Rise of the Loon

So, basically, Rob & I could not have chosen a worse time to move home. The Canadian dollar reached a 37-year high today. This means that all our hard earned wee pounds, which we had to leave tucked safe and sound into our bank in England, are going to have to stay over there for the foreseable future. Not great when you have a house purchase looming, and a certain someone is still unemployed (note to self: lady of leisure lunches to stop until dollar crumbles... which might happen sometime in the next decade or so).

Lofty loonie
HEATHER SCOFFIELD
Globe and Mail Update
October 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM EDT

OTTAWA — The Canadian dollar has reached its highest level since it began to float freely in 1970.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071029.wloonie1029/BNStory/robNews/home

Git along little doggy

Had a very fun afternoon with my lovely friend Emer, and her baby Bernie, and of course Lulu, the wonderdog. It was Lulu's 1 year birthday on Saturday, so I bought her a beautiful Halloween costume to celebrate. She seemed to quite like it.

We also went for a great walk, enjoying the dreamy weather, and stopped and had a coffee and a piece of pumpkin cake - yum!

The job search isn't going well - I don't think it's going to be easy to find a 2 or 3 month contract... Doh! The search will continue tomorrow.

Here's Lulu in her beautiful outfit, and then her trying to lick Bernadette to death!

Wacky Weather

It's supposed to be a whopping 26 degrees today in Toronto. Hellooooo! It's LATE October.

We were dreading moving back to Canada because winter was looming, but hey, if the weather stays like this, I'll be tootally enjoying the fall! (And I can't help but notice that it's only 12 degrees in St Albans today. Har har har!).

Homes: temporary and permanent

So, real estate has been top of our minds for the past few weeks.

We knew that we wanted to rent an apartment in Toronto for a few months, while we looked for a house to buy, and to give us the chance to get settled and spend some time with friends in the big city. (To you Brits, it IS a big city by Canadian standards. Compared to London, however, it's more of a rural village, but, it's as big as they come in this lightly populated former colony).

After much stress and hassle, we finally found a condo to rent on the 17th floor of a brand new building at the foot of Yonge Street, which is the longest street in Canada, and forms the main north/south route through the city and beyond. It's north facing, and the cost almost makes rental prices in St Albans seem reasonable, but, it'll do for a few months.

The view from our balcony - downtown Toronto

Balcony view - towards the CN Tower

Inside the condo - from kitchen towards living room

We were very relieved the finally get a place in Toronto. BUT, there were more permanent, and exciting things in the works. Two days after Rob landed, we went to view a house that we'd seen online that we quite liked the look of. It's in a wee town called Millbrook, about an hours drive from Toronto.

My mom and dad had already done a reccie for us, when we'd still been in England, and had reported back that it was a pretty great house, in a great location - the last house on a dead-end street, overlooking the Mill Pond, for which Millbrook gets its name. Anyway, to make a long story short, we put an offer in (after some heart-stopping stressful moments, and heart palpitations about spending that much money in one transation). We are having a home inspection done on Thursday, to make sure it's not secretly filled with rats or asbestos, and then providing that all that goes well, it's ours and we take possession of it on 29th November. Woo woo woooo!

Here are some pictures:

The front of the house

The kitchen

One of the bedrooms (there are 3 in total)

The dining room

The front porch (just the place for drinking a giant port & lemonade, methinks)


The view from the front of the house

Back in the land of bears and beavers

So, after living in the UK for two years, 8 months, and 25 days, we moved back to Canada. Actually, I came first, on September 25th, and Rob arrived later, on October 9th.

It's been a busy few weeks. I've been spending time getting caught up with family and friends, and we've found a condo to rent in downtown Toronto, and also a house to buy in Millbrook (a very cute town about an hour from Toronto).

I've had some serious culture shock getting back into the Canadian way of life - I've had to stop myself from saying 'trousers', 'pudding', and 'mobile', and am slowly adding North American words and spelling back into my life. The dreaded Canadian upspeak has crept back into my voice when asking questions. I guess that's good because for the first few days I was getting a lot of abuse from people saying I had a funny accent. I think you Brits reading this will agree that I never had any hint of the limey twang in my voice - as proven by my innability to say water or yoghurt the proper way.

I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been really weird being back here. We have both been really missing England, and St Albans, and especially all of the friends that we made there. But, we're looking forward to an onslaught of British houseguests in the near future.

Here are a few pics to give you an idea of what life has been like for the past 25 days!

Charley and me hangin' in Ottawa

Oggy and Penny enjoying some fall foliage

Charley helping with the gardening

A frisky cow getting intimate with Charley's foot at the Ottawa Experimental Farm (and yes, that's Lee's 'up the duff' belly in the picture too!)