Full Status Newbie

Friday was a sad day for me. It was the day I traded in my Texas driver's license for a New Brunswick license. My plan was to just lie and say that I had lost my Texas license because I really wanted to keep it for sentimental value. Unfortunately, my illegal plan was foiled.

Becoming a full status Newbie caused a lot of rage for D, and I got sucked in too. It all began when I was at work and D went to register his van that he had imported from Texas. At Service New Brunswick (SNB, where one goes for all of their New Brunswick needs), he was told that he had to have insurance on the vehicle before he could register it. He then went to an insurance agent where he was told that he couldn't get insurance without a NB driver's license. So, he went back to SNB to get his license. Apparently they have a system that is connected to all North American DMVs and when the woman at SNB entered D's driver's license into the system, it said, "cannot find a record" or something like that. Apparently, if there is a problem with the system, it usually says "system down." Because it was not saying, "system down" the SNB woman became suspicious that D's license was fake. She told him that he would have to get Texas to fax confirmation of his driving record. D called the Texas folks who are responsible for such things and the woman told him, "We do not fax to Canada." Really? There isn't even a country code involved. Just dial 1 and the fax will go through!

This is when I get a furious phone call from D spewing obscenities. I suggested that we both go in together, with our matching driver's licenses and our driver's abstracts that we had gotten from Texas before we left. That would perhaps make her believe that his driver's license wasn't a fake. She entered my license number into the system and it also came up as "cannot find record" also. I guess this was a bit more reassuring since both licenses were not coming up in the system. Our driver's abstracts were dated for May 25th, which was 5 days before we left Texas. This was also not acceptable because "anything could have happened between then and now." She suggested we get Texas to fax new ones. We explained that the Texas folks "do not fax to Canada." She could tell we were getting really frustrated, so she called the head office to see if the abstracts were acceptable. After about 20 minutes and several transfers of her phone call, she got the approval to issue us new driver's licenses. This information was conveyed to us with the very stern warning "When the system is back up and they investigate your licenses, if there are ANY issues, your NB licenses will be revoked immediately." She made us feel like criminals. WELCOME TO NEW BRUNSWICK!

After our marathon session at SNB, we went to get insurance, and then came back to SNB to register the vehicle. The whole process took about 5 hours from start to finish, but now we are official Newbies.

Also, can I nominate NB for the worst license plate slogan in Canada?

How could I forget?

D's pride and joy and arguably the best part of our new purchase - the workshop/garage (and his bike):


Shop from LDH on Vimeo.

While I do love the fireplace, I am not a fan of having a double garage, complete with automatic garage door openers, in which I am not permitted to park my car.

Moving Day!

Moving Day was officially June 15th, but I have been slow to get up to day on this here bloggy-blog. Now the moment you have all been waiting for, pictures of the new house!

But first, a story. On the big day, we rushed to check out of our hotel and head to Sackville. We were supposed to meet the realtor at 8:30 am for a walk through of the new house, and then await the official closing. We got there a bit late, and that was just the beginning of our annoyingly annoying day. After walking through the house, we were supposed to call the lawyer and let him know that everything was okay, and that he could start the closing process. I tried to do that, but when I called the lawyer's office, the phone was just dead. No ringing, no nothing. I called D's phone, and it worked just fine, so it seemed that something was up with the lawyer's phone. Fortunately it is a small town, so we just drove down there to see them in person. We handed over our certified check, told them everything looked good, and the lawyer's assistant said it should take about an hour for the mortgage money to be deposited into the account. We went to the bank to open an account, and then walked the dog around for a while. After about an hour and a half, the lawyer's assistant called to tell us that the money was still not there and that she had a call in to the mortgage company. Since we now knew it might take a while, we headed down to the local lake so Nova could play in the park. It was a really windy day, but the sky was mostly blue. It looked really cool down at the lake.

Also, Nova was kind of scared of the waves, which was funny.


