So, the drive to Ottawa was interesting. I left Sudbury about 2 hours later than I had planned. I simply wasn’t packed properly, and needed to do unexpected things as I was trying to load a truck. My bad, I slacked. Luckily this wasn’t a major problem for meeting Tracy; the CLV Group agent who was going to meet me at the apartment when I arrived. She was super nice about having to push back the time.
On the drive toward North Bay I noticed the ‘check engine’ like went on my anytime I pushed the engine above 3000rpm. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I simply kept it in the ‘zone’ where the light didn’t come on but I was going as fast as possible. When I stopped for gas in Cobden (about an hour away from Ottawa) the ‘check gauge’ light went on and the engine started making a nasty, noise. The sound of a lack of lube. I filled my tank, pulled off to the side and checked my oil and coolant. The oil was completely gone. I was a little surprised, but thankfully another gas station in the town had 15w40 so I got a few quarts of that and some coolant to fill the reservoir; the rad still had coolant. I called Chris to get his opinion while I was prep’n to put the coolant in. He said the noise was probably from the lifting rod not getting oil. Thank god this happened in a town and not on the highway.
Eventually I decided to go above 100km/h ’cause I really wanted to get here to unpack; I had people waiting. Uhaul trailers develop a nasty speed wobble when you’re going 120km/h. I also don’t recommend taking long sweeping decline turns above 100km/h because that speed wobble will reappear and scare the shit out of you. Luckily the ‘fix’ is to simply slow down to around 80 and drive in a straight line.
Once I was in the city, Dave and Jen met me at my place and helped me unload in rather quickly. It took around 4 hours to get my stuff off the truck and out of the trailer. The reef still isn’t completely setup, but as of right now I’m just a little too tired from this whole thing to care too much about it. The fish and rock are in the tank which is half full and has water waiting to go into it. My sailfin blenny decided to make the trip inside of the cooler containing only live rock, crabs and snails. Thankfully I half filled it, because he appeared fine the next day; Jen had asked where he was and I said ‘oh no’.
My projector doesn’t fit this place at all. I’m going to get a decent lcd tv for movie and gaming. I have no cable tv hookup; and I plan to keep it that way. I ordered a Popcorn Hour a little over a week ago, to cover the movie viewing in the living room.
Yesterday Jen and I went to Ikea to get a bedroom for me. I left with a good amount of items I needed for the new place, as well as bed and dresser which took about four hours to put together. I love em. They’re far from unique, but the basic construction quality is pretty good and I know it went together properly; which is something I questioned my previous dresser on a few times.
Today I need to go to a grocery store and get a good amount of food because all I have is a pepsi, a twix bar and a carton of Tropicana orange juice that I got from the gas station around the corner. I also need to go back to Ikea to get some lamps, and I need to find a chair for my computer desk. I’m sitting on my bed right now.
I’m rather fond of my location in relation to mechanic shops. I’m about 20 minutes walking distance from most of the restaurants I went to while visiting Jen; I wish they were closer. Having everything else close by is super convenient though.
Oh yeah, my parking spot is rather tight.
This move was insane. Lots to write, but I have no chair at the moment. I’ll make a proper entry tonight probably.
I woke up a little before 6am today, thinking about packing. I’ve been taking a pretty relaxed approach to this move, but now that I only have to box up my dishes and a few misc. things. I can’t stop thinking about being at the new place. Jen was going to leave work early to help me unload/unpack; but it turns out the real estate agent can’t meet me until shortly after 5pm. Making things easier or more complicated; depending on how you look at it.
I pick up the trailer this afternoon, and need to drop off a few things (cable/net related); clear out my office and I’ll be ready to go.
Anyways, it’s 6:15am and I’m going to box up my towels and dishes.
Last night I tackled and took care of removing 99% of the items I won’t be taking with me when I move. This included my monsterous dresser. It was fugly, and heavy and took up a good amount of space. Apparently, it was completely unneeded. Looking at my place now, I could’ve easily ran a different; more functional floor plan with less furniture while living with Maegan which would’ve taken care of some of the frustrations of living with her. Oh well, hah. I never would’ve known until I had given time to consider the layout, and that never happened ’cause I wasn’t supposed to replace furniture until we moved (her rule).
Funny how that works out. I’m going to have a lot of fun at my new place, making it look the way I want.
I went to a pub with Matt and Blair, their friend Jason; and Chris and Shauny. I was bored at home, so I pre-drank a little and listened to music on the tube gear in the bedroom. I decided to give Chris my Marantz receiver for his new house ’cause I really don’t need 3 amps, and the Marantz will never be primary in my setup again.
When we got to the pub I ordered some food and switched to rum & cokes. The food arrived pretty quickly, and I ate it just as quickly. It was a yummy chicken/ceasar wrap with fries on the side. Once that was eaten, I had I think 4 more drinks (6 beer / 4 mixes). That’s a pretty solid night of drinking I think. We ended up leaving around 11 or so to go back to Chris & Shauny’s. Shauny had to work this morning, so she’s already there as I’m writing this. We blazed a fat joint on their balcony, laughed at more stuff. I decided to leave sometime around 12:30 because I was feeling tired. I think that was the fault of the green.
So, that was my night. I’m supposed to drink with other people tonight, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that because it’s kinda rough doing that back to back these days.
Here’s the stack of empties in my kitchen. I need to return them this week. I should switch to 24s, they take up less space overall.
We had hot chocolate and talked for a while. I ate this great muffin.
I was originally planning on doing a partial move tomorrow, and possibly 2 trips this weekend total. However, that changed as I started to consider the time to drive, vs cost of fuel and in general the stress such a weird decision would incur. I then opted for renting a trailer; and bringing all of my stuff down tomorrow. However, the cost of a trailer and 10 days of rent is more than a large Uhaul truck… and I’d still end up doing multiple trips because I’d have to come back here (Sudbury) for a week.
None of those options really made sense after a minute of consideration. So, after a few rash decisions I’ve got a set plan in place. Next Thursday/Friday I’m taking the days off of work so I can move (Thurs), and be there for the cable technician to hookup my net access (Fri). Breaking down the reef early Thursday morning will suck, but it’ll suck much less than driving an extra 10-12 hours.
I finalized my isp, hydro and move dates today. In 2 days I’ll be driving the majority of my belongings to Ottawa, to sign my lease and get the keys so I can pseudo move in; and make some water for the reef (which I’ll be bringing by the following weekend). My goal is to get my couch set, kitchen and table there. Hopefully the table works out, but I might decide to leave it behind.
This is also Easter weekend, which kinda fucks up things and makes it a short work week for me.
The weekend started off well. I went to the gym after work with Chris. I skipped cardio ’cause I was planning on biking to Jason’s place later that night with beer. The lifting felt good. I’ve increased my weights by another 10lbs. So far I’ve gone up 40lbs since starting a few months ago. I’m very happy with the progress of my shoulder, and in general body.
I had no pain while riding, and easily lifted the bike when needed. Very happy.
So, I got to Jason’s to discover he wasn’t home yet. It turned out he was running late, and caught up at a previous engagement. Not a big deal. I didn’t go back out when he eventually tried to get a hold of me. I was already done for the evening. I was supposed to meet up with him the next night at a metal show; but I had forgotten that Chris was coming over to watch the Leafs game so that also didn’t work out well. I was too intoxicated to drive after the game and eventually passed out early (I got up very early all weekend).
Yesterday we checked out a small exhaust leak on my truck, and decided it’d wait until the summer. So far, I’m the only one that easily picks out the noise of it, so that’s a bonus I guess.
I was supposed to pack this weekend, but only ended up getting a lot of boxes and decided that I’ll try to sell my theatre off for the move; and buy a decent tv. My new plan is to keep only my tube gear, monitors for audio and switch things via the tv which’ll output a 2.0 signal to my amp.
I got Sirius streaming through my Xbox 360 using Tversity with uSirius. This is a fantastic combo. I’m also very impressed with the smoothness of realtime transcoding with Tversity for video files. Trying to fast forward doesn’t work well, but that’s something I can easily accept considering .ogm files are viewable now. HD .mkv’s crash. It could be the speed of the wireless g network coming into play; it’s not exceptionally fast to my pc due to the shitty dlink adapter.
I can’t stop watching this.