Category: Personal

Another busy weekend has come to an end. This morning, Brooke and I ran in another race. Actually, two races. The Don River Run is both a 5K and a 10K event. Brooke ran in the 10K race, as the culmination of the 10K class she’s been taking at the Running Room. If you recall, I’d injured my knee and didn’t take that class, so I ran the 5K race. We both did ok, though I wasn’t too happy with the gigantic hill just before the finish. Read more here. Tonight, we met up with some of the people from her class at The Host, a very nice Indian restaurant. Brooke’s going to repeat the 10K class so I can join her. We start (again) this Wednesday night.

Last night, we stayed in to watch Saturday Night at the Movies on TVO, our public television station. They were screening Mildred Pierce (1945), starring Joan Crawford. It’s a great combination of film noir and shameless melodrama, and it’s the inspiration for the name of a very nice restaurant here in Toronto.

On Friday night, Brent and I went to see American Splendor (2003), about comic book writer Harvey Pekar. All I’ve been able to say to Brooke about it is: “What kind of woman is your bride, Harvey. Is she a nerd?” (you’ll need to see the movie now, won’t you?!). Excellent work all around, and nice to see one of my favourite character actors, Paul Giamatti, get a larger canvas.

I promise to try to be more interesting from now on. I’ve been neglecting you. The film festival is coming up fast, so I’ll be writing my traditional mini-reviews of the 15 films I’ll be seeing this year. Tuesday night we’ll be going over the schedule and guidebook choosing our films, and next Monday (Labour Day), we find out whether we got all of our first choices. This is always a frantic time of year for us, but it’s always worth it.

Well, yesterday around 4:15pm, we lost all power, along with 30-50 million other people. It was actually pretty boring for me. You see, I was home sick from work. I had no appliances running except our air conditioner, and when it shut off, I thought maybe it had blown a fuse or something. I’d been reading, and still feeling sick, so I decided to have a nap. When I woke up around 6:00pm, there was still no power.

Brooke walked in about an hour later, telling me that she’d walked two hours home from work, and had to walk up the fourteen flights of stairs to our apartment. We went out shortly afterward to try to buy batteries for our radio, which was a bit of an adventure. There was a brave soul directing traffic at Mount Pleasant and Eglinton, the nearest major intersection, and lots of people were out walking around. Most of the stores had closed, and the ones still open were selling out of water and batteries. Ice cream was half price at most convenience stores, though we didn’t buy any.

After getting back home (and walking the fourteen flights of stairs), we just listened to the radio until it got dark around 9:00pm. We lit a couple of candles, but were in bed by 10:00pm. Our power came back on around 2:00am, but we didn’t really sleep that well, since we’d turned off our air conditioner. This morning, we were advised that the Premier of Ontario had declared a state of emergency, and that all non-essential employees were advised to stay home from work. The subway wouldn’t be running today, and may not run again until Monday.

So, it’s actually been pretty boring. This is the first time in 24 hours that I’ve been able to connect to the internet. Since we’re still being advised to conserve power (due to possible rolling blackouts), I’m going to shut down again now and just wait for the sun to go down. Maybe we can watch some TV tonight.

How are you all doing?

I’m sorry. I’ve been back more than a week and haven’t even said very much about my trip. The truth is, I’m really busy at work, and still dog-tired from all the travelling. I’m working on getting the photos together and you should see those by this weekend.

In other news, last Monday (yes, the day after I got home), I got together with about 15 old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in many years. I spent many formative years in the 1980s as part of a very close-knit church youth group, and some of us have recently come together again. The reason is that this July marked the 20th anniversary of the death of one of our friends in a traffic accident. Robyn was just 17, and practically glowed with energy and faith and potential. I still wonder what she would have been doing now had she lived. But as I wrote in an email to the group:

So yeah, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And just so this post isn’t all sombre, here’s a picture of unrealized potential. When I saw this, I really wasn’t sure that it was me (I’m the skinny one on the left, by the way):

Brooke and I have had the whole “renting versus buying” discussion several (dozen) times over the past few years, and I’ve never been convinced of the value of owning real estate. But last weekend, I let myself be talked into going to look at some condos that are being built very close to our (rented) apartment.

Surprisingly, after checking out the floor plans and prices, I was interested. We live in a pricier section of the most expensive city in Canada, so $200,000 for a one-bedroom condo, slightly larger than our current place, actually seemed reasonable. We currently pay almost $1100 in rent each month. I figured that if we could get away with paying no more than $1600-$1800/month, it might make sense for us.

What I didn’t count on was the deposit/down payment. The condo isn’t built yet, and expected occupancy isn’t until the spring of 2005, at the earliest. But they still want a $30,000 deposit, spread over eight months. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have that sort of cash laying around. Even if we were able to borrow it, paying it back over two years (before we’d have to start paying our mortgage) would be more expensive than the mortgage, since we’d still have to pay our rent at the same time. What’s worse, I found out that upon moving in to the finished condo, we have to pay another $20,000. Where is this money supposed to come from? We’d be first-time home buyers, and we don’t own any assets at all. Our credit history is exemplary, but somehow, the idea of trying to put $50,000 on our lines of credit seems insane.

People talk about how rent is just like throwing your money away. But after looking at interest rates, amortization periods, and condominium “maintenence fees,” I’m pretty convinced that we’d be throwing away at least as much money each month as we do now. All this hasn’t helped to console my wife, though…

I’ve been so reluctant to mention any news from the job front over the past few weeks for fear of jinxing it, but after several weeks of uncertainty, I start a new job, nay, a new career tomorrow.

I’ll be designing and maintaining the web site for the Lifford Wine Agency, who represent some of the most prestigious wineries in the world. Once the site is live, I’ll be shifting my attention to creating from scratch a new marketing initiative to sell wine directly to consumers. This will involve writing monthly email newsletters and coming up with other creative ways to educate consumers about the many many wines that never make it into our local government monopoly wine stores.

It’s going to be a huge challenge and I’m really excited to finally be working at something that will stretch me every day. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and encouragement over the past few months. You kept my chin up and my eyes open and if it weren’t for you, tomorrow might just be another day.