Down And Out In Cheviot Hills

I feel like Nick Nolte looks. I've been rather negligent in updating this blog in the last couple of months because frankly, I don't have the time. 

Work has gone from intense, to extremely busy to all out insane. I have about two and half hours of waking time a day that is not spent at work. I'm up before seven and at work by eight, home between seven to nine in the evening to eat, watch a little tube, talk to my wife and then promptly pass out for a few hours before being woken by a teething eight month old or a bouncing three year old. When you only see your kids for fifteen minutes in the morning and half of the nights during the week you miss them altogether before they go to bed, they want to play with you if they happen to wake up at quarter past six ie. yesterday.

Surfing? Working out? What's that? I'm tired and getting more so by the moment and as I write this I sit on the couch, sniffling with a snotty nose at home sick for the afternoon.

Alas, all this comes to an end on the seventeenth of June a mere fifteen days from now. The road has been long and hard and a lot of fun and at this point, I can't wait for it to end. I will miss this city and the awesome people I have met here but it is time to return home where I have work waiting for me. The adventure has served its purpose. I've made the contacts and worked on another film and if it all works out, I will return to work for Sony in the fall at their Vancouver location.

Our three year old Miete became rather upset this afternoon when she saw the first couple of boxes Lisa had packed. Change is never easy when you're a tot but I know she'll love being back with her friend at daycare and seeing family again.

We are searching for a place in Vancouver to rent and is it ever an ordeal. The challenges of finding a place down here seem insignificant in retrospect. The prices in Vancouver are pretty high and we are looking for something to live in long term and therefore our standards are elevated. We'd like a three bedroom house close to or in Mount Pleasant and have found a few candidates. Nothing is cheap. All are over two grand a month but there is a couple of gems which I would gladly pay that for. In the long term if we can't afford it we can move and downsize and adjust. For now, that is the plan. Get something nice and enjoy it for the summer and next year while I work away at Rainmaker on their film with Woodsy.

It is truly amazing what some people consider rent-worthy in Vancouver. I know there were some real shit-boxes down here ie. The Hacienda Del Dookie I saw in Culver when looking for a place but I think Vancouver takes the cake. We have been sending my sister to look at places most of which are in the eighteen hundred to twenty two hundred dollar range. She has left more than one with some stories. A few quotes:

- " It needed a cleaning but was pretty nice inside. Two guys were moving out. There was a real bad smell in there like mold. I could still smell it on my clothes an hour later." (Commercial area $2000/month)

- "The front yard was tiny, like unusable. You could never leave anything out there or you'd lose it overnight. The neighbour's was a shit pile and the two garages across the street were interesting. One had a band jamming in it and the other was wide open with two guys in lawn chairs drinking beer and watching the hockey game." (Fraser area $2300/month)

- "It was small. You would have to saw your table in half. " (Main area $2200/month)

So we have all that to look forward to when we return. We are planning a June 30th arrival or thereabouts and are making the family road trip back over four or five days. I thought it would be a fitting way to end this blog so before I end it all  or transfer it over to Wagnerfied British Columbia I thought we could wrap it up with some family fun/lunacy on the road up.