Merry Christmas, all, especially to the guy yelling in front of the church across the street

As I sat down to write something, I suddenly heard the sound of a man yelling down on the street.  Jen and I looked, and she correctly deduced that he was "crazy preaching", dressed like the Fourth Wise Man who was written out of the story.  The iPhone picture really doesn't do his outfit justice, since he was carrying what must have been one or two Holy Bible-esque parcels with his left arm, in the manner of students holding schoolbooks against their chests.  Even though we can often hear full conversations at the level of normal speech being seven stories up, the man's loud yelling bouncing off of all of the stone walls is making it difficult to make out much of what he's saying, except when he said "That is NOT loving thy neighbor as yourself!".  He's still going as I type.

I was going to write something about getting started on a book I bought several months ago, Harvard Business Review on Managing Yourself, about how I'm working to build up the fearlessness that I'll need to secure a paid internship for the summer, about how I was excited to go downstairs to the gym since it's never technically closed.

But all that has a tin ring to it when compared to the street preacher on a cold Christmas early-afternoon.  Most everything that I have to worry about is containable and none of those things involve the possibility of being unhinged in public.

As they saying goes, "the Lord works in mysterious ways".  I don't think you have to be religious to understand that.

Give thanks for your loved ones, work your plan, and enjoy the unstructured time that you've been given, wherever you happen to be.

Slow Saturday night, now Sunday morning

Semester is done, save for one paper that's due on the 23rd that I want to have done by the 21st.  Gave a good representation of what I could do, learned the system, what carries weight, met some great and solid people over the last few months.  Three-and-a-half months went by pretty quickly, it seems, but I feel like I'm on the right track with the school idea, and obviously need to have things fall into place financially for Year Two to happen, but trying not to be too concerned with what I can't control yet.

I have just over two weeks off until the winter semester begins and with it the summer-internship stampede, where I see what I can get and where I'm wanted, obviously in the hope of staying exactly where I'm at here in Toronto.  Jen continues to stay on the job-hunting trail and seems to have more frequent interviews coming along, so hopefully something will come through for her - not just so that we can breathe financially, but so that she can more fully take part in this city.

It's actually hard to write about the uncertainty, even though being a "poor" college student is hardly new or uncommon.  I feel like I can make the needed grades as long as I can stay the course, can meet the people that need meeting, can find the opportunities that need finding, create what I need to.  But the money thing... fuck.  Before, living in the same city where I grew up, there was always the feeling that I could just crash out somewhere if things really fell apart, could keep up the continuity of a job, where no one has to know or care where you live as long as you keep on showing up and keep meeting and exceeding what's expected of you.  But my family unit doesn't have that flexibility now; if we do, I can't imagine where that flexibility would come from.  And if "it" doesn't work, then what?  Do we get on a bus and go back to Minneapolis, or do we go somewhere else?  To Washington D.C., for example, where Jen has friends?  Do we try our hand in a place like Chicago?  And we have two little four-footed members of the family to consider, too, if it ever came to that - how would we pull it off?

The flip side of this, of course, is the amazing opportunity of just being here, having this platform to truly improve, and I can feel it helping.  Maybe this is what a new professional sports player feels knowing that they can be cut or sent down to the minors at any time, have everything upended; maybe this is what a fighter feels when they step into the ring, where the wrong defeat at the wrong time can throw them, sometimes permanently, from the ladder or wall that they've been climbing.  But the thing that keeps these people going is their own will to succeed, cliche though that may be.

I feel an affinity with that - I went downstairs to the gym today for the first time in weeks, determined to push my physical self as I've pushed my mental and time-blocking self with my schooling, I want to build my network further over the next few weeks, and really start to set out publicly what I'm all about when it comes to postitioning myself within and outside of school.  For I may feel the age and life-experience gap with a number of people, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they're good people, and ultimately that's the best reflection of the experience that I can take away so far.

As always, I keep on, and keep working to make the best keep on happening.

Quickly

I've worked hard before, but never with so much determined focus.  The degree to which the car distracted me was made clear by how much I've been able to buckle down, even though I frequently take longer to read things than I would like to, longer to chimp out a paper than I feel I need to.  The next couple of weeks will see a mountain of work that I've already scaled significant parts of, and I'll be grateful to see Friday, December 17th, at which time all of my finals will be done, and (with luck) my economics paper will be nearly finished, if not already completed.

I've made peace with the financial stress of school, but in so doing it has revealed another unexpected feeling: I am reluctantly spending loaned money and feel much better with the idea that I actually created some of my still-small surplus by selling the car.  I didn't actually create any wealth; I merely converted the durable good into income at a price less than its market value, feeling that the extra $1000 that might have resulted from higher pricing or a delay would not have been worth repeated trips to Buffalo (which I didn't and don't have time for) or the prospect of a snowstorm undoing the proper testing of the car (which still hasn't hit - a twenty-minute snow flurry yesterday is all that's really happened yet this year and even that melted away to reveal the still-green grass).  I was able to trust my gut, and again have it work - even letting the father of the buyer take the car for a spin while I waited in their home, talking on the phone to his son, who agreed to buy the car sight unseen on his father's recommendation.  The driver could have vanished, but he didn't, just like so many people that we trust could betray it, but don't.  It's a big small thing.

