Just trying to get away

Sounds simple right?  WRONG.  We leave in two days...two!  And there's no end in sight to silly clients who can't seem to get their act together, and deadlines that draw out (I mean, come on...ten versions of a business card design to get it right?!?!).  I'm slowly losing my mind -- not only do I have other people's 'problems' to look after, but I've got my own list of things that's not getting any shorter.

*Calm blue ocean...calm blue ocean...*

Wild Saturday nights

(The above title is a complete lie.)  I'm sitting in the office right now, loading my sparkly new macbook* with email account information and waiting for it to chug through it's 1's and 0's.  (Binary solo anyone? LOL)

It's been a busy day, lots of places to hit and I can't remember when we had so many errands to run in one day.  First we hit up Ben's birthday party around 9:30-ish (so many cute and funny things a 3 year old can say!) and then headed back across the river for eye appointments at 11:30am (which we were late for thanks to 3 ferry waits, but they squeezed us in...gritting their teeth I'm sure) -- oh! and eye appointments because we were due, and also thanks in part to Trevor's glasses breaking...AGAIN.  Stupid Flexon glasses with their stretchy metal bits -- what they don't tell you is they get to 2 years old and then snap at the corners...

Anywhoo, I digress.  Eye appointments were done (my eyes, perfecto except for a smidge of astigmatism, and Trevor's eyes improved for the second visit in a row, leaving the doctor almost speechless -- we made a joke that Trevor's been doing his own mock laser eye surgery with a flashlight and a magnifying glass...).  Next up was getting a pair of glasses that could be ready for Wednesday (as of Thursday we are out of here) and we headed to the Lenscrafters for that.  (Oh, and stopped by two banks...one to pick up some euros, hurrah!)

I can't remember the last time we went to the mall on a Saturday, but it was a zoo.  We spent a long time trying to find frames to fit Trevor's knobby head ('knobby' used with love there, LOL), placed our order and grabbed some lunch (I think it was 2:30pm by then).  After that it was over to get Trevor's hair cut -- which we had to come back after 4pm it was so busy -- so we went over to the Best Buy and bought the macbook (also, as a side note: they make you feel like you should have to pee in a cup just to buy a computer...questions and weird looks all because you know what you want...).  At that point the monsoonal rains came (it was crazy) and we ran to the car, drove back to the mall, ran into the mall (v. dramatic, with wind and rain lashing at us), picked up the glasses, ran back outside into the hurricane (again, drama!), drove back to the hair cutting place and I waited in the car while Trevor got all-man-groomed-up.

You'd think the day would be over at this point, oh no, we have more!  Since we're gone next week, we decided to vote in advance polls so we booted to a local high school and proceeded to have the most slow and PAINFUL voting process for me...not Trevor.  I'm never on the right list so I had to go through and get paperwork done, which wouldn't have been bad had it not been for some insanely slow man writing the form out (seriously...Trevor had been checked off the list, voted and come back and this guy had only managed to write my last name on the form).  It was crazy.  After about 15 minutes of slow form writing (which only needed my name, address and telephone number!!!) I voted and we got the hell out of there.  We grabbed a quick take-out pizza for dinner and came home and crashed around 5:40pm or so.  

Which brings us to the beginning of this post.  I'm now finished setting up email accounts, and my eyes feel like squares.  Time to go to bed.

(*I thought I could wait for either the new macbooks being released any day now, or better, no macbook at all, but this week has proved that I can't just get up and galavant away without having some connection to work, so guilt and fear took over.  Call it an expensive piece of mind.)

Coffee table quest

I'm in need of a coffee table for our living room. The last one we had was a *lovely* $30 pine Ikea version (circa 1992). That is long gone and we've just been living with a blank area of floor in the middle of the room. I've been scouring websites for inspiration, and there's not much out there that ships to Canada (boo) or that looks all that great (double boo).
What I have managed to find is the cream of the crop of UGLY coffee tables, which I'll share with you here:

This table screams 'I am a piece of pie!!!' to me. And a big yuck goes to the moving tabletop, and the colour.
This coffee table looks like a rolling cart, with the wheels chopped off. What's the point of having handles? Perhaps it's to steady yourself if there's a coffee table related mishap...
Ugh, another lifting table top. If I want a desk, I'll just buy a desk!
Is it a glass bug? Almost!
Oval...check. Glass...check. Fugly offset blue art palette-looking glass pieces...check, check and check.

