And everything will work out fine.

We’re in it and still incredibly unpacked – but it’s still pretty nice! We’ve been homeowners for about a month now and I think we both feel quite comfortable with that title (no buyer’s remorse yet!) We’re taking part in sundry adult activities like lawn moving, composting, going to Home Depot like it’s our jobs, owning ladders and being concerned with property taxes. It’s quite the change!

The move went semi-smoothly, the only casualty being my favourite mirror, which can and will be repaired. Both our awesome families came down to Fredericton to help for the weekend – which was super awesome. Thanks/merci!

Since then, wallpaper has been peeled off, pink paint has been painted over, a new countertop has been ordered and a new living room set has been bought. And that’s just a small part of the changes we’re making around the place. I have a feeling homeownership will be a vicious cycle of redecorating and maintenance/upkeeping. Ah well. Better to spend my money on something I own than something I rent.

Abby’s been… well, I think this picture says it all for her:

You might have also noticed that things are looking a little bit different around here. Yup, I’ve finally gotten around to switching to a new layout. What do you think?

Caveat lector (reader beware): These are pictures of the house with the current residents’ stuff in it. It will look much different after we’re in there (obviously).

Ground floor

The living room – on the main floor.

Guest bedroom – on the main floor. This room gets gorgeous light. We’ll be getting rid of the pink.

Dining room – on the main floor. It’s sort of like one big long room – the living and dining areas. Those patio doors lead out to the wrap-around veranda and gazebo!

The kitchen – on the main floor.The only thing staying the same here are the floors and the cupboards.

Kitchen breakfast nook/bay window – on the main floor. I LOVE this. The curtains on the bay window have got to go.

Also on the main floor – full bathroom with bath/shower, front door entryway and side entryway from the garage.

Basement

Den – in the basement. The house is on a gentle slope so we have a full walkout basement – it’s pretty great!

Bathroom – in the basement. Brand new!
LOVE the whirlpool tub.

Also in the basement – lots of storage, a huge laundry room, one unfinished room which will become a band room/home recording studio, and a bedroom.

Second floor

Master bedroom – second floor. Notice the his/hers closets, w00t.

Also on the upper level – lots of storage, a bedroom (craft room!), and a bathroom in desperate need of some remodeling (but it has an adorable clawfoot tub).

Because we suck, we don’t really have any pictures of the exterior of the house. Will snap some as soon as I can. But in a nutshell – it’s a 16 year old Cape Cod on 1.39 acres of land (the concept of “land ownership” really weirds me out). We take possession of it in two weeks (also – we haven’t started packing yet).

More pictures in my Our home! Flickr set.

Yes, the rumours are true (by rumours I mean countless tweets and many Facebook status updates), Chris and I just bought a house. Exciting, right? Right!

We had been casually looking at MLS listings since December, and due to the wonderfully slumping economy (I am only benefiting from this recession-business so far), we decided we might as well get a real estate agent and start having a look at some houses. Well lo and behold, we found a house we really like on the first day! Amazing! So we went to see it again after having slept on it (figuratively) for a few days, and decided to put in an offer.

I will spare you the excruciating details of our horrible negotiations, so in keeping with my “for the love of God and all that is holy, be concise!” motto, here is a point-form summary:
- visit house for second time
- put in offer on house on Tuesday
- *nervousness*
- get 1st counter offer on Wednesday afternoon
- counter-counter offer
- little bit of vomit
- counter-counter-counter offer
- counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- counter-counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- various forms of indigestion
- standstill – $ 2,500 apart
- counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-counter offer
- *puke*
- vendors: fine, but we get to keep our fridge
- us: ugh, ok, fine! (Friday)
- (2 weeks’ wait for some stupid condition to be waived)
- WE GOT THE STUPID HOUSE!
- us actually starting to be happy and excited

So yeah, phew, the whole process was super anticlimactic and nerve-racking, but you know, now we have a house, so I guess that’s kind of neat.

I’ve got some pictures, I’ll try to upload them to Fickr this weekend so that may all marvel at its beauty (and look at the wallpaper borders that I’m going to peel off and subsequently test out the wood stove with).

I’ve tried to not rant about everything that has gone wrong in our moving process, about the hassle it was to change our cell phone plans, about our $425 monthly power bills, about our upstairs neighbour who tokes out on our front porch every morning at 7:30 while I’m walking the dog, about… ok nevermind, now I’m ranting about everything.

But there are two things that warrant a full-out bitchfest blog post: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours and Fredericton residents’ lack of common sense when driving.

First: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours. Get this, in New Brunswick, if I want to pick up some groceries on a Sunday night, you know, because I need food to live, I can’t. Why? Because grocery stores are only open from 12 to 5 on Sundays here. Do you know what kind of chaos only being open for five hours on a Sunday causes in grocery stores? The massive kind, that’s what kind. As someone who was a frequent Hartman’s-walker-to-er for some Sunday evening pantry replenishing action whist living in Ottawa, this is really, really hard to get used to. But it’s not just grocery stores, ohhh no!

A few weeks ago I was in Moncton for some training and on Tuesday night upon my arrival I figured “Hey, I’ll go for a stroll to The Bay” (since we don’t have one in Fredericton *sad panda*) only to show up and find out that Highfield Square mall closes at 7 from Monday to Wednesday. Like, what?! What mall closes at 7? To console myself, on my lonely walk back to the hotel I thought “Hey, I know what’ll cheer me up! A Caramel Latte Bene from Timothy’s!” (since I have yet to solve Fredericton’s Timothy’s mystery [I see people walking around downtown with Timothy's cups all the time, yet no one can tell me where the Timothy's actually is - it's all very strange]), but nooooo, the Timothy’s on Main street closed at 8! It’s a coffee shop people – it’s where people go at night! But it doesn’t even end here!

The other week, I got word that some liquidation store in town had bought the stock of a gone-out-of-business wedding dress shop and had really nice wedding dresses on sale for $50, so I rushed there right after work, only to get there at 5:50 and find the doors already locked because they closed at 6. Who closes at 6? Gah! What I don’t get with this whole “closing early” thing is that all of these places are retail-type businesses. How do you expect to get any customers who have day jobs come into your place of business? Sometimes I’d like to know what goes through people’s minds here.

Second: Drivers here are too nice or possibly sometimes just plain old misinformed (I haven’t really figured out which one it is yet). I can hear you saying “Too nice? How could that be?”. Let me tell you how that can be. There are certain rules and conventions, when driving, that make things go smoothly for everyone. A perfect example is a left-hand turn: if I’m waiting to turn left at an intersection and there is a car waiting to turn right directly across from me, he has the right of way as soon as there is a break in traffic due to his proximity to our common desired lane. Last month a motorist kept giving me exasperated hand signals because I didn’t “get” that he wasn’t turning like his signal light indicated because he was letting me go. Dude, it’s your turn, just be on your merry way and I’ll resume looking out for my break in traffic, mmmkay? Another good example of this behaviour is at four-way stops (although with this one I would have to lean towards ignorance as the cause of my frustration and not so much niceness). At a four-way stop whoever gets there first gets to go, right? WRONG! People just don’t seem to “get” the concept of four way/all way stops here. They’re like free-for-alls. Get with the times people! I would really hate to see a roundabout anywhere near Fredericton; it’d be such a gong-show.

To end on a positive note, I will list a few of things that I do love about being back in New Brunswick (because there are lots). Perhaps they’ll get their own blog post some day.
- Being able to say “Good morning!” to people while walking to work in the morning and not get dirty looks.
- Housing prices.
- Seeing our family all the time.
- Fredericton’s so-far awesome restaurants.
- Northumberland Dairy’s various products.
- Being able to buy a house “in the country” and still take the bus to work/drive to work in 7 minutes. (More to come on this house-purchasing business at a later date!)

I’ve always described myself as a very visual person. But this morning, while peeling a clementine, I realized that I’m really a tactile person.

And really, how could I have been so in the dark about my tactile tendencies?

I touch everything when I’m shopping. When I was a kid I used to drive my mom crazy touching all the clothing in stores, especially silk and satin (fabrics which really gross out my mom for some reason). I’m still the same today. Chris and I’ll be walking along in the mall when suddenly he realizes he’s walking alone. Then he’ll usually hear a high-pitched “Ooooo!” sound behind him, just to turn around and find me petting old-lady clothes. True stories.

I also get a really strange sense of satisfaction out of peeling things. Many different things. Some aren’t so bad – like clementines. I like it when a clementine is so easy to peel that you’re able to remove its whole peel in one piece or motion. Ahh… life’s little pleasures. Another category of things I like peeling are protective stickers. You know, like the ones that come on your new cell phone’s screen or on mirrors when you buy them. I love those. I die inside every time someone peels one off in front of me. I could never deliberately buy a screen protector for any of my gadgets because I just want to peel them off. Just last week, Chris had to reprimand me for peeling the protective coating off the PayPass machine at the Time Hortons down the road from our house. Well if you think I have issues now, wait ’til you hear about the other thing I like to pick: scabs. Yup, I’m a scab picker. Not only do I compulsively peel my own scabs, I am also completely willing to pick the scabs of others. Needless to say this has lead to many simple lesions such a mosquito bites to get blown out of proportions and lead to permanent scarring (is that redundant?) when really, if I had just shown some scab-picking restraint, it wouldn’t have left a scar. I’m pretty gross.

I wonder if there is a philia associated with my extreme tactile tendencies? My google-fu is failing me.

I think I have it.

Do you remember in elementary and middle school, those kids whose moms would bake cupcakes for Hallowe’en, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and whatever other holiday was deemed important in your community (or by the kid in question’s mom)? Well my mom was one of those moms. For me it just wasn’t Hallowe’en in elementary school unless the whole class sat together in a circle on the classroom floor in their costumes made of aluminum paper-covered boxes or bought at K-Mart and ate a huge container of crafty cupcakes that my my mom had brought in. Then all my classmates would come up to me and say how good of a baker my mom was and how lucky I was.

For me, it all started in grade 12 when I decided that I was going to bake and decorate sugar cookies as Xmas presents to my high school friends. From that day on, time (like last Xmas when there was just no time for my sugar cookie-making ritual), money (I was pretty broke at certain points of my university career) and oven access (all I had was a toaster oven in residence in 2002) permitting, I’ve always baked cookies and made cupcakes for special occasions. I don’t know why I do it. To me it’s not really an option – it’s just kind of what I do. Although I’m starting to think that it’s something I caught from my mom.

So as I finish up this blog post because my Valentine’s Day 2009 cupcakes should be about cooled enough to frost and decorate by now, I will leave you with some pictures of some of my creations for the past few years. Here’s to hoping that one of your coworkers has the holiday baking gene too! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Starting this week, Chris and I are members of the gym in my work complex. We’ve both been so busy in the last three months that we didn’t really get a chance to exercise all that much, and as a result of that our pants are incredibly tight. Since we can’t really afford new pants and don’t really want these extra uninvited love handles to stick around – we both signed up. After all, it’s not like we couldn’t afford the $10 a month fee. If you think about it, it’s cheaper than buying new pants. Heh.

I’m going to be starting to run again since my ankle is pretty much fully functional again from last May’s pothole of death ankle-spraining incident. Just to make sure I don’t overdo it, I’ll be starting Cool Running’ Couch-to-5K program from the beginning again. I’m a little paranoid when it comes to running and cardiovascular activity in general because I have a heart murmur. So I figure it’s just safer to start slow and work my way up at a gradual pace. I did the Couch-to-5K thing when I started running last March and it worked well for me. By starting it this week, I should be good to run a full 5K around mid-April. By then hopefully I’ll be able to run outside – which is what I really enjoy.

The gym also has various other instruments of torture such as a rowing machine, elliptical trainers and all sorts of scary weight machines. I might venture off the treadmill and try some of them eventually. Have any of you ever used any good training programs for any of those machines? I’d like to try them, especially the weight machines, but I really don’t know where to start.

The gym doesn’t seem to be that busy at all. Chris and I will mostly be going at night and on weekends and I think most of the other members go during the day or immediately after work. There’s a big user-controlled sound system in the gym which we have full control over when we’re there alone. I want to start burning CDs of non-sucking workout music. The only really good non-sucking workout song I know is The New Workout Plan by Kanye West (how à propos) and the only band I can think of right now that might be a possible candidate is MGMT. I really need suggestions on good workout music. Please fire them away! The only condition I have is no Ace of Base-type stuff.

See you at the gym!

Oh hi, it’s so nice of me to join you. Seriously, though, hi, and yes, I’m still alive and well. I blame my prolonged blogging absence on: last few weeks at my old job/packing/moving/unpacking/getting settled in a new city/starting my new job/the holidays/still unpacking… and the list could go on and on. But I’m just making excuses. I’m a bad blogger – that’s all.

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.

I’m incredibly happy to report that I saw my favourite dog person in Centretown this morning at the corner of Dundonald Park speaking to a lady I know from my housing complex (she owns two wiener dogs!). From afar it looked like just any normal morning chat, but as I got closer, I noticed something protruding from his jacket. What exactly was it?

A tiny nine week old sweater-clad Boston Terrier puppy named Izzy that promptly greeted me with puppy kisses on the nose.

I am so happy for him right now. I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling since 8:15 this morning!

A lot of you who follow my Twitter or see me in real life already know about this, but Chris and I have some pretty big news: we’re (finally) moving! Now this isn’t just any small in-town move, we’re moving from Ottawa, Ontario to Fredericton, New Brunswick.

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.