Rebound!

 It's funny how life can change direction suddenly and in many different ways.

In the space of a week, we had the following happen:

• We bought a house. We have been looking since December and it had been grim going. Disappointment abounded because it seemed like every nice house we were interested in was sold for a crazy price. The very first house we put an offer in for went for $100 000 more than what we had offered. What's worse, is that if the seller had held out for another 3 months, they probably could have gotten $100 000 more than that.
  
  But this time, we were blessed. Unlike the other houses we had visited, this one did not seem to get the same action in terms of visits. I had counted cards. That is, there were only four real estate agent cards on the table; whereas all of the other ones had a dozen or more. I also think that supply had begun to catch up with demand and there were a lot of similar houses competing for attention. And we went in strong with a good offer.
  
  What's even better is that this house is the best one that we had seen. It looks to be in fantastic shape and it is in a great location. And I get a gaming space again, although it will also double as my office for work.
  
  
• I got my first Covid shot. A couple of weeks ago, I had put my name down in the local pharmacy list. I wasn't expecting a quick response but a week ago, I got to pick my appointment and so I chose a Monday, because why not? I got the shot, and I felt a little something in my arm later that evening and not quite 100%, say 90%. But this morning, I'm feeling great.
  
  FWIW, I got the Astra-Zeneca jab.
  
  
• I received a job offer, which I promptly accepted. After being laid off last summer and then having a non-Covid health scare, it has been a tough little while. I was so happy to get a contract because I was able to prove to myself and to other people that I was willing and able to work. But the contract was ending and I was dreading having to search for work again. It can be pretty soul-destroying. 
  
  I had applied to this company back in February. And the hiring process ground on through March. Near end of March, I knew I was in the final stage because they asked for references. On it went through April as I swung between hope and despair. It's where you try to figure whether them not contacting you is a good thing or a bad thing. 
  
  The company finally put me out of my misery. I am so looking forward to working for this company. What they do is exciting and worthy and they seem to have quality people. I can't wait to start.

This does mean that gaming (or anything related to gaming) might be a bit difficult to do. We'll see how things turn out.

Hiatus

 Well, it has been an eventful six months, not even considering a global pandemic:

• At the end of July, I lost my job as part of a corporate restructuring.
• I spent the second half of the summer and early fall searching for a job. We set a deadline of me finding a job by mid-September. I came really close, but there's no prize for coming in second.
  
  We set the deadline based on the real estate market being still hot in September and October before slowing in November and December. We also wanted to beat the surge in Covid cases that everyone was predicting.

• Simultaneously, I was preparing the house for sale, so this meant a bit of cleaning and clearing out of junk. You can see the results of that cleaning and clearing out in the pictures of our Abbotsford house.
• We then sold the house, so the cleaning and clearing out switched to packing for our move back to Ontario.
• One day, I emerged from the basement following a job interview and my wife asked, "What's wrong with your eye?" I couldn't feel anything different so I went to a mirror. My left eye was wide open while my right eye had it's normal semi-lidded position. I basically looked a little like Bill the Cat from Bloom County
  
  
  
  
• So it was off to the family doctor, who immediately sent me to an ophthalmologist, who immediately sent me to the hospital for a CT scan.
• The CT scan showed that some muscles that control my eyes are inflamed and maybe there was a blood clot in the vein for those muscles. The swelling has moved my eyeball a little forward and that's why my eye seems to be more open.
• I got referred to an orbital specialist who ordered an MRI and then another CT scan but using a dye. The swelling has gone down some but not completely as you can see here:
  

  

  
  
  
• I did discover another side effect: I get double vision if I am looking at anything closer that about four feet. Since I work with computers, this is a distinct problem. I can see fine but only one eye at a time.
• At the end of November we moved. The movers were a disaster. They managed to dent our dining room table and mash the bed headboard. They took forever to load the truck because there were only two of them and only one knew what he was doing.
• We also discovered that despite having to wear a mask all the time, travelling by airplane in the Age of Covid was actually very pleasant and smooth provided that you ignore the fact that there is an infectious and deadly disease spreading. There was lots of room and the WestJet staff were so nice and attentive.
• After we landed, we had video with the orbit specialist. She gave me the rather alarming news that I possibly had a leak somewhere vein network or near the brain and that I was to take it easy and refrain from any exertion.
• The movers continued their disaster by taking a whole week longer than we were originally told. Then, only after we escalated to the CEO and lots pleading, they found a driver to deliver our goods to a storage locker. But the driver was alone. Thank goodness that my brother-in-law and  his son had showed up to help us, because they packed our goods into storage. I was under strict orders to not lift anything.
• We moved in with a cousin of my wife, who has generously let us stay with him until we find a more permanent home. We're repaying him through nice meals and companionship, which I'm sure everyone appreciates during this time of lock-down.
• I got to see another eye specialist in Toronto, who let me know that there was no leak and no clot. Woo hoo! The one downside is that my eye has not changed. But at least I can get new glasses to fix the double vision.
• With the clean bill of health, I started to look for a job by reaching out to a recruiter who had contacted me. In a small world coincidence, he was looking to fill a contract that had been filled by my manager at my previous job. 
• After so many rounds of interviews that stretched the hiring process out to weeks or even months, I got a contract in less than a week starting from when I reached out to the recruiter to signing the contract.

