Busy Weekend

My weekend was filled with waiting with a sprinkling of party and a dash of groceries. 

I'm very tired. Good night.

Housing and Histamine

There's a lot of factors to balance when pondering the next 6 months which decide the next 3 years.

Eric's lease isn't up til July. Megan doesn't know what she's doing yet or even what province she'll be in come summer. Mom and my little sister are moving to town in April and not a month later. This means that if I'm going to live with Mom I need to decide that very soon, but I don't know what Megan's doing and Eric will not be free til later but I don't want to leave either of them hanging for a reasonably priced place to live and... well, you see the problem.

On top of that, there's the cats to consider. Meg has recently become mildly allergic, mom is mildly allergic, and Eric has a dog but I love my kitties and could never just drop them in a shelter. Mom has said she's willing to deal with the cats so that door isn't closed. The cats and dog might get along so that's still a possibility. And Megan loves the kitties so if she's close enough to visit she'll probably spend half the visit petting the cats anyway.

I think the term Meg uses for situations like this is "spoiled for choice". I can't seem to narrow down the options so soon I'm just going to have to decide what I WANT to do.

~Sent from my cell~

Solution is in the S.O.I.L.

 I was looking up land in BC because sometimes memory is faulty and things do change, so I wanted to make sure I could still get 5-25 acres (with or without shelter) for $50-100 thou. It turns out I can..... but it's nowhere NEAR where I want to live or have the ability to work in a city nearby to pay the mortgage.

 The land where I wanted to buy was listed at $300 thou for 5 acres! (incl cottage). For that price there was a remote mountain top valley that as over 100 acres... but that was in the middle of nowhere and even if I did have a car or snow mobile it would take more than 2 hours each way to drive to work. Ouch.

So after about an hour of stressing over the fact that my current plan just wont work... I bumped into an old bookmark for S.O.I.L. http://www.soilapprenticeships.com

Wow, I can't believe I'd completely forgotten about these guys! I found them years ago when I was still with the mooch and although I really wanted to go for even just 3 months, I decided I couldn't because he wasn't healthy enough to come with(bad back and feet from being overweight) and there was no way I could afford to pay for an apartment and food for him while I was gone. I should have just gone, but that was a dumb and stubborn period of my life where I was insisting on making that relationship work.

Now I'm not attached at the hip to another human being and although I love my SOs, they are grown adults who take care of themselves so I'm free to take care of myself. I now have the opportunity to work and learn and save up all at the same time IN BC so when cheap land or a good opportunity for a co-op comes along I can snatch it up.


So that's the new plan. Work here for 2-3 years saving up a nest-egg, then working on a S.O.I.L. farm. Now all I have to do is figure out where and with whom I am living these next few years.

Getting up to Date

So last you heard, it was March and I was setting up for a work from home job. It looked like my long stint of under-employment was finally coming to an end. Unfortunately it turned out that "work as many hours as you want" REALLY meant "grab whatever hours you can AFTER the top performers get first pick of their preferred shifts, then sit by the computer every minute of every day in case someone decides to drop and hour or two so you can grab it before the other new people". 

After a week of that I decided to continue the active job hunting. After a few weeks of doing neither very well I told them that I had to quit to focus on finding stable employment. Then there were months of unemployment, and it was summer before I found my current job through a friend of a friend. Happily, I've been content here ever since. :)

During these past few years I've been living with my long-term girlfriend Megan and our housemate John. This is the first house I've lived in for more than a year, in the past 10 years. I love the feeling of stability, but this house just isn't suited to what I want out of my life. I want a farm. I want land I can call my own. I want to stop paying other peoples mortgages in the form of rent. I want to live somewhere I can plant a peach tree and enjoy the fruits of that labour.(pun intended)

It's kind of hard to describe what I want and what I plan, so I'm going to do the next post as a Q&A to get it all sorted out.

The cats are happy and, other than Willow needing some dental work this past winter, both are in good health.

A New Year; A New Beginging

Soooo... It's been almost a year.

It's been so long in fact that I considered creating a new blog for this new chapter of my life. I've decided against that idea because I don't want the past efforts lost to time. I want to bring with me the memories and lessons of these past few years.

That being said, there is so much we have to catch up on before I can even start telling you about now, let alone the future. But there's time for that. I'm not leaving the city for at least two more years so we have all the time we need.

For now however, it's past 1 am and I should be asleep. Goodnight.