Moved

Well, that was a long day.

Despite shedding our old apartment of boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff in an effort to declutter before the move, we still ended up moving junk we never intend to use again. Seriously, we have something like ten power bars. So the move took longer than we expected but the movers were pretty professional and all our stuff arrived in good condition.

There are lot of things I like about the new place: it’s quiet, for one. Our old apartment was on the corner of Victoria and 55th in Lachine, with the building sitting right behind the back of a popular restaurant. Every morning we’d awake to the sound of a garbage truck picking up the metal bins. Or the fire trucks would roar down the street about five times per day. Or frustrated commuters would come off the 20 and down our road where they’d blare their horns at local residents who had the temerity to drive the speed limit.

You can hear the 40 from our place but it’s a low hum and you do get ambulances going into the Lakeshore Hospital across the street but other than that, sleeping at night is improving.

It’s real change when you go from living entirely on one floor to now having three to deal with. The rooms may be smaller than the old place but there are more of them. I’ll probably complain a lot in the coming years about the kitchen – it’s a galley and not a particularly well-designed one. The oven prevents a cupboard door from opening and in general, there is much less storage space so it’s going to force us to keep much less stuff in the kitchen.

It’s funny how un-lofty my ambitions are. All, I really wanted was a modest row-house and next year, my current almost 10 year old Corolla will probably get downgraded to a gently used Yaris. The car thing may have something to do with the fact that I dislike driving now and I just want to have small car payments with minimal maintenance. I hear of colleagues purchasing massive new houses in Laval or the Bois-Franc section of Ville-St-Laurent and I’ve never been tempted. I’m still close to work that commute time hasn’t changed and Kerry now takes the train to work.

Tonight, I fly down to Saint John to pick up James to bring him to his new house tomorrow. We’ve been telling him over and over that we’re moving to a new house when he comes back from Grammy and Grampy’s house so we think he understands what’s going to happen soon.

He does seem to think, however, that the nice rental agent who showed us the place will also be living with us. Well, we do have a guestroom…