Just When Life Couldn’t Get Busier – A quick trip home!!

As mentioned earlier, it has been excessively busy in the world of Jen & Joep for the last few months. However we both took solace in the fact that I had 1 month of vacation in July meaning we could cease weekend flights for a few weeks and enjoy some quality time together!

As with most plans in life, they were changed a bit. I hadn’t been back to Australia in far too long and when you are planning a wedding that your parents are kind enough to do on your behalf, at some point you need to get a bit involved and help out! And so it came about that for 10 days of the month in SoCal I was heading to Perth for a bit of quality time with the Delany’s! Alas Joep couldn’t join because his vacation days are needed for our wedding / honeymoon at the end of this year so I went solo.

The first week in SoCal began on July 1 which meant that we missed this years Canada Day celebrations. This was pretty depressing because Prince William and Princess Kate were in town and I have developed a bit of an obsession with them of late … that being said, perhaps it was best that we WEREN’T in town for their visit. The consolation however was that we were in the US for the 4th of July! Joep’s colleague very kindly invited us to his place for a bbq with his awesome fiancé Cara. The day was then spent party hopping between various neighbourhood bbq’s in Costa Mesa and it was quite lovely! The partying was not as crazy as the other country equivalents we have been involved in (Australia Day, Canada Day, St Patricks Day, Queens Day) but the fireworks were a lot of fun and we definitely enjoyed ourselves.

The rest of the week was spent relishing the fact that we got to see each other every evening! My planned vacation was a little bit hindered by a bit of work but it was manageable and lets face it, working from your balcony in the sunshine is a vacation no matter what!

The week flew by and before I knew it I was on a flight to Perth! It is heavenly to live a bit closer now so that the commute involves only 1 stopover. What is strange though is that you cross the time line so I left SoCal on Sunday night and landed in Perth on Tuesday afternoon even though I had only been in transit for about 24hours! Yes, I lost 15 hours in the time difference! Nuts.

The 10 days home were far too short but it was soooooo nice to be back with the family. Even nicer was that the parentals had arranged a weekend trip down south! Sheenz, me, and the parental unit hit road on Friday morning making it to Margaret River in the afternoon where we proceeded to chill out and enjoy a few drinks and laughs. On Saturday we had arranged a tasting for the wedding at the winery (it was delicious by the way!) and we did the usual tour around all the winerys. By Sunday we were sufficiently over-fed and relaxed and so we headed back up to Perth. I am spoiled!

The remainder of the week was spent catching up with some old favourites and having serious family quality time. Content sigh. There is nothing like being home.

Sadly before I knew it I was back on a flight returning to LAX – The upside of this, naturally, was that I got to be reunited with the Joepinator! This is clearly a big plus!!

We then settled back in for another SoCal week together! The good weather, the good food, the tennis matches and the relaxation were exactly what the doctor ordered! We even managed to make a few new friends and attended the launch of a friends company … all in all we are extraordinarily content!

Bring on September & October for more of this quality time!!

Yikes! Where has the time gone?!

Man oh man I have been LAX about updating this blog. I keep thinking ‘hmmm I should update that blog of ours’ and then I forget. Its for legitimate reasons. We are BUSY. We are living in 2 different countries and yet we still manage to see each other almost every weekend. In addition we are both working full time in jobs that seem to get progressively busier as time goes on. Throw in the fact that we are planning a wedding and a honeymoon and we had to move countries and get to know a new city and you pretty much have us in the busiest year of our relationship. With no sign of things slowing down!

2011 is proving to be QUITE an exciting year for us!

So lets recap – As of May 31st we are no longer residents of 200 Besserer Street. We had an amazing almost 2 years in that apartment and we were very sad to see it go! Still, new adventures were just a relocation away and so the moving truck came on May 31 to collect all our stuff and ship it down to Laguna Beach, CA. It was hard to believe that 2 years ago we arrived in Ottawa with only 3 suitcases and yet we left with a truck full of furniture and knick knacks. Man oh man it is easy to accumulate stuff. After saying goodbye to our beloved apartment, we headed to my summer sublet! Yes, I am staying in Ottawa for the summer and Joep will live in Laguna. I was lucky enough to find a sublet room in a share house for the summer. However, the landlord neglected to mention that my housemates were a mix of other professionals like myself and a couple of 20yo college students. Needless to say, the college students have a different schedule to us older professionals.