I woke up seven hours ago and with this writing exception, all that I've done is research for a group accounting project, get my portion of a paper completed for a group information-systems project, and have begun plowing through readings for tomorrow's classes, with a quick resume review needed as I have a strategy session at 5:30pm tomorrow for that.  I've never stared at a computer screen so much in my life, but I'm doing much more than staring: though the research, the note-taking that has resulted in an incredible pile of used scratch paper in the "den", I've had great focus, so much so that when I looked to my right and out the window a few minutes ago, I was again reminded that yes, I'm in a new city in a new country.

The view has become very familiar, but I think I'll always be an outsider, or rather, will never forget where I came from.  And that's a very, very good thing.

Fare thee well, fair Sally!

Though the prospect saddened me yesterday, I gratefully sold Sally the Subaru today (so named by Jen) to her first suitor in the greater Buffalo area.  I met with Bill, whose son Tim was intersted in it, and everything went far better than I could have expected.  Bill is the kind of conservative you don't see on television these days, someone eminently sensible and simply great to chew the fat with. He even drove me to the bus station and gave me a rundown of the run-down that is much of Buffalo, as "our recession hit about 30 years ago" when giants such as Bethlehem Steel saw their fortunes undone by global competition.

When I pulled up to their sleepy hamlet and saw another silver Subaru in the driveway, the good sense I had about it was reinforced.  It's good to know that yes, there are still limitless opportunities to find good people, no matter how brief the meeting may be, for a particular extended moment in time.

I'm on the Greyhound bus as I type, as yet another innovation takes hold, that of onboard WiFi.  I hope they're turning a profit with it, but regardless, I am a current beneficiary, and I only spent 20 dollars (!) on a one-way ticket from Buffalo to Toronto.  The things I've had to spend that much on in my new home for something that only provides a fraction of the utility...then again, maybe this is another reminder that yes, utility abounds for those who know where to find it.

I was apprehensive in a big-picture way yesterday: with the car now in the care of a new owner, my family is now fully committed to T.O. residence, come what may.  No "screw this, we're taking the cats and high-tailing it out of here" is an option now, like it would have been even if we might have been down to our last dollar at some point.  That last dollar is now a good distance further away with the sale of the car, though, and the freedom from gas that costs nearly $1.10 a liter, car payments of over $400 a month, car insurance that would have likely exceeded $400 a month - all of that is officially a thing of the past.

Amazing how car culture seeps into your pores, makes you think that you're at a disadvantage without one.  The car was wonderful, did everything I asked it to, and more; after all, the main reason I got it was to be able to court my girl, who at that time was a 30-40 minute drive away with scant public transportation options.  Now, of course, we live under the same roof, and without a car, I can focus that much more on my family and the challenge of my MBA responsibilities.

Back to work, onto the next challenge... and as the QEW traffic clog reminds me that I'm once again close to home, I again give thanks for the blessings I've been given, which I live every day.

Reframing idea: the Spaghetti Northern

Good grades, bad grades, ugly grades: all have arrived already and the job is to press onward, retain as much as possible, and really learn, ensuring that I get a B average in the process so that I may graduate.  The stated objective of the program is to take the student out of existing comfort zones and it has accomplished that in many ways; there's so much to take in with the new city and the learning that it's hard to turn off the switch.  Even surfing the Internet only packs more information into the Tokyo subway of the mind - I can look outside at the time and temperature on the Manulife Financial building just a few blocks north, which seems to be the closest I'll get to meditating anytime in the near future.

I'm off in a flash to finally get the box for the amplifier that John purchased ten days ago, and perhaps visit an appliance store in the event that I can't obtain a free box.  Then, I study macro- and micro-economics for the mid-term exam, complexity science, and organizational behavior.  Then, tomorrow morning, I team up with another student to do the written analysis for a quantitative-methods assignment that's worth 45% of our grade.  All of the huge numbers aren't really a stressor; knowning that there aren't many chances to shine through and affect a grade is where that comes in.  At least it's not law school, where one test at the end of a semester is the only shot a person has.

And it's amazing how much the Internet has changed formal education.  Half of my textbooks have "exclusive" online reference, half of the textbooks themselves are functionally useless in that they don't match up well with the covered material, and in times of difficulty, people ask one another their opinions rather than strugging in a vacuum.  It's not far off base from the world of work, I suppose.

Any romantic notions about self-betterment have largely been dispelled, but one person notably described my effort as "heroic", which continues to be inspiring.  As I try to bottle that feeling and all of the other emotions and thoughts that swirl around this effort, I give thanks for my fiancee, with whom I've been exploring this new place (we went on a "haunted Toronto" walk around the city this past Thursday, which was a great treat) and who has done wonders to help me adjust to the new hat that I wear as a graduate student.