I'm hoping that 2021 continues in this way. Good times are coming, we just have to hold out until they arrive.

Nostalgia: Photos of the Stouffville House

 Having posted about the house we are leaving in Abbotsford, I found the real estate shots of our Stouffville house that me left in 2017. We did hire a staging company for this one but keen observers will note that the stager used a lot of our stuff. To be fair, we used what the stager did as ideas to furnish and decorate in our Abbotsford house such as the paint colour and the glass top tables.

We'll start with the view from the front entrance looking towards the living room at the back of the house.

We originally had a bench seat in the hallway but we replaced that with the less practical but more photogenic glass console table.

And here is the reverse view looking back.

Here is the living room from the kitchen area.

And here is the reverse showing the kitchen from the living room.

Swinging a bit to the left, we have the dining area, which includes sliding doors to go outside to the back yard. The back yard wasn't too much to look at, basically a 40x20 foot area with a small patio and a loud air conditioner.

The landing of the stairs, which you would see the moment you stepped in the doors and looked to your left and then the stairs themselves.

The office, with a view out the front and a faked daybed. It's really just a bunch of boxes with a bed cover on them. We always intended to have a daybed in there though.

The main bedroom with a view out the back.

The ensuite bathroom, which was double in size over the Abbotsford bathroom, but nowhere near as nice. I much prefer a proper dedicated shower over the tub/shower combo.

Finally, the guest bedroom.

Maybe I'll be able to dig up the Brampton house. If so, I'll post those pix as well.

 

Gaming Stuff Packed

 Here is my miniature life reduced to a few boxes.

One big black box contains most of my Chain of Command 28mm miniatures and terrain. The only bits that it doesn't contain, trees and buildings, are in the grey box with the blue top. The other big black box contains miscellaneous gaming stuff including my lead mountain.

The white shelving unit is my bit box. It used to also contain my paints, which have been replaced by 15mm ECW figures and the forests and buildings of my 2mm board.

The yellow box and Mary Kay bag contain my 6mm figures and terrain, both finished and based and unfinished. The Mary Kay bag is seriously the best thing a miniature gamer could use for traveling to gaming events. It has 4 boxes on trays for miniatures to go in with slide out access. Rules will fit in front of the boxes. The top part (originally meant for lipsticks) can lift out and is where I put all of my trees in. I can put some tall buildings in there as well. The side pouches are nice areas to put gaming equipment in such as dice, measuring tapes, containers of tokens, and so on. The bag has both a nice carry handle and a good strap for carrying on your shoulder. 

And here is my travel boxes with reading material. Because I might not be able to get to the other miniature boxes for 6 months or so as they go into storage, I have some miniature supplies to tide me over. I packed my 15mm tanks in there, a whole bunch of toothpicks, stir sticks, and other bits of wood so that I can do some terrain crafting, especially when we self-isolate after moving. I also put my 15mm Americans in there just in case I feel like painting. Speaking of paints, that's what the tackle box contains.

I'm quite proud of how compact my collection is at the moment.

Photos of the Abbotsford House

 We're into the home stretch of packing to leave, but I thought I would post the real estate pictures of the house. Please ignore the distortions that the photographer uses to make it look bigger and brighter. I do want to point out that we really didn't stage the house too much so it does/did look like this once we finished our renovations. 

Let's start with a video. 

And here is what it looked like through photos:

It is a raised ranch style house with the entrance half way between the levels. This is the view of the upper level after you climb the stairs and look to your left.

I miss our fish but we had to rehome them. Here is the view from the living room looking into the dining area.

Here is the opposite view from the previous one. The stairs are immediately behind the sofa.

Here is the view from in front of the fireplace. You can see the kitchen.

Here is the dining area with the French doors to the deck.

This is the view of the kitchen you get if you go from the top of the stairs and continue forward.

And here is the view looking from deep in the kitchen over the island and into the living room.

Here is the opposite view of the kitchen. This is pretty much as we bought the house with the only real change being replacing the ugly tiles with the vinyl planks.  

The main bedroom.

The ensuite bathroom, which has to be the smallest but nicest bathroom we have ever had. It's not much bigger that what you would find on a cruise ship, but it does have a fantastic shower with bench, much more storage that you would think, and heated flooring.

This is the shower, which we rebuilt completely. Originally, it had a fiberglass shell that led to a 30 inch by 30 inch shower. Getting rid of the shell and moving one wall over by 8 inches (so that it actually conforms to the blueprints!) doubled its size.

The guest bedroom.

The home office.

The main bathroom, where you would hardly notice the 8" it gave up to the ensuite bathroom.

The main room downstairs, which became my hobby room and COVID office.

Behind my hobby area and office was an extra area that we used as a spill-over bedroom.

The view of the deck after stepping out onto it from the dining area.

This is the view of the deck. To the very right are the French doors in the dining area that you use to get onto the deck. The raised area where the red umbrella is is where the pool used to be. We removed the pool because it was a nasty cheap one that had not been properly winterized.

