Portland and Stuff

We had a great weekend in Portland. It was so nice to see friends and family again. We celebrated with everyone; we were eager to see people and they were eager to see us. It felt great to be so welcomed, like we'd never left.

I didn't have much of an agenda, but even so I got to tick off a bunch of boxes on my list of Favourite Things To Do in Portland:

• Shop for CDs (used, of course) at Everyday Music (there's nothing like it in Vancouver, or most of Europe for that matter)
• Shop for magazines at Rich's Cigars
• Buy some Stumptown coffee (ground for French Press)
• Have a pint at Laurelwood (the seasonal Vinter Varmer no less)
• Have some German ale (Spaten Optimator) at the Rheinlander
• Get a slice of Flying Pie pizza (sausage and mushroom!)
• See a matinee at the Academy Theater
• Shop for hard-to-find foodie items at Trader Joe's (actually, Margo did this)

We enjoyed lots of food, drink, and excellent company. For readers who were there ... thanks for your warmth and hospitality and we look forward to visiting soon.

Monday was our moving day. It was a sad parting, especially for Sarah, who cried for some time at leaving her friend Nika. Margo met the movers she'd hired at the truck rental, and I met them all at our storage unit. The loading went smoothly and quickly. Then we were off - two movers in the truck, and us in the rental car. We agreed to stop at Blaine so I could swap passenger seats with them, since I had the Customs paperwork.

Ever since we made landing last year in Edmonton and declared our personal effects to follow, we wondered exactly how this would play out. We knew we needed to present these papers and inventory at the border, with our possessions, but we had no idea what to expect: would they be searched? Would we need to provide additional ID or papers? 

But the actuality was surprisingly smooth. I showed our papers at the booth; we were directed to a bay on the side, entered an administration building, and our papers and IDs were checked again. There was no inspection (though I'd expect there was some form of sensor inspection as we passed the booth). The border wait was just five minutes, and this only added about ten minutes to that.

Then we unloaded it all. It was a challenge to find space for it. But the unloading was just as quick. The movers, friendly and professional, took their leave of us to enjoy a hotel in town before returning the truck to Bellingham and taking the train back to Portland (all at our expense, as agreed).

Now we have hills of boxes, though the hills are getting smaller. Box after box is being scissored open, emptied, broken down, and added to a stack for recycling later. (It will be another van hire.)

Some of our things are nice surprises, like seeing old friends. For me, these include office shirts, several pairs of trousers I didn't know I had, bike panniers I thought we'd given away. But for much of the things, we're wondering why we ever stored them. We agree we saved way too many things. We'll struggle to place what we keep, and lots will be Craigslisted and Freecycled.

Also, with all this new furniture, we're seeing our first dust gathering on it, and realizing that soon enough, we'll have bum imprints in our futons, and our white sofa covers will need laundering. 

But it is nice to have all our things in one place, finally, and to enjoy them again. Me, I'm enjoying listening to albums again. For the last few years, with only an iPod and dock, I've only listened to ripped music. I've figured out how to use our Playstation to play CDs without needing a TV, so I don't have to buy a CD player.

Sarah is enjoying the boxes of childrens' books that Margo saved for her from her own childhood. Sarah is quite excited to have books from favourite authors like Roald Dahl and Judy Blume in her room, and we find she gets lost in a book quite easily.

It's also great to have our dishes again. The Italian mugs, the wine glasses, the familiar ceramic of the plates and bowls - it's so nice to see and use them again.

