RVing

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Matters of Residency

The big project for this summer is to try to become a resident of Saskatchewan based out of my property. This will help me be more legitimate in the eyes of federal, provincial, and international law. It will also give me the peace of mind that I will never have to change provinces again. The post office here could close, so I could have to change my address again, but that would be a small thing to deal with should the time come.

Before beginning the residency change process, I need to make sure I can get my vehicles adequately insured here. A blog reader recently commented that Aviva does NOT offer the Elite full-timer policy in this province because Saskatchewan has government-run insurance.

So I need to sit down with an insurance adjuster here, present my existing coverage, and see if they can provide me with something comparable for the motorhome. I need coverage for contents (including anything in a shed) and liability, and I want it to be clear that I plan to be out of the country six months of the year so that we can get the surcharge built into the policy. Snowbirds appear to have some sort of official status here, but, of course, the website has no information on that.

The insurance premiums must also be payable in installments as there is no way I could afford to pay my policies in full (one of the many reason I could never move to BC).

Then, I need to make sure I can prove I am an SK residence. This is going to be WAY easier than it was in other provinces as I just need to prove I have an address here! Their list of what is acceptable does not include a property title, but does include a bank statement and a property tax assessment notice. If I get water hooked up, I can use a water bill.

Once I am comfortable that I will be able to get adequate insurance and my residency paperwork is in order, I need to get my insurance and driving abstracts from Alberta. I don’t want to take this step until I’m sure that I will be able to transfer residency to Saskatchewan in order not to tip off Alberta in case the residency change doesn’t go through.

The following step is to arrange for my out of province vehicle inspections.

Caroline and Charles told me to go to the Kal-Tire in Assiniboia as they were well treated there when they moved from Manitoba. The cost for the truck should be about $80, but I have no idea what it will be for Miranda. I have enough confidence in the Kal-Tire brand to believe that I won’t be ordered to have thousands of dollars worth of work down on each vehicle to get my certificate, but there’s always the concern that something could come up. Best case scenario, this is going to cost me a few hundred dollars.

The order of the next steps is a little fuzzy since I don’t understand exactly how insurance is going to work here, but a visit to SGI, the SK DMV, will be in order. I will bring my driver’s abstracts so that I can get a full license, having learned my lesson from Alberta.

Once my vehicles are registered in Saskatchewan and I have my driver’s license, getting health coverage should be a non-issue.

And then, I will be able to breathe a little easier and will feel more comfortable crossing the border.

Charles and Caroline suggested I share their PO box in Montana, which will save me from paying the full rental fee. I’d love to go there once every two months or so and get Amazon packages. There’s so little I can’t get through Amazon that it makes sense to use up my gift certificates every month and drive to Montana to get the items than it does to pay for them out of pocket up here. I mean, a lot of this stuff would be items I’d get in Moose Jaw, so I’d be making a long drive anyway.

I had thought to apply for a Nexus pass once I’m established here, but since Nexus travelers are treated like regular travelers in the non-Nexus lanes and there are no Nexus lanes in Saskatchewan, that seems like an unnecessary step that would give the governments even more information about me.

I’ve been feeling rather like an outlaw on the run for years, so it will be nice to have a veneer of legitimacy even though I will continue to live according to my rules.

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Business is NOT Picking Up

I feel like a couple of recent comments need to be addressed in a post. There seems to be the mistaken impression that business for me is picking up and that I’m raking in the cash. This is most certainly not the case.

Being a freelancer, business is never steady. Sure, I’m swamped this week, but the last two weeks all I had on my plate were jobs from a client who pays me minimum wage at best. The client who’s keeping me busy this week could go dark for all of July. I don’t know.

Since last summer, I’ve been able to ride this income roller coaster and get the bills paid, no problem. But it’s still not enough to go beyond my most basic needs. I need a couple more steady clients who pay me well to serve as my ‘overtime’ pay. Until that happens, I’m going to be scrambling.

I have so many big expenses this summer, including attending the seminar, truck maintenance, and the cost of transferring residency to Saskatchewan, among others.

