What's happened?

Well right now its halloween night which I have never experienced before, well never the whole kids walking house to house trick or treating and us reluctantly handing out chocolate and candy because we want to eat it ourselves.

We carved pumpkins last night, Andrea only likes carving them because she bakes the seeds which are pretty good to eat.

So we put candles in them and put them on our front door step while kids walk the neighbourhood collecting candy. Theres a lot of older kids too, I think we had a couple of kids about 18 (2 guys dressed as women) so I guess they earned something and considering its 1 degree outside too.

I finished working in September at the marine warehouse and have been doing temp work at a plastic extrusion plant. Its not a terrible job, you have to stand in one area for 8 hours and its loud and the pay is crap, but its hard to find work lately so at least I'm earning something.

We moved out of the townhouse in the crappy part of town, why? Because we bought our own house finally in a good part of town. One weekend we were talking about the house we were interested in out in the country when we asked ourselves if perhaps we could find a better house for our money in town. Within one week we had decided to look for a home in Barrie and by the following Friday we had our offer accepted on a house. The thing with Barrie housing areas is you either get an older house or a house that we call 'cookie cutter houses' meaning they all look the same and are squashed together. We found a nice different style house in an 8 year old area, its called a 4 level backsplit on a decent piece of land.

Theres a video on my youtube page that I took before we bought the house: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_uLpXdZ9q4

Slowly were getting furniture together and doing the odd DIY job around the place to make it feel more like our home. Its in a great location, only 3 blocks from the shopping centres and mall, its one block from a recreational centre which has everything from an indoor pool, gym, basketball and 2 ice skating rings. Theres a lot of familys in the area too considering we about 54 kids visit for halloweeen in less than a 2 hour period.

Oh yeah, we went to Toronto a month a go and saw the stage show 'Rock of ages' which....rocked of course. Other than that this is a pretty good update to whats been happening, there are a lot of small gaps in there of course but I cant list everything.

Oh yeah again, finally heard about my residency, it only took 10 months (supposed to take 6) but weve received first stage approval, now we just have to wait for the actual residency card which could take 2-4 months.

Hopefully the next blog update wont be as far between.

summers gone?

Its been a great summer for us. There are things that I wish were a little clearer like the fact that I still dont have my permanent residency (over 8 months now).
Weve been looking for a house to buy outside of the city and weve found the right one. Its a 2 storey home (with a fully finished basement) on a 1/2 acre property (which is just grass, makes for a clean palate for landscaping), its 1 block from the lake and boat ramp. It is exactly between Orillia and Barrie which only takes 15mins to drive to either one. So within the next 2 weeks we will be putting in an offer and who knows what will happen.
Im still working for the marine wholesale industry, at least for the next 2 weeks, which afterwards I have no other job to walk into. The thing that makes it hard is that without my residency I cannot obtain my drivers licence which limits the available work as well as bieng able to travel to work.

Floats your boat

I'm still working at the same place and I have another 6 weeks to go, which means ive had constant work all summer. It has had some really boring moments, for example theres times that i get to work at 8:30 and not do anything until 10:30. Some may say that its good to be able to do nothing and get paid for it. I enjoy being productive and accomplishing tasks because it makes you feel like your time is valuable.
Still waiting on my permanent residency to come through, they keep pushing the timeline back and were getting very annoyed by the whole process.
Weve been boating with Andrea's parents every weekend for the past 3 weeks. They own a 28ft motor boat and theres no lack of rivers and lakes in this part of the country. This pastweekend was great, we met with Andrea's parents in Orillia and then had dinner with their friends who own a large property a little outside Orillia. Their friends owned a quadbike and let Andrea and I go for a ride where we came across a big porcupine near a swamp.
We stayed on the boats for both Friday and Saturday night and Sunday morning we left on the boat through a channel called the Severn river and into Georgian bay. We left around 9am and got there around 3:30pm, so it was a long trip only because we had to go slow through most of the channel.