Built

It's been a busy week and I haven't had much time to write. Our furniture is all built now. We've gone from an empty house to a fully-furnished one in about six days. Over that time I have assembled or otherwise unpacked and prepared:

• 2 sofas
• 10 bookshelves
• 5 bookshelf extensions
• 2 bed frames
• 3 dressers
• 2 bedside tables
• 2 end tables
• 1 coffee table
• 1 media table
• 4 CD shelves
• 3 desks
• 4 kitchen chairs
• 3 office chairs
• 1 lounge chair and footstool

We have a thick stack of assembly manuals with names like markör and hemnes and poäng. I must say, I have a newfound respect for IKEA engineering. Not only do they design the furniture, they must also design the boxes and their packing schemes, they must ensure there is clearance for tools at all fastenings, and the joins usually offer a single affordance, so it is impossible to join pieces incorrectly. The wordless manuals are brilliant: the illustrations show how pieces should be positioned, and the steps ensure that the progression of assembly is smooth - with little exception, each piece of furniture can be assembled by one person, in a fairly contained space, with no additional supports or tools needed.

You wouldn't believe how much cardboard we were left with. We also had big bags full of recyclable plastic (mostly type 2, some type 4). There was some paper to recycle, and some cardboard as waste.

Today, after a morning interview, I met up with a guy with a van I'd found on Craigslist, and he and I moved our stuff from the vacation rental to our new home. We arrived in Vancouver with our luggage, we had about a dozen boxes shipped from England, but when Margo's new clothes and Sarah's new books and toys were added to the load, we had a completely full van.

After unloading at the new house, we loaded the cardboard and plastic bags, and once again the van was completely full. We went to the Burnaby recycling centre and unloaded into the appropriate containers. The cardboard went into the back of a garbage truck, and we'd filled it so high that an aide came out to run the crusher at the back. He had to run it about three times before we could resume filling it.

So now we have a furnished house. We could live here if we had dishes. Tomorrow we go to Portland to visit, and on Monday we bring up the rest of our stuff - some more clothes, our dishes, books and music, and art.

Furniture!

Yesterday a truck pulled up behind our new house and I helped two guys unload dozens of boxes of IKEA flat pack furniture into our living room. Before opening a single box, I took a few pictures.


You see, Margo and I have never bought a lot of furniture before. In our Portland house, we just shared the furniture we'd each accumulated over our adult lives. We bought a crib and a dresser for Sarah, and a new mattress for us, but that was about it. The twin futon I bought right after college became Sarah's bed, for example.

Before moving overseas, we liquidated pretty much all our furniture, so here in Vancouver we were starting from scratch. There's a lot of stuff you need in a house, if you think about it. Like a toilet brush. Can you live in a house without a toilet brush? Probably not well.

Margo has been looking forward to this day for years. No more shipping boxes as end tables! She has spent days surfing online catalogs and making plans. One day I came home to see her rotating roomfuls of furniture with a 3D design tool she'd downloaded.

So we've gone from an empty to full house in about a week. Above are two sofas, chairs, stools, lots of bookshelves, desks, and end tables. An earlier run to IKEA got us lamps, linens, coat hangers, and curtain rods. Another delivery brought bed frames and futons for Sarah and I. And next week at the end of our Portland visit, we'll return with books, clothes, compact discs, a mattress, art, and dishes.

I've had a busy few days assembling furniture. Some things go fast, like the bookshelves; some things, like my dresser, take hours. Margo was around today to help. My hands are getting quite sore. I'm guessing we've got about two more days of assembly. But it's great having a home again.

Power

We are enjoying the setting up of our new home. We've done a lot of moving in the past few years, and moving out is the worst as you have a houseful of stuff you have to liquidate quickly. Moving in is the sweetest because you get to buy a bunch of stuff. Margo is especially enjoying this. She's been looking forward to this for years.

So Margo's been spending hours on her laptop ordering many things unknown to me. A delivery from Sears arrived recently and one box contained a Craftsman power drill. It's a massive chunky thing with a huge battery pack, one spare, and a quick charger. I remember asking Margo, isn't this a bit of overkill just to hang some curtain rods and coat racks?

Then came the flat pack furniture. Margo's cabinets went together with speed. Our bedframes were trickier - they needed Allen wrenches and many joins didn't afford room for a power drill. So I torqued and torqued until my fingers got sore. The next day I was at a hardware store for sundries and got a set of drill bits that included Allen keys. The rest of the bedframe assembly went much smoother. I'm nursing a blister on my right index finger that I probably didn't need to get.