Nova at the lake from LDH on Vimeo.


Soon it was after noon and the lawyer had originally said everything would be done by noon at the latest. I called over to the lawyer's office and was told that the computers at the mortgage company had gone down this morning, which is why they had not yet transferred the money. But don't worry, it will be sent right now!!

Because we had the dog with us (and that's a whole other story - we were supposed to drop her off at a friend's, but kind of forgot) we couldn't really go anywhere that involved being inside for too long. So aside from going to the lake, we spent most of the day sitting in the van in various parking lots around town. Tim Hortons was sort of our home base, but we also sat in the grocery store parking lot and the liquor store parking lot.

By 3:00, after 6 hours of waiting, we still hadn't heard anything, so I called the lawyer's office again. This time I was told that there seemed to be a problem with the wire transfer, so the assistant had called the bank to put a trace on it because it had been sent, but had never arrived (I am not really sure how these things work). So, more waiting.

Finally, at about 4:30, we got the call that we officially owned the house, and we could come pick up our keys! Thank Jeebus!

So, here are some pictures:

Master Bedroom (We do have actual sheets on the bed now, but this was the first day. Also, we had to saw off a piece of the boxspring to get it up the stairs):

Spare room (for all the visitors we hope to have):

My soon-to-be-awesome home office:

Stairs and hallway to the enclosed front porch (My camera doesn't do justice to the colour of the walls, which are lime green):

The front porch (soon to be populated with chairs):

The kitchen (complete with human dishwasher):

The living room (before we moved in because right now it is a disaster):

A bad picture of the dining room (I will post another when we get our new table):

Downstairs bathroom and mudroom (also taken before we moved in):

And Nova's favorite place (not including the 1.7 acre yard), the back deck:

Time to celebrate!

That last picture took about 5 takes to get. Clearly we are not gifted in the realm of self-portraits.

The Journey Pt 4 - The Finale

The next two days of driving to get to Moncton/Sackville were fairly uneventful with the exception of sitting in traffic in Montreal for 90 minutes!! What a waste of my life! I have never had the pleasure of driving in Montreal before, so I didn't really know how bad it could get. I should have known, since everyone I have ever talked to about driving in Canada has told me that Montreal has the worst drivers and the worst traffic. It was only 3 pm, so we thought we would just miss rush hour. Fools! By my calculations on Google maps, the route we took was 44 km and should have taken about 30 mins. It was pure torture. On the positive side, it definitely made me happy that I was moving to a small town where there is no rush hour.

Quebec had some of the most interesting and unique road signs I have seen. Unfortunately, by the time I had figured out the wackiness of a sign, it was too late to find my camera. I was able to find a picture of my favorite sign on the internet, though (although now I can't find the source.) It means, "Watch out for strong crosswinds." I feel this could have been conveyed without using some weird Bigfoot-looking dude. Do the Quebecois really believe wind comes from a hairy monster?



We stayed in St. Apollinaire, which is near Quebec City. (A few days later I found out that my credit card had been duplicated, and I suspect that occurred at the hotel.) Even though we were on the other side of the St. Lawrence from Quebec City, the next morning we had to deal with a TON of traffic again both near Quebec and Levis. Not only do I loathe traffic, the van could not handle all the constant braking with all the weight it was towing.

As we got further towards the Gaspé Peninsula and closer to New Brunswick, the scenery became more and more hilly and green. The green of the hills and the blue of the sky and the water were so bright and vivid. It was beautiful. The van, however, loaded to the gills and pulling a uhaul that was also loaded to the gills did not like the hills as much as I did.



I really wanted a big, grand "Welcome to New Brunswick" sign that I could use for a picture commemorating my entrance to my new province. On the route we took, however, there was no big sign, unless I completely missed it. I was really looking for it though. Oh well, I decided to settle with this sign commemorating our arrival.


Except that we needed to spend a week in a motel in Moncton before we got to move into our new house. Bor-ing.

The Journey Pt 3 - Northern Ontario

We arrived in Monetville around 10 pm on Day 3 of the journey. It was still light out as we rolled into D's dad's place. I love that about Canadian summers! D's dad's place is on a lot that was subdivided from D's grandpa's farm, which is about 150 acres. This is why the population is approximately 200 people. I can't seem to find the actual population since Monetville is apparently a part of the municipality of French River, which comprises several "communities." D's family actually lives in North Monetville, which might be even smaller!

Here is a shot of D's dad's house from the road that goes through the farm. The extreme zoom at the beginning combined with a rough-running engine in the van make it a little shaky. Sorry!

House from LDH on Vimeo.

I had been to Monetville once before, but that was 10 YEARS AGO! I was so surprised when I calculated that because it really didn't seem like it had been that long since I had been there. I had seen D's parents over the years, of course, but none of his extended family. Last time I was there, I didn't get to meet everyone, but this time I met all of D's dad's 5 siblings and a few of D's MANY cousins. Of course, no visit is complete without some time spent with the grandparents, and these particular grandparents are damn adorable.


We also went into North Bay to visit D's maternal grandmother, but I neglected to take any pictures while we were there. I assure you that she is also adorable. I did take a couple of pictures down by the Lake Nipissing, which stretches all the way from Monetville to North Bay. The lake is so massive that it almost looks like the ocean.



Between North Bay and Monetville is Sturgeon Falls, which is where D went for most of his High School. Sturgeon is a small-ish francophone town famous for it's Chip Stands (french fries for you Americans) that are just off the highway. D's favorite is the RIV chip stand, so we of course had to visit it and get some good, old-fashioned Canadian poutine. (To be considered poutine, it MUST have cheese curds. Anything else is just an imitation).

These stands are basically big huts that sell mostly fries, but also burgers, corn dogs and other things you would find at county fairs, like beaver tails (in Vancouver we call them elephant ears).


We also took a trip into Sudbury, a formerly very dirty mining city. It is still a mining city, and it is still fairly dirty, but they are working hard to make it more clean. One improvement is a taller chimney for one of the main smelting operations that helps the soot blow out of Sudbury and into surrounding towns, such as Monetville.


It is actually really insane to think of all of the soot that has been spewing into the air for so many years. Much of Sudbury's rock face is just black from years of being coated with black soot. I stole a rock from beside the big nickel that shows over a half inch of black soot accumulation on top of the actual rock. (I can't find it right now to show a picture, though). Last time I was in Northern Ontario, I didn't go to Sudbury for some reason, so I had never seen the big nickel, which is apparently actually made from nickel. It is a tourist attraction intended to draw positive attention to all of the metal mined there and to distract from negative attention to all the pollution.



On our last night in Monetville we headed to a cabin on Lake Nippissing and went canoeing. It was just as the sun was thinking about setting, so it was really pretty.




It was a lovely ending to our week-long stay in Northern Ontario. And here we are setting out on the morning of our departure. Two more days of driving to go!

The Journey Pt 2 - Southern Ontario!

Early on day 3 we crossed through the US-Canadian border at Detroit-Windsor and had to spend an hour there becoming Canadian again. Things went pretty smoothly except when they asked for proof that we had actually lived in Texas. I just sort of drew a blank. I had no idea how to prove I lived there. Then the immigration officer asked to see my U.S. visa, which I had thrown out after my last trip because I thought I wouldn't need it anymore. D had his though, and it had my name on it, so thankfully they let us immigrate back to Canada.

We were going to drive straight to D's dad's place, but decided to take a detour to Elmira, home of the fabled old school Mennonites. In the 10 + years I have known D and his family and friends, I have heard tales of Mennonites in southern Ontario that still drive horses and buggies. I had to see this for myself. And they were everywhere! The first ones I saw were near farms and olden style shops, so that seemed normal.

Buggy 1 from LDH on Vimeo.

But then I started to see them in more incongruous places, like in front of Shopper's Drug Mart and then it just seemed weird.


My favorite part of Elmira, though, were the many road signs depicting horse and buggies. Those were everywhere too!

In addition to hearing about D's exploits in his baby-sitter's horse and buggy, I also have endlessly had to endure stories of Mennonite summer sausage, which can only be found in the Mennonite areas outside of Kitchener-Waterloo. Apparently summer sausage is the most delicious food ever known to humanity. D's favorite is Noah Martin summer sausage. We tried to go to the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market to get some summer sausage, but it was closed on the day we were there. Fortunately, the grocery store in Elmira had an entire wall of summer sausage to choose from. D was able to get his Noah Martin summer sausage. Even though I am a vegetarian, and even though I hated sausages even when I ate meat, I was so curious about the summer sausage that I had heard so much about that I decided to taste it. That was until I smelled it and almost puked. I decided that smelling the summer sausage was as far as I wanted to go in that relationship.

Next stop - Monetville

Five boxes, One closet

It ain't gonna be pretty. All of those boxes are still full of clothes. How am I supposed to fit that in there?



That's what she said....

The Journey Pt 1 - Farewell America

On May 30th, D and I set out on our journey from Texas to New Brunswick with our fuzzy companion (Nova) in tow. I was so, so sad to leave the amazing city of Austin and all of my amazing friends there, but excited to start the next chapter of my life.

Here was our planned route with each stop shown with a marker.


View Larger Map

This was taken approximately 5 seconds before we began our journey.


We headed off for our our first destination, which was Memphis, TN. The minute we pulled onto I-35 in Austin, the check engine light came on in D's van. Clearly this was not the best start to our journey, and I took it as a sign that we were meant to stay in Austin. In my already anxious state, the check engine light triggered a compulsive need to ask D "Is the light still on?" approximately every 60 seconds. In addition to my nerves, we also had Nova shaking with fear over the horror of being trapped in a loud moving vehicle. You can imagine how delightful it was to be in the van for the first hour or so of the journey. Fortunately, I had to pee after only one hour and D took this opportunity to give the van a once over. Apparently the gas cap was not on well enough and this was what caused the check engine light. Phew!

While my fears were alleviated, I could not say the same for Nova, who REFUSED to lie down on the very comfy bed we made her between the two seats of the van. At one point she was so tired that she was sleeping sitting up.


After night 1 in Memphis, we headed to our next destination - Toledo, OH. In Ohio we hit some crazy rain. Below is a picture of the wall of rain that was approaching us. First we thought the rain walls we saw in the distance were funnel clouds, probably because we watch too much Storm Chasers.


My favorite picture from the whole trip, well maybe just from the American portion of the trip, was this GIANT Jesus, who definitely beats the giant Jesus near the Vancouver airport.

I may have gotten one of the last pictures of giant jesus (aka Touchdown Jesus) because he was struck by lightning a few days later!

As we approached Toledo, I started thinking about how close it was to Detroit, aka the scariest city in the country. So, I decided to google Toledo on my Blackberry and began to read horror stories about how horrible Toledo and all of Ohio were for crime. There were several REALLY BAD areas identified on various forums, so I looked up where our hotel was to see if it fell in any of these areas. Fortunately it was north of the city and past all the bad stuff. The only problem with that was that we had to drive through one of the really bad areas, which caused D to be very nervous about all of the very expensive tools crammed into our van and u-haul trailer. Arriving at our hotel, which I insisted was safe (look a Toys 'R' US! look an Applebees!), Darryl became even more nervous since it backed on to an abandoned mall. Even though the hotel was already paid for, I offered to try to find a better one further from the scary part of the city. Finally we compromised and just changed our room so that we could see our van and uhaul out of the room window. Of course all was fine and we woke up the next morning eager to be on Canadian soil again.