Change the channel!

Its the Saturday after my 3 week work period was supposed to end. I got told yesterday i have another week of work if i want it and its possible there may be more to come over the summer.
The work has been very boring, i mean very very boring. Im doing the same work as I was doing in Vancouver with boating and yachting equipment/parts etc. In Vancouver during the busiest part of the year our department could easily send out approximately 600-700 pieces per day. At this location, even though they say its very busy we may send out maybe 50 pieces on our best day. So there is a lot of standing around trying to stay awake and drinking coffee like it was water. The location is close enough for me to ride, it only takes 15 mins on my bicycle.


Our friend Elissa is visiting us for a few days, she left Vancouver and in a couple of weeks travelling to South America and then back to Barrie.
It seems like we left Vancouver a long time ago, but its only been 6 weeks. It is probably because we only got t.v. and internet connected 1 week ago and we had to entertain ourselves with playing board games, tennis, golf and walks around the lake. Speaking of golf, Andrea had a mini tournament yesterday along with other optometrists from around the area and she did really well.

When the summer comes

Were getting settled in Barrie, sort of. Were living at a place that the owner has just bought and decided to renovate in his spare time (weekends). So were sitting on camping chairs and have a t.v. sitting on a coffee table that only gets 1 channel. Things are coming together though and were taking the extra time we have to explore our new surroundings, and I have time because Im still unemployed at this moment. So what better to do when you have no job? well go on a holiday of course. We left here last Friday on a road trip for a wedding in Cleveland Ohio. We took the route that went through Niagara and into Buffalo N.Y., Pennsylvania and then Ohio. Because we were pushing for time and the wedding party was already at a bar by time we got to Cleveland, we decided to change into more appropriate clothes in a very inappropriate location, the BP gas station parking lot. The wedding was good and the setting for the reception was just as good, a country club (not golf club) set in an old english style house in the forest surrounded by gardens and 20 tennis courts and an outdoor gym.

The rest of the weekend consisted of us driving via Detroit which was the opposite direction of where we'd come from to Andreas parents house because we were to go to dinner for her grandfathers 80th birthday.
After sponging off the parents for a couple of days and a round of golf later we finally made it home for Andrea to start work again and for me to keep looking for work.

The summer has kicked off just fine here, the heat has been turned up and the bodies are sprawling out on the sand along the lake side soaking up unnecessary sun rays.
Ive got 3 weeks of work starting this week with the Marine company i was supposed to work for when i got here, so things are doing ok for now. Leave a comment if you want to tell me about your summer/winter so far.

Cleveland

Going to Cleveland Ohio today for a wedding, its only a 6 hour drive from where we live now and I've never been that way before so the scenery shouldnt be boring.

Thats the actual city of Vancouver (not a picture) under Andrea

Finally got a new phone this week, old one got broken and let me tell you about how the phone company's like to rip off their customers here in Canada. If you live in a province (state) you get a phone number.....fine.. if you leave the province, anywhere you make a phone call it will cost you long distance rates.... anywhere!!!! If you receive a call from someone it will cost you money, thats right receive a call from anyone on any network anytime it will cost you. Going to leave the province and move to a different province permanently? well.. you will have to change your phone number (because you dont want to pay long distance fees anymore do you?) so to change your number that will cost $40. So basically everything has a fee added to it if you own a phone here, want to check the time on your phone? its going to cost you!! well maybe not, but it sure feels that way. So i will only ever text message people if i can avoid calling, and i will hang up on people if they ring me and i dont need to talk to them e.g. banks, marketers, my boss.

We need to revolt!! who's coming with me? no one?

No!! you have an accent!!

