I am in Victoria, BC right now. It is quiet and everyone else is hopefully sleeping. Actually,I am in Langford technically and not Victoria proper.
28 SEP 2009: MONDAY
Mandy came over and she and Amanda canned a lot of salsa. They used a recipe from one of the vendors at the Farmers Market. They also got most of their ingredients from the same vendor. It was tasty. Neither wore gloves while cutting the peppers so both were suffering from burning hands for quite a while.
30 SEP 2009 : WEDNESDAY
After five or six months (I really don’t remember when we started), our mortgage refinance finally is happening. We met with Bihn of Pacific Northwest Title Company… our escrow company… downtown to sign all of our documents. There were some minor inaccuracies (e.g. a $90 fee was not included in a couple of documents), but Bihn seemed to think (and I guess he would know) that we could go ahead and sign everything anyway. The loan would not close until 05 OCT for the state mandated cooling off period in case we change our minds after reading the documents, but of course we will be in another country. I did not bring payment, so I would have to return with the money to close. There were lots of papers to initial and sign, but not as much as our last loan.
We had to valet park across from their building, but that was alright since they validated parking.
01 OCT 2008 : THURSDAY
In the afternoon I went downtown to get a cashiers/bank check from BECU to pay for our refinance fees. It was a significant amount of money since real estate has tanked and we wanted to have 20% down (again!) to avoid mortgage insurance. I was not sure if there was a 24 hour wait for the withdrawal, so I made sure I would be able to get one before we left town on Saturday.
I went to the BECU office downtown. I had never been. They don’t have $$$ there. If you need cash you have to use the ATM. Simplifies things. I did not need 24 hours for the check, so I had it done up immediately and walked the eight or so blocks down 2nd Ave to the escrow company. I dropped the check off, waited for a receipt (it was a lot of money after all), and walked back up to Pike/Pine. I almost always park in Pacific Place if I happen to drive downtown instead of taking public transit.
I stopped by Nordstrom Rack to look for cheap stuff, but there was none to be had.
02 OCT 2009 : FRIDAY
I spent most of the day in preparation for our trip to Victoria. A huge chunk of time was going to get my drivers license renewed. The BECU guy yesterday helpfully mentioned that it was expiring in a few days which would not be good since we would be in Canada.
Washington does not have a singular DMV where auto stuff is handled. Instead there is a Department of Licensing which as one might expect handles licensing and ID issues. Another place handles titles, license plates, tags renewals and the like (curiously, I think they are also managed by the DOL but are called something different). I had to go to a DOL. The state/county recently closed down the Rainier Valley office which was very close by, so I had to venture off to the West Seattle one.
Before heading to the DOL, I stopped by the AAA office in West Seattle to get a map of Victoria.
Aside: the Greenwood office where I got my license when we moved here in 2005 was also closed. I apparently was too busy with moving and work and whatnot to write anything about it. When Amanda and I went there to get our Washington licenses we had to take a written/computer test to prove our knowledge. Amanda passed easily since she actually studied a little while I hadn’t bothers. I forget exactly how the test went, but I believe one had to get a total of twenty questions while missing fewer than five. I just so happened to miss four out of the first five which made the rest of the test more interesting than it should have been. The fact that two people beside there failed did nothing to improve my state of mind. Anyways, I did manage to answer the next nineteen questions correctly.
The questions I missed were very specific questions about things like the penalties for drunk driving (isn’t it enough to know that they probably are bad?) and questions involving school buses that I always screw up.
Anyways, I was at the DOL for a long time. There were a lot of people there. A hundred? More? One basically goes in, tells the person in the front what you are there for, they give you a number and you wait until you are called. There are separate queues for various things which is why the person up front is there.
I am glad I just had to get a renewal as everyone else there seemed to be waiting even longer than I. A guy next to me had been there four or five times previous but always had to bail out and go back to work as he been away too long.
I was a little foolish and did not look to see what I needed to bring. I assumed that all I would need was my old license, and fortunately I was correct. I forgot they don’t take credit or debit cards, but also fortunately I had enough cash on me.
I waited a long time to actually renew the license and then had to wait even longer to get an updated picture. They queue up a lot of people for picture taking all at once rather than taking them as people go through.
Eventually, though I left with a temporary license and will get the real one in the mail later. I decided to go to Southcenter to get another pair of jeans as mine have been tearing enough to be unwearable. I took surface roads because I don’t drive in that area much and it would have been a hassle to get back to I5 anyway.
Jean obtaining was successful. I saw a jacket I wanted to get, but, hey, I don’t need it.
On the way home I stopped at Urban Vines to get a gift certificate for Mandy as she would be looking after our cats again while we were gone.
At home, I did a lot of cleaning, a lot of landry, etc. etc. etc.. I finally got a skype account so that I could check phone messages and call people in the US while we are in Canada.
After picking up Lonan Kai and Amanda, we all had a simple dinner of fake chicken burgers. We had been eating all of food in our refrigerator the past week (and not doing any usual grocery shopping) to clean everything out before our trip.
The main point for going to Victoria is to accompany Ann, Mike, and Connor. Ann wanted to deliver her kid in Canada so that he could be a Canadian citizen, and it is far easier to do a dual citizenship thing if he is born there (Ann is a Canadian citizen herself). But I don’t know the details. As it turned out, she had Liam right before they were about to leave on Friday. It was good that it did not happen while she was on the road.
After dinner Amanda went over to their place for a visit. I was going to try to meet up with Karl and Randy who was up for the weekend, but I could not get a hold of them and Amanda had the car anyway.
Ann and Mike were still up for going to Victoria anyway, which I found impressive since she had just given birth, so we made plans to caravan up the next day.
03 OCT 2009 : SATURDAY
We did final preparations and packing and headed out to Ann and Mike’s at 9am. I did end up going back home a couple of times to get stuff I had forgotten. Ann looked great. Liam looked like he was born yesterday which of course he was. We helped them pack up the car and we left town around 10:30 or 11am.
The trip up to Canada went much quicker than I thought it would. I sometimes forget how close it is (not as close as when we lived in Buffalo, of course). We only stopped once outside of Bellingham to allow Liam to nurse.
The border crossing was easy enough. I still find it odd that all we needed for Mr. Kai was his birth certificate. Ann and Mike got across easier, too, even though Liam did not have a birth certificate being two days old and all. They did have all of his paperwork from his birth with them, and I guess it was enough.
I liked the fact that once we crossed the border all I had to do was press a button to convert our speedometer from mph to kph. Neat!
We picked up the ferry in Tsawwassen. We choose to drive to BC and then take a ferry rather than pick up one in the US because the US ones have much more limited schedules. We parked in the loading line and then let the kiddies run around outside while we waited. While it was a sunny day, it was pretty frigid outside due to the wind. The ferry docks themselves were nice; there were park like areas in between the docks where one could hang out plus a restaurant/market area plus restrooms plus playground area.
(to be continued)
(hopefully)