Another thing to add to the list of things I never thought of before I moved to a snowy place: Too much snow on a roof can make it collapse! Fortunately D knows about these things. The roof on the main part of the house is steep enough that it isn't a problem, but we (well, D) had to shovel the snow off the shop and the addition at the back of the house. These pics are from a few weeks ago.
So for the past 2 days, the temperature has been above freezing, and this has led me to declare that winter is ending and spring is coming. Because I said so. I haven't actually said this out loud to any one who lives here because I don't want people to laugh in my face and shatter my hopes. So until I am proven wrong, I declare that spring is on its way. Since the snow has been melting like crazy, I went out this morning to document the accumulation of snow before it all disappears.
I tried to use Nova beside the snow banks at the end of the driveway to give it some perspective, but clearly I know nothing about photography.
The giant snow banks that have built up at the end of the driveway are taller than my car. When I back out of the driveway in the morning, I mostly just hope that no one is coming because I really can't see anything. There is rain in the forecast for the next few days, so perhaps the snow will all wash away most of the snowbanks so that I don't have to risk my life every time I leave my house.
*Sigh* I just got back from a really great trip to San Diego. It was so, so nice to be around friends and in a real city with real restaurants and bars and such. I think the trip shocked me out of my denial about the fact that I have moved out of Austin and now live in the middle of nowhere. I have been going along my merry way here in Sackville, pretending that my friends and the awesomeness of Austin were just hiding, and that I was just busy. Last night, when I got home and donned my rubber boots to take the dog for a potty break in my 2 acre yard, the contrast between life in the real world (San Diego) and life in Sackville really struck me.
I went from staying in a fancy 4-star hotel with this view:
To this:
But, I think the cuteness of the puppy makes up for the difference at least a bit:
Damn she's cute!
I realized when looking for pictures to add to this blog entry, that I only took 2 pictures the entire time I was in SD, and both were out the window of the hotel. I will have to get some from my lovely associate who took at least a couple more than I did.
I am also very happy to be headed to Vancouver very soon. Hopefully the extended exposure to a real city will help get it out of my system. Perhaps I will even get so angry at the traffic there that I will be relieved to head back to my little town.
Nova misses her aunty Nanci, so to make her feel better, I give her hugs, Nanci style. (Also known as smothering). I think Nanci does it better, though.
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.
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.
While in Monetville, we decided to test Nova's recall skills in the hay field beside D's dad's place. We were definitely impressed and credit her good behavior to Tara Stermer at Training by Tara. (Note: Any bad behavior witnessed in real life is to be credited only to me and D and our laziness.)
