after a suitable pause to mourn the passing of one of the great heroes of my day, steve jobs, i am back to the reality of my move.

i was somewhat overwhelmed today by the amount of work that i have yet to do before i leave and so i took some extra time off from work to try and recover lost ground. i sent the last of the stuff i intend to send by parcel post, and am left with the bare minimum of stuff that i think that i will need to move across country and to survive while i re-establish myself in toronto once i get there. i won't have time to get my car fully checked out and serviced before i depart, so i hope that i've taken good enough care of it over the years that it won't let me down on the road.

tomorrow, i abandon my desk, bed and sofa. that will leave me with a few knapsacks of clothes, toiletries, and a box of computer stuff to truck across the country, along with two cats, cat food and a litter box. for travelling light, there's still a lot of preparation involved.

i have not had the opportunities to say goodbye to a lot of people here who i really cherish. it's a crime really, but a lot of it has to do with work that i was doing to help a friend, so i hope that things will balance out karmically.

lots to do tomorrow. many loose ends to tie off before i start the full-court press to pull up all the pegs and get mobile sunday. things will get hectic, but then i will be able to really enjoy the drive out east.

- g

this is me totally failing to provide a better post than what i promised yesterday.  

reiterating that if you move more than 50km, take that week off from work.  and make sure no one needs you to do anything in the short term.

i'll explain later.  ...but don't hold your breath.

- g

i packed the last of my clothes and stuff that will not be needed until i arrive or that won't be travelling with me. i am now officially living out a suitcase for the next two weeks. if i see you in that time, forgive my clothes for smelling musty or of cat panic. i have three or four more days of work, after which time i will break down my computers and i will really be living on the fringes.

working while you're moving is a challenge. if you have to move across the country, i highly recommend taking the time off from work to focus on the move, rather than trying to elegantly coordinate your schedule, workload and move timetable. it will end up in a chaotic mess and things will invariably get missed. i speak from experience because i've never ever followed this advice.

i did have a chance to have a very grand dinner with some very old and dear friends tonight. i will miss them a lot. but it has been a great opportunity to spend time with them here and reconnect. if nothing else comes from this experience, i will have gained more incentive to use google chat or Skype when i move back to toronto.

tomorrow, i ship almost the last of my things and take a bunch of stuff to my parents house for storage. i have my desk, my sofa and my bed remaining. that's pretty scant places for my cats to run and climb and lounge on. but fortunately all of those things have a place to go on this end, so i'm clear to travel light.

wow - this was a terrible post. sorry for just phoning it in. i'll try and put more though into tomorrow's post.

- g

today didn't go quite as expected. all i was hoping to accomplish was to drop off some shelves to my parents and maybe move some boxes around. instead, i spent the entire afternoon cleaning my dad's basement apartment.

his condition doesn't make him as sensitive as he should be to the state of things around him, and he's seemed to be content with his accommodations for a long time. but with a week left in the city and limited time left to look after him directly, i felt that i needed to do as much as i could to sort him out and make him as comfortable as i could. so i moved all of his boxes and files and furnitures and dusted and washed and wiped everything down. for three solid hours i cleaned and sorted and organized. the chaos seemed limitless.

while i was down on my hands and knees, scrubbing tiles cindarella-style that had not been cleaned in what looked like a decade, i felt really really good. it wasn't much, but i was finally looking after my parents. honouring them if you will. i realize that this is just the start of my responsibility and that it will get harder before it gets easier, but i was really glad to have a chance to do this for him.

in the end, my dad's suite is going to look very much like my old place, which is comfortable and tidy. i think that it will be a huge improvement. and it also justifies my shedding of all of my stuff. if it makes my father a little more comfortable until he can join me out east, then it's a success all around.

one more week. that's all the time i have to do a mountain of work.

- g

today marks the start of the countdown to my departure from my hometown of Edmonton. unlike all of my previous attempts to escape the gravitational pull of this place, this time i am not moving for emotional reasons like escaping a personal life event (read: "divorce") or moving to be with some new fantastic person or because my parents are moving, but because i choose to. that has really changed my approach and my mood towards the whole endeavour.

today, i spent some time with my new circle of friends and as part of our usual saturday ritual we went to a gun shop (a requisite part of the Alberta experience, i assure you) and it was further enforcement that i do not belong here. the fact that a paramilitary supply depot could exist 100m from the newest skyscraper to grace the Edmonton skyline was a fairly poignant indicator that this is not the city for me. the fact that the PC party is electing a successor to ed stelmach who will immediately inherit control over one of the most successful of the canadian provinces, and i cannot make a meaningful contribution to that already loaded choice is another indicator. that i am counting down the days until i leave here is yet another.

in practical news, i broke down the last of my extraneous furniture (i.e. bookshelves) and now have a much better idea of how much crap i still have to send to toronto by parcel post. things will get super boring for the cats now that they have much less furniture to jump on/sleep on/tear up with razor-sharp claws than they are used to. and i grow more and more amazed at how little stuff i need to function effectively if necessity demands it. :)

there are so many people living in and things about edmonton that i love. there are so many new things in edmonton that i enjoy. i have so many reasons to want to stay here and make a life work here. but unfortunately all of these things in sum pale in comparison to the reasons that i have to leave and never look back. these countdown blog posts will help (i hope) to illustrate them. i have a week to do all of the things here that i need to do before Edmonton, once again, becomes that place that i grew up, but not that place in which i want to live. i shall try and be kind.

- g