Another catch-up post
Haven’t posted in awhile so I have to catch up from my last post. My December was spent preparing for the move out East to Montreal. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until the house was broken into. The thieves stole some money, liquor, all the jewelry they could find, 3 laptops (ouch), xbox 360 and an ipod nano. It happened a week before Christmas so that sucked too. On the upside everything was covered by insurance (though you can’t really replace jewelry.) It’s been over 2 months and I’m still dealing with the insurance agency though. I’m grateful that the insurance covered it but I can’t wait for this to be finished with.
Christmas was at the Webster’s this year. My big present was some sweet monitor arms.
They allow me to keep my laptop raised up and use a normal keyboard. I highly recommend the Ergotron LX if you work on a laptop all the time. I got the dual arm model so I can keep the laptop on the side and my main monitor in front. Love it.
We successful sold the RAV4 right before leaving. Rachel asked for more than I thought we could get for it but in the end someone came along and gave us what we wanted for it. We ended up with about $10k extra which got spent on our movers (Premiere Van Lines), paying off all our loans (yay loan free!) and paying for some new furniture for the new apartment.
Speaking of the new apartment. It’s awesome. Comparing it to our other Montreal apartment it is a huge leap. I have a lot more room for my office here:
The living room is nice and bright and the projector works great in there.
And our kitchen has 2 sinks (I love 2 sinks.)
All the appliances are new. The location is amazing. We have bus routes close to us and a metro stop one very short block away. For the times we need a car Montreal has a service called Communauto which lets us “rent” a car for pretty cheap. It ends up costing about $10 to get a car to goto Costco. For more apartment pictures go here.
As for Montreal, the last 2 months have been really busy for us here. We are still hanging pictures and getting things organized. I think by the end of March we should have everything unpacked and pictures hung up. Rachel spends almost all of her evenings studying for her genetic counsellor certification exams in September and November (one for Canada and one for USA.) I can’t wait for her to be done studying for stuff.
This time in Montreal I’ve been making more of an effort to leave the apartment. I was expecting on having lots of extra free time here but I’ve:
- been going to a boardgame meetup every 2nd Saturday. These have been awesome. I’m getting to discover some new games that I’ve never heard of before. What’s even better is most people who come to this own so many games they just want people to play with. It works out well cause I don’t want to buy any games, I just want to play them.
- joined the McGill squash club which has monthly meetups but has exposed me to a lot of new people to play against. I have about 2 games a week. McGill is about a 20 minute walk from the new apartment so I’ve been liking that too.
- twitter meetups. Ya that’s right. Twitter meetups. Technically they are called “tweetups”. I’ve met some great people at these. I lucked out at the first one and met some new friends that have a weekly Wednesday movie/supper night which I’ve been going to every week since.
- checking out tech community events. The tech community is very active here. From general “technology” breakfasts to iPhone dev camps to Python meetups. I think there is at least 2 events every week.
- spending time with the wife in the same city. Granted, I have to steal her from her studying. It sure is nice to be in the same city.
That’s about it for this post. I have some picture event posts coming up.