Slowly coming to a close is this Wonderous summer. I've had a total of 11 people come visit and stay over the last 6 months and it's been quite the epic.
The latest company was my lovely lady Danielle. She's my spirit twin. So she spontaneously decided to hit up the GoTrain and get us some waterfall time!
I haven't been to the falls in about 6 years. It was nice to be once again under their majesty.
Also. You know. Besides them. With a good glass of wine.
Cheers!
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist
It has been a crazy month. Moving across the country is not something to be taken lightly (despite what people might say...looking at the BF right now). This all started back in May when Matt signed the paperwork to work at IBM in Ontario.
The planning began, rather slowly (a little begrudgingly) at first. I had lived my whole life in Alberta and had just found out that the only relative I had in Toronto was moving back to Alberta the month before we left. Swapsies!.
Matt and I had agreed that container moving was probably the best option to us, as we had no apartment destination yet. We'd be flying out to TO and finding a place. So I started collecting boxes because, having never moved before, I thought it would give me more piece of mind to pack the apartment up myself. This thought was affirmed when I called around to get more information from moving companies in Edmonton. I would either get no response, or in the case of one company, I got told I didn't know what I was talking about before I'd even explained my situation (what a gem of a man that was). Matt and I had decided to go with a container moving and storage company called PODS because they offered flexible storage options AND they had really good customer service people (people that didn't make me feel like the protagonist of a sexism story, Yay!).
With the POD scheduled and the flights booked (July 23rd 2014), I started planning the last month we were in Alberta, filling our calendar with friend visits and family going aways, etc. It was very bittersweet to see all my buddies because I didn't know when I'd see them in person again. (Gush.)
Anyway. As I packed I realized that the small POD we'd booked was definitely not going to fit all our stuff (Matt would like to interject, "Your Stuff" here). So PODS was called and they even arranged the bigger pod to come the same day, thank gad. I have a lot of china... and books... and kitchen appliances....
We had salad too. Honest!
Moving day came and with the help of Matt's friend Ian, Matt's parents and my friend Jess, we loaded up the POD. It took all day. (Also, if you follow the Talky you'll know that I had a broken toe this whole time. That was entertaining.) But we did it! Then we went and celebrated with dinner and beer. We spent one night at the BF's 'rents and then our last Alberta evening at my friend Julia's place. Julia's BF made us an Alberta steak dinner to remember.
The next morning Julia graciously drove us to the airport at 5am where we deposited our bags, and my plants, boarded a plane to our new home.
Renting in Toronto is a little different than in Alberta. Here, if you want to rent a condo, you get a realtor. Unlike in Alberta, where a condo building's property management company deals with renting condo suites, here it's done via realtors and the actual condo owners. Let me clarify. In Alberta, if you own a condo and want to rent it, you go to your building's management company and say "Hey! I want to rent my unit. Can you do that please?", and the property company says "Sure!". In Toronto, it seems that most property companies who run large condo buildings don't have anything to do with the actual unit occupancies. This has both up sides and down sides. For example, it makes looking for a nice rental suite really easy. Step 1: Get a realtor (you can call listing agencies to snatch a realtor); Step 2: Sign on to the Toronto MLS; Step 3: Pick a bunch of listings; Step 4: Go see the suites and pick one; Step 5: Sign a lease - Yay! Downside: it makes actually seeing the nice rental suites a pain. As a prospective tenant can't just go see a place. We tried calling up listing agents to see if we could see their listed suites but got turned away because only realtors can show suites. So we got a realtor. However, then it turns into a bit of a coordination nightmare as the listing realtor and the showing realtor have to be on the same page at the same time to have the suite shown. Blaa.
Anyways. We managed to look at 6 places before deciding on one we loved. Then we ran into another AB/TO difference: Lease Negotiations. Like if you're buying a house, the realtor will put in a lease offer typically less than the asking monthly rent and with certain conditions. This, for me anyway, was terrifying. Because of the fast paced rental market here I was worried we'd lose the apartment because someone else may offer more or have less conditions on their offer. I gave myself heart burn waiting for a response. Everything turned out ok though. We got a call from our realtor at 1am to tell us the offer had been accepted and we now just had to meet up to sign the final lease. Gad. And I thought the moving would be the most stressful part.
