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?

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.

There’s this man that everyone in Centretown who owns a dog knows. He can always be found either at the park, walking to the Arboretum or stopped somewhere chatting someone up along with his trusty dog. He always carries with him what seems to be an infinite amount of dog treats, which makes him quite popular with the pooches (well, with my gluttonous pug anyway). Last Spring he found out his dog had Lymphoma. Over the summer, the dog got skinnier and skinnier and seemed to be slowing down every time we saw her. This morning I saw him walking alone and I immediately knew what it meant because that dog never left his side.

He told me his dog died Friday morning, and as he was talking to me and hiding tears with his sunglasses, I felt like such a knob because I clearly did not know what to say. I thought about the usual losing a pet is so hard and losing a pet is like losing a member of your family (which, thinking back on it, I think I did say to him), but those are just words and clearly they don’t apply to his situation. As far as I’m able to tell, that dog was this man’s family. I’m absolutely serious when I say that that man loved that dog way more than a lot of people in our society love their spouses. His life revolved around her and now he finds himself with long days to fill without his trusty, ever-loving and ever-present companion. He told me this morning that looking back on it, he probably should have tried to have some activities that did not revolve around his dog in the last 12 years because now he finds himself piecing his life back together and having to deal with himself after spending every waking moment for the last 12 years caring for his dog. But I bet if he had to do it over he wouldn’t do anything differently.

Once the pain of his loss eases I hope he realizes just how awesome of a life his dog had and can look back on their lives together and remember the good days (which I’m sure she had up until that Friday morning). I can say with certainty that his dog probably had the best life any dog ever had. This man spent every waking moment of his day with that dog for the duration of her life. How many people can say that about the people in their family or their children?

I feel rotten because I didn’t know what do say or do around him this morning and now it’s really bothering me. I didn’t want to ask too many questions but also didn’t want him to feel like I didn’t care, because I really do. I feel that pet loss is in many cases comparable to losing a family member for some people, and I’m sure it was the case for this man. A pet is a companion who loves you unconditionally, with whom you never fight, who’s always around to lick your toes to crack you up when you’re feeling down and who’s dependent on you to care for them everyday. That can leave a big hole in a daily routine. I just hope he can dig himself out of that hole and possibly find another puppy to make his life complete someday.

Such rotten news to start off the week.