Accommodation

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Return to Mindfulness

In a few hours, my high speed internet connection will be terminated and I will have to go back to my very limited 5GB cellular connection. The new billing period starts on the ninth, so I can use that entire 5GB in a week, making the return to limited bandwidth not too drastic just yet. And I’ll be back on high speed when I get to Quebec, so this is just for six weeks. I opted to terminate the connection tomorrow because that was the last day of the billing cycle. The way internet is billed, I pay a month ahead of time, so I should not have to pay for anything else, but I will ask Jody to keep her eye out for a Telus envelope with my name on it just in case.

This winter, I haven’t had to think my use of water or electricity or internet or propane nor have I had to worry about sewage. It’s been very easy, and very mindless. I find that the days tend to run a little less into each other when you have to monitor your utilities. because it hasn’t been that long since you dumped or took on water or because your batteries have been rather low for a few days. It’s a combination of small things that help me feel more engaged in my life. There is so much I miss about living in my RV and mindfulness is at the top of the list. Cooking over a flame is also near the top of the list. 🙂

I am giving the apartment complex a few more hours early this week but I am hoping that by Wednesday I will be pretty much done. I ended up putting in a full eight-hour plus day on Saturday, which had not been on my schedule! So I wound up spending today doing transcription rather than working in the rig.

As for my rig preparations, I’m downscaling them as I always do since my mother reminded me that she has her full woodworking shop and some of her free time at my disposal. So I will finish up my work in the study and call it done, unless the time to do that materializes this week and I have time to take on the other projects.

April 11th is marked on my calendar as the day to take Miranda out for fuel, propane, and dewinterizing, and April 16th is down as the absolute last morning for pulling out. Having those dates firmly set in my calendar makes the idea of departure from Lethbridge much more real. I have now been in Lethbridge exactly one year and am 14 days away from leaving. While I have no regrets about the last twelve months, I am ready to go. Well, mentally at least. Physically, I’m hustling. 🙂

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A Little Soggy

I was up in The Apartment this afternoon doing some transcription when I got an email from the new manager that said, grosso modo, a tenant has a broken tap and it’s spewing water everywhere and I can’t get a hold of maintenance. Did I any chance know where the shut off valve was?

Nope. So I raced downstairs to the other building, turned off a couple of taps in the boiler room until I got the water turned off for the building, and then pretty much waded into the tenants’ apartment. What. A. Mess. A bathtub tap had come right off; I’ve never seen anything like it and I have more than a casual acquaintance with plumbing issues. I used the tenants’ phone to call the office to find out that maintenance still wasn’t picking up. Thankfully, now that there wasn’t water pouring out of the tap and filling the tub faster than it could drain, I could turn the tap off manually.

So I handed the tenants a wet-dry shop vac and went back to the office to get a screw driver. When I came back with the tool, the apartment was a lot drier and I had no trouble turning the tap off. I can’t remember if all house-style plumbing has this, but all our taps have a metal cover below them, behind which is a pipe with a screw that can be used to turn the water on and off if the tap fails. That done, I was able to turn the water back on to the building.

Back at the office, I told the new manager to add to her to-do list, “Ask head office what to do in case there’s another plumbing emergency, maintenance won’t pick up, and Rae is gone!!!”

Such fun. 😀

I have made the switch in my brain and consider myself to be in a supporting role now. I’m putting in some face time at the office, but it’s a better use of my time to be upstairs doing transcription or other work for myself. I am in the pay period that will produce a mid-April pay cheque and will Friday fall into the first of May pay cheque period, so I am motivated to work my fingers to the bone in these last few weeks in Lethbridge. It would bring me peace of mind to know that I have income coming in during my trip east.

That said, my rig is nowhere near ready to go mode and my toad needs a new battery, so I need to start drilling down my list of priorities!

 

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The Coatless Winter Winds Down

March! How can it be March?!

This morning, a reminder to cancel The Apartment’s internet connection popped up on my calendar, so I promptly called Telus and did just that! This is going to be my last billing cycle on hard wired internet and I’ll be back to using my cellular modem on April 2nd. I can’t believe how quickly the last few months have passed!

An email landed in my inbox an hour ago that 100% firmed up my cross-country itinerary. I need to be in Quebec for May 18th so I will be going straight there by way of visiting a friend in Virginia, leaving exploration of the southwest to next winter.

Going to Virginia might seem like a huge detour, but it’s actually less than 1,500KM. When you’re committed to traveling 3,500KM already, what’s another 1,500KM? 🙂

I will be deviating a little from this route once I figure out the best way to by-pass Chicagoland by RV (I do hope to squeeze in a hop to one of my favourite cities by toad, however!), but for the most part this is a familiar route for me that will still allow me to add a few new states to my visited states list!

As things stand today, I don’t see myself leaving Lethbridge till mid-April, so I will have a solid month to get across the continent, which will leave me with plenty of time for sightseeing, visiting with friends, and working while traveling at a reasonable place. I’m itching to get back on the road, but am glad that I have time to finish up a few projects before I do.

(As for the title of this post, someone was shocked to see me wearing a coat during the day yesterday. That’ll give you an idea of how warm it’s been!)

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Winter’s Bittersweet Refrain

BRRRRRR!!!

February is going out like a lion! It’s unfortunately too cold to work in the rig, so my electrical and painting projects are on hold. Eep! The forecast does have us moving back up towards a thaw for next weekend, so I’ll hopefully be able to catch up then!

I’ve been feeling really spent the last couple of weeks, so I spent the bulk of today curled up with my cats and the iPad. Tomorrow, I’m going to continue preparing The Apartment for my imminent departure. I should be back home within a month or so!

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The Week That Vanished

Is it really Friday again?! I know it’s rent collection week, but still, it’s been busy! The transcription hasn’t let up either, which is a Good Thing.

For lunch today, I decided that since I haven’t had sushi in weeks, I’ve been (and will be for the foreseeable future) too busy to go out for dinner, and it’s been a manic week I had earned a treat. So I called Dono this morning to place a pick-up order for lunch. I wish I had thought to do this before! I normally pay about $30 (plus tip) for a sushi dinner out and I got more food for lunch today for $19 (no need to leave a tip) than I do for a dinner. I had them make me up a bento box with an assortment of things and was really pleased with what was chosen for me, which including a type of sashimi I’ve never had or seen before (possibly mackerel). I had thought that for $13, I’d get a light lunch, so I added two pieces of nigiri (octopus and eel) to round out the meal, but I didn’t need to, not with the soup, salad, tempura (all included with the lunch special!), five huge pieces of sashimi, two other nigiri, and a gigantic shrimp tempura roll (the only disappointment (and a mild one at that) since that’s a bit too heavy/western for my palate).

This evening, I continued working on the study. Oh? Earlier this week, I took an evening and emptied the study of everything but the desk and the filing cabinet. I have been really unhappy with the paint job in that room so I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’m out of the rig to redo it and get it right. Tonight, I sanded down the walls and gave the whole room a good scrub. I’ll prime tomorrow and hopefully get a coat of paint done on Sunday. I haven’t picked out a new colour yet and am torn. I love the current colour, but it’s a bit dark. It’s just that it’s so hard to get the right shade of light green. I’ll see what options the home store has compared to the green in the curtains and decide then. I’ve also decided to relocate the wall cabinet for what will have to be the last time as I am down to the last possible place to put it! I hope that I’ve finally found a home for it where it will be usable.

Once the study is back together, it’ll be time to start thinking about slowly moving back home!