Personal

by

How I Started RVing

Croft just posted a great story about how he started RVing.

For newer readers who might not have read back to the beginning of the blog, here’s the short story of how I started RVing:

-sometime around 2005, a blog made me notice RVs for the first time and I had a revelation: hey, I could have a home AND be able to travel!

-in early 2008 I attended an RVing show;

-later that spring, I toured a friend’s Gulfstream Hurricane class A;

-on that same weekend, I slept in my mother’s pop-up camper, my first time overnighting in an RV!

-in July I bought a motorhome;

-in September I hit the road full-time.

That sums it up quite nicely. Thankfully, fortune (in the sense of life experience wealth, not monetary wealth) has favoured the foolish!

by

Red Tape Exhaustion

I’m in the process of switching to Alberta residency and I’m just about done with this whole full-timing in Canada thing. It’s probably easier to request, and get, refugee status in the States than it is to move from one province to another.

I’m no longer comfortable spilling all the details of how I handle the legal red tape in this country. I am tired of all the lies and half-truths I have to tell to be able to drive and have some semblance of health coverage, and I grow increasingly concerned by the abundance of information that I voluntarily give up that could be used against me.

There was a time not so many months ago that I thought I was strong enough to be the full-timing martyr in this country; that I could live openly, proclaim from the rooftops that I screw the rules and do things my own way, consequences be damned, but that isn’t me anymore. The stress is gnawing at me and my resentment of my government grows exponentially with every hoop I have to jump through. I am exhausted. I bet if I were to grow out my hair it’d be grey!

I won’t let the government win. I’m not giving up on this lifestyle that I love so much, but I am going to go into hiding, so to speak, for a while, and say a lot less on the blog for the time being about the infrastructure aspects of my life.

 

by

Four Years Ago Today

Four years ago, while recovering from major surgery and mourning the still fresh loss of my father, I felt an urge to expand my family.

I was nervous. I had tried to bring a second cat into mine and Tabitha’s lives before and it had backfired. I wound up with a sweet boy who just wasn’t right for us. When he died suddenly, I’m ashamed to say I was relieved.

So it was with trepidation that I visited the Ottawa Humane Society on a hot Tuesday afternoon. I clutched a list of requirements that the new cat would have to have for me to bring it home. There were dozens of kitties in cages and I spent time with each one. Some shied away, some were very demanding. I don’t know how long I was there but it was at least an hour. And then I saw him, a brown tabby peering out at me from a bottom cage. He was curious, but not needy. I looked at his information sheet and compared it to my list. A perfect match. I put my hand up to him and he came to sniff it. My heart went boom and all my doubts went away. The next day, I brought home my handsome boy, Neelix:

first picture I took of Neelix

It takes a while for me to bond to an animal, but like with Tabitha, I felt an instant tug towards Neelix and I knew he was going to fit into our family just fine.

It wasn’t until several years later that I realised that my list was missing a crucial requirement: a sweet disposition. Thankfully Neelix has one. I have never met a gentler cat in my life.

Happy adoption day my beloved boy.

by

"I just privatized world peace"

My favourite type of popcorn movie is the comic book adaptation. A recent favourite is the Ironman franchise. I saw Ironman 2 in Dawson last summer.

So you can imagine how amused I was this afternoon when I went across the street to the bottle depot and saw the following lying on the grass by a tree:

Wonder if this guy is running around our neighbourhood without his mask. I guess he’ll be tough to miss.