{"id":50,"date":"2014-09-13T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T14:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=50"},"modified":"2016-11-03T19:23:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T17:23:00","slug":"so-much-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/so-much-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"So Much To Do!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last couple of months have gone galloping by. I can&#8217;t believe September is just about at the halfway mark and that I&#8217;m still crazy enough to think that I&#8217;ll be en route to Mexico on or about October 1st!<\/p>\n<p>One of the problems I&#8217;m having is that the weather has tanked and I still have some exterior Haven projects to wrap up. I need to paint the new shed door and finish cleaning the shed so that it will be usable in the spring. I also have cleaning and sorting to do in the cabin.<\/p>\n<p>My truck also needs organizing and sorting since I plan to sleep in it quite a bit (weather permitting) for the trip down to Mexico. I love driving my truck and look forward to doing some exploring in a vehicle that isn&#8217;t a bear to stop and park! I&#8217;m hoping to hit a few tourist spots along the way, but I think we&#8217;re going into an early winter, so I may have to drive hard to get through the mountains. My truck just doesn&#8217;t do well in snow, unfortunately. I can always hit those attractions in the spring since I plan to come north fairly late in the season (Mayish).<\/p>\n<p>Because I&#8217;ll need time to acclimatize in Mexico and get settled in, I don&#8217;t want to take a lot of time off on the way there. So I plan to drive and sleep in my truck (again, weather permitting) a couple of days and then stop at a hotel to work for three or four days. The income I&#8217;m getting now is such that I can afford a decent hotel with a proper desk and still actually make a profit at the end of the day. I&#8217;ll therefore be able to work nearly full-time in a compressed period of time and keep my clients happy. I plan to take about a full month to get to Mexico!<\/p>\n<p>As for Mexico, most would say that I haven&#8217;t done any work at all to prepare, but there&#8217;s been a lot of thinking. My friend <a href=\"http:\/\/croftsmexico.blogspot.com\">Croft<\/a> has helped me figure out things like vehicle insurance and what sort of paperwork I&#8217;ll need at the border.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I still don&#8217;t have the housing situation sorted because I keep waffling between getting a tiny inexpensive place and a larger more expensive one. I can afford the latter now and want to be comfortable (remember how claustrophobic I felt living in one BIG room in Lethbridge&#8230;), but I also want to put money away this winter. With finances not being super tight, I&#8217;m tempted to just show up and stay in a hotel for a bit while I sort out housing. But I might take advantage of super fast internet at my mother&#8217;s to make a few Skype calls.<\/p>\n<p>My mother&#8217;s? Oh, you don&#8217;t know that I&#8217;m flying to Quebec on the 17th for a week? I try to visit every two years, so it was time to go back east for a bit. My eldest nephew just had his 10th birthday, so the timing is good. I&#8217;ll be home late on the 23rd and then I play to be in focused departure mode.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving Miranda behind for eightish months is absolutely terrifying. I have no idea what I&#8217;ll be coming back to&#8230; Caroline and Charles, beloved friends and neighbours that they are, have promised to pop in every once in a while to make sure everything is okay. My roof is still leaking, so I plan to tarp the whole thing. I&#8217;ve also been having mouse issues now that I&#8217;m catless, so Charles will be providing me with plenty of mouse poison. I will be getting rid of all food and doing a thorough cleaning. Hopefully, I&#8217;ll come home to a dusty, but habitable, rig.<\/p>\n<p>From a technical point of view, I have to remember things like disconnecting the batteries. They will be moved (with a dolly because they are super heavy!) to Charles&#8217; workshop for the winter as will other things, like paint, that I don&#8217;t want to freeze. I also have to winterize the water system.<\/p>\n<p>It sounds like a lot of work, but I know that once I get going, it will come together quickly. I&#8217;m still working on my packing list. I&#8217;ve grown so used to having everything I own with me at one time that it&#8217;s kind of fun to play the &#8216;house is on fire, you have time to grab what&#8217;s important&#8217; game. Really, all I need are my electronics, the 2014 financial stuff folder, some other paperwork for the border crossings, and a bit of clothes. I&#8217;ll probably bring a bit of kitchen equipment and bedding as well. I want to take off and travel the world for a while in a backpack, so downsizing from an RV to a truck is a step in that direction!<\/p>\n<p>My biggest concern about Mexico at this point will seem silly to many, but it&#8217;s crucial for me: internet bandwidth. My new contract has me downloading large video files and so I need a lot of bandwidth in a month, more than I can\/should get from public wifi, and I&#8217;m supposed to avoid public wifi if I can for security purposes. But otherwise, there is no issue with my working from Mexico this winter and my clients are excited for me!<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on in my little corner of Canada these days. I am eager to go, but not sick of being here, and hopeful that Mexico will have good weather to make up for the lack of a proper summer!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last couple of months have gone galloping by. I can&#8217;t believe September is just about at the halfway mark and that I&#8217;m still crazy enough to think that I&#8217;ll be en route to Mexico on or about October 1st! One of the problems I&#8217;m having is that the weather has tanked and I still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,4,6,14,719,635,718,807,3,8],"tags":[853,1603],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-haven","category-homemaking","category-mexico","category-montreal","category-north-america","category-quebec","category-saskatchewan","category-travel","category-work","tag-accommodation","tag-outbuildings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}