Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Bum Bum Bum
The Oilers lost on Monday night - the final score was 3-1 to the Hurricanes, but it was close right up to the end. We watched it here at home and it was nail-biting stuff. The score would have been 1-1 in the third period except for a shot which was deflected into the goal off one of the Edmonton players' bums! So the Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup after all, but the Oilers at least have the consolation of being the first team since 1948 to come back from 3-1 down to level the series at 3-3. Maybe next year!
In other news, we're having a busy time of it right now, getting ready to move tomorrow. I also had to drive to Edmonton and back today (6 hours in the car) to clear our container through Customs. It only took about 5 minutes to do the paperwork and then it was back south again! Sigh. And then we had a nice farewell dinner with Dr Temple.
More updates tomorrow when the packers are here,
Love
J
PS Don't they say that moving house is one of the most stressful things in a lifetime? We've spent a lot of time organising and planning this, but watch this space...
Monday, June 19, 2006
Go Oilers Go!
With all this World Cup Fever (it's big here in Canada too!), it's been easy to pay a bit less attention to the Stanley Cup Finals. But tonight is the final of Lord Stanley's ice hockey competition, and we've been keeping an eye on the games so far as our adopted team THE EDMONTON OILERS have made it to the Final!
The Edmonton Oilers
It's been a bit of surprise, as the Oilers were a bit rubbish this season and were often beaten by the Calgary Flames in the regular season. The Flames qualified easily for the playoffs at the end of the season, while the Oilers just squeaked in several places down. The Flames were fancied to win the whole thing (i.e. the Stanley Cup), but they were knocked out in the first round by the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Rather than playing in a sensible way (like football), each game in the playoffs is played in a best-of-7 format. So you need to win 4 games in a 7-game series to progress to the next round. Each game is played in three 20-minute periods with 20 minutes in between each period, and with all the breaks and stoppages a game can run for several hours. Anyway, while the Flames were knocked out 4-3 by the Ducks in the first round, the Oilers made steady and quiet progress in the rounds, beating the Detroit Redwings, the San Jose Sharks and the Mighty Ducks themselves to win the Western Conference. (You can check all this out here).
The Carolina Hurricanes
Anyway, they are now facing the Carolina Hurricanes (hi, Uncle Jim!) for the Stanley Cup, as the Eastern and Western champions play for this in another best-of-7 game. They came on strong at first, scoring a lot, but then their goalie got injured and they seemed to falter, and Carolina went 3-1 ahead in games. Everyone was sure the Oilers would lose in the next game in Carolina, but somehow they pulled through and made it 3-2. And then on Saturday night they won on their home ice, levelling the series at 3-3. And tonight it will be decided in Carolina, with the game starting about 50 minutes from now.
The Stanley Cup
So, as Edmontonians-in-waiting, we support our adopted team: GO OILERS GO!
On a Freight Train Somewhere...
The Big List
Luckily I have a bit of free time this week, so I can do all the running about to the bank, the insurance office etc. so that everything happens the way it's supposed to. I'm also in charge of supervising the actual moving out of our stuff here, and I'll be home all day Thursday and Friday to make sure that everything that needs packed up gets packed up. The 'Packers' are coming first, on Thursday, to pack up the whole house. We enquired what 'prep work' we have to do before they arrive (assuming as good Norn Iron people that we would have to more or less pack up all our stuff so it's neat and tidy and ready to be lifted when they arrive) and the company said "no dirty dishes, no dirty clothes, apart from that, we'll pack the house up as it stands"! So it should be interesting to see the whole house packed up before my eyes! We're out for a farewell dinner with Walley Temple on Wednesday night, but we can't stay out too late as we have to gather up our 'Survival Kit'. As we'll be living in an more-or-less empty house from Thursday night - Monday morning (and then again in Edmonton until our stuff arrives next Wednesday), we have drawn up a list of essentials which shouldn't be packed up, so we have to gather these together before the packers come and put them in the cars, so that we can more-or-less say to the packers - "right, pack everything else up"!