The main seating area, which we used extensively over our three summers in the house. 

The house from the back across the back yard. The deck is massive but there's still plenty of yard. This picture is taken between the pear tree on the right and the plum "tree" on the left.

This is easily the best house we have ever owned and we're a bit sad to leave it much quicker than we had planned.

On the Move Again

 I got laid off at the end of July. I gave myself six weeks to find a new job at the same salary or else we'd sell the house and move back to Ontario. There were a few reasons for this timeline:

• Housing sales start to dip in October and selling in November and December is much tougher.
• Prices on houses had remained strong because of low mortgage rates combined with limited inventory.
• COVID-19 seemed to be spiking again and we definitely wanted to be on the market before 14 days after the long weekend. We definitely didn't want to be trying to sell during a lockdown.

We got a very good offer last weekend, and with me narrowly missing out on a job that could have kept me in Abbotsford, we had to take the offer.

I'll miss all the great people I've met here in British Columbia, my co-workers, my neighbours, and the gamers who attend Trumpeter and those who don't.

Meanwhile, this is a shot of my workbench, research library, and my gaming storage cupboard. I had cleaned up considerably to the showings, so this area is usually not so tidy. 

The one cool thing I found is that my 2mm terrain project is basically the exact same size as the top of my gaming cupboard. This was not planned but sometimes things just work out.

Garden interlude

I accomplish little in the way of miniatures this weekend. But I have been admiring our efforts from last summer and fall in the garden. We ripped out all of the weeds and other vegetation except for the ferns and two wild rose bushes. Apparently, gardening is a blood sport when it comes to things with thorns.

We replaced that with 9 bags of mulch, an Easter lily we gave the alternative of growing instead of composting, a bunch of Hostas that we moved, and some upside down roofing tile to serve as a cheap trough for dealing with rain.

Six months later, I'm happy with the results so far. We'll see what it looks like in summer but this is a great start.

The next project is likely to be the front garden and lawn. The lawn is in particularly bad shape because grass struggles to grow on it and I just weeded it with a digger that rips out the entire weed, root and all. It looks a bit like World War One battlefield right now with big craters everywhere.

I'd love to replace those concrete blocks at the end of this garden, but I think that is going to take some serious WORK and some expense to do properly, so for now it will stay as-is.

Interlude

Well, it's been a while between postings and for that I apologize.

I had initially thought that not working would mean that I would be able to get in a few more hours of painting, terrain-building, and gaming. How wrong that was.

Looking for work turned out to be a full-time job in of itself. I found that even when I did have the time, it was hard to find motivation. Perhaps it was guilt: should I really be painting when perhaps there's something I could be doing to find a job?

Well, eight weeks ago that all changed. A fantastic company offered me a position and I accepted. The only catch was that I had to move to BC.

In the space of 17 days, we packed the house, painted it from top to bottom, changed the kitchen counter, staged it, and put it up for sale. Needless to say, this has made anything gaming-related hard to do. But not impossible...

Cancer Sucks Part 2

Last year, my wife dealt with breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and radiation. So far, there's been no sign of re-occurrence, for which we are extremely happy. Even my dad's treatment for bladder cancer seems to have gone well. You can never be sure but for these things, no news is good news.

However, we have learned that our dog, Surie, has a mass cell tumor. We thought initially that it was just a wart on the back of her leg. But Sylvie noticed that it had gotten a bit bigger so off to the vet we went. Dr Peter was pretty certain that it was benign and nothing to worry about. But he wanted to make sure and he took a biopsy. The thing is not benign but it is slow growing.

So Surie's going to have surgery. The tricky bit is that the vet needs to make sure he gets the entire tumor because this type has deep roots. If things go well, Surie will have just a bit of a dimple on the back of one of her legs.

Update: the surgery went well and there won't be much of a scar or dimple. It's going to be tough to keep her from bouncing around the house like she normally does.

New Skillz!

One of the first projects that we wanted to do in the house was to add a back splash to the kitchen. The existing quality paint was in good shape but we wanted something even more durable. With a bit of time on my hands, I dedicated two days to get the job done.

I've not tiled before but thanks to watching a number of DIY shows, I had a rough idea of the process. A couple of You Tube consultations filled in some gaps. The rest was going to be a combination of practice and trial and error.

We had originally thought of using sheets of small silver, grey, and black tiles but sticker shock had us looking for alternatives. Fortunately, someone at Patti Lynn Interiors suggested a subway tile base with an accent stripe of fancy tiles. This was much friendlier on the wallet.

Actually, I want to thank all of the folks at Patti Lynn. They were very helpful in answering my questions, providing us with design solutions, and with kitting me out with the proper equipment. The right tools made the job smooth and (relatively) quick. 

The first day was a long one as I had to cut and tile the entire back splash (about 16 feet long or so). A profession would have done this in a few hours but I was taking my time and making sure I did things properly. I was racing the clock to finish my self-imposed curfew of  10 pm. The second day was grouting and cleaning up. 

I'm very pleased with the result