With keys in hand, we went and bought an air mattress and a couple chairs to sit on (having just breakfasted on the floor) and awaited all our stuff. We signed our lease on July 26th and our POD wasn't due to be in Toronto till August 2nd, so we had a while to wait. In the mean time, we set up the internet, we organized the POD delivery and the elevator booking (37th floor yo!) and we hung out with Heather, our one friendly Toronto native, and Taylor, a friend of Matt's on internship with IBM. Yay friends!
On August 8th, in the early morn, our POD of stuff had arrived. The BF had booked movers to help us unload the POD, which I now see as the best decision of the whole trip. The two dudes had the POD emptied and all our furniture, boxes and miscellaneium into the apartment in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Best $200 we ever spent.
Now all the boxes have been mostly unpacked. Mainly, my kitchen is set up. We need to buy a desk for Matt, a couch for the living room and a bunch of shelves for our massive book collection and my four sets of china.... But other than that, it's nice to have a bed and a functional kitchen and a table to sit at.
Move Success. Now come visit me. STAT.
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist
After a very very intense first day, the BF and I decided to take it a bit slower the second day out. We slept in a bit and woke to a rather grey day. Not ideal for wandering around monuments so we made a plan: see the White House, wave like the President is an 87 year old British monarch, and then take refuge in a free museum.
First things first, find the White House. This was, surprisingly, a little more difficult than we expected. This was because of how the White House is surround by trees and fences and men in big black coats wearing big black guns. We walked passed it once without even knowing it and found the National Treasury. By the time we found the back of the White House -where I stealthily stuck my phone between the fence for a picture- it had started to rain. We took cover in a coffee shop and people watched through the windows. When the raining stopped (kind of) we followed a group of tourist down a very unlikely sidewalk. It was then that we came upon the White House's front door. Also, a ton more fences. And trees. And secret police with handguns.
White House! Seriously far away.
We had acomplished our first task, waved, and hit the pavement back to the Mall to find a museum. The first one we came upon was the American History Museum, so in we went. As per the norm, there were tour buses upon tour buses of children ahead of us. There didn't seem to be anyone coordinating these hundreds of kids, which was weird. It was a bit like being in a zoo, where the exhibits were safe behind the glass watching the masses of hormones and immaturity go by. We took refuge in the nearest, emptiest, exhibit about food.
I did my degree in Nutrition and Food Science so I always find articles about food systems and how they developed very interesting (especially since, typically, big industry is vilified when in fact it helped keep a lot of people fed who would have otherwise starved). We walked the timeline of industrializing the food market in the states, rounded the inclusion of ethnic foods from the 1950s, saw the birth of the potato chip. My two favourite parts of the exhibit were the inclusion of the Berkeley Food Pyramid and the Julia Child's Kitchen.
Foodie Bible
I love the food pyramid because I know a couple people who actually eat by it. We live in a world, afforded to us by the industrialization of food systems, where we can choose foods that we consider "better" or more "wholesome" than other types. The insatiable gourmand will believe this was how people ate originally and this is what we should harken back too. It's funny because, in fact, we wouldn't have the international availability of any of this "quality" food, had it not been for the huge changes in the food systems of the 1900s (Off topic ranty! Yay!).
Julia Child's kitchen was impressive too. Too big for my liking though. She had a similar approach to cooking that I do. Just do it. Anyone can cook, it just takes a bit of confidence and practice. It was neat to see her TV programs and even cooler to see her old cook books. (That made me sad a little. No one will ever cook from them again.)
After the Food exhibit, we went though the sea travel bits and locomotive parts (neither Matt or I really have too much interest in boats and trains) and we ended up in a room full of steam machines. Humans are impressive creatures when it comes to building large scale things. There was a piston so huge, it was 2 stories away from the actual crank shaft it would have been attached too. Insane. Getting hungry and over run by children that kept calling me "M'am", we headed out to find a Victorian restaurant called the Old Ebbitt Grill. Or rather it was kind of Victorian.
