life

Fuck, does it ever stop raining here?

…

Okay, I know I’ve been saying for months how much I missed the rain, but I didn’t miss this much of it. It’s been pissing down for over 5 hours, which is about 4 hours and 30 minutes longer than what I’ve been used to in Kelowna.

But, um, yay, I’m back. I’d be excited if I weren’t so exhausted. Good thing I have the next week off before I start my new job; I may just sleep through all of it.

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:

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.

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

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:

Technically it’s a vacation, technically it’s not: I’m taking next week off work and spending it in Vancouver. I arrive sometime in the evening this Sunday, and leave in the evening next Sunday.

It’s a vacation since I’m not working, but not a vacation since it’s home. Hell, I would probably take a few days in Seattle in there but I have run out of money, having shoved it into RRSPs and paying down debt since I wasn’t expecting to get any time off.

There’s a brunch for me that week which may or may not contain duck poutine. I am very nervous about that, but in a good way.

This time off was decided upon yesterday about 4 pm, so I haven’t made many plans yet and the week is pretty open (though the weekend is filled up with Kimli‘s birthday shenanigans and the hypothetical duck poutine). Anyone on for brunch on Saturday? Or doing stuff during the week? If only I had more friends who were unemployed, damn you all.

I also plan to give myself mercury poisoning via the consumption of immense quantities of tuna sashimi.

I’ve been surprisingly saddened by the recent decision by my parents to give away their Manchester Terrier Seven. Surprisingly because I don’t really like the dog, he barks at every noise and is all nose and elbows, plus he’s a dog. I like my dogs like I like my men, fluffy and quiet and only around for brief visits.

I think my parents got Seven in 2003 or 2004, I don’t remember exactly. He was the runt of the litter (of 9, hence the geeky Star Trek Voyager “Seven of Nine” name) from a breeder in Terrace, BC, and I was visiting when they got him (though I didn’t name him, I was so over Voyager by then). He was cute, but he wasn’t cuddly, though he eventually became so in spite of being all pointy bits and unfluffy, when curled up into a ball beside you in a chair.

Our dog Dom, a Maltese Poodle (very cuddly), had died a few months or maybe a year previous, and he’d lived to be 15 or 16 or so and I’d grown up with him around. Dom’s best friend/worst enemy Samantha (my cat) had died maybe 2 years before that, at 14. I sort of felt when they were both gone that it was the end of an era, as we’d got them when I was in Grade 5. Here they are, old farts at this point, too weak to fight over the sunbeam:

I guess I see pets as family, and I would because I’m an only child so it’s either that, imaginary friends or hardcore drugs. I feel like I’m losing a family member here, and I did something I never do, which is question a parent’s personal decision. I argued with my mom a couple times in the last few days about how I think this is a mistake, but ultimately we agreed that it’s the best thing because she and my stepdad obviously have no soul.

Bah, it still sucks. The reason, really, is that given their move to a small condo from a very large house, plus other life changes, taking care of the dog is harder than it used to be. And the dog is a purebred and while stupid is still quite cute, so there have been a bunch of people wanting to take him. He’s not gone yet but he could be this week, and I’m sorry I was too tired to visit this weekend and say goodbye.

The other household pet is Mom’s Maine Coon cat Spooky, whom they got maybe a decade ago from the SPCA, who guessed the cat’s age at that point to be around 10. That cat is old and crotchety and its fur is all clumped up and matted, and I figure it’s still alive only out of spite for us. Spooks’ kidneys are starting to fail, though, so we probably will be saying goodbye to her sometime in the next year. Oh well, it’s hard to be that upset about the death of a pet that’s had a good life and is frankly on borrowed time at this point.

I think the real reason I’m more upset than I expected is because I’m imagining what it would be like to have to give up my cat Shebang, and that’s a really, really sad prospect. As far as I’m concerned, my home is not home without my pet, and neither are my parents’.