Still it was only for a few months right? Yeah. That didn’t register on a Thursday night at 4am as I stood in the kitchen in my pyjama’s yelling at some very intimidated 20yo’s to turn off the music and get out of my kitchen. Yikes. I’m becoming my mother (and I have to say, I’m quite proud of it!). I made the executive decision the following morning that I didn’t want to be in that house for the entire summer. Thankfully I was heading to SoCal the following week for a MONTH and my landlord is awesome and arranged for a different house for me for the month of August. It is much nicer and quieter here!

I shouldn’t complain too much though. The housing situation has been ideal in many ways. Its central, its clean, its spacious and I’m still walking distance from all our friends. In addition I’ve been away every weekend in SoCal anyway so it’s manageable. Plus it is great to be in Ottawa for another summer!

The move to Laguna Beach however, was quite stressful. The moving company initial verbally promised Joep that the furniture would take 7 days to get to Laguna. 7 days after they collected our entire worldly belongings we found out (after having to call them a million times) that the furniture had only made it as far as TORONTO! Yikes. Another 2 weeks later, again after many calls and emails and discussions we eventually found out that our furniture had not yet left Canada! Oh goodness. In the meantime Joep was sleeping on an airbed and camping in the apartment in Laguna. It was limited fun. Thankfully, it is now all a distant memory because after a month the furniture eventually arrived in Laguna Beach!

Sadly, the removal company that had promised so much not only under-delivered in regards to the time it took them to get our stuff to Laguna but also in the actual moving service. We had paid for a full service that included taking all furniture apart and putting it all back together again. When the truck arrived in Laguna Joep was greeted by 1 man. Joep was, naturally, perplexed. How on earth would 1 man carry all our furniture up 3 flights of stairs? He couldn’t. In fact, he wanted Joep to help him! I don’t think so.

The only solution was to drive to the local ‘day worker’ stall to hire some help. Confused? I was too. This is relatively depressing but basically the day worker stand is a bus stop on the side of the road where immigrants (largely Mexican) wait each day in the hope that someone has work for them. They’ll do pretty much anything. Gardening, cleaning etc. etc. There are many things about this that make Joep & I very uncomfortable. In fact, there is little about this situation that makes us feel even remotely good. These are good hard working people who don’t have access to any benefits and who have a pretty low standard of living and get totally ripped off for working super hard. Yuck. When the removal guy hired the 2 workers he had to pay a deposit for them – Guess how much? It’ll likely upset you. It was $5!! $5!! To hire 2 people! Gross. Yuck. It makes me feel icky. Joep was happy for the help however, and tipped them generously. A small consolation. Still, there’s something very wrong about that.

We’ve both made the mistake of trying to have rational conversations with Californian’s about this situation. Alas their viewpoint differs enormously from ours so the conversations are usually short lived … and sometimes Joep has to kick me under the table to get me to stop trying talking about it. What can I say? I have opinions!

The end result however is that we now have all our furniture in our new home and we’re all settled! Apart from the fact that I still live in Canada, of course.

However, having this last summer in Ottawa has proven to be quite enjoyable! The month of June has been pretty glorious. We’ve enjoyed amazing food (hello Murray’s Market!), we checked out the annual Art in the Park festivities (although we couldn’t buy anything coz we’re moving) and we had incredible bbq’s with amazing people! We also checked out Oysterfest! It is exactly what the title says it is. An oyster festival. The Whalesbone in Ottawa is one of our favourite restaurants and they hold this festival annually. It was a gloriously warm Sunday afternoon spent eating oysters and enjoying beverages with good friends! Alas, it came on a Sunday after a big Saturday night out so Joep & I were feeling a bit under the weather. Oysters are less delicious when you are hungover. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone involved.

We are going to miss Ottawa so much! Every time we sit around with friends we’ll often catch each others eye across the table and have a ‘oh I am going to miss this!’ moment. Moving around the world is an amazing experience but it does mean that we are continually growing the list of ‘things we miss’ around the globe.

Still, new adventures await. We have a few crazy months ahead of us and we’re both looking forward to living together again and regaining some sense of normalcy in our lives!
Oh Ottawa how we will miss you …