Eventually Clever

Weekend Roundup

After the last of the summer long weekends, I am now home free! Yes, the bulk of last week, and the long, five-day weekend, was spent dealing with the sale of the house. Still, it wasn't all headaches.

On Canada Day, the tenants moved and the new tenants – rather, the new buyers – moved in. The July 1st moving day is always hectic in Montreal as people are loading and unloading trucks all around each other. I've never moved on the big day, and, to look at the chaos and hear the horror stories, I never will. I'll always move off-season, to avoid the crush. Moving is stressful enough as it is.

So, I expected to hear a horror story of my own about my dumb tenants causing problems for the nice new buyers. Fortunately, I didn't, which helped me relax.

Despite the fact that it was a holiday, my office was open. Unlike St. Jean Baptiste Day, which must be taken off on the date and cannot be moved to a more convenient day, my company decided to keep the office open on Thursday, and then close them on Friday. Other companies chose differently. So be it.

While Dina played with Ben, I chatted with the crew at the office and got updates on my latest projects. Everybody was so looking forward to their plans for the long weekend that I received an inbox full of work on all three of my current tasks!

Speaking of inboxes, I also experimented with Gmail for all my email needs. All my email went to my Gmail account for one day. Didn't like it at all, so I put everything back the way it was. Well, almost. I did discover that Netfirms now allows me to turn off catchall email forwarding, which was the source of most of my spam problems.

Now, my daily quota of spam messages is limited to the dozens of messages, rather than the hundreds. I feel much better!

In the evening, we relaxed and watched Shrek on DVD.

Friday was a busy day. After a relatively smooth morning, we set out to St. Bruno for (presumably) the last time. First, we stopped off at the notary to pick up the proceeds from my experiment in home ownership. I've never held a cheque for such a large amount before. It felt good. I want more! [grin]

Then, we stopped by the house to talk to the new owners. Apparently, my former tenants were not perfect little angels during their departure. They left their basement and backyard full of junk: broken furniture, boxes of magazines, yard toys for their son and their pets! I know that lots of animals are abandoned on moving day, but I could never imagine the type of people who would leave their pets behind.

Well, now I can. Jerks!

So, the new buyer and I talked about hauling away the large piles of trash. If the tenants don't come up and get their things as they suggested they would, then I'll foot the bill for the truck to come and take the stuff away. I don't know what's going to happen with the pets.

I also learned that, despite assurances to the contrary, one of my former tenants isn't keeping her old phone number for her new place. Which means I have no way of contacting her directly. Which means that I don't have much faith in the cheque that she wrote me for the final month's rent. I'll try to cash it, to be sure, but I believe that document to be pure rubber.

More fodder for small-claims court, or a case against them filed with the Regie du logement. And, of course, more deductions for my taxes.

After that set of unpleasant surprises, we drove back to Montreal and stopped by my bank to deposit the cheque. Although my banker assured me that they would not place a hold on the cheque, the teller did just that, severely limiting the spending spree that Dina and I had planned. The wireless network would have to wait another day, it appears.

(As of this posting, though, my banker has come back from vacation and liberated the funds. Now that's what I call service!)

Then, we parked the car and headed off to the video store to exchange my defective copy of Coupling. I marched right to the display, grabbed all the copies of the third season, and headed over to the customer service counter. The clerk tested two of the five copies. All were defective in exactly the same way. So, he's going to take it up with his distributor and get back to me.

With the rest of the afternoon open to us, we wandered along Ste. Catherine St., shopping, gawking at new construction, and wondering what those crazy kids are wearing these days. It was a good run. Ben earned plenty of attention.

In the evening, we settled down and watched Return of the King. As with all of our second viewings, we noticed the flaws, and we got a little punch-drunk and giggly towards the multiple endings of the film. I broke out into "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Frodo" during the climactic bits. It was fun.

Saturday was a good day to hang out and see people!

First, Lynda came by for a morning visit. She hadn't seen Ben since he was a month old or so, so Ben had quite the show to put on. We had tea, caught up on the gossip and the wedding plans, and had a fun visit.

Then, Erik and Talya came by for an afternoon tea and playtime with Ben. We kvetched about work (a lot!) and watched Ben climb every bit of furniture he could reach.

In the evening, I loaded Ben into the backpack and we went for a little walk. We stopped by our favourite Chinese restaurant to show off Ben, but the owner wasn't there on either visit. He was too busy with deliveries, poor guy. Then, we went to the video store, bought Circle of Friends and rented Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro for the week.

On our return, we watched Circle of Friends and played with Ben. It was a calm, happy evening.

Sunday was pool day in the Townships. Dina picked up a pair of inflatable, covered wading pools for Ben, and Dina, Lou and I worked on hooking up a heater to the big pool outside.

Ben loves his wading pool, that's for sure!

We arrived home a little later than usual. Traffic was heavy heading back into Montreal. The last week of June/first week of July is a popular vacation time, so lots of folk were hauling their campers and boats back to the big city.

Ben was a little wired for most of the evening, but he gradually settled down. We weren't long to follow.

Posted by Stephen