And hey, if I ever feel too hemmed in, I can always look up Illuminati conspiracies online, or something - some things are simply guaranteed to restore harmony to my view and remind me that yes, I am paying attention to and focusing on the right things.

Nobody's ever said "ch-ch-ch-changes" before, right?

Not posting as much and definitely not journaling as I had been prior to the move.  Looking back, journaling served its purpose for me in restoring my ability to write concisely again and also in dealing with prolonged unemployment and family struggles, but with both of those things in the rear-view mirror, I need to stay away from writing until I can find a way to do so without recalling either or both of those.

(Fortunately, I have graduate school to attend to.)

A big surprise was not only being one of the few Americans in the program, but the sheer volume of people with engineering backgrounds.  Initially I thought of it as people looking to burnish technical skills with more business-strategy abilities, but in talking with a couple of students recently, it's even more pragmatic than that: Americans have long used India as a poster child for outsourced jobs, for people paid a fraction of what Americans were paid to do the same work.  But guess what?  The race to the bottom is never over in the modern era, as work that once would be outsourced to India is now finding workers even cheaper and hungrier in places like Thailand and Bangladesh.

I have a lot of work to do to keep pace, but I appreciate the energy it takes.  Besides, I wouldn't be in graduate school if I was simply paying $60,000 in tuition over two years to confirm things I already know.  I'd be more irritated if I *wasn't* getting enough work to do for that kind of money.

I think about my new life adjustment and contrast it to the current American political season and the bald-faced insanity just stupefies me.  Canadian news seems almost quaint by comparison, even with the Toronto mayoral election coming up at the end of October.  Nobody's freaking out about a mosque being built in NYC and there's no Sharron Angle or Carl Paladino or Christine O'Donnell to make people's heads spin; the candidates here just concerned with cutting costs and how to pay for things, and none of them have any real answers that I can detect.  Did I mention that September 11th came and went up here, and it was barely mentioned in the media, and discussed by none of my classmates?  I feel like I'm catching up on a lifetime of enforced ignorance, and it's not like I wasn't raised right or anything - I was raised to question and think, but sometimes you just have to get out of the petri dish to see it properly, no matter what the cost.

Back to catching up on my Financial Accounting reading, and hopefully off to another corn maize about an hour north of Toronto, a way to recap my engagement on 9/19/09 at Sever's.  Plus, it's Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and Jen is excited to make a pot roast tonight, for which we already have all the ingredients.

Life is different, and life is good!

Zip, zoom, read, WOW.

Have been gladly blown away by school for the most part.  So much reading to do all of the time, so much to jam into so little time.  It's like a rocketship that I'm glad to ride, and meet hundreds of new people, some of whom will likely become good friends into the future.

Jen and I will shortly head out for one of those events that only truly big cities seem to have the chutzpah to pull off.  It'll be her first time on the TTC subway, finally - all of the rides are free this evening and they're having a special all-night subway schedule for people to want to take in as many of the art installations as they can.  Oh, and it's barely 50 degrees out, so I get to break out my new coat I purchased today, which on clearance in Toronto costs as much as it would have at full price in Minneapolis.  The law of supply and demand with 5 million people-plus, I suppose, but I'm still proud of the score.

I've also started a daily photo blog here that an old friend inspired just yesterday, and will be adding things that I find in this new place as a collection of experiences.  There are so many new ways to see things; I've somehow been blessed to have the opportnuity to challenge my conventions and intend to make the most of this.

Off we go for art, sweet corn, and poutine!

The methodical plow.

Woke up at 7am with a clenched stomach, worried about the credit card debt.  The debt management plan I'd inquired about came back yesterday with an estimate that showed that I'm $938.00 in the hole every month with the debt that I have.  I know that's not possible; the repayment plan with the University and my plans to sell the car (even if it has to be sold for a song) would have me in the black, but barely.  I replied to the debt counselor with the nuances of my situation, but I'm suspecting that I'll have to actually go to debt settlement, which sucks.  Was able to talk it out with Jen and feel better, as some of the anxiety is coming from not wanting to make her anxious.

That itself makes it manageable; I also have to remember that my personality is such that my mind will keep finding things to worry about - I could just as easily be going to school in Minnesota and worry about keeping my grades up, for example.  I need to push past this fear and uncertainty for my own good, too - for as much as I'm adjusting to this place, I still have only one friend here, and am just meeting the new classmates that are gradually becoming friends.

I know that people fall on hard times with the loss of jobs and the inability to pay a mortgage, for example - I saw it in my old job a fair amount, with income sometimes just not shaking out after an application is in process, and low appraisals contributing to borrower frustration.  My situation is different: for years, I'd lived just enough beyond my means to accumulate credit card debt, which I hammered away at during my well-compensated year in 2007.  However, the near-year of unemployment between 2008 and 2009 set that back, as did the need to put essentials on credit (I'm sure that a few thousand dollars were at places like Target just for food).

Am I one of those struggling Americans?  Yes, but like so many, I am trying to better myself, and with an opportunity that few have to give myself MBA skills that will enable me to get away from the life of quiet desperation (employment-wise) that I've mostly lived.  And though $30,000.00 is a lot of credit card debt, it could always be worse.  I have my health and the love of my girl ("Bubbletoes" by Jack Johnson arrives overhead, right on cue) and all the motivation in the world to keep charging forward.

