crows to burnaby

To the lady who paused at a stop sign at Commercial Drive today long enough to shout at me, "I know it's not my place, but on a hot day like this that dog should be at home!", I would like to say the following:

1. That's exactly where we were going. (I did get to say that before you drove off, but I doubt you were listening.)
2. My dog cannot use the toilet. Wouldn't it be more cruel not to walk him?
3. Hypothetically speaking, what if it was really hot inside my apartment?
4. So you're offering us a lift home then? Mind some dog hair on your car seats?
5. No, it really isn't your place.

These are the sorts of things you might experience in the Commercial Drive area.

I was walking to the bus the other day when I noticed a man with a coathanger fishing his way into a truck. I had a rush of adrenalin, wondering if I should call the cops, or confront him, or avoid him, or what. Then after a moment, I realized his manner was strangely casual - not casual in an efficient car-thief way, but just unbothered and easy. Plus the fact that he was about 60 with a ZZ Top style beard tipped me off that maybe this actually was his truck.

He drove off, very very slowly, a while after I'd passed him by; a few days later I did spot the truck back in the same location. It's just how he gets in.

Yesterday I noticed a guy carrying groceries in one hand and fiddling near his mouth with the other. I assumed he was smoking, but didn't see any smoke; I thought maybe he was chewing his fingernails or something. As I passed him I could hear him humming and then trying chords out on his harmonica. Not what I was expecting, and a far nicer discovery.

I noticed a few signs today while out & about.

One, in the window of a vitamin store on Pender, said simply "BUY 2 GET 1".

The other was a pair of signs in front of a gym around Commercial. One said "$24.99/month", and was next to a special promotional offer: "3 months $99".

I ain't buying.

My big job for the past few weeks has been getting the condo ready to put on the market. So it's been freshly painted, everything cleaned, all the junk packed away, and my next challenge is to hold it all together until the open house in a week and a half.

You gotta understand. I am messy. Always have been, always will be. It's easiest for me to find something when everything is out there in plain view. And sometimes I am right in the middle of something and I just don't want to put this or that random object away right now. I'll get around to it later. Really I will!

The bookshelves and coffee table are gone, which has severely limited the amount of horizontal space I have upon which to stack things. And I'm trying to keep the remaining tables and counters neat. So I'm throwing everything into moving boxes and hiding it in the closets, for now. Only soon I'm going to start forgetting which bits of paper are in which box, and it's all downhill from there.

The other disconcerting thing is rattling around in this perfectly clean and un-decorated apartment. When selling a place, you're supposed to strip away any personality you've injected into it - no pictures of family, not so many quirky knick-knacks. So there's not much of anything still visible that is "me", except some funky little cards in the office. And it's more space than I really need, especially with less furniture and things packed away.

I definitely feel like I'm transient here, and I'm ready to find my own place. I've been looking and have more looking to do. It's exciting, but it'll still be a little while yet before I'm out of this in-between limbo phase.

We need to fix our condo up before selling it. Can any of you recommend good painters (or bad ones we should avoid)? Also we need some cleaners to go over everything; there is probably dog hair embedded in every possible surface that will need to be carefully extracted.

Post here or send a note to kirsten at crows to burnaby dot com.

Thanks!