Monday, October 23, 2000

Pulling up stakes (again!)

Another LONG weekend. Saturday we piled into my sister Gail's old Volvo and drove up to Manning Park. Cheryl put a bug in my ear to go there and I thought that it would be nice to go since I haven't stopped to enjoy the leaves yet this season.

The sun was shining in Surrey and Vancouver when we left, but got progressively cloudier the further we got from the low lying coast. By the time we got to Hope, there was intermitten freezing rain to go with the clouds. I was pretty sure things would be okay because we still had the wind behind us, bringing clear skies with it.

We got to Manning and it was freezing! Melissa was bundled up and put into her backpack, to be toted by her mommy. I had Michael in his snuggly. We hit the trail so we could get out of the windy parking lot and into the trees where it would be warmer.

We hiked along the Lightning lakes trail and ran into sleet, sunshine, and sleet AND sunshine. Very bizzare, but beautiful too. Many trees in beautify yellow fall foliage. Sorry, no pictures.

We got back Saturday night around 7, Cheryl grabbed the newspaper and handed me the phone. I spent about 2 hours calling people about their advertised suites for rent and lined up about half a dozen appointments for the next morning. Our first appointment would be at 9am. With that, I crashed and didn't wake up until...

8am! Cheryl was telling me to get up! Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi...

It was a rush, but we made it out the door and to our first appointment. The neighbourhood was alright, but the suite was definitely too small.

We drove to our next appointment. Well, about the nicest thing I could say about the place was that it was definitely a lot of room. That, and maybe that the laundry was indeed very accessible. (The washing machine was outside the back door.)

The next place I drove us to we weren't to meet the landlord until after lunch, but I wanted to find the house first to have a look. I drove us by, but didn't stop because it seemed to be a nice house but the location was next to a busy main thoroughfare.

Our next appointment was in a new subdivision away from busy streets. (Put a plus on my mental list.) The new house seemed to be quite large on the outside. (plus) The landlord showed me around the suite. Large kitchen space, with linoleum (plus) He told me that he was the contractor building the homes in the area so he would be putting in a new fridge and stove into the suite for us. (plus! plus!) We looked into the bedrooms. Good closet space. (plus) We walked down the hallway to the 3rd bedroom. Cable and phone access. (plus)

He showed me the washing machine and dryer in the garage. We didn't have direct access to them, but would have some access anyhow. (minus, plus)

All in all, it seemed to be a good deal to me.

We arranged to start moving in on Tuesday (tomorrow). When we got home, we started getting stuff ready to pack, and we have been packing since.

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