The light at the end of the tunnel may very well be an oncoming train. I've been back from Vancouver for about 10 days now and haven't had time to stop and breathe.
I'm moving. Not far, closer to George Town. I've lived most of my Cayman life in West Bay (The Armpit of Grand Cayman) and really, it's not as bad as some people make it out to be. There are a few spots that you probably want to avoid (ironically I jog through it on my "Loop From Hell" circuit) but there are spots to avoid everywhere. Traffic isn't so bad anymore since they opened the bypass, although there are still a few chokepoints that have just relocated since then. Not so bad that I'm cursing and slamming the steering wheel and plotting to buy a scooter like I did in 2005 though.
On that note, I'm still awaiting closure (and money) from the insurance company. The police report is in, and the other driver (who shall remain nameless until after I've got my money, then it's open season) has been charged with careless driving. Open and shut case. He is still maintaining that he wasn't at fault, and that he has a witness who claims I was going the wrong way in the roundabout. WHAT THE...?! Anyway, I'm not posting any details or anything until after the case is closed. In the meantime, my poor little Vespa is still parked behind Vespa Cayman awaiting repairs and starting to rust from the salty sea air we have down here.
While I was at home over New Years, John was busy scouting places for us to live come February 1st. Which is next Friday. Yeesh. He found a few places and was able to send me links from the property management companies to check out while he went and scouted around. He narrowed it down to a couple, one WAYYYYY out in West Bay and another in Snug Harbor. In the end, we went with the one in Snug Harbor. Close to work for both of us, no traffic for me to deal with, walking distance to DD's, Foster's, Paperman's Coffee House, Blackbeard's Liquor Store, Canton & Copper Falls. w00t! It's a house, too which is a nice change from living like sardines in a shotgun shack. These apartments are ALL concrete, which is nice and stable when you're thinking about 200mph winds and storm surge, but not so nice when you're laying in bed and one of your neighbors starts dragging furniture around.
Moving out is always a pain in the ass, but it's also a good time to purge. Purge junk you don't need anymore, don't want anymore and just can't bring yourself to pack up and move one more time. Tonight was operation refrigerator and I terminated most of the contents with extreme prejudice. I also found a few surprises in there, i.e. expiration dates that had long past. :)
As I thought would happen, our landlady is turning out to be a bit of a nightmare, but again, until I have our security deposit in my hand, I'm not going to name her. There's no point in it really, she's just as much of a cocksucker as every other landlord in the Cayman Islands. They all seem to think they're entitled to the security deposit regardless. The last one took forever and a day to give us our deposit back (although she did give it back to us entirely) and before that they took a month to get it back to us as well.. what was left of it. However, they did give us a breakdown of everything they replaced and deducted from the deposit. This one's making moves to keep the whole thing pretty much "just 'cause". The ONLY thing that's not as we found it is one arm of the couch. It's pleather or something; it's hard and brittle over the arms and it split. The day I moved in. I emailed her and told her about it that week. Over the year, the split has gotten a bit bigger. She thinks its damage, and I think it's wear and tear. Damage would be something above and beyond what's normal. If I had cut it with a knife, or melted a hole in it with a cigarette butt, that would be damage. Putting a split in it by sitting or laying on the couch... not so much. We didn't even break any plates or glasses, this place is LITERALLY exactly how we got it when we moved in (or will be after we finish moving stuff out and have a chance to clean).We got a quote from an upholstery place (who informed us it's NOT leather) to cover it over for $300, and he would have to cut the piece out of the back to do it. We decided not to, as she would probably FREAK OUT over a hole in the back of the sofa the exact size of the arm piece that was covered over. We'll leave that decision to her... If she tries to ding us for more than $300, it's straight off to the complaints board and then small claims court. I don't care if it takes a year to get it back from her, it's the principle. Bitch.
It was easier for us to find an apartment this time, as we didn't have to worry about accepting pets. Tweeter died on the Sunday before Christmas. Poor little thing was weak and sitting in the bottom of her cage when I went down that morning. I gave her some fresh water and food and went to get a coffee and when I got back, she was still in the same place and hadn't touched her food or anything. I picked her up (another warning sign, usually she freaked out if you tried to pick her up) and hand-fed her some seeds and water from my finger, but the poor dear didn't even have the strength to perch anymore. She got weaker and weaker over the next couple hours, so in a last-ditch effort, I called up Island Vet services and had the bird doctor meet me at their office. She was still alive, still moving around a little and looking around. The vet said we could try an antibiotic via injection, but the prognosis wasn't very good. I think he knew she was a goner and was just trying to make it look like we tried. While he was in the other room preparing the injection, I picked her up and with her laying in my hand looking up at me, I saw her crest stand up momentarily, and then slowly lay back down against her head. The doc came back and I said I thought it was too late. He put a stethoscope up to her little birdy chest and listened for a few seconds and confirmed that there was no heartbeat. Poor little girl :(
Upon examination, the bottom of her belly was all black.. like a bruise. She had had a systemic infection and eventually it poisoned her bloodstream and that's what made her really sick. The doc told me that small birds like Tweeter (a pearl cockatiel) go to extraordinary lengths to hide any illness as if they were in the wild, any sign of weakness would make them a target to predators. By the time they can't maintain that facade anymore, it's too late. Poor little girl, I had no idea how old she was. Hazmat Jenny brought her home one day from the Humane Society to babysit for a few weeks while her keepers were off-island, and then they never came back, and then the hurricane hit. When things started getting back to normal and Jenny and I split up, I took Tweeter with me, as we had kind of bonded and no one ever called looking for her.
I didn't run once the whole time I was gone. I posted late last year about the Couch to 5k running program that I found online and started doing with the podcasts from www.podcastsforrunning.com and managed to finish the program in about ten weeks, finishing up with three mile runs three times that week. After that I still ran three times a week, but varied my distance and pace on nothing more than whims. I packed my shoes and some running gear to take to Vancouver with me, but it was just too fucking cold to go running outside, and I was running AROUND so much I never got a chance to go down to the community rec center or any of the gyms and run on a treadmill. To make up for it, I stepped BACK to week 5 this week and finished up last night with a two mile run in 20:05. I'll miss out this week because of moving, so I might go out and do 2 miles Tuesday and then Saturday as well and start Week 6 the following week. At this pace, I should finish up week nine again around the end of February and maintain that through March and sign up for the 5k Irish Jog on St Patrick's day this year.
Work has been busy since I got back, too. We got approval to purchase some licenses for Sunbelt Email Archiver for Exchange server and that was my #1 project when I got back. We've been making preparations for it and have an appointment and window to install it on Wednesday afternoon. It should take the load off of our Exchange Server and shrink down mailboxes to the point where Outlook is a viable application again. Once that's done, we can re-jigger the backup solution to take into account a HELL of a lot less exchange data, but more SQL data and then we'll be in a fine position to prepare the move to Exchange 2007.
I haven't even begun to write about anything that happened back in Vancouver, but that's another post just about as long as this one, but with hella pictures in it, too so I'll leave things there and pick up another time.