The Ebbitt Grill had a mussels menu that was very Very not Victorian. For obvious, voluptuous, reasons. I couldn't resist taking a picture. The waiter looked at me weird.
The restaurant itself, while definitely renovated sometime in the 1980s, was decidedly vintage. Real gas burning lamps hung from the ceiling and stood next to each table; the walls were panelled with dark stained wood and painted with murals of "old-time scenes"; The booths were upholstered in velvet. The food was supposedly "American", however, with how much schnitzel was involved I would say more "European, but we'll pretend". I had a guinness beef stew, which was pretty tasty. After a trip to the washroom, down more white marble stairs, we headed back out to the Mall and back into the Museum of American History for one last look at a couple exhibits.
Victorian?
There comes a point in every museum filled vacation when the thought of one more will break anyone's sanity into teeny tiny over-saturated brain bits. Matt and I, when we entered the Natural History Museum, had a plan of action. Get in, find the washrooms, find the hope diamond, and get out. (Bathroom's nasty, diamond very shiny, way out indicated weirdly.)
After successfully executing our plan, we met up with Matt's sister and headed to Dupont Circle again for a gander at all the neat shops and coffee places and, of course, dinner.
The next day we planned to visit Georgetown and the of-so-talked-about M street. In Edmonton we have a similar street, way smaller of course, but M street reminded my strongly of our own University-proximal street filled with adorable, expensive, shops. We went into Godiva's, Dean and DeLuce's, and ate at a pizzeria that made amazing fire baked pizza. Basically a foodies dream. I also went into the Anthropologie store, my very secret vice. It was three stories. What.
We cut up a street to get out of the shoppers flow and headed to Georgetown University campus. Which is a castle. It would be like going to Hogwarts but getting a Biology degree. With a minor in Genetics. We walked the campus, watched a soccer team practice, and promptly walked back out to the streets beyond to find some coffee.
It was around 3pm and the BF and I were done with walking. So we walked back to Washington University and took the Metro pseudo-home. We had finally been defeated by touristing. We even ate leftovers for dinner! Truly horrible tourist behaviour.
Oops. Accidental Trespassing.
That evening we decided to go out for an walk to the National Cathedral with Manon. Keeping in mind that back home it had already snowed 5 cms, time had turned back to fall.
We explored the insanely huge exterior of the church, saw the spires that had fallen off the building two years ago, and we attempted to find Darth Vader's gargoyle. We even adventured through a super dark, and thus creepy, park that the grounds keeper had forgot to lock up. Having survived the creepy park, our reward was frozen yogurt and bed.
Our last day was upon us. The plan was to take transit to the airport so we had the morning to run around in a last attempt to be tourists again.
We headed to a diner by Manon's apartment for breakfast. Fancy coffees and a sandwich covered and filled with cheese later, we went for a last walk through the very rich area around Pennsylvania Avenue. 3 and 5 million dollar houses with brick walls and shuttered windows. It was like walking through an old town movie set. And then it turned even more into a movie set. Coming up a hill, peering into a cul-de-sac, was a giant brick house covered in toilet paper. Also the giant tree in the centre courtyard-thing. I actually only thought that happened in movies. Just wow. Our walk coming to an end, we headed back to pick up our bags from our pseudo-home.
Getting to the airport was rather painless. What really got me was the security at the airport. I have never travelled out of the States before so this was my first experience with the TSA. Giant radiation machines really aren't healthy.... To be fair though, the machine caught my Fitbit which was attached to my bra. I have never taken off before because the Canadian metal detectors don't see it.
We had arrived early for our flight so I wandered around looking at all the tourist junk. Obama-bobbleheads!!
The flight to Chicago was ok. We had a two hour layover so we had to find something to eat. There was a sushi place near where we had come into the terminal that had decent looking plates. Little did we know how mind-bogglingly good that sushi would be. And in an airport! Seriously. We people watched the rest of the time till boarding.