The decision of one or two people has resulted in drastic financial change and uncertainty (and my school is BIG on those two concepts, all irony aside).  But isn't that how this kind of thing often works anyway?  Risk involves the chance of loss, which I've already experienced to some extent, but the chance of gain: I made it past the gate at this school, which The Economist just ranked 10th-best in the world.  The world!

This is my big chance, and I have to take whatever suffering may come along with it.

Trying to build a balance

For the first time in memory, I did no journal writing this weekend.  By writing I do mean "writing", putting a pen to paper and watching the scrawl decode my thoughts.  Every little thing takes time, but building in time for things like that will keep the stress level at a productive level.  I'll keep this blog up for myself and the handful of people that I know in the States who check in from time to time, as it's a great (and free) way to broadcast a small part of myself and my new experiences.

I've always believed in productive stress, but it has been years since I actually experienced such a concept.  Probably the last time was when I was still playing with In Defence, where the creative and energetic effort has to hold together, which was always my responsibility as the bass player with the thundering rig and solid tempo (which I still have despite hardly playing for months, and I'm proud of that).  The gigs themselves never lasted long, but the sweat output confirmed the work put into the performance every time.

The schoolwork is already rolling at a rapid pace, which I like and don't find intimidating.  I get the feeling that the professors want people not to memorize the material, but to be able to dig into it enough to enable a level of mastery, as neither of the two Monday classes (dealing with management and organizational behavior, which is "behaviour" here) spent a lot of time referencing the first-week materials - they helped more to frame the discussion.

Then again, with my entire section-cohort of 55-60 people taking all of the same classes, maybe it was by design to put the qualitative material first (even though the two classes are back-to-back and each three hours long), then drop the quant-bombs the rest of the week (as I have accounting on Wednesday, information systems/statistics on Thursday, and Economics on Friday).  But I only have class from 8:30-11:30 on those days, so I can keep my new routine of getting up at 6am and getting to school before 8am to get my bearings before each class.

Jen was very happy to learn that I have the flexibility to not be gone until 7pm every single weekday, and I was glad to have that news to give.  Hopefully she'll have her own routine soon, too, so that I don't feel like I'm leapfrogging too far ahead in making this city feel like home.  Everything is a balance, but no matter how much work I have to do or how many places I have to be, she'll stay right where she is at the top of the pyramid.  For I haven't been a student in fifteen years and it's entirely different this time around - the support of my best girl plays a huge role in how strongly I'm feeling with this start, as we work through money and adjustment tensions as best we can.

The evolution of risk into a controllable entity

Busy orientation day and worn out just before bed, as a full-day retreat beckons in the morning.  Too tired to really write, but:

- a payment plan is being worked out, as I was fortunate to find that my graduate program has the flexibility to allow a portion of the tuition to be paid in the second semester.  We will be staying in Toronto for the long haul and will not be forced to give up on this long-planned dream.

- will be selling my car to save money, and frankly, I won't miss it in this city of incredible public transportation and pointless traffic jams; it long since did the job of allowing me to court the girl who would accompany me here as my life partner.

- will be entering a debt-management program.  The credit card debt has been out of control for years, and not only will no car help keep that down, but sometimes a forced day of reckoning is just what a person needs.

- I should be able to skate on the money we have until the financial aid comes through (presumably) next week, and Jen can soon hit the job trail in earnest with a new phone.

- I already know that I'm really going to like this school, having already met and heard from a gang of entertaining and engaging professors, one who reminds me of my first guitar teacher in college: brash, headstrong, funny, and hand-talking to the nines.

- our personal effects finally arrived yesterday, and assembling the bed was the first step to getting back to normal.  We're missing a shower curtain and everything is disorganized, but only a couple of poorly-packed wine goblets broke, and I need to fix the handlebars on my bike, but ship-shape otherwise.

Putting a steel pole in the jaws of the dream crusher.

Received the near-worst news possible today restricting my financial aid to a Fantasyland number.  My head is spinning; I cannot think.  I have eaten one granola bar and drank maybe one glass of water today.

Called through to the voicemail of the financial aid determiner today; the voicemail was predictably full and there was no forwarding option available.  It's possible that the person missed one of the loans, but my gut tells me that I have been screwed, and I have to take my case to the Dean's office tomorrow morning.  I will look on all of the Big Five banks' websites for more options, but I suspect that their student options will be limited to Canadian citizens or permanent residents.  Maybe I'm wrong, but our household is struggling against the wind right now.

We don't even have our things, which will finally arrive Friday morning.

I owe six hundred dollars to a friend that I love like a brother, and I have no idea when I will be able to pay him back.  A relative co-signed for a loan after I desperately tried to get the right information from my school's financial aid department.  I have all of the emails to back up all of the misstatements and drudge that I tried to wade through, apparently to no avail.