So these ‘I’m busy with work’ posts are not to say, ‘wow, I’m rolling in the dough’ but rather ‘there’s a reason I’m filling the blog with fluff.’ 🙂

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International Cooperation

Late Wednesday May 29th, I ordered a water filter to be shipped to my friend’s in Virginia. I have an Amazon Prime membership, so the package got there on Friday May 31st, within the two promised business days. My friend promptly checked the order to make sure everything was there, repackaged it, and sent it ‘Express Mail’, which offers delivery to most major international markets within three to five business days.

She had me pay her the $30 or so it would have cost to send the package a slower route and covered the difference for Express herself (THANK YOU, I love you!), only telling me this after the package was processed.

The package left Norfolk on Monday and got stuck in Canadian Customs. It’s always scary to see the ‘item was sent for further processing’ and then ‘item was released from customs’ notes. This was Wednesday. No update yesterday. As far as I knew, the package was languishing in Mississauga.

I checked the status this morning and discovered that it had arrived in Regina at 1AM and left there at 4AM!

I went to the post office around 10, just as the post master was getting into her car, and when she saw me, she got out and told me she had a package for me. My filter was here! AND I didn’t have to pay any taxes on it! So my out of pocket cost was only about $30. Wooho!

This isn’t the first time I’ve been impressed by the expediency of the postal system, but this really was above and beyond what I expected, especially since my friend sent me another package by a slower method and it seemed to be moving along faster.

In other news, Skynet has gained self-awareness AND is prescient. I got up this morning and had crazy fast internet with three bars of signal and an RSSI of -86. At the EXACT minute I hit send on an email to a client, the connection dropped and would not come back. I had to scramble to get out the door and up the hill for my deadline. Once up there, I got offered tons of work for the weekend, which meant enough downloads that I would have had to go up the hill even if I had been able to send an email from home. Be very afraid people.

I don’t expect to be back online till Monday as I have 30 hours of work to do by 9PM Sunday. Gary, have a virtual beer for me each evening!

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Grocery Sprint

Even though it looked like the transcription marathon was going to stop at the end of this current (very difficult) job, due tomorrow first thing, getting a few groceries today was absolutely necessary. I had originally planned to leave for Stettler on the 10th and didn’t want to leave too much food in the fridge, so I worked down my stores before realising that I’m actually leaving the 14th and that I would have to eat Neelix at some point to get protein. A gal can’t live off rice, veggies, and the odd bit of almond butter forever. 🙂

Since a) I was in a hurry, b) the truck was full of donations for the thrift store, and c) I didn’t want to do a giant amount of shopping, going to Willow Bunch made sense. To my surprise, my trip took me exactly one hour round trip!

The road to Willow Bunch was in decent shape and I actually drove about 80KPH on it even though it’s gravel.

I found the thrift store and Co-op (right across from each other) without trouble. The lady at the thrift store had me go around back through the alley to unload. It felt good to get that stuff out of my truck! She seemed pleased with the donations.

Then, I circled back around and parked at the Co-op. The food store is tiny, but the more I walked around, the better stocked I found it to be. Since the prices are the same as the Co-op in Assiniboia, I didn’t have the small market sticker shock I was expecting. In fact, once I manage to do a good pantry stocking run in a larger community, it would definitely make sense to just top up in Willow Bunch once a week instead of Assiniboia if I have no other errands to do since it’s half the mileage.

I stocked up on produce, including a 99 cent avocado, and then looked at protein. Like in Assiniboia, there was lots of choice, but everything was so pricey. Every time I have tuna (of the canned, non sushi variety) I think that I should start eating more of it. Since tuna was on sale for $1 a can if you bought two (which I think is a decent price for the Cloverleaf brand), I decided to go that route and I also found some nice looking pre-marinated pork chops for $4 that will make four meals, so that sounded like a fair deal. I am most definitely not a vegetarian anymore! 🙂

Today was the day Co-op members got their equity cheques. Of course, I didn’t have one (I’m told I will next year, though…), but that made me eligible for the BBQ. I wasn’t interested in burgers, but I was somehow talked into grabbing a doughnut and coffee “for the road.” Considering I haven’t had anything resembling junk food in a full week and the last time before that was about a week and a half, I have forgiven myself for my weakness. 🙂

The drive home seemed faster than the drive out, especially once I found the country music station out of Moose Jaw (turns out all the radio shows are on the AM frequency).