Margo keeps asking me how the crow that I'm dining on tastes. Not too bad.

Election

It will be unsurprising to our readers that we were hoping that Barack Obama would prevail in the American election and it was gratifying, after watching the returns with dismay in 2000 and 2004, to see the numbers coming in as the polls closed. To see Pennsylvania and Ohio recorded as blue on the news coverage so early in the evening was so exciting.


We could see on the CBC that there were groups of Americans and Canadians celebrating in pubs downtown and we wished we could be with them. Unfortunately, Sarah was really sick with a kidney infection and we weren't going to be going anywhere that evening. So, Mike went to the BC liquor store and bought a six pack of beer and some crisps from the marked across the street, and we had a small celebration at home ... weeping a bit as we watched the acceptance speech and the jublilation of the crowds in Chicago and all over the country and around the world.


Having lived overseas for a couple of years, I can say that even those with a conservative ideological tilt were befuddled and could not understand how George Bush remained president in the states for two terms. They felt that Americans were uneducated, or incurious, or racist or SOMETHING - how else to explain the support for somebody so ideologically extreme and intellectually incurious? To have as the leader of the free world somebody who disdained any discourse or discussion of difficult and divisive issues was incomprehensible. This election has me feeling that Americans have been redeemed in the eyes of the world (and I do think that this is important - that we are, and should be, increasingly part of a global community) and that in rejecting racism, hate speech, and negativity, we have affirmed our best values and maybe turned a corner.


I know that there are some who believe that the positive response around the world to this election may be because other nations think that we will be weaker and easier to push around. I don't think this is the case. Despite everything, the perception of the American people has not seemed to me to be all that negative - the Bush administration was seen as highly problematic and there seemed to be puzzlement how such a good people could accept and support that government. I think this election has re-affirmed the belief of people around the world that the people of the US actually do believe in justice and fairness and equality and all of the other values that we like to consider as characteristic of the American ethic.


Happy days! - I hope President Obama's intellect and steady temperament prove sufficient as the US navigates the rough seas that I fear lie before us.


Love,
Margo

Unemployed Again

Well, that was a quick three weeks.

I haven't written much about my job since first getting it. I had hoped to get more settled into it first. But this afternoon I was laid off. I don't even have all the details as to why just yet, as I was informed secondhand. But I think there was a conflict between our owner and our customer about my role. The customer wanted someone in my position who can work into late evenings without notice, which I'm unable and unwilling to do.

I don't believe I was hired with this expectation. I'm not even sure the customer would have expected it at first. But I think the customer was acting under intense pressure from another customer of theirs and this project just became crazy.

Me, I kept hearing reassurances that this project is unusual, that normally projects are much saner with this client. I can't say. Maybe it was very bad timing for me to be hired and then tossed into such chaos.

And what a mess it was. Very little planning. One of our staff took on the role of writing specifications for the client - otherwise we'd have none. Requirements were fragmented across dozens of emails and one or two conference calls a week. I got one day of knowledge transfer from another coworker, and that was it. No designing. No modeling. No analysis. Just write code, write test classes, and move on.

This project also had external dependencies and resources that we didn't have access to. We coded our parts, but when things didn't work at integration, there were many late nights trying to diagnose problems. We worked under pressure trying to figure out what we could with our limited access.

I managed to get home at reasonable hours, but lost a good deal of sleep from anxiety. We never knew which nights the client would be working late to test our system, and expecting us to help fix things.

The worst for me was not knowing what to expect. The first few weeks of any job are tough until you learn the rules and patterns, who to ask about what, and what you can and can't say and do. And you might have a honeymoon period, but soon you have to prove yourself. I think I may have proven myself; I certainly got good feedback from some coworkers, and I think my competence is not in question. I think the issue in my case was my availability and not my ability.