People have put their trust in me and I feel like I have let them down.  I have been pragmatic my whole life, vigilant to the vagaries of human nature, and I know in my mind and heart that I did everything I was supposed to do in this instance.  For the last year, I have been aiming at this, taking care of as much as humanly possible.  Even if our family was living for free, we would still have to stretch the approved allotment, would still fall behind on bills.  I honestly have no idea what the school is thinking with its limitations; I want to see the metrics for myself.

There is an admissions board that wants me at that school, and there is a financial aid board that apparently does not care.  I have nothing to go back to, only a rebuilding project.  I have to hold it together for myself and my girl.  I have to make something work.

Somehow.

Labour Day brings grey skies, but reminds of open horizons.

Coffee is abetted by the fact that I'm able to sit and type in a padded armchair hear at Starbucks at Bloor and Ted Rogers Way, barely a ten-minute walk from home.  Typing while lying down on a deflated air mattress or sitting on a hardwood floor has been an invitiation for muscles to ache and I'm soaking this up fully before heading back home to kiss my sleeping girl on the forehead and take the elevator down five floors to the fitness room.  (Just in case I hadn't waxed eloquent about how awesome that is.)

It's a huge benefit and I'm grateful for everything right now, even the grey skies and the cool temperatures.  I can look out our seventh-floor window at the Manulife Financial building, which alternates the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius: one more little thing to figure out and incorporate into my new normal.  All the high-rise buildings around us, all the lights on at night in each little visible rectangle... it wasn't long ago that Jen and I used to make fun of what we called "aspirational apartments" overlooking Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, and sure enough, now we inhabit one of the ubiquitious cookie-cutter-condo units ourselves.  Some things just evolve that way, and that's cool by me.  I can't imagine ending up in a better place or location, close to so much (the adjacent Danforth neighborhood to the east has quickly become a favorite; I'll only need to take one 15-minute bus ride from the front door of our building to the Kool Haus to see Off With Their Heads on October 14th; so much more to take in and absorb). 

I sit here for a few more minutes, doing a little GMAT Business-Ready online study as Meshuggah's "Chaosphere" album tracks ring in my ears.  It's a good summation of who I am, a good reminder that I've brought my whole self with me across the Canadian border.

Here. Here, and there, we were. Here we are.

So much for leaving by noon to start the trip: just before 5pm, after a frantic and exhausting final cleaning and sorting of what would stay next to the Dumpster and what would be packed in and around the cats in the back of the Forester, we bade farewell to our old home, grabbed some McDonald's for needed comfort food, and set off down Interstate 94.  Six or seven hours later, we were checked into the Motel 6 just west of Chicago; one fitful night's sleep and just under eight hours later, we were at the border, the "WELCOME TO CANADA" beckoning in red above the entry lanes where each driver stated their purpose and moved on.  Within half an hour, we'd completed a painless interview that resulted in Jen getting work authorization on the spot; four hours after that on the 401, then the QEW, then the Gardiner Expressway, the CN Tower appeared, illuminated in seemingly iridescent fades of red and white.

We were home.

Two days of new-to-Canada orientation later, and through many of my own efforts, I had a $99 monthly student transit pass (which will save a great deal of money over parking, which gives little tiem savings with unpredictable traffic congestion), and had settled on Scotiabank for our new banking account (which we couldn't rustle together in time for this weekend, so we'll have to wait until this coming Thursday when I have a break in my orientation week, which starts with back-to-back 12-hour days of meetings, mixers, and food).  Also, with the work permit Jen scored, she was able to get to a Service Canada office and have a new Social Insuance Number (the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Social Security Number), which allows her to apply for work.  Next up is for her to obtain a new phone from Telus, which I'll do after figuring out my financial situation.

That latter item, to be blunt, continues to be a major stressor.  It has not dampened our excitement and zest for being here, but has led to daily freak-outs and needed calm-downs.  Jen understandably can't plan until we know how much we have to live on; I've bottled that stressor for so long now that I fly off the handle and have to pull it back together and apologize for being fiery and unreasonable.  Even though we both know that the determination is only for an eight-month period (with the expectation that I will interview for and secure a paid internship next summer, which usually offers pay of $1000-$1200 per week), and that her chances of finding employment here are better than in the U.S. with its battered economy, the simple inability to have any control over my financial-aid determination inspires temporary paralysis and complete destruction of perspective that's reminiscent of road construction on a road trip: no way out, just have to slow down, ride out the momentary change and delay, and then get on with things once the orange cones no longer appear.

We know that we've already accomplished a lot simply by getting here; just because people at the new-to-Canada session at school seemed more concerned about how the wire-transfer of funds works to get money from their accounts to the school doesn't mean that I'm the only one with financial worries.  I was the only American in attendance the first day out of probably 90 people - I took solace in already making a couple of new acquainances from Thailand and Venezuela respectively, as well as fielding questions from people from India, Mexico, and China about the United States, sharing our perspectives about where we come from.

