Go Big or Go Home

True to my nature, my enthousiasm outweighed my experience in Moab. First day, first ride, just after the first hour, bam! my face hits the rocks. And not only that, but my face actually gets sort of sandwiched between the slickrock and my handlebars leaving me with an award winning shinner, a bloddy nose and a mid-range concussion. I think this was my best crash to date, or at least the one with the most injury. Thanks to the experience with my wrist last New Year's down in Kalispell, Jeff and I are pretty smooth with using our out-of-province extended health insurance cards. I got off the trail thanks to some slightly drunk 4x4 drivers and Jeff took me straight to the hospital to get my eye checked out. Retina, iris and cornea, intact and healthy - check! Awsome. My eye was swollen shut for most of the remaining days in Moab, but I still got out and hiked up a few of the trails Jeff was riding. I must have looked pretty funny hiking with no depth perception (I stayed far back from 'viewpoints'!), and I came home with a square outlined by sunburn on my face (from the patch), but all told it was nice to get out of town for a while.

Fortunately or not, on Saturday when we got home I was hit with a bad cold. I think it was maybe tied to having hurt my sinus, but having a runny nose with a still sore face was a challenge! I say 'fortunately' because I stayed home from work yesterday sick and started packing up our stuff. I feel like I worked pretty steady all day but I only got about a 1/4 of our stuff packed up... for a small apartment, we certainly have things stuck in every little spot! Some field work has come up for this week (starting tomorrow) but with my eye, I'm really not comfortable driving long distances yet. So for all my threatening to ditch out of moving, I'm really quite happy to beable to stay and get it done. It's a much bigger job than I remember...

Tomorrow we get the keys and start the van train. The next picture of the house I post will have us inside it! The 4 to 5 months promised has become 9 months, but the house looks good and the weather is much better for moving than it was around Christmas. It's finally Moving Day!

Musing on Mortgages

(i'm back to the green template - oh the indecision!) Tomorrow I'm heading on vacation! Jeff and I are heading to Moab for the week, and we are leaving Friday as soon as we can get out from work. There are many reasons for this vacation - 1) we got our tax returns, and though I know it's not true, it sure does feel like free money... 2) yesterday we went to the lawyers and signed our mortgage, certainly a watershed moment worth celebrating, and 3) yesterday we signed the mortgage - so now the waiting is feeling intermitable! Oh yeah, and we're bringing our bikes so there's that fun stuff too :)

Signing the mortgage really did seem like a big deal. With all my attempted bad-assedness of my early 20's, it was my first time in a lawyers office (I wasn't much of a bad-ass). Kevin (the law-man) took his time and explained it all and I'm starting to actually understand about owning property. You hear and read all about the realestate market, the benefits of tax-free income, and flipping houses, but without experience it's hard to get a handle on it. Our, or at least my, house-buying motivation mostly came from personal perceptions of space, of greedily wanting to stop sharing with the 2 a.m. vacumer above me, the stinky meat-fryer down the hall, etc... I have a bit of a family history of 'wise investment' in land/houses and I think I've been rather stubborn against giving it any attention. I'm not saying I've begun down a complex road of tax-shelters and market prospecting, but I think I've started to understand how people can see it as a realtively safe road to happy retirement. Once again I realise how far the gap is between knowing something and understanding it!

So, we are off to the desert for a little fun under that big sky and happy cappucinos after a frosty morning ride. Riding with Jeff is daunting, but he's a great and patient teacher, and I am clinging to the hope that you truly never forget how to ride a bike - it's been months since I rode, and my last ride left me with a black eye on the eve of my company christmas party. Biking and I did not part well for the season... finger's crossed for an accident free week!!

Time for a change

Thinking of posting today, I was looking at this site, and it was just too green for my liking. I have nothing agaist green, but I figured it was time for a change. Nothing big to report today. Although I do feel rather proud - I think I have actually got the next month of house/legal/paperwork organized to be on my schedule! Because Jeff's work life is so seasonal, it occurred to us that if we don't take a vacation before April 1rst we will likely not have a chance to until the fall. So, on top of closing on the house and moving, we are taking off somewhere for the week of March 20th. Not really sure where, but it's got to be cheap! Stay tuned...