I've done a bit of consulting - I even had a consulting business of my own, many years ago - but I've mostly worked on products and services and have managed to avoid such chaos. So one good thing from all this is that I know more what to look out for when interviewing. But I still think that if it hadn't been for this particular project and its demands, I'd be doing all right.

This is frustrating for me as it looks quite bad to lose a job after just a few weeks. I plan to get references from this attesting to my skills. It's also a concern as our field doesn't provide stability with age - there are always younger coders who will work longer hours for less money, and experience doesn't mean as much as it may in other disciplines.

So it's back to the job boards for me. But at the moment I'm not sad. More relieved; I look forward to getting better sleep and spending more time with my family.

Halloween, IKEA, US Election

Halloween

Sarah has reported that she had her best Halloween ever. I'm not sure what made it so fabulous, other than the contrast with her time in England, where the holiday is not really observed much. She reprized her skeleton costume from a few years ago and was a big hit at school. She hung out with a friend from upstairs for a bit in the afternoon and then I took her out to trick or treat after dinner. It had been raining all day, but there was a break during the early evening which worked well. The other thing that worked well is that Sarah does not like candy with nuts or peanut butter, so Mike has been the recipient of the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and I get the Snickers and Mars Bars. It was a nice night and I again appreciated the basic friendliness of Canadians.

IKEA

Yesterday Sarah and I went on an epic shopping excursion to our local IKEA to purchase the linens, curtains, lamps and rugs for our new home, plus stuff like coat and shoe racks, mirrors and the other miscellaneous stuff needed. We still have a big order of furniture to come. I had hoped to be in a position to get furniture that does not require the use of an allen wrench to assemble, but this is not my reality. Fortunately, Mike is a competent assembler of flat pack furniture.

It was a big undertaking as we filled 4 large grocery carts plus one trolley. Sarah was a trooper, helping with the carts throughout the trip. We called a minivan cab and Mike met us at the house to unload and schlep everything into the house. Then, we spent the afternoon assembling the bases for my desk (Sarah and Mike did this - Sarah enjoyed hammering in the dowels the most) and putting together all of the lamps etc. It was a long day and we were all pretty tired by the time we walked down the hill to our apartment, stopping for a pizza dinner at our local Italian place on the way. I went to bed very early and slept long and well.

I am really looking forward to making a home again. We always felt very temporary in England, even using a couple of our moving boxes as tables. The house was very nice and our landlord was lovely, but the furniture and curtains were not what we would have chosen, and, at least for me, it never really felt like home. I am excited to hang our pictures - we have brought back some art and antique maps from Europe, as well as our photographs of our travels, and I'll be getting these framed and hung up once we get our furniture organized. I have no school at all during the month of December, so I have lots of time to get the house sorted and to enjoy the holidays.

It has been a lot of fun to pick out lamps, linens, curtains, etc. I think we will be very cozy in our new place. We have a fold out sofa and an extra full-size futon bed, so there is lots of space for visitors.

Elections

I have been more than a little bit obsessed with the US election. Although we have had a recent national election in Canada, and provincial elections as well, we can't vote here and haven't been here long enough to feel passionate about any of the candidates. I think everyone who reads this blog will be aware of my political leanings to the left - not unusual for a social worker - and I am first and foremost relieved that we will soon be seeing the last of Bush. I do not think that his secretive, combative and anti-intellectual style has been a good thing for the country or for the presidency. (I for one would be happy to have a president who is smarter and better informed than myelf and Bush was sadly deficient in this respect - as would be Sarah Palin.)

I think one reason that Obama has done so well, aside from the economic crisis, is that there is a sense that the Bush presidency pushed the country too far in a particular direction - any move to the left can perhaps be seen as an attempt to move the Federal government back towards the centre.

Anyway, I won't rant at length, but I don't know what I'll do once the election is over and I am no longer obsessively surfing CNN, Politico, the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and (even though I hold my nose to do it) Fox News.

Well that's my post for the day. Hope all is well with our friends and family. We invite you all to plan a trip to Vancouver sometime soon - we'd love to welcome you to our new home!

Love,
Margo