Bobblehead!
Now, before this trip, I had never flown an American airline. Initially, I was surprised by the classism. Then I was surprised by the massiveness of the fleets and the planes themselves. This trip home, however, I was surprised by the ridiculousness of error. After everyone was seated, 15 minutes went by where nothing happened. 15 minutes in itself is not a long time, but psychologically, apparently, some passengers of the flight couldn't take it. Specifically one over large, over vocal mid-aged women sitting two rows in front of me, who needed to get up and huff at the airline attendants when they clearly had no ability to help the problem along.
It wasn't till 30 minutes past our time of departure, with no announcement, that I started to wonder what was happening. They had asked a family to deplane and now they were rattling around in the cargo hold. At a 40 minutes past departure time, one of the attendants announced that the plane was over weight because the ground crew had over filled the necessary fuel for the trip. What? The family that got off the plane had been on stand-by so to save weight they were asked to get off. Also, the rustling from the cargo hold was bags and mail meant for Edmonton, but not belonging to anyone on board, being off-loaded. What? I had never had this experience ever. I didn't even know you could over fill a plane. So 45 minutes go by (by this time the horrible standing women was yelling "Come On Guys" to no particular person. I assume she was attempting to foster support from the embarrassed passengers around her in order to get something for free). The attendant appeared and went over to the intercom, rather incredulous of her luck, and announced that now the cockpit and front kitchen area were flooding with some unknown liquid. I had heard that ridiculous things happened on United but I didn't think I would be in for the full show. Anyways. They got a maintenance guy to drain whatever the liquid was and then seatbelt signs went on away we went! Haha.
Hello Winter!
The flight itself was very nice. We got to see the vastness of Chicago light up at night. Also, sure enough, when the first drink service arrived the horrible women demanded a complementary alcoholic drink, to which the attendant rightfully said no. Other than the no smoking light going off briefly, there were no more hiccups or floods or rants. We were en route home.
When we got back a white winter Wonderland was awaiting us. For all the majesty of Washington, I missed little concrete built Edmonton Alberta.
Yay! Home!
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist
I don't often travel anymore. With school expenses needing paying and being between good paying work, the last vacation I went on was Mexico with the BFs family. But Matt's sister is working for the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. till mid-Decemeber, so, of course, we decided to invite ourselves over for a visit.
Now, since I am currently very broke, we booked our flight to D.C. with airmiles. I've been collecting them since I was 18 and have never used any of them, so we paid for one whole ticket with them. Score. The weird thing though, the states airlines operate using a hub system. Whether it is actually more effecient, I don't know, but we had a choice of going through Chicago to D.C. or literally taking a tour of all the western costal airports in the entire United States until we ended up at eastern Baltimore International. Needless to say, we chose the shortest stop through Chicago.
It was the first time I had ever flown with an American airline (well since I was a newborn), and it was an interesting experience. First off, classism still exists (which is weird). I guess I'm so used to Westjet where there is only one class, Everyone. Also, on the United plane, the safety pamphlets are all so verbose in legalese that I had the sneaking suspicion that they get sued everyday. While I was checking out the weird legal spill, we sat on the tarmac for a half hour because someone hadn't made it through customs and had to have their bags taken off the plane. By bags, this person had 10 full sized Rubbermaid containers and a 5 foot tall plywood box marked fragile.... And the rest of the passengers wondered what the hell was in all those containers. (They never told us. It's a mystery!) Up in the air, the ride was smooth and very uneventful. Except Matt sat next to The Dopple-Dean's doppleganger.
Landing in Chicago was incredible. It's one of the biggest international airports in the world and it looks it. I have never seen so many planes in my life. Little prop planes to huge double-decker airbuses. It was insane! (And totally made me feel like a little Alberta hick.) We had an hour and a half of layover and then it was back onto the strange classist phenomena that is American air travel, and off to the Baltimore International airport and Washington. It was around 10:30pm when we got into Baltimore and we had no idea how to get to Washington. So we took a cab. A $100 cab ride. To be fair though, the cab driver was super nice and talked to us about the area. Fun fact, there were no lights on the highway. Seriously. It was like being on a gravel road in the boonies back home, only it was an 8 lane mega highway, with no street lights. We made it to Matt's sister's apartment in one piece. Yay!
We Made It!
The next morning we finally got a glimpse of the wonderfully old city of Washington D.C.. In Manon's backyard is an old stone Church and up the street in the National Zoo. I had never seen a real life panda before so we took a tour through the zoo (which is free, whaaaaaat?) before heading to the Smithsonian and the National Mall. We took the metro, which was very efficient, except for the automated machines not wanting to take our Canadian credit cards.
Just in case of emergency....
When we got to the Mall, we took a trip to see the underground closet where Manon works in Provenance research. It was particularly easy to find our way out to the Air and Space Museum due to the million exit signs on Every Wall. Just in case.... of really bad short term memory? The entire basement was like this. I guess if the electricity went out in an emergency it wouldn't look so foolish. But in the light, it's pretty hilarious.
Finally into our first museum, we got out bags searched, weird, and walked into the museum for free, also weird. Immediately, Matt nerd-gasmed all over the planes and space capsules and the telescopes and the spy satellites. It was nerd love at first sight. I was amazed to see the actual capsules that had been to the moon and the lunar landers and german rockets and Russian nukes that had actually been made to be used, not just be displayed. It was very impressive how humans have take to the sky.
After 2 hours, we both got hungry and ventured out, off the Mall, to find some food. On the way we saw the most Canadian flags ever on the Canadian Embassy (maybe Canadian sarcasm at the amount of flags in the States?), and we also saw the Archives building (which later inspired us to watch National Treasure, hah).
We found an all-American restaurant, including all things fried and covered in lots of cheese. Good service though! We sat outside on the patio, in November, with the flowers still in bloom. No wonder Canada has such a stigma of being cold. We close our patios in the end of September, October if we're lucky....
After lunch we headed back to the Air and Space Museum to finish up with the Wright Brothers exhibit and the old 1950s luxury air travel exhibit. The lunches back then looked delicious. Jealous.
Mmmm, airplane food.
After touching a moon rock (ahhhhhh!!!), we headed out onto the Mall to start our trek up to the Capital building. At this point we had both done 10000 steps (we both have pedometers) and my feet were starting to hurt. We walked all the way up the Mall to the Capital building, which was very cordoned off with iron fences and men with machine guns. Since you can walk into our parliament in Ottawa, a little on the Ultra side for security. We walked passed a line of black suburbans to the Federal Courthouse and the Library of Congress. There were news people just camped out in front of the courthouse, cameras on stands waiting for anything to happen. And as for the library, out of all the ostentatious buildings we saw, that was the most ridiculous. Fountains and domes and stairs and stairs and stairs.
By this time it was getting late, and my feet hurt, so we had a break in the National Conservatory gardens. Promising to meet Matt's sister to tour the National monuments, we got up and walked back down towards the Washington Memorial, covered in it's lovely scaffolding.
Dusk on the Mall
From here we walked through the cherry trees to the Jefferson Memorial. Something very strange was happening there. Specifically, it was packed with school children. Tour buses upon tour buses of children. At 6pm. In the pitch blackness.
From the Jefferson Memorial we walked through the Roosevelt park, and then to the Martin Luther King Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial, all the while being followed by hundreds and hundreds of children. Our last stop was to see the big man in the chair, Mr. Lincoln.
I'll give Washington brownie points for being the most monument filled place I have ever been.
At this point we had done 30000 steps and Whin-ea had been replaced with Hungr-ea, so it was time to find some food. Walking back up to the Washington Monument from the Lincoln side, we had planned to see the White House after dinner, but after a whole day of walking we got in a cab and went off to Dupont Circle for a well deserved dinner break instead.
When we finally got home, we had walked 36.7 kms. I later found out the reason my feet hurt so much was because I had dislocated my big toe on my left foot. Half-assed walking for the win!
Day two and three to come!
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist
