, which allows you to zoom and play with menus and cool bonus art. Thats not the coolest thing about it though. 

All of those little pictures are zoomable with articles and pictures about the making of the film. You see the black squares in the middle? They are cards, about the size and shape of a coaster, and each card has on it a different topic. 

So all you have to do is pick up the card you want to learn about, place it on the screen, and the circle menu comes up with your options. Take it off the screen and put it back in the holder to remove the data from the screen. SO COOL!

No Michael, you may not have one. I'm not taking that thing in for oil changes.

If you've seen the movie, thats one of the actual suits they used in filming. Seriously awesome. 

This museum was just awesome in general. Observe the coolness. 

The other exhibit we saw (besides the AWESOME Sci-fi paraphenalia...did I mention that this is a science fiction/music museum?) was a really fantastic one called "Can't look away; the secrets of horror films". I was in seventh heaven. Contrary to popular belief, given that I am a scaredy cat about silly things like this-

I'm sorry, that's terrifying. I have no faith in a buiding that looks like the end of a jenga game.

I love horror movies. I think its because Dad let me watch Psycho and the Birds, two of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time. I have no pictures of this exhibit because they had actual movie props from things like Nightmare on Elm Street and one of the Alien suits and so on, so there was no photography allowed as not to damage the items. Oh, and Jason's mask and machete, did I mention them? Also the wolf's head cane from the original Wolfman movie. AHH! Geek heaven. I probably spent the better part of an hour down there. Dani, when you come visit me, I'm taking you to Seattle and I'm bringing you to this museum. I could have happily spent the whole day there, but we had things to see. 

Sarah, and I don't blame her in the least, bowed out of spending too much time in the horror exhibit as it is not her cup of tea, and instead walked the labyrinth outside. 

After the AWESOME (I can't stress that enough) museum, we had lunch at Zeeks pizza, which was pretty fantastic too. Cam and I shared a build your own with roasted garlic and sausage, while Michael and Sarah had a 'white' pizza, meaning the sauce was alfredo instead of red. That looked good, but I was in love with my roasted garlic pizza. 

Next stop: Pike Market. 

So many vendors! Seattle really is an artists city, because unlike the usual dime-store kitsch you see at open air markets, almost everything was handmade by the vendors, and of excellent quality. This was my favorite booth:

Seriously, how fun are these hats?!?

The light was too dark to take many other pictures of the market, but it was chock full of flowers, mostly tulips. They really like their flowers in Seattle, we kept passing people with huge bouquets of them out in the street. 

After we'd had enough of the market, we wandered back to the hotel where I got to skype in to my Grandfather's birthday party and say hey to my family. Hey family!

We all crashed for about an hour, our time lagged, hill tromping (oh my GOD the hills here are killer on your knees) bodies demanding some down time, before we made our way back out into the city for dinner. We went to the cheesecake factory, where the food was actually beyond my expectations, and the cheesecake simply sent me into a coma. Sadly, our waitress knew nothing about Big Bang Theory, so all of our jokes were wasted. 

After a long and eventful day, we crashed. I am now back in my breakfast nook, enjoying tea with Sarah and about to head down for the breakfast buffet. Today we make our way across the border (prayers please) and meet up with Uncle David in Vancouver for dinner. 

Just a note for those of you still reading- this blog won't end with our trip. By popular demand, I'll also be documenting the moving in, so stay tuned for more adventures. 

For you mom