I came in and assembled a tasty tuna salad (using sour cream instead of mayo) and slathered it on some fresh cheese buns (couldn’t believe they had those; I am a sucker for them). I asked Neelix if he wanted the tuna juice and he answered by getting up on two paws and reaching for the counter. Still, he appeared dumbfounded when I poured the tuna juice into a bowl for him. He’s been wanting to go outside since we got here and so he’s been getting a lot of nos lately. He really enjoyed his treat!

It’s another beautiful, if not super warm, day and the internet has decided to work. *rolls eyes*

Oh, and before I forget, I have to give a shout out to Joni in Salem who sent me a tripod for my camera! THANK YOU! Having a post office right here in the village is such a bonus. I go once a day just for the walk and didn’t expect her package to be here yet, but the postmaster had seen me coming and had it out for me. I’ll be putting it to good use.

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Lots of Typing

My biggest transcription client is keeping me busy this week! I finally learned over the winter to take on as much as I can in such situations even if it means a week of 14+ hour days since the droughts can be quite severe. I still have another four hours to do on the current project, but it’s 9PM and the deadline is 11AM tomorrow, so I may push on for only another hour or so. I worked till 11PM Monday and 10PM yesterday, so I’m feeling a little knackered.

The thing with transcription is that you actually have to work to get paid. It’s not a job where you can stare out the window for five minutes and pad that into your invoice. You’re paid to complete so much audio regardless of how long it takes you. When you have 10 hours worth of typing to do, that’s 10 hours of sitting at your desk moving your foot and hands. You can’t do that straight, at least not for several days in a row. So the days grow quite long as the breaks increase when fatigue sets in.

I put in a good morning, then took a long break for lunch. Charles gave me the heads up yesterday that Nels is returning this weekend to haul stuff out of his yard. So I spent a half hour or so doing a final audit of all the junk and hauling a few more pallets to finish my boardwalk and to bring to Ken. If I catch sight of Nels and he appears more rational than the first time we met, I’m going to see if I can convince him to have the water and power turned on to his property, with me paying the utility bills for the rest of the summer.

Then, I packed up the dolly and tools that I borrowed from Charles and trundled over there with two empty jugs to fill with water. No one was home, so I just left the things in plain sight, filled up, and headed home to make some food.

Reading Apartment Therapy this morning, I found a recipe for onigiri, Japanese rice balls, so I had that on the brain even though I didn’t have nori (seaweed), never mind anything interesting to stuff in them. And then I remembered something my cousin gave me last summer, a sachet she’d been given by a Japanese exchange student. All the text on it is in Japanese so I had no idea what the contents were although I could read (if not comprehend) a lot of the words.

I pulled it out and realised the picture on the front was of onigiri! I was holding mix ins for them! I put some rice on to cook and opened up the sachet. WOAH! It smelled like fish food! I could identify bits of dried nori, salmon, and shrimp as well as coarse salt and sesame seeds. I figured that if it was like most Japanese food, it would be addictive despite the strange smell.
Once the rice was ready, I decided it needed a little something, so I turned it into sushi (rice seasoned with sweet rice vinegar) and then put in a little bit of the fishy stuff before making up a few balls. As I suspected, the fishy stuff was addictive! So this was a very good first introduction to onigiri and you can blame my internet connection for there not being any pictures. I am amused that lunch was made with a sachet from Tokyo given to me in Montreal, vinegar bought in Hampton Roads, and rice bought in Dallas!

I powered through a good chunk of the afternoon, then took a break to restring and clean my new clothesline and make dinner. Now, I’m getting my second wind and should be able to get a little more done tonight so I don’t have to rush in the morning.

I badly need to get some groceries, but that takes about three hours out of the day, so I’m hoping I won’t have time to get any tomorrow… I have decided to go to Willow Bunch since I need to drop some stuff off at the thrift store, so maybe that would cut the grocery run to two hours. I only realised today that prices at their Co-Op would be the same as in Assiniboia, only the selection would be even more restricted.

Back to work I go. I surely have the fittest fingers in all the land!