House hunting (just looking...)

Yesterday we went to Fort Langley to take a look at the Bedford Landing development, right next to the river. Let me emphasize that it's RIGHT NEXT TO THE RIVER. Okay, with that out of the way, we can now talk about how much you're going to spend for a house that will, one day, be floating.For a detached house, you're going to spend a minimum of $589,000 (or 'value priced' as it says in the ad) and for a detached house that you get a backyard and some semi-privacy with you're going to have to sell your soul for a minimum of $899,000 (again, 'value priced'). It was sad walking around mass-produced homes that try so hard to have character but just end up looking like dominos waiting to be toppled over (hmmm, enter river flooding action?). There were so many issues that we saw all through these houses, from the choppy basements (unfinished, so I can say we're able to make that assessment after doing our own) to the outright mistakes that were made (a beam that went into a staircase and was carpeted over, a fridge door that couldn't open fully because of a wall) to the HORRIBLE finishing of cheap moulding, wobbly edges of drywall, crappy painting...

You can see my point. If we moved in there we would need two contractor's packs of caulk because the builders sure didn't use any. Oh, and remember that you'll be paying GST on those prices above for that 'brand new' house.

Not that I'm immune to the whole mass-produced house, we live in one now. People make the mistake all the time of saying that we live in a townhouse because these houses are so close together. But at least we can say that this is only our first house and that hopefully on the next move that we'll be moving up in size, both with the house and with the lot. But realistically, those Bedford houses can't possibly be a starter house for people, and look at what you're getting: a teenie house on a teenie lot.

Oh! And the best part: there are two ways into the area, and both are crossed by rail lines. When we were walking through the houses we noticed that there were fire sprinklers all over the place. Well, this is in case your house is burning down and there's a train on the track and the fire truck can't get in. The rep at the sales office told us that Park Lane was kind enough to do this for peace of mind for the homeowner, and that the maximum time it would take, if there were a train on the track, for the fire fighters wait to cross would be 20 SECONDS. Hmmm. Not sure where they get that time, but there are some long freight trains that take a lot longer to get through the crossing than that. I suppose they'll say anything to sell a house then. Good thing they didn't ask us what we thought of the development...

Holding pattern

Well the cruise tickets never made it into our hots little hands (she forgot to stop by, whoops!), but they will be dropped off tonight. Yay! I'll have to remember what cabin we got...I know we wanted a balcony (for the first time EVER) and it was a good price but we hummed and haa-ed and missed out on the price. So back to the inside cabin, oh well...we still get a bed and a bathroom, what else do you need (a view??? hahaha!)

We've also been trying to get started on some Christmas shopping and managed to make our way to Costco last night, only to be told that Trevor had to go back out to Chilliwack to secure the building because there was something wrong with the alarm there. Normally this wouldn't be such a big deal, but since we had already been out there LAST NIGHT for the same thing I was big time ticked off. Kind of ruins an evening when you have to drop all your plans and drive out there (especially when there's people who live closer who haven't been called or who have been but won't go, but that's a whole other story) and once you get back home it's straight up to bed. Boo. So we are attempting AGAIN tonight to go out and shop a bit. And if that phone rings, I swear you might just see a little mushroom cloud form over Langley.

Okay, venting over.

Oh! And our new couch is arriving November 28th! At least there's some good news. Super-speed finishing reno's, coming up!

M Day will soon be upon us...

Well, I've finally been given a breadcrumb trail to figure out when the heck I'm supposed to move this office. FINALLY. I don't think I need to go into my displeasure at how annoying/frustrating/poke-your-eyes-out '----------' (add another negative comment here) this whole situation is. For weeks I've been trying to figure out when I'm being booted out, and as of today I have 17 days (YES, 17 days) to get my collective junk together and go cram a office the size of a small country into my house.

Frantic plans are now going into place, getting phones and contact info all ready to be hooked up and working for August 20th, changing over the name of Old Foundry to the new and fabulous name, getting the word out to everyone, packing boxes, and somehow managing to work and be productive through all of this. Not to mention dealing with space so tight in the house I think the walls might be shaking and heaving every time we bring something new into it.

Our nasty, NASTY dining room set is being given the boot and I get to set up shop in the dining room. I'll have a nice cozy space shared with giant long lengths of moulding jutting under my desk, boxes, bags and general crap. Oh I can't wait to post the photos...you will all get to bask in my disaster of a house.