Okay, so, I'm new here. How did I get to Port Alberni? Well, my wife died. That's what started it all. It's kind of too bad that it worked out that way, because I think she would have liked it here. She always loved a view of the mountains. This goes back when she first moved to Vancouver, and, as the story goes, her father drove the family over the Lions Gate Bridge, talking about the North Shore mountains. Well, it was raining, and he said that that was why they couldn't see the mountains. Gloria didn't believe that a little thing like rain could prevent you from seeing something as big as a mountain. Over the course of a few decades in Vancouver, she learned otherwise.
Her mother's favorite scripture was Psalm 121, which starts out "Unto the hills around." So, having hills all around (and where better situated to have hills all around then in Port Alberni?) would have been a big thing for Gloria. When we got married, she lived on the slopes of Grouse Mountain, which she always referred to as "my mountain." (The grandchildren frequently disputed this claim.) I have still have a piece of Gloria's mountain, because we once went to a presentation on the water tunnels being dug between the Capilano and Lynn Valley reservoirs, and the person giving the presentation had gone, that day, to the tunnel construction, and had picked up a bucket of the very large rock chips that the boring machines carved out as they were digging the tunnels. It's from a point about six hundred feet below one of the intersections quite near to our old house in North Vancouver.
But I digress, as I am prone to do. Once Gloria died, her pension died with her. I, with a career history that is not so much chequered as plaid, never stayed with one company long enough to qualify for a pension. So I was left with simply my savings and CPP. My baby brother got very concerned about my finances, and said that I should buy a house. Of course, in Vancouver, that's impossible. However, Number One Daughter, while not a realtor, had worked extensively in the marketing and promotion of pre-sales. Everyone in Vancouver knows what pre-sales are, but nobody in Port Alberni knew what they were. So, when she found one, she figured it would be undervalued, and therefore within my price range. So she told me to put a deposit on that.
However, that is not the house that I eventually moved into. A little while later, I was at a trade show. I wasn't feeling particularly well, and so I went to sit in the bathroom, to see if that would ease the situation somewhat. I hacked the hotel's wifi. (I'm not a security maven for nothing.) The girls are always on WhatsApp, and so, shortly, I was explaining to them what I was doing (although not in as much detail as I'm telling you). Number One Daughter asked if I wanted to move sooner. I said that that was an attractive proposition, but could we talk about it on the weekend. That particular weekend was Number One Great-grandson's first birthday, and so I was going to be traveling over to Port Alberni for it. Did we have to decide this right now? Number One Daughter said we had to decide this right now. So, I bought the house, where I'm currently living, while I was sitting on the toilet.
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