toby's from san francisco: The truck! The truck!

Just when we were sure our furniture would get trapped in a snowdrift in Calgary, there was the giant truck, taking up 8 metered parking spaces along the side of St. Laurent, our little blue car smiling at us from the back. Our new apartment is, as toby will be the first to tell you, on top of a yogurt shop. He tells this to anyone who appears to be listening, especially people that we meet on the bus. “where do you live? I live on top of the yogurt shop”. By on top of a yogurt shop, I mean that you ascend one steep, narrow flight of stairs to put you directly above said frozen treat purveyor, then up another two flights into our apartment. If you desired, you could then go up another flight and be in our bedroom or on our deck with a view of downtown. It is a lovely view and you might consider doing this unless you are one of the men carrying our furniture and boxes up from the truck, for example, the man who at the end of the day explained that he had the steel plates holding his recently broken spine together, in which case, I suspect that you might pass on the view because your legs have already turned into jello. And in fact, just so that they don’t have to contend with that last flight of stairs, we tell them to just stack all the boxes in the vast empty area that we don’t have enough furniture to fill right now anyway. As a side note, we bought a new dining table and sofa like a week before we moved. In our San Francisco apartment, they looked enormous and so we have had weeks of fitful sleep when we imagined all the money we wasted on furniture that would be too large to even fit up the stairs, let alone fit into our new place. Of course, the new place is large enough to have swallowed our previous apartment in one gulp, and thus the sofa and table appear tiny by comparison, so in the end, I feel that was not the most productive worrying that we’ve ever done. In any event, somehow, the movers managed to get everything up the stairs unscathed and so our apartment went from empty to full of boxes to full of empty boxes and piles of paper to full of stuff that we shouldn’t have moved all the way over here but we were too frantic before the move to properly clean out our closets so now we have a huge pile of junk for goodwill to almost presentable, just requiring a few more coat hooks. and with that, we’re finally home. And ready for some yogurt.

toby's from san francisco: blandest vacation ever

The grande biblioteque is both grand and bookfilled as its name would suggest. But I am mostly just sitting sleepily watching the glass elevators shuttle up and down. Toby and jon are in the kids section reading, I assume, books about or involving or with at least one picture of lions. As with most aspects of our new life in Canada, this is actually just a form of waiting. In this particular instance, we are waiting for lunchtime. But much of the past week has been spent waiting in lines, waiting and filling out forms, trying to distract toby while waiting, waiting on wait lists, or just generally waiting. It’s a strange limbo. We went to a party last night and everyone asked how we like living here so far, and mostly we smile and respond positively that we like it very much. Because we do, or at least, we think we do, and we certainly expect to. But of course, we don’t really know, because living in a hotel and working by standing in lines isn’t really what our life will be here, in fact with any luck it isn’t what our life will be next week, when we hope that the slow moving truck with its amiable but somewhat tooth-free driver and all of our belongings pulls up at our new apartment. But until then, we live in what may b the blandest vacation ever, swimming every evening in the hotel pool (for which we purchased heavily discounted bathing suits because ours are on that slow truck) and cooking some pasta on our single functioning burner, and waiting waiting for furniture and cell phones and credit cards and bank accounts and medicare and snow. But at least right now we can stop waiting for lunch time as it has finally arrived. cheers!

toby's from san francisco: 4093 km is a lot of miles

Just a few notes for those of you who might be considering a transcontinental move to a different country, for example, from san francisco to montreal.

1) carrying cats through the metal detector is not as terrible as you might expect if perchance you are lucky enough to be holding a surprisingly limp lulington. If, on the other hand, you are holding wendy, it is full of all the clawing, scratching, and bleeding that you had previously imagined. And maybe more.

2) speaking of cats, while soft carriers are lighter, easier to fit under the seat in front of you, and keep the people at customs from asking to see your paperwork because they don’t realize those bags are full of cats, they do little to protect the cats from rambunctious 3 year olds who are also quick to forget that they are not just luggage.

3) the flight from san francisco to toronto is REALLY long if no one takes a nap.

4) 1 hour and 15 minutes may or may not be long enough to get from one airplane, through customs, to a second airplane. We don’t know the answer to this because what we did learn is that 75 minutes isn’t anywhere near to enough time to get through immigration when you are actually moving to that country, especially when the immigration computer system is mysteriously down.

4a) when the immigration computer does go down and they have to fill out your work permit form by hand, be prepared for every office that you walk in to subsequent to that to eye you suspiciously because of your strange non-standard green work permit that has been haphazardly stapled into your passport.

5) while Jon disapproves of “found” toys for hygiene regions, I feel that once you wash off that plastic dinosaur that’s been sitting in the immigration waiting room for hours or perhaps even days, it becomes your best option for occupying an antsy 3-year old while the immigration official tries to fill out your work permit paperwork by hand.

6) it’s much easier to estimate the cost of all of your belongings on the spot when the customs agent asks if you have just gone against the all the rules of importing furniture to Canada and bought a bunch of furniture immediately prior to your departure.

7) it turns out that montreal is pretty far away. And after today, it feels even farther. Fortunately, beer is here to help.

toby lives in san francisco

ok, so I have plans to describe to you in glorious detail, our new life in Montreal. but a quick digression before we start. when we last left off, apparently way back in february, we were inches away from moving to iowa. well, it turned out that iowa could kinda tell that we were not exhuberant about the prospect of being cornhuskers or hawkshuckers or cornhawkers or whatever they are there and so days before the visit that we had planned for the middle of february, they cancelled. the trip, the job offer, the whole shebang. I can't really say that we were upset exactly, it mostly just meant that they had taken away a really good bargaining chip that we had. an offer from iowa is, at minimum, better than no offer at all. in any case, shortly thereafter, although at the time it seemed like an eternity, somehow through the magic of canada, we got jobs at mcgill in montreal instead. both of us got jobs. that's one, two jobs. 100% more jobs than we have gotten anywhere else. 2 times more jobs than we've been offered before, and this time it was in a city where we would not just be willing to sit for a year or so while trying to get other, different, better jobs, but somewhere we would like to live. needless to say, we took them. fast forward 7 months, and here we are, living in montreal. anyhoo, I had planned to just pick up this blog from where we are now, and not dwell on the dark days of iowa, because I am old and lazy and can barely remember what we did yesterday let alone last july, and if I had to recall last july, well, I think we'd still be stuck with the most recent post being from last february, except that as I was working on the first post, there was a bit of a ruckus upstairs. toby had been complaining about his stomach after dinner. this happens not infrequently, but it's hard to tell if he's just eaten way to much or had too much juice or if the strange sassafrass candy from the local natural foods store is disagreeing with him or if maybe beef tartare isn't so great for three year olds. in any event, we suggested that maybe if he just went to bed, he would feel better. I then came downstairs and was clacking away on the laptop while jon offered him a nibble of an antacid. I'm sure you can see where this is leading. so moments later came the ruckus and the lovely dinner from our new neighborhood bistro was all over the blankets and floor and behold, toby felt immeasurably better. I bring all this up because after we stripped the bed and wiped down the floor, we did not hand wash those items while planning tomorrow's trip to the laundrymat, oh no, we placed them in our energy and water efficient washing machine, pushed a button and set it to work. to which I say, take that IOWA.

and just fyi, that picture is from a little trip we made to san mateo in august to escape the fog and eat some ramen. so now you're almost filled in on what we've been up to.