I know that the school wants me there and will do what it can (as another department has already stepped up with both an emergency bursary and processing a $1000.00 advance against the financial aid that will be paid back once the financial aid is worked out), but the wait just hangs like a cloud over everything.  It's like my old mortgage work, where people may not have known for an agonizing amount of time whether or not they'd get the home they had signed a contract to purchase, and a few of them did indeed come down to the wire, with less-than-three point landings occurring before the loan could close and the buyers could get their keys.

My mind and self are ready and open for the new roads in this hugely vibrant city; my life experience and skills have prepared me to employ Ockham's Razor to cut the Gordian knots between me and my goals, of which there will be many.

My to-do list may never again be empty, but it's a grateful acceptance that life is a full thing, and I don't expect that I'll ever have to worry about my list being vacant - because along with the have-to-do, there's the want-to-do.

I feel as alive as I've ever felt, and things are really only just beginning here.  Let the madness begin!     

Zapped, but only of strength for today. The Drive beckons.

Last thoughts from my soon-to-be-former Minneapolis home.

Only piddly things remain to be boxed, for the most part, and we'll get the floors cleaned once the movers have boosted all of the boxes and wrapped all the furniture to get out of here.  Unbelievable how much has ended up in the Dumpster, how much is/was worn out, unusable, or simply not needed anymore.  It's different from any other move I've made in that if it's not in a box, it's (probably) not coming along.  No driving from the current residence across town; it's across-the-country-time, baby.

No time or (especially) money for the State Fair this year.  There will be other places to marvel at all of the animals in the barns and eat fried foods with tons of yokels and people pushing strollers and everything.  Had to break impromptu plans with Will for a beer, which was a bummer, but at the time I had wanted to meet him at the Triple Rock, I had just loaded my laundry into the dryer at the laundromat, still to eat dinner and pack still more things.


But no more packing for tonight.

As I walked outside to bring some of the last trash out, the muggy air suddenly, and arrestingly, reminded me of being a boy needing to come inside for the night after playing with other neighborhood kids as the last dregs of summer were fading away, before the dullness of grade school began again.  As I looked over the hedge to the back parking lot of Market BBQ, I remembered myself running or biking back home after hearing my parents' call.  Times really were so much simpler then, and like with most anyone's life, I had no way of knowing what the future held.

But now, I do.

I walked to the front of this building and looked out up and down LaSalle Avenue, still people about, looked across at Emerson School and thought of all the jumping and shouting I heard so often.  I'll miss living in this apartment, but it's time to go, time to make the move I've been planning for so long, the one I knew I had to make as soon as I put to rest my days of touring as a member of a hardcore punk band, with all the memories that were created while my longing for travel was sated.  There is simply no opportunity for me here anymore - interest rates can't last like this forever and I can only wonder what will happen to my departed mortgage industry once the rates go back up again.  It's a testament to how bad it is everywhere else that...

And just as I realize that I no longer have to think those thoughts, the clock nearly strikes midnight.  Bedtime, then the touch-up, then the drive to my new life begins.

Insomnia... and the bar-close drunk with the chalkboard laugh.

2:15am and I can't sleep.  Went to war against the filthy stove and several hours later it was practically spit-shined, but something in my head went off during the course of that cleaning: we are really about to get the hell out of Dodge, we really are moving to a new country, I'm ready to go to war for my financial aid and don't care what kind of news I may get tomorrow or next week.  I'm functionally broke until the aid arrives and do not feel entitled in the least, but gimme my money, dammit, so that I can budget my year and know whether or not my credit rating will sink or swim.

The summer drunk kids are back, too, and for several days now at 2am it's been a constant ship of fools.  It was so quiet for so long here just outside of downtown, with the bridge repairs of the LaSalle bridge over Interstate 94 cutting down on a good amount of traffic.  But now the college kids have returned; I'll be glad to be a college student again myself and hope that things will be quieter seven floors up than they are three floors up.  Just because the Toronto Public Library and a senior retirement community are across the street is no guarantee of anything, though.  But if they must be drunk, at least let them shut up if they're young and naive.  I've known plenty of smart drunks in my time and I'd give anything for the presence of just one random one now and then.

Yet, nothing is really an irritant.  The glow of the horizon has returned to my mind, the pictures of the huge new city beckoning.  Even the simple chaos of what kind of checking account to open at which bank, which also spun my brain into confusion and unrest, pales at the overall adventure that we're about to undertake.


Along with all the packing that's been done will be the re-packing, which is a putz, but it means that we've had more time to do things here at a more relaxed pace and we get to see a couple more people whom we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.  I'm very conscious of the people I'll miss and it's not a treat to miss them, but knowing just how strong my network of friends is despite the Venn diagrams of our lives intersecting seemingly ever more rarely is a great treasure that I'll never take for granted.  New roots, old roots - all are important, everyone has their own take on you, and you on them, forever enjoying the richness of each diverse life... provided, of course, that perspective doesn't drown in stress and cause a circling of the mental wagons.  But I don't think that'll happen; I only need to adapt to how Jen and I will need to make more time for each other as our lives accelerate at different speeds and more separately than they have in the last few years, where we've been blessed to spend countless hours together, with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows already in the books, and yet we just keep soldiering on, mutually supportive, seeking to develop our lives together and the independent interests that we cultivate and share.