The packing crew will leave on Thursday evening with the whole house packed up but with nothing removed (should be a very odd night for us). They're leaving our bed in place until Friday morning, when they return with the 'Moving Crew', who will dismantle our bed and then lift all our packed goods into a big lorry and take them all away. The house will now be actually empty, which is when we bring out the Survival Kit:
2 Ikea Plates
2 cereal bowls
2 glasses (big)
1 wine glass
2 denby coffee cups
1 frying pan
1 kettle
some dishwasher tablets
squeezy
instant coffee
tool bag, paintbrush, paint, polyfilla, screwdrivers
passports
2 knifes / forks/ spoons
corkscrew, bottle opener
small TV
table
2 fold-up chairs
Roomba
Hoover
DVD & DVD player
A few shoes
A few coats
Cleaning materials
Blow-up bed
Pillows
Duvet
Bed sheets
Alarm Clock
Books
Clothes for 5 days in a suitcase
Tolietries for 5 days
2 towels
1 face cloth
Hairbrush
Laptop & airport & modem & laptop stand + webcam
External HD
Pens
PSP & games & accessories
Personal papers in a box
Chief amongst these are the blow-up bed ($ 60 from Canadian Tire, just a big blow-up mattress with a built in fan which blows up and sucks down again at the flick of a switch) and the stripey camp chairs ($ 14 each from RONA, a bargain, good for the deck too). We take some more pictures when they're set up so you can see just how sad they look!
Key elements of the kit
It's going to be rather an odd weekend, but at least we'll have a TV to keep up with the World Cup (watch out for an upcoming blog about this) and a few DVDs to pass the time. We're going to be quite busy getting the empty house cleaned out and touched up with paint and Polyfilla, but we're taking a break on Saturday to have dinner with the HERBs. And we might get a wee run out on Sunday, weather permitting.
And then we say "Goodbye to No. 48" on Monday morning at 8am, when the rental agency comes to make the final inspection and give us our deposit back, and we head off to Edmonton, where the story will be continued...
Regarding this post's title - the stuff we packed up from home in May got packed into a lorry, and thence into a container which travelled from Belfast to Liverpool.
Our stuff, Island Park
More stuff
The Big Yellow Moving Lorry
It sat on the quay for few days and then got loaded onto a boat headed for Montreal. 
Container ship
Port of Montreal
That boat arrived last Tuesday and the container was moved to a rail yard where it sat waiting for a train to Edmonton. We checked on Friday and it hadn't been assigned a train yet. But we got word today from our agent that it is now somewhere on the plains of central Manitoba, heading west on one of those impossibly long trains that we see all the time here.
Impossibly long train
The upshot of all this is that the container is expected to arrive in Edmonton tomorrow, and Customs insist that we have to go in person to clear the shipment within 2 days of arrival. Which means that I might be spending another 7 hours in the car driving up and down to Edmonton tomorrow! (I was up again last week to interview for a secretary, who we have now employed).
This is going to be some week...
J
Thursday, June 15, 2006
This Blog is Back
Hasn't it been a bit quiet around here? No photos, no posts, nothing going on. You'd think we'd disappeared or something. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We've been busy busy busy! I think that (unless you make a big effort) blogging is what happens when nothing much is going on in your life. When the going gets tough, sometimes the tough stop blogging, but you can rest assured that we're back now and will be keeping you up to date with developments.
But we have been busy and we have lots to get caught up on. Getting back from Arizona, finishing up my Masters courses, flying home to Belfast and then getting ready for what's going to happen in the next week or two. Speaking of this, we've been very careful about not putting it on the blog before it was all decided and settled, and we didn't want to spill the beans before we'd told everyone who needed to know, but for anyone who doesn't know, here is our Big News, at Last:
We're staying on in Canada (i.e. we're not coming home as planned)
WOW. There. We said it.
It's been the toughest decision that we've ever made, it's taken us a long time to come to it and we're still not sure if it's the right decision (how could you ever know?), but we've decided to go for it and see what happens. I'm moving to the University of Alberta as an Assistant Professor, while P is moving to the Provincial Headquarters of the Cancer Board to keep doing her current job. We've sold our house back in Carrick (happy new house, Denise and Roy), and packed up all our stuff into a container which arrived in Montreal yesterday (now it just has to come on a train to Edmonton and we'll be re-united with it). And we bought a great new house in Edmonton, about 10 minutes away from the hospital and the university. It's got 4 bedrooms, so there's plenty of room for guests (hint hint).
Our new place
As the more observant amongst you will have realised, this has some implications for the Carrick to Calgary blog, as we won't be in Calgary anymore. There were a number of options to handling this problem (including renaming this blog Carrick-to-Calgary-to-Edmonton.blogspot.com), but we've picked a nice new name for our new blog and it will be revealed in a few days time once we've completed our Big Move. In the meantime, we'll be rounding off this blog with a final blast through all our news and pictures of the last few months. So watch this space, there are more posts coming...