When we stopped in Billings Montana on our road trip, we went to a subway for dinner. Well i have to say my order twice because lets face it "They dont get no folk who speak weird language like them there queen from England land!" and when we handed over our 'Subway gift card' we explained it was bought in Canada and hopefully it will work in the U.S. Well the cashiers response was... "They got Subway in Canada??" so immediately you just want to completely enlighten this geographically and worldly inexperienced human with a few facts. 2 come to mind...
1. You are only 4 hours drive away from the canadian border! youve never wanted to just go for a small trip one day?
2. You work for a company that is found WORLD WIDE! you dont know anything about your employer?
So this is the type of thing I encounter often, especially when in the states and especially because im Australian. I dont get upset about the fact they dont understand me the first time afterall Im the one in their country.
Its not usually an issue when im in a city, only when im in a country area when they dont hear a lot of diversity in language, it can be amussing.
I had one today on our way back from Barrie when we stopped to get a drink in this small town and I said "Do you still have coffee available?"
to which she replied "yes we have coke zero!"

Everyday is for mothers.

Im an 21 hour plane flight and a 2 hour car ride from being able to see my mother (give or take variables like layovers and security checks). The last time i saw my mum (mom) was exactly 1 year ago when she made the journey to Vancouver from Australia. I was thinking about her this morning (especially because it is mothers day) and what we did together when she was visiting a year ago. It is not very hard to see how this woman is so easy going and so generous to others.
The day she flew into Vancouver from Australia, we had the day already planned before we knew she was even comming to visit that we were going to move into our new apartment and out of the old one on the same day. So Andrea and I picked her up from the airport and drove to our old apartment to start moving stuff we had already packed in preperation. Well without questions or gesturing (not to my memory anyway) she rolled up her sleeves and started scrubbing clean our old apartment while Andrea and my friend Brian and I trucked everything back and forth. She was a trooper that day and Im sure after helping us unpack she didnt get to bed until around 10pm that night.
So last year i remember we went to Grouse mountain on the north
shore of Vancouver and via a cable car it over looks the entire city, out to sea and the mountains of Washington.

There was still snow in areas but it was a perfect sunny spring day and Im sure she enjoyed it. I could write for an hour here about what we did for the time she was here but it will probably only bore those who couldnt experience it with us.

Video of our Seattle trip-----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK74F8g6ZjA

So mum i miss you and i hope your having a good day whatever your up too and I will talk to you very soon when my feet hit the ground.

I remember when.......

1. Walkmans, a cassette that held 16 songs in a machine that was the size of a small house brick. Used to make mixed tapes that would take hours because you had to record in real time. Now we can fit thousands of songs onto a player as thick as 4 slices of cheese.

2. Home telephones. Used to make plans way in advance and you were commited to them, there was no spontaneous text MSG to contact someone. Used to leave messages for people and wait for a return call, now anybody can be contacted anywhere anytime. Calling or sending a txt message to another country takes seconds and costs very little compared to when it seemed like $5 a second call rate. You can now use your mobile phone to take pictures and message and email and find directions, the list goes on and on.

3. Emails, photos, messages can be sent electronically to anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. It used to be a out sending a hand written letter which could take weeks depending on where it was going. So what could take 2 weeks to tell someone what I'm doing now only takes as long as writing the letter itself.

4. Digital cameras, you take a photo and instantly you can see the picture on a 3 inch screen, then you can decide whether to keep it or take another. You can fit hundreds of pictures and video on one camera which can be viewed by anyone in the world once they're put on a computer. It used to be that you had to buy a roll of film which held 24 - 30 pictures and cost around $8. You had to wind it to take the next picture and you wouldn't know if it was. Good picture until it was developed. The film would be dropped off to be developed and the cheapest way was to wait a week for your prints to be picked up and it cost about $20. If you wanted someone to see your pictures you would have to make another set and post it to them, the whole process could take 2-3 weeks, now it takes 2-3 minutes.

5. Computers, it would take 5 minutes to load a simple adding game (2x3) from a disk that resembled a 5"x5" piece of cardboard. The screen used to be the size of a miniature microwave oven (and probably had just as much radiation). The computer console itself was the size of a carry on luggage suitcase. Now there's almost nothing a computer can't do in seconds with 20" flat screens and some consoles being the size of 5 slices of bread.