Three days from now, at this very hour, we may be checking into the Motel 6 in Battle Creek, Michigan, our last American sleeping outpost before driving a few more hours to the border, where I can only hope that I have all of my paperwork organized efficiently and to the border officers' liking.  The pendulum swings of the last week have been wrenching, but we're still here, still determined, and still leaving.


Not being held back by the uncertainty may yet be the greatest victory of all, as it's what separates a vivid life from one that may ultimately be left wanting from roads and chances not taken, circumstances bowed to instead of risen above.  I've worked very hard for this chance, but it is yet only beginning, and I hope not to forget the victories of each moment as they happen.

And then

...my guardian angel was able to come through.  A stroke of good luck, one that propels us forward again, gets us out of the hellish pit of not knowing.  Our home feels like home again, not like the jail it had become, stacks upon stacks of everything.

I'm exhausted and grateful.  Who knows what financial aid battles I have yet to fight, but I am grateful for the chance that was taken for my benefit, which puts wind beneath my wings again.

(Yes, I know, that phrase was essentially trademarked many years ago.  But it's the truth, and thankfully, I can't think of a better way to express it.)

Now, to hope that tomorrow is relatively simple, with another trip to the moving company to sign revised documents, and another credit card slip, this one for Jen's mom (who is just as much of an angel) to sign, as she offered to front the funds to pay for the movers, which we'll be able to pay back to her once we're settled in Canada.

Now, this is definitely a question of privilege and can't truly be answered, but how many other students have fought tooth and nail to put forth the best applications they could to their most-hoped-for school, felt the joy of clearing that hurdle and being accepted, and methodically put all their eggs in that basket, only to have a financial aid department have the real final say in the matter?  

It's not even a matter of small print: it's like you go somewhere for a meal and it tastes good, but then they serve you something bizarre and distasteful that you didn't order, and lock you in and hover over you and force you to eat it before you're allowed to leave.

Toronto or bust, but currently uncomfortably close to bust

It's this simple: either I find a creditworthy co-signer (or a guardian angel appears), or it's all over.  Either our wagon train gets the juice it needs, or one week from tomorrow I'll officially be both unemployed and homeless with $450.00 to my name , pretty completely fucked.  It is hard to believe that after five-plus months of planning, I am in the position I am in. I feel like we're up in a plane at 33,000 feet where the fuel has run out, but the inertia will keep us in the air for hours, possibly days, and I have no idea what shape our landing will take.

On top of it all, Jen got a job offer today for a position here in town at Chuck and Don's - a job she really, really wanted.  Apparently it didn't work out with the other person and they wanted to hire her on the spot, but Jen had to decline because we're moving.

We hope.

Not being able to sleep or scream, I can only walk through the neighborhood to try to burn off this tension, then come right back to it once I decide to come back home to the packed boxes, the handful of boxes re-opened for cookware and plates, the feeling of complete and utter transition that has dominated this "home" for a month now.

Screaming will not help; must save strength.  Must get out and walk with the weather less humid and the outdoor heat tempered, become leaner and meaner, hungrier, more willing and determined to fight and save this opportunity.  I am not going to let some faceless assholes steal this dream from me; I am going to find new ways to fight the backsliding.  Somehow.

So.

I get an auto-reply phone message around noon on this Sunday from one of my credit providers to call them today.  I missed the call, called back, spent fifteen minutes on hold, and gave up.  I had a worst-case panic that my card had been canceled, but then thought that they were calling about the reservation I'd made at Motel 6 in Battle Creek, Michigan, where I've never been, as they've called about "abnormal" transactions in the past to ensure that no fraud had taken place.  I then went on about the business of packing more things and visiting family.

Then, I called back while Jen was getting a prescription refilled.


"Due to your high credit utilization and minimum payment history, we have reduced your line of credit."

By two-thirds.


Financial aid?  Sitting in a file on someone's desk in Toronto.

Financial flexibility that I was relying on - to eat, get a new suit to compliment the one decent one that I own, pay for ANYTHING?  Gone.  Credit score?  Takes a nice hit thanks to me not having worked since July 28th in the run-up to coordinating a move to, oh, just another country, where every single thing from mail forwarding to car insurance to health insurance to a cellphone plan is something that needs to be addressed.  By me.  And the credit takes a nice hit thanks to (probably) a harried temp worker hired by a massive financial conglomerate who's looking for signs of financial mismanagement before the new credit card laws take effect, when massive financial conglomerates won't have quite as much freedom to fuck their customers like they can now.  (I'm sure it was all done in the name of "fiscal prudence" and "shareholder value" and everything else tossed up onto CNBC, MSNBC, and the like.)


To think how much worse this could be if I had children and had already gone through the process of finding new schools for them in another country.  Or if I was selling a home and had nowhere else to go.  Or if I'd quit my job having been accepted to a school in March.  (Whoops, already went and did that.)


As it is, something will happen on Monday, and it had better fucking be good.  The movers are/were due to be here at 8am tomorrow, and they won't be loading a truck, that's for sure.


"Someday, we'll look back and laugh."  Maybe Ian was right.

(Soon-to-be) Ecstatic Songs of Farewell and Departure

In sum: had a condo ready to go, lost the option due to a neophyte obviously not accustomed to full disclosure (much less being a landlord), panicked for about five minutes, called up another option (more expensive, but a beautiful unit), sent same supporting documents to The Condo Store (yes), borrowed $600.00 to be able to wire enough money to settle in the day before my required Orientation and Career Planning Session, wired the funds, waited anxiously for three days, and finally confirmed that it was received, but humorously $10.00 short (as the receiving bank likely added a wire receipt fee that hadn't been disclosed with the wiring instructions), was informed that it shouldn't be a problem, that it can probably be added to a rent check or something.

So, we have a posh condo for a year, where we will truly stretch every dollar, as my school only approved 60% of what I'd requested, with a lowered remainder still to be decided on by Sallie Mae.  With any luck, my credit won't be completely trashed by the time the financial aid funds come through, but for now, I'm just relieved that we have a place to lay our heads at night (and with every amenity we could possibly want or need, save for daily maid service, but in all other respects just like a nice hotel).

Money aside (hell, even with money in the discussion), my stress level has done a serious tank job, so now I can plow through my To-Do List that has a couple dozen items on it.

I drove to Kowalski's to get a couple of late items tonight and the feeling of imminent departure was palpable.  All the places I couldn't make time and/or afford to go to, the roads I'll rarely ever drive down again, billboards advertising events that'll occur long after we've moved to another country, foods with expiration dates long after I'll have sweated out my first batch of final exams in over 15 years.  The sounds of people for whom this will remain home, the cars that will basically stay around here forever, all the nearby brownstones full of people who will never meet - and all of this to greet me in my new home, which has a Toronto Public Library branch right across the street, the Sherbourne subway stop just three blocks away, a seventh-floor balcony with a northerly overlook of part of the massive expanse of Toronto.

I won't see all the people I'd like to see before I leave, but I'll see most of them.  In mapping out the route on Google, I looked at the satellite photos from Sarnia to Toronto and was tearing up in joy as the places I haven't yet seen were replaced by those that I have, such as the Gardiner Expressway along the Lake Ontario waterfront that I've driven on a few times already.  Toss in a few boxes packed tonight, a great chat with Jason (who's in Salt Lake City tonight as Baroness opens the second of several shows with the Deftones) and a clear schedule of goals for tomorrow, and I'm rolling, ready to go, amazingly not worried about money (though that will change, but am enjoying this healthy state of mind and cultivating it).

Things keep on happening as they need to, and the adventure is just a stone's throw of the calendar away, the first fruits of the risk that I decided to take so many months ago.   

Holiday Inn Pearson Int'l Airport, room 558, facing Highway 427, live postcards of Air Canada takeoffs

(Photo from today's Torontoist, chronicling just one part of Toronto's 43rd annual Caribana parade, which an estimated one million people attended.)

Four frantic days wind down from my landing here last Thursday afternoon, and I finally feel like myself after sleeping in today, deciding against seeing any other properties after endless driving around and viewing about ten or so places after vetting and rejecting dozens more.  I think I've found our new home, and now just need to get my school to issue a financial aid award letter so that our hopefully-landlady-to-be can see where the rent will be coming from.

I needed today, needed to just move at my own pace after draining nearly a full tank of gas driving around this sprawling metropolis, and a day after my cumulative stress tank overwhelmed my perception apparatus, leading to a long and tough talk with Jen where things that were creating needless static were ironed out and worked through.  Only today did I let myself off of the justify-the-expense hook and actually explore the town, start establishing new bearings in what I hope will be our new neighborhood: watched four streetcars rumble down the street in half an hour - on a Sunday, no less - and took my first subway ride (which was somehow free, despite my attempts to pay for it).  I was reminded of the subway trains I've ridden in San Francisco, Washington DC, New York, and London, and the civic statement that is made by investing in such valuable public infrastructure.

The entire world is here, and I want to find a way to buy the Rosetta Stone series for French and Spanish and write them off as educational expenses after (a) watching the re-dubbed detox scene in "Trainspotting" at 2:30am on CBC last night and (b) watching a family get on the train at Eglinton West today and sit down next to me where a girl and boy took their frenzied game of patty-cake from the subway platform into the subway car, with the boy trying to get a man my age to play with exhortations of "iRapido! Rapido!"

I can also begin to see what Jen gave up to stay in Minneapolis with me, what it must have been like to leave London and not return, staying with me in a town where the brightest lights just aren't as bright.  I'm excited to begin my schooling (the need to pull the financial aid rabbit out of the school's hat notwithstanding) and re-launch myself, but I'm almost more excited for Jen to re-establish herself here, after how limited we've had to be for so long because of our finances, in a city where driving is almost a sport for the foolish, what with the seemingly endless and constant supply of buses, streetcars, two or three interconnected train systems, