Author: Rae

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Dono Sushi, Lethbridge

This has been my second weekend in a row glued to the computer for a big transcription job. Saturday wasn’t too bad because I had a ton of chores to do, so I had ample reasons to get off the computer chair and move around. The downside was that I had about eight hours of work to do today. I decided to just plow through to be done by dinner. By mid-afternoon, I was soooooooore. I knew I needed to go for a long walk, but it was cold (sub-zero!) and dark out there. There was only one option: go out for dinner so I would have motivation to face this bitter fall night.

I went out for sushi on the 31st, so I wasn’t craving it, plus it’s not the first thing I want when I come in frozen from a long walk, but miso soup, teriyaki, and tempura sounded like just the ticket. So I schlepped the 2.5km (1.5 miles) to Dono Sushi  (link is to their menu). Jody’s daughter had told me that Dono was worth going to, but the sushi isn’t as good as that at O-Sho.

Dono is located in a strip mall. I was surprised by the cozy wood paneling decor. The menu is huge, but easily narrowed down if you’re not really in the mood for sushi. I zeroed in on the $13.95 teriyaki and sushi combo–teriyaki chicken, a ball of rice, two pieces nigiri (which turned out to be yellowtail and shrimp), and California rolls. I decided to splurge and ordered a side of veggie tempura ($7.95) and a Sapporo beer (a surprisingly reasonable $5.50). Total with tip was just under $33. It’s a good thing I’m usually  more reasonable when I eat out. 🙂

The food was delicious!

First up was a miso soup. It was heavy on the soy sauce, so not quite to my liking because you lose that unique miso flavour, but the broth was rich and had plenty of spring onions and tofu in it. So, not my favourite miso soup in the universe, but not one at which I’d turn up my nose!

I did find the nigiri to not be quite as nice as those at O-Sho; it was just a subtle flavor difference that could simply be due to the fish coming from a different supplier. I wasn’t crazy about the California rolls because their version has mayo. I couldn’t believe the meal came with eight pieces! That would have nearly been a meal on its own!

The chicken was very tasty and the sauce just sweet enough. I like that the chicken had a strong grilled taste coming through the sauce. It was served on a bed of cabbage and sprouts, which I like for the crunch.

As for the tempura, oh my! Whenever I’ve had tempura in the past, it’s been the same thing–yam, broccoli, and zucchini (which I firmly believe only belongs grated in chocolate cake, but I digress). Dono added three things to their tempura. The first was red pepper. I can’t even begin to describe how tasty the red pepper was wrapped in the tempura batter. It was crunchy but still melted in my mouth. Yum! The second thing was an asparagus spear as long as my forearm (yes, I compared the two). This confirmed to me that the reason I don’t like asparagus is that the people who serve it to me overcook it. This asparagus was firm and crunchy, the second time I’ve had it like this, and it was delicious! Finally, the last thing was acorn squash! Now that was practically a dessert! I sampled all the tempura but left the zucchini. 🙂

The next time I’m in the mood for walking to teriyaki, I will order the teriyaki and tempura combo and add some nigiri. No sense wasting calories on something containing mayo. 🙂

It was a great meal and the walk home wasn’t nearly as bad as the walk there!

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Posting On Demand ;)

I got a comment from faithful reader Gary on my last post about my not posting for a week. I thought he was exaggerating. But no! I haven’t posted for a week!

With the week I just had, how can that be?! Oh, right, I don’t like to post too much about my jobs. Well, I will be sharing one anecdote shortly, but I’ll just say first that right now I am working about 30 hours at my outside job and at least as many for myself. That leaves me just enough time to sleep, cook, tease my cats, and keep The Apartment tidy. It doesn’t leave much time for bloggable activities. 🙂 Just hang in there, okay? This will all be worth it when I go south this spring and have new border crossing stories to tell. 🙂

So this week’s amusing anecdote is once again brought by some of the most laughable Canadian organizations, our telecom companies.

Try to follow this…

A new tenant called Telus to have his internet connected. A Telus rep came to do the hookup, but discovered that the wiring was bad from our box in my office to the tenant’s apartment. He told me to call Telus to have them install a new line.

“But you’re Telus, why can’t you do the work?”

“Actually, I’m a sub-contractor for Telus. I can’t do anything without their authorization.”

Oh, okay. He gave me the business contact number for Telus. I called and was told I needed to call another number. I tried that number and it was not available in my area. So I called back Telus and decided to try my luck with another rep.

“Oh, we can’t help you. Your equipment is with Bell. You have to call them and they’ll contact us so we can get a subcontractor to do the repair.”

(I swear I’m not making this up.)

I was given, again, the number that didn’t work. Thankfully, I caught the rep before he hung up and he was able to dig up another number for Bell that he said would work.

Next, I called Bell and explained the situation to them. “Well, yes, it’s our equipment. But why should we have to call Telus? Call them back and order through them. They’ll send us the information. Then call us to schedule the repair so we can schedule it with Telus.”

(So Telus can then schedule it with a sub-contractor, right? Really, I cannot make this stuff up.)

I hung up with Bell and called Telus again. This rep said the same thing as the last one, informing me that the person at Bell was completely wrong. Here, try this number, you should get someone smarter.

So, back to Bell I went. This rep agreed that Bell had to take my order, but she needed to do a credit check on the company, never mind that we have an account with them and that we’re asking for a line to be repaired, not a completely new one to be put in, yaddi, yadda, call me back when you have the mountain of information I asked for, bla bla bla.

I decided to go up the chain of command at my company and get some advice. It took some persistence on my part, but I was finally advised to have the tenant call Telus, tell them at the first install failed, and that they need to come fix the line.

The tenant looked at me like I was an alien when I told him this, trying to figure out how this was going to work since he obviously had no authority to have major structural work done in the building, but he went along with it. He came back a short while later to tell me that Telus had no idea what he wanted but they’d be sending a sub-contractor tech to talk with me the next day.

The sub-contractor arrived on schedule(ish) and discovered that there wasn’t really anything wrong with the line. The first technician missed something that was easy to repair…

As my best friend would say :::head desk:::

Next week, I have to go through all of this again to get three new lines hooked up for our intercom system. I’m starting to understand how some people end up throwing their phone through the telecom office window!

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Still Doing Laundry By Hand

I’ve been doing my laundry by hand with my Wonderwash since I moved into the apartment.  I got a lot of concessions and perks when I agreed to spend the winter here, but free laundry wasn’t one of them.

Doing the laundry with the Wonderwash is no hardship. It takes about 30 minutes start to finish (not all in a row since I always allow a bit of time for soaking) to get a couple of loads done with it. Moreover, I was also able to pick up Donna’s spin dryer when I was visiting last weekend (thanks!!!), so I don’t have to wring out everything. Even jeans dry in record time (about a day; it’s been damp and too warm for putting the heat on).

I have tons of space in the apartment for placing the drying rack and hanging things. When I do towels and sheets tomorrow, I will put the drying rack on the balcony so that everything will dry in a couple of hours.

The gift of the Wonderwash could really have gone both ways. It could have been a useless space hog, but I have really made it work for the space it takes in my shower. I think it really is a must-have tool for the frugal RVer who doesn’t want to feed quarters or loonies into laundromats. Of course, I have gone for very long stretches on the road where laundry was free, but I have also had some periods where it wasn’t. In those periods, I would say I have done my laundry by hand 75% of the time. So laundry really isn’t a major line-item in my budget.

 

 

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This and That

It’s been a busy week and I’ll definitely be putting in a couple of hours this weekend. Work is still going great!

Jody can attest to the fact that the apartment is definitely looking lived in. I keep bringing in things that I need (tonight it was the breadmaker). Moving out is going to be a lot of work! I’m still not that comfortable living here. The noisy fridge is a pain and I don’t like that people in the hallway can hear what I’m doing. My maintenance guy gave me some weather stripping to put between the door frame and the door as well as a door-sweep for the bottom. I installed them this afternoon (he’s got enough to do!) and noticed quite an improvement. You can still hear things outside, but the sounds are muffled. I have the second worst designed apartment layout; most of the others have an L-shaped hallway with the living room way at the back so there’s a ton of privacy. My hallway goes straight into the living room area.

One of my tenants came to let me know that one of his buddies is interested in buying Miranda. I let him know that MY RIG IS NOT FOR SALE!!!!!! She’s irreplaceable!!!!!!!!!! And priceless!!!!!!!! I went in Miranda this evening and had to leave quickly; I miss my home so much. 🙁 But I have almost a full month done of the six before I can go back.

The weather is still gorgeous with today being on the cold side of chilly. The sun is glorious! I still haven’t plugged in Miranda since I still don’t have enough extension cord, but I got good news: maintenance has been needing an outside plug near where Miranda is parked and it’s going in by early next week! I’ll only need one extension cord to reach it. Yay! Once I have heat inside, I’ll be able to set aside some time and budget for painting and fall cleaning. The weather has not been cold enough yet for me to be uncomfortable with there not being any heat inside.

That’s the latest scoop in Raeland!

 

 

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Tribalism

I had a lot of time to think on the drive into BC this weekend, mostly about the slew of birth, wedding, pregnancy, and new house announcements streaming from my loved ones in my old life.

It really hit me how little I have in common with these people any more. Their milestones are insignificant in my life and they certainly don’t understand mine. There’s no point posting “I got a solar panel!” to Facebook, for example, because they just wouldn’t get how significant that is to my life. My milestones are so different–achieving electrical independence, financing my life on the road without rely on outside work, mastering mountain driving, backing into a tight spot with crunching anything…

For the first 29 years of my life, I felt like an outsider, like the background player on a popular sitcom. I just never belonged with anyone or anywhere and I dreams of traveling and somehow stumbling on my ‘tribe.’ On my Friday afternoon drive, it hit me that this dream came to fruition! I have met people in the last three years I would most likely have never met, much less connected with, in any other context. I have found kindred spirits in Donna and Ken, Sarah, Jody and Gary, Croft and Norma, westerner by choice, Les, the Sands, and a number of other RVers and nomads, the list being too long to enumerate here (and I would be afraid to omit someone!).

These people might not be part of my daily life, but we can come together at any point and pick up where we left off without having to explain our milestones or our choices. We all understand the need to seek the next horizon, to find fulfillment in a foreign sunset, to experience how others live. We might not all live the same way or have the exact same values but we don’t need to explain ourselves to each other. We are a community bound by common understanding rather than roots.

I had no idea on that potluck afternoon of November 4th, 2008 that the neighbour who was just 10 years old than me and her wonderful husband would become such amazing friends, that I would enter their rig like it was mine, babysit their pup, or help myself to a beer before stretching out on their couch.

And I bet Jody had no idea what she was getting into the day she fired off an email inviting me to stay in her and her husband’s back yard this summer! With her and Gary it was ‘right’ from the start. I have always felt welcome and safe in their home, as though we have known each other forever.

We never know who will be the special people in our lives, those who won’t just pass through but rather stick. I miss and love my friends and family from my old life. I am always happy to connect and forever sad that our bond has eroded so much. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m no longer on the outside looking in because I have found my tribe at last.