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Give to me miles of tall evergreens

People have been asking me if I’m excited about moving back to Vancouver and starting a new job.

I don’t think I’m excited so much as I’m happy, because I’m going home.

There are those who don’t get why I’d want to move back, since it’s so big and crowded there and the people are mean and it rains a lot. Home means different things to different people, and every time I’ve flown or driven to Vancouver there’s a certain point where I’m standing outside with the cool wet air on my face and I feel like I’m where I should be. That’s what home is for me.

I have three more weeks until the move, but I’ve got this song on my iPod to keep me going. The Lonely Forest‘s newest release is a love song to the Pacific Northwest, called “Live There”.

(Here’s the Stereogum link if you want to download it.)

Friday Cat Blogging: OMG NEW SIMON’S CAT

I start packing this weekend, so I see this video as a PSA.

In less awesome news, I did hear a week or so ago of more violence against cats here in Kelowna, which makes the sticking-cats-in-a-sealed-container-in-the-sun from last month just seem kinda mean. I’m not going to link to the article or video, because the title is enough: “Cat mutilations now total three”. How do such people exist, who would treat animals so cruelly? I also heard about a local guy tying his dog to the back of his truck and driving at full speed. I really hope it’s not a trend.

My cat may complain about cruel treatment but don’t believe her. Obviously I am very obedient and comply when she puts her foot down.

Feline permission

On the move

I keep finding myself without any free time these days as I try to sort out how the hell I’m going to work this move.

Last Friday I gave my 2 weeks notice, and then was reminded that I signed some contract a year ago stating that I’d give 4 weeks notice. Suppose I should pay more attention to stuff like that in future.

So I had planned to move at the end of August but then this 4 weeks thing suddenly threw a wrench in. Now my last day at [current employer] is September 10th, except my last day at my apartment is August 31.

The good news is that a friend is letting me and the cat stay with her in Westbank for the first bit of September, and then my dad said I could stay with him for the rest of September, so that’s settled. Shebang and I will not be sleeping under any bridges next month, unless we want to of course.

The not bad, but awkward news is that I have to not just move my furniture back to Vancouver, but I have to store it for a month too. I’m currently trying to organize getting one of those mobile storage containers to keep my stuff here in Kelowna for September, but I’m not having a lot of luck, and there are only so many companies. I may have to hire movers to take my stuff and move it into a storage unit in Vancouver for me if I can’t do anything here. I’m going a little mad from this because I’m not good at organizing anything anyways, plus work is too busy for me to deal with this stuff properly.

I do have a job waiting for me in Vancouver, and if you’re a friend who’s known me a few years it’s the same job as the one I was supposed to get at the end of 2008 but didn’t due to a hiring freeze. I’m switching from a pure DBA role to Tier 3 tech support, where I will be helping DBAs and developers with their database problems rather than being the one with the problems. I look forward to not being on call and not working unpaid overtime. I won’t know what to do with myself once I give back the blackberry but I will figure it out eventually.

This is also my first job with “Senior” in the title. I hope I can fake the maturity.

A few people here in Kelowna have commented that phew, moving back to Vancouver means that life will suddenly become much more expensive for me! Which is a bit silly of a statement to make if you don’t know me and my lifestyle. A few comparisons:

in Vancouver in Kelowna
Rent $820 $780
Sushi dinner $9 $14
Personal training session $50 $70
Pedicure $30 $60

Granted that’s an odd list (except for rent; note that my place in Vancouver was much larger and nicer than this dump I’m leaving, and wasn’t surrounded by white trash neighbours), but I used to have sushi twice a week back in Vancouver, and here I’ve barely had it since the quality suffers and it’s a third more expensive. Take out and restaurant food is more expensive here in general, and again not as good on average. I’ve ended up either spending too much money, or having cereal for dinner.

I cooked chicken today but then my cat stole it. Which just proves I shouldn’t cook anything my cat would want to eat. That leaves cookies.

I never went to a single personal training session here because $70/hour is absolutely ridiculous unless it comes with a happy ending. But yeah, various services are much more expensive in Kelowna, maybe because there’s less competition.

Anyways, that’s it. I thought I’d update you since last week’s posting was kind of open-ended, really. Now it’s time to pass out from exhaustion.

And in other news

I’m moving back to Vancouver. I miss all the cheap sushi and women.

I keep forgetting to mention

I’ve been in Kelowna a year now. I’m still surprised I survived outside Vancouver, though I suppose the coming up for air once every month or two to buy shoes and overpriced moisturizer helped somewhat.

Despite the hopes/worries of various people I have not found a husband, bought a house and/or got knocked up in this time. Sorry/hurray (pick one). Hell, for Kelowna I’m an old maid at 32, and most single people here at my age are divorced! I’ve been reassured that there is a man for me out there, to which I was too polite to reply, only one?

I don’t think I’ve really changed at all. I wear more dresses because it gets damned hot outside (we’ve had some weeks where it didn’t dip below 30C until midnight) and skirts are so well ventilated, aren’t they? And I cook more because people don’t eat out much here, not even for brunch, it’s so sad. But that’s about it, which isn’t surprising, they say your personality is set by the time you’re 30 so I’ve been like this for at least two years.

Not much else to report at the moment. This is the song currently stuck in my head:

Today’s randomness

One situation you don’t ever want to find yourself in is when you’re alone at a friend’s house, wearing nothing but a towel and answering the door to the police. You’d probably never imagine that scenario, but it happened this morning and I spent the rest of the day rather confused by the absurdity of it all.

Everything’s fine, it had to do with a neighbour’s house alarm going off. But now the Burnaby RCMP have my name and address (“how do you spell Pandosy?”) and possibly some notes about how I was found in a house that’s not my own and in a towel. It was pink. The police were wearing flak jackets. In Burnaby. Well, I suppose you gotta air those things out once in a while.

As you can surmise I was in Vancouver over the long weekend, and up until the end it seemed like it was just going to be fun but not strange in any way.

It seems I missed out while I was away, as a building up the creek from me asploded and dumped toxic stuff into said creek and now we’ve got our own little Gulf crisis where there are dead fishies in the creek (that I didn’t know actually had fish, which is just as well since it doesn’t now) and smart ducks that are staying out of the creek and hopefully smart humans who are staying out of Okanagan Lake but I wouldn’t count on it. Oh well, who needs nature when you have buildings going kablooey?

The Westjet flight attendant (male) called me “sweetheart” when I boarded the plane today. He needs to stop watching so much Mad Men.

That is all.

Music Recommendations: slow covers

I’ve been listening to quiet, subdued music this week. I collect songs I can play to calm myself down, to relax, to shush my worrying mind. I’d be curious if a real life music therapist could do a better job, but they probably don’t go around recommending indie rock to their clients.

Here’s a song I’m overplaying this week: Lewis & Clarke‘s very chilled-out cover of The Cure‘s “Disintegration”:

(Compare with the original if inclined.)

Another cover I’ve been digging lately is Elbow doing Peter Gabriel‘s “Mercy Street”:

(Original here.)

I don’t usually like covers, but these are two of my favourite bands, and I think they’ve treated the songs well, putting in their own interpretation rather than just doing karaoke, which is all too common with covers. My opinion is that 95% of covers are complete crap and can only diminish the song, but that’s just me. I know some of you think covers are the shit and you’d rather listen to The Barenaked Ladies’ “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” than Bruce Cockburn’s original. Or you think that The Barenaked Ladies actually wrote that song, because you are 12. Gah, kids today.

I mentioned Elbow to a friend the other week who listened for a bit and then referred to them as something like “Coldplay Wannabes”, which is crap since Elbow’s been around far longer, so if anything Coldplay wanted to be them way back when. And in any case I think Grounds for Divorce is one of the best songs to come out of the past few years. There’s even an orchestral version.

Real life blogging will be returning eventually, honest, but people have been complaining about a lack of music recommendations so here are some.