6. Game playing consoles for your tv, while not much has changed with the size, their capability has. The games used to consist of a black screen and each player (max of 2) would have a little line that could only move up and down and they would hit a square "ball" back and forth to each other. Now the images on the screen are very close to real life with unlimited amount of different games and the ability to play with peoples from all over the world.

7. Saturday morning cartoons, they used to be like watching a comic book come to life with good guys defeating bad guys and being superheros. The images were very rough and they tend to repeat backgrounds constantly but they always kept you captivated. Kids could appreciate the deadpan humour and simple jokes. Now the images are close to being 3D and story lines have to hold alot of content and contain a lot of subtle jokes that I'm surprised kids actually understand.

8. Money, if you wanted money on the weekend you had to use an ATM and get enough to get you by. You had to use cash or credit card to purchase anything anywhere. Bankers hours were between 9am and 4pm Monday to Friday. Now almost anyone will accept a debit card from taxi drivers to pizza delivery's. Banks are open till late and some open on Saturdays. The Internet provides the ability to do all your banking from anywhere anytime.

10 states, 2 country's, 5 days

May

Its from a hotel in Milwaukee that I'm writing this and we still have one more day of travelling before getting to Ontario Canada. So whats happened since leaving Vancouver until now? well..
After having final drinks after work on Friday and then again at a friends place (where we stayed for the night because we didn't have a home to go to, thank you Sav and Allana) it was a tough Saturday morning to get up too.
We packed the car and started driving at least 2 hours later than we had planned, which we thought wasn't too bad....until...
We arrived at the USA border to a 2 hour wait, which didn't include the other hour we spent inside the office standing in line to fill out a piece of paper that took 2 minutes.
At the point when we finally got on our way we were then around 4 hours behind schedule, and yes i had a schedule although it wasn't a big deal considering we had time on our hands.

Washington was our first state to conquer, with a high mountain highway around snow caps and the feeling of driving through the clouds. Finally made it to Spokane (Originally a mining town in the foot of mountains) around 7:30pm and ready for bed. An early start the next day, after continental breakfast of course got us going across the beautiful area of north Idaho. It was a very easy mountain drive to enjoy including the very pretty town of Wallace (an old gold mine town) which is wedged in the middle of pine tree covered and snow capped mountains.

Kept the drive going all the way to Billings in Montana where we decided to pull into our favourite hotel chain Best Western. Billings Best Western was very nice, a clean fresh place clad with the look of an old fashioned mountain cabin. Monday became a full day of driving and sightseeing across 3 states all starting at 8am (after continental breakfast of course). The first pit stop was at 'Little bighorn' or 'Custer's last stand', a historical site located exactly where war broke out between the American 7th battalion and Native Indians in 1876. A monument stands for the fallen on both sides and grave stone scatter the hill side wherever a soldier or warrior fell. There is artifacts in a museum style building and a whole garden dedicated to the fallen American soldiers of the past. Want to know more?.....google it!

On the road again with South Dakota in our sights and Montana and Wyoming soon to be a horizon in our rear vision mirror.
The South Dakota state environment with its forests and hills and grass high plains (some with snow still) reminds me of a classic old cowboy movie i cant put my finger on. It came to me later when i realized 'Dances with Wolves' was made in the South Dakota region. I'm going to have to sit through 3 hours of that story now so that i can reminisce about our drive.

30 Minutes off the highway from Rapid city we came to the quiet little tourist town of Keystone which sits at the base of Mount Rushmore (that place where the former presidents are carved into the side of a mountain). We had a tight schedule so the $10 entry fee didn't interest us considering we could view the monument and take a picture clearly from the car park.



We strayed away from our favourite accommodation choice that night due to the fact that the only requirement we had was to find a place with a water slide. Days inn provided our necessity with a 150ft tube of watery fun, which was well deserved after 13 hours on the pavement.