Sunday

Yeah, this is somewhat out of order ...

Okay, I'm not sure how far I got on Saturday morning.  I know I talked about the wifi hotspots that I was mapping out, and how cold it was, and about the Save-on wifi.  This morning, Sunday, Save-on has let me down, in terms of wifi.  Fortunately the Shoppers Drug Mart does have a decent signal available.

After mapping the hot spots, and checking out the prices in the Save-on, I was just slightly too early to buy some diet Coke that was on sale at the Shoppers.  Shoppers opens at 8:00 a.m., except on Saturday it opens at 9:00 AM.  So I headed back to the apartment no, it's not an apartment it's a house, or at least a unit in a fourplex, and I'm not renting it, I own it.  I'll have to get used to some of this.

Anyway, I got back to my home, my new home, which still feels like an apartment, and unpack the stuff that I had bought at Save-on on my walk.  I must have done some other stuff because it was shortly after 8:00 when I found out that shoppers didn't open at 8:00, and it was nine when I left to go back to shoppers and buy the Diet Coke.  There were a couple of other items that Shoppers had on sale that I figured it would be good to stock up on so I got a bit of that too.  But I had picked up the local paper the night before, and had read all the flyers.  I had made up some shopping lists, one of the items being the Diet Coke at Shoppers.  But there were some other items as well that I needed to get, most of them at Walmart.  So, since I had a list of things to get, and it would have been a bit of a chore to haul them around the city with me, walking, I took the car to Shoppers and then up to Walmart.

By the time I was finished at Walmart it was late enough that I could go and bother L, since I had left my laptop at her place, as one of the only places that I can consistently get on to the Internet, and have power for the laptop, etc etc.  I haven't tried out the library yet, and that's an option, but it doesn't open until 10:00 AM anyway.  It's also closed on Sunday, so it's not an option for today.

Anyway, I headed to L's place, and read through my email, and responded to some of the most urgent items.  While I was doing that, B, who is a colleague in the security field, and lives here, sent me a text about getting together for coffee.  So later in the afternoon we got together at one of the places in town and talked a bit about Port Alberni and various colleagues and activities going on in security.

I went back to L's place to pick up my car, and all my shopping, and headed back to my new home.  Because Telus is playing games about the address, I'm not connected yet at my new home, and this is possibly why it doesn't really feel like a home yet.  Physically, I like it.  But I'm certainly missing being connected, and also missing having my stuff, as George Carlin referred to it.  His sketch about stuff, and how uneasy you feel when you don't have your stuff, certainly resonates right now.  Of my stuff, the thing that I miss the most is my desktop, permanently connected to the Internet, and with most of my frequently used accounts pretty much permanently signed on and having all of my files.  B wanted something, for example, and while I can dig it out, and carry my backup, which I have brought with me, over to Linda's place, modify what he wants for the most current information, and then email it, it's an awful nuisance to have to do that, think of it in advance, and so forth.  This also means that there's a lot of downtime when I am frustrated because I could be doing something, but, without my various resources, need to simply make notes to myself to follow up on that item, when I get back to town and have better access to what I need.

B did tell me about a barber in town that he likes, and I definitely need a haircut.  The day that I came over on the ferry was the same day that my last hair appointment was to have been with my previous barber.  And I keep my hair fairly short, and it's been two months.  So, yes, I definitely need a haircut.  After we had coffee I went and checked out the barbershop, hoping that I might be able to get a haircut then, but the place was closed.  However, it did note that it was open at 8:00 AM Sunday morning, which seems somewhat odd in terms of business hours timing, but is possibly convenient for me right now.  I figured that if I got up at 7:00 I would walk up to the barbershop, get there at 8:00 when they open, and get a haircut before I went to church.  That's still the plan.

So, I was hoping that I would wake up not too long before 7:00 AM.  I had another test of the bathtub, and watched the movie that I had brought with me, for just such an eventuality, and got to bed about 9:30.  Then I woke up at 2:30.  I wasn't too happy about that, and was somewhat fixated on the fact that I hadn't been able to get to the closest coffee shop, which is three blocks away from me, in order to figure out what their password wifi password was.  Then I realized that the Save-on foods was only four blocks further, so why was I fixated on this one particular coffee shop in terms of getting access to wifi.  If I was going to go to Save-on and walk in circles in their parking lot while I dictated or checked anything I needed Internet access for, it wasn't really any better standing outside the coffee shop.  Indeed, in terms of the coffee shop, I probably wouldn't have been able to do as much walking as I was dictating, because the wifi signal probably wouldn't have covered as large an area. So why get fixated on the coffee shop?

I thought I might as well get up, even if it was that early, and do whatever work I could around my new home.  However, as it turns out, I must have fallen asleep in there somewhere, because when I looked at my phone again it was 5:00 AM.  So, I got up and did a little work, although not as much as I had planned when I thought I was getting up at 2:30.  Part of what I did was consider putting a load in the new washing machine.  But as I was reading through the manual, I noticed a cleaning cycle for the washing machine itself, so I did that.  It was still going when I left, and, as far as I could tell, hadn't even run water into the machine.  So I'm not quite sure what's going on, and I hope that I won't come back to a flooded unit when I get home.  That has happened to me before in terms of new washing machines, so I'm a little bit paranoid about it.

So I walk down to the Save-on, and, half a block away, got a decent signal.  My phone tried to connect to it.  And tried, and tried, and tried, and tried.  As noted, Save-on foods has let me down in the wifi department, on my first serious attempt to use it.  So, I'm across the street at the Shoppers Drug Mart, walking in circles in their parking lot, while dictating this.  Shortly I will head off to the barbershop, and see if I can get my haircut before I go to church.

While testing out the new washing machine, I noticed something interesting.  The placement of the washing machine, and the placement of the door on the washing machine, and the arrangement of the doors on the closet in which the washer and dryer have been placed, means that you can only open the washer door about a quarter of the way.  This would allow you to throw clothes into the washing machine, and get them out, but it certainly inconvenient.  There is a little bit of wiggle room in terms of the space before the washer and dryer, although not an awful lot, and moving the washing machine, also means moving the dryer, and that would place the dryer, in a position where it wouldn't be able to open doors.  I figured that getting into the dryer is possibly slightly more important than getting into the washer. But it's definitely annoying.  In addition, the soap and bleach dispenser on the washing machine is also impeded by the closet door given the placement of the washer.  This isn't exactly a deficiency in construction, as much as a design flaw in terms of placing the washer and dryer in that particular location in the first place.

I am starting to figure out how to use my new home.  I'm finding places to put things.  I am finding places for specific activities.  I am working on what I can do, and what I need, to do what I need to do, in my new home.  It's a big learning curve, and there's a fair amount of work involved in figuring out what it is that I have been doing, what is absolutely necessary, and not just something to be done because I was at a particular location, and what, of the things that need to be done, can be done, and how, in this new situation.  I know that this will get easier, eventually.  It will certainly get easier when my stuff is able to be moved over here, and that will happen when I am able to get Telus to agree to provide me with Internet access.  Or maybe I'll go back to Shaw.  In fact, the next time I talk to Telus, I will make the point that they are not the only game in town, and that I have had service with Shaw before, and if they don't get their butts in gear, I could go back to them again.

Save-on has now opened.  And I tested their wifi again after I finished that last piece of dictation, and before I head off to The barbers.  And, now I can connect just fine.  I'll have to give it a try, on some other occasions.  Maybe I will have to take away Save-on's community wifi award, if they disabled the ability to connect to their wifi when the store is closed.