Later January 2006 entries

01-13-06

Future beautiful flooring
 Well lookie what I found. It's the hard wood flooring beneath the carpeted bedrooms, living room, and hallway of the new house. And it's beautiful! I went to the house tonight to pay Nick our deposit and take some measurements. I am so excited about this, even more now that I know it has potential to have hard wood floors and we can paint the wood paneling in the living room (it takes a special kind of primer, but we can do it). So the living room could go from navy blue carpet and wood-colored paneling to hard wood flooring and white walls. What a HUGE difference!
Of course this opens up many more hours of labor and expenses before moving in, but I really think it should be done before moving in. RIGHT?
I also found a Starbucks Drive-Thru not far from the house that I'm gonna ask my manager if I can transfer to. She's actually been making some phone calls for me, which is nice. I am scheduled through Jan 27 here at this store so the transfer time along with the move would be perfect for the beginning of February.
So now I need to convince Sean that refinishing all the hard wood floors and painting that wood paneling would make A LOT OF SENSE TO DO IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS. Wish me luck.
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01-12-06
We got it!!!
We now have the following few things to think about:
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 The house is available now, and the landlord has been kind enough to offer us the opportunity to move in whenever we want, with only the deposit, and rent due on Feb 1. This is AWESOME. But it's in another city - Burnaby. I need to figure out when we will officially be moved in over there.
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 We need to approach the current landlords with the law that states that they owe us a month's rent (we need to find the law online so we can print it out and show it to them), because we don't think that they know about it. Which is a bit awkward to approach them with. Especially while telling them that we'll be out of here by the end of this month.
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 My job. Man, what a mess. Apparently I'm not allowed to transfer stores within the first 90 days of employment (even for a re-hire). Even though we are moving to another city. If the transfer is not allowed no matter what, I'll have to give two-weeks notice, then start all over again at another Starbucks, which means I'll lose another month before benefits kick in (three months after employment starts).
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 I have applied for another three jobs, all admin positions. There's a chance I could get one of these jobs right around the time I start at the new Starbucks. Which doesn't make me look too nice. But y'all, I make $8.50 an hour at Starbucks. Which means that I would make about $4.75/hour on my parental leave all of next year, which is NOT livable. (Parental leave is based on 55% of what you last made.) Taking a higher paid job would not only affect my salary now, but my salary for the next year-and-a-half. I *have* to look for better work. Also? MY FEET HURT.
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 What we need for the new house: a sliding-glass-door cat door, lighting for the living room, a vacuum cleaner, a new fish tank stand so we can use our white table as a dining table again.
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 OH MY GOD WE HAVE TO PACK AGAIN. Good thing we hardly unpacked in this place.
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 We need to figure out what internet the people in the basement of the new house have. If it's good, we'll split it with them, since we have wireless cards. OR we may just set up cable or DSL and get Vonage for our phone service. Decisions that we have to make soon.... knowing most internet companies and their sense of urgency....
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 WHERE ON EARTH will we put the litterbox in this new house? There is NO bathroom floor space. And it can't go out on the deck because it's too wet outside.
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 NOW would be a really nice time to know where I'll be working 2-3 weeks from now. Like, NOW.
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 Money. Yeah, yeah broken record....
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01-11-06
The weird house.
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01-08-06
Aaaaannnnnnd the home we looked at tonight.
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01-07-06
Three bedroom East Van apartment for rent, ground level, $900 per month.
No, really. Go look.
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01-06-06
From Mom to Me:
I have the same questions some of your commenters have - did the landlords always know they were going to be making these renovations? How did they tell you the news? Will there still be an apartment after the renovations?

From Me to Mom:
I wasn't home - I was at a Starbucks class, but Sean said Serguei came downstairs, with a written Notice to Vacate, plus showed the architect's plans, and contract, and an assessment of the house (and only the house) valuing it at $57,000 which is HORRIBLE - the houses around here are $1M (total, but still).
They need a new roof, we always knew that - that's what made Serguei want to put off the kitchen.
Sean thinks they knew this the whole time, hence the month-to-month.
They are required by law to give us two months notice. They wrote it on Jan. 5, hence the March 5 date.
If there is still an apt here, we don't care.
Concerns: a new midwife, transferring jobs, finding a place to take three cats again, rent + deposits + etc, truck rental, the poor, poor fish going into coolers again, and our sanity. We start looking this weekend. FAR FAR AWAY. Like Burnaby or New West or any other OUTskirts.

Hope this answers some of your questions. If we could find a home in Vancouver, we would. But experience shows that a nice place in Vancouver will run over $1500, which we just can't do with a baby on the way. Therefore, we won't be trying to continue our stay at Locarno Beach anymore. And what a shame - we never got to live here for a spring/summer, which was one of the great assets of this house.

Tonight we are throwing MJ a birthday dinner at Rugby Club. We looked at a place in New Westminster today which was okay except for the fact that it took 45 minutes to get there....
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01-05-06
Notice to Vacate
We are getting evicted!!!!
Serguei and Tatiana are renovating the house - as in a complete renovation. Even they are moving out. We have been given notice to vacate by March 5.
What a month this is turning out to be....
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01-04-06

I'm back from Florida with my usual Post Vacation Depression. When the fireworks were going off, I yelled "HAPPY NEW YEAR" then I said to Sean "Well, this one's gonna be a bit different."
I started at Starbucks yesterday - it's early, I'm tired, and I'm too old to be there. The pay is atrocious. Yes, I'm still looking for work. And NO, DON'T SEND ME ANY IDEAS OR SUGGESTIONS.

I have a new wardrobe of maternity clothes thanks to my Mom & Jeff, and Dad & Kay, and Grandma & Grandpa (soon to be "GiGi" and "GP"), and my Aunt Nancy, plus aunt Karyn got me some clothes at the baby shower. Sadly I trashed a new pair of maternity pants while taking out the 70 bags of garbage in the rain and mud on my first day of work. That day I came home and crawled into bed without saying anything. Today I just came home in a bad mood.
Like I said, New Year. Things will change. Right? RIGHT?
I have pictures from myself and Karyn posted, although I know there are tons more out there - I'm waiting for them. So I hereby present: Holiday Vacation Pages, now all on one page.
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