31 Mar 2015

Sitting in the Morning Sun

Wow how time flies! I cannot believe that it is the last day of March already! it seems like just a few days ago we decided to do this, but looking around the apartment I can see that is not the case.

We are quite a long ways along into the pulling everything out of where it has lived and deciding if we will a) take it to Australia, b) keep it and box it and move it to one of our parents house's c) try and sell it d) throw it away!

There are lots of things we have already gone option d with, but it still feels like we have been invaded by hoarders a little bit, although it is reasonably well organized. We have a Value Village/Sell pile, a garbage/recycle pile and a nice stack of keep things all in apple boxes or big bags. That is the keep pile, otherwise known as stuff we have to somehow transport to Courtenay or Vernon...

Although it looks, seems and feels a little daunting now, we still have lots of time to keep at it before we have to leave. It is kind of incredible how much stuff can live in a closet, and how much space it takes up if you put it in the middle of the floor.

In other news our little flower "garden" on our balcony is blooming like crazy right now. All the bulbs I planted at christmas have come up and are looking very nice. So far we have lots of little daffys and some tulips opened up with many more on the way.

It is a bit of a murky day out there with some pretty dark looking clouds, but at the moment the sun is streaming in and it is lovely. Yesterday was quite warm. We went up to Sidney and had a little walk around, then a little explore of some back roads on the way home.

Angie is off to work very soon, and I start at noon, so I think I am going to wrap this up and sign off. By the way, this is me trying out a new way of separating our posts, with different authors. This way it is easy to see the ones I write, the ones Angie writes, and the ones we write together. At some point once we will set up some sort of a schedule of posts, probably one of each of those a week, spread around, plus any extras when we have things we just need to share!

24 Mar 2015

Sunny Thoughts in Victoria

Angie here, it's been a little while since I've written so I thought I would make an update! We sold our table the other day to a nice couple. They are adventurers that are in the process of settling down (I'm assuming to start a family because they're around the right age) so we felt that was a nice send off for our table: From my family to theirs. Again, I know it's the sentimental side of me coming out, but it feels nicer to know that it will be in a good home. 


There's still quite a few things that need to be sorted out and boxed up but I'm surprised by my lack of inhibition. I would have expected to feel the pains of change but I'm not. If you know me, I have a strong history of resisting change so this is a big departure from normality! 

It could be that I'm so accepting of this change because I feel as though there's no other option I want to pursue. The way I see it, I would have to find a new job and a new apartment to 'wash' the slate a bit in Victoria. I have been living in the same area for 5 years and I think that it's beginning to feel like a holding pattern. 

All the while I was in school I was waiting to get my degree and find a nice geology job somewhere else... but since a lot of science is dead in BC right now, I just don't feel that as an option (Note: I relinquished my right to complain about the government because I didn't vote). 

Graham and I decided that the soul crushing monotony would be nicely abated with a dip in a warm ocean! We brought up two options: A) Little week or so long vacation to somewhere warm and then we'd think about a big trip in ~6 months or... B) Big trip as soon as possible!! 
We drew up a spreadsheet and input our wages, rent, food money, etc. It turned out that we would have enough money (and contingency) to leave by the beginning of May! A few days later we had our work VISAs, our plane tickets, and a place to stay when we arrived! 



Rent is $880 for reference
And look how well we're doing keeping on a small budget :) 
This is between March 1-24(today) but it doesn't include Grahams banking... admittedly he does pay for a lot of the groceries...
I still think it's quite good though :)



So ready for this!



On a side note, I've decided that I want to get a little tattoo with my best friend Jessica before I go... I really like the idea of a small strawberry because we used to have matching 'best friend' strawberry necklaces about 4 years ago, as shown below! The little design on the right is closer to what I want though... we're still thinking of what placement we want but it'll be small :)


But more like this design

19 Mar 2015

Musings From a Rainy Night

The days and weeks are going by both quickly and slowly as we draw nearer to our departure. We have been filling our mutual days off with little adventures out and about in the Victoria area, visiting old favorites and discovering new places. 

Our adventuring today brought us on a nice little drive through the city to Beacon Hill Park. We spent a little while trying to play with the ducks....they were reluctant....We think they were scared of Angie's yellow rain jacket. From there we headed to Clover Point and played with the ocean a little bit. It was a bit gray and rainy, but nice. We stopped by my work and got food for lunch - yummy tacos.

Angie is at work now and I am at home watching a movie and listening to the rain fall softly. It is amazing to think that in a month and a half I will be many thousands of kilometers away in the tropical rainforest of far north Queensland. It is an exciting period in our lives and we cannot wait to get it started. We have started boxing up some things  and we aim to keep doing that so we don't have a big rush right before we move out. We will inevitably have a big stressful rush right at the end still, but it is a nice thought.

Anyways, just a few musings from a rainy night.

The One With the Sooke Potholes



Last weekend Angie and I went on a little adventure about 45 mins away to the Sooke Potholes. I had never been there, and it is way cooler than I expected. I thought it was just a river with a couple swimming holes, but it is so much more! Cool canyons and waterfalls abound!

Enjoy the video! We were playing around using a makeshift selfie stick. I like the effect!

2 Mar 2015

Goodbye to an Old Couch


Angie here, we've decided on an interim solution for differentiating who's typing by being colour coded! Eventually Graham wants to fiddle with it and figure out how we can sign in through different emails and it will tell you who's typing... but for now... DIBS RED


So it's a bit weird (and the first step is realizing that) but I'm crying because I just sold my couch.

This thing of beauty. 
I like to think of myself as sentimental but I think the bigger problem is that I anthropomorphise too much. Sometimes there's no place for it, but I think that this couch was different. My couch was an old friend because it's been in my family for as long as I can remember. Literally. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch in my grandmas basement in Edson, Alberta and unwrapping a Ken doll for Christmas. 

Shortly afterwards, the couch was moved to my families house in Edson. A few years later, when my Mum discovered that Magic Erasers are indeed magic, we were cleaning the couch and we found the tag for the Ken doll! It had simply disappeared into the couch along with all the memories from earlier days. That is what this couch had meant to me.

It's never complained, or asked for anything, it's just absorbed the memories and stood proud wherever it was. When I moved to Victoria, it waited patiently for me to get an apartment and then followed me. When I got a terrible roommate, it stood with me and waited until I had had enough. When I moved to a new apartment and it came with me, there was never a question. 
But now the apartment isn't just my apartment. And this life isn't just mine. I share it with my handsome prince. And we are far to ambitious to be tied down by a couch!

I like to think he loved the couch as well, but in the end it just couldn't stay. It's because of this trip that I have to say goodbye to my couch, and I'm sorry if I feel a little bit like I've betrayed it. I know that I'm the only one that will love it like it deserves, but I also know that I'm not going to always have it. 
Handsome Prince. Worth it. 


I think this is a big part of moving on from Victoria and preparing to move to Australia. I also think that this is the hardest part... so the silver lining? After this, everything else will be easy. 
And I think it makes it okay.


So here's to an old friend with a new home! 
And here's to a young woman (and her handsome prince) with a new adventure!

1 Mar 2015

Who We Are and Why We're Here

We are Graham and Angie and we are started this blog to let you all know what is going on in our lives. We hope that what follows is as interesting to you as it is to us.

Us in Florida a year or so ago
First off, why don't we give you a bit of a run down on what we are all about. We both finished BSc degrees from the University of Victoria, and since then have just been working in jobs that while entertaining at times are not what we really want to be doing. This led us to the drastic decision of leaving house and home and job and car and heading off into the wide world to try and make a go of it somewhere else.

Warm ocean was considered essential by Angie, and since I had done a university exchange there a couple years ago, we chose Cairns - in the tropical far north of Queensland, Australia - as our first destination. We will likely move on from there, but in the mean time, we are counting down the days until, two months from now when we will be jumping onto a long metal tube which will carry us at hundreds of miles an hour across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

In the meantime, we are spending as little money as we can, as every dollar counts towards making it easier to stay in Australia. In that vein of thought, we will not be simply lolligaging around on the beautiful northern beaches of the Cairns area (though we do plan some of that for sure), no we will be trying desperately to find work, as that is what will allow us to stay.

Said beautiful Northern Beaches, Clifton to be exact.
"Aha!" you say, sitting upright in your chair, "But you cannot simply work in another country!". Well, we thought of that, and have both received working holiday visas, that let us do just that. They will let us fund our lolligaging through working there, which is a pretty neat deal if you ask me.

Since I said I would keep this brief (I didn't), I will end it there with the promise of more to come in the following days, months, and hopefully couple of years. We are not bloggers by nature, although I have tried during previous travels of mine, but we will make every effort to each do a post a week as a bare minimum, more when we do exciting things.

For now though, it is time to go to bed.