Chris and I are still getting settled in our new life in Fredericton. Things are going well. Kind of slow, but well. I’m very neutral about Fredericton as a city so far. I don’t love it – I don’t hate it. I like it fine. I’m finding that I like it more and more with every week that passes by, so I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s probably because with every week that passes, we are also staring to do more “normal people things”, you know, like grocery shopping and going out as opposed to staying in, unpacking and cleaning.

Well I would hate to bore you with the minute details of the last few months of my life – so for the sake of brevity, let me give you a summary of December and January complete with visual aids.

End of November/Early December – Holy bejesus we’re moving!
This is pretty much just one giant blur in my mind. Things started getting finalized for my deployment to my new job, I went down to Fredericton for three days to visit my new workplace and look at some apartments, we let go of our place in Ottawa, started packing, started telling everybody about our move… Basically I got very little sleep and stressed a whole lot. We also started not buying anymore fresh food and surviving solely on leftovers and mystery cupboard food. That’s never a good thing.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
“we’re moving so we need to get rid of all our food” shitty meal #37: shake and bake mystery freezer chicken with rice and broccoli 8:36 PM Nov 27th, 2008
project management as applied to moving our asses across the country: not so fun, ackshully. 11:49 AM Dec 2nd, 2008
just opened my own NB Power account. I feel all East Coaster-like. 2:10 PM Dec 4th, 2008

Mid-December – Goodbye Ottawa – cram our lives in a UHaul truck – Hello Fredericton
This part was definitely the hardest. Especially the “Goodbye Ottawa” part (and because of that I don’t know how to make my summary brief). Despite what some of you might think, we did not leave Ottawa because we didn’t like it there. In fact, I loved living Ottawa and still miss it very much every day. The last few days at my old job were tough. I miss my Ottawa coworkers everyday still. On our last Thursday in Ottawa Chris and I had a going-away supper/drinks at the Clocktower Brew Pub in the Glebe. So many of our friends came out – they braved the cold, the traffic and the bus strike to come say goodbye and it was so heartwarming. I’m still very emotional about it all as I’m writing this over a month later. The following three days were spent as follows: Friday was my last day at work, after work we picked up the UHaul. Saturday we finished packing our boxes and packed the truck late into the night. I can’t go any further without giving another huge thanks to our friends Josh and Jen for helping us pack the truck and countless boxes of miscellaneous junk on our last day in Ottawa – we would have been so screwed without them. Chris’ dad flew up to Ottawa on Saturday to help us drive the UHaul down to New Brunswick on Sunday. Sunday morning we left Ottawa and got to our new home in Fredericton late into the evening. We ate Greco and passed out. On Monday we got the keys to our new house and met up with my parents who helped us unload the truck (unloading is so much easier than packing!). They took us shopping and bought Chris and I our Xmas present – a washer, a dryer and a new mattress for our bed. Good times! The parents left that evening and Chris and I were left alone in our new mess in our new house in our new city in our new province.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
going away party tonight with our friends. So sad to be leaving the last 6 years of our lives behind. I’m going to miss everyone so much :( 6:32 PM Dec 11th, 2008
packing: the final frontier. OMG moving in December sucks, guys. 8:22 PM Dec 12th, 2008
goodbye Ottawa, it was a fun six years. 11:09 AM Dec 14th, 2008
I’m so excited about my new washer and dryer it should probably be illegal. I can finally stop hoarding loonies after 6 years of doing so! 12:44 AM Dec 16th, 2008

Rest of December + the Holidays

Our first few weeks in Fredericton were quite uneventful. We unpacked, cleaned, did our Xmas shopping, explored the city a bit (which consisted of going to Kent Building Supplies and Canadian Tire a million times). I started my new job on the 22nd – but only worked for a day and a half before I was off for the holidays. We traveled up to Northern New Brunswick for Xmas with our families which was lovely as always (and, as always, we were way too spoiled). I got together with my favourite group of girlfriends for a lovely evening of food, wine and karaoke (unplanned – but definitely amazing). We came back to Fredericton because I worked on the 29th. Chris’ family came down to stay with up for New Year’s Eve/Day which was a lot of fun.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
every morning it feels weird when I wake up and realize that I live in New Brunswick again. 1:36 PM Dec 18th, 2008
attempting to finish my Xmas shopping this afternoon. OMG if I ever move across the country around Xmas time ever again shoot me. 12:13 PM Dec 21st, 2008
hanging out with my mom :) 3:15 PM Dec 26th, 2008
good night and good food with good friends. I love my ladyfriends! 2:06 AM Dec 27th, 2008

January – present
After the holidays is when I really got to get into the groove of things at my new job (because, let’s face it, starting a new job on December 22 is not exactly ideal). I absolutely love my new job and my new coworkers, and I’m not just saying that because they know I have a blog, hahah. I never really felt that there was an adjustment period in my new functions. I mean, the work is different but the pace picked up quickly enough that I didn’t really didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that I was thrown into a new work environment. It’s nice! I’m learning lots and loving every minute of it. My department is pretty cool in terms of technologies and new media: we have webmail access, remote desktop access and social media sites are unrestricted at work. Oh yeah, and we also have a water cooler that has a boiling water tap – how’s that for fancy? Everything else in my life is also starting to fall into place. We’re nearly completely unpacked by now. And I’ve finally started to be able to establish some sort of a weekday routine (I’m a creature of habit), you know, stuff like grocery shopping and exercising and Battlestar Galactica. Heh. We’re slowly resurfacing and it feels nice.

Some pictures:

Some tidbits from Twitter:
going to get my New Brunswick car plates. Goodbye AYJN 864. 10:41 AM Jan 3rd
drinking tea. They just put in one of those water coolers with a boiling water tap in the hallway. It’s pretty amazing! 2:10 PM Jan 9th
going to Bathurst for work later this week – hah! 1:28 PM Jan 12th
trying out Fredericton Greek take-out. I’m skeptical, but hopeful. I miss Greek on Wheels :( 7:19 PM Jan 16th

Well there you have it. For a self-proclaimed no-nonsense concise writer I think I deserve a big FAIL for this blog post. Ah well. Now you’re all caught up with my goings-on.

As many of you know, Chris and I both grew up in New Brunswick. I grew up in Bathurst (Beresford to be more precise) and he grew up in Miramichi (Napan to be more precise). Over the last few years we’ve been realizing that as much as we love Ottawa and the life we’ve made here, we miss our families and friends in New Brunswick too much to justify staying here. We both feel that we’ve moved out, done our thing, seen another place, but now it’s time to go back. (I swear I’m not being paid by Shawn Graham to say this stuff!)

I’ve been looking for a job in the Maritimes since about July now. Last month I got a call from a manager in Fredericton saying she was interested in speaking with me. We spoke a few times, I met with her National Capital Region counterpart here in Ottawa, I flew down last week to meet with the team in Fredericton, and now they’re in the process of deploying me out to their department’s regional communications office in Fredericton! So as of December 22, I will be transferring departments and classification group. My new job title will be Communications Officer, Web and New Media and I will be working for the Department of Natural Resources Canada. I’m really excited about this new job, and I’m not just saying that because I was pretty much ready to accept any position in order to move, I’m actually really excited about the work I’ll be doing there – it sounds interesting and challenging and everybody on the team seems really excited about new media and Web 2.0 and how we can use it to better communicate with Canadian citizens as a government department.

Chris and I found a new house in Fredericton which we will be renting as of December 15th. The place is gorgeous and really big. The final details of the moving dates are still not completely finalized, but we will definitely be on our way to Fredericton in roughly two weeks.

Two weeks… that leaves me very little time to say goodbye to my life in Ottawa as I’ve known it for the past six years and all the wonderful friends I’ve made here. The next two weeks will more than likely be a whirlwind for Chris and me, but I hope nevertheless that we can squeeze in enough time to say goodbye to everyone and close this chapter of our lives on a positive note.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much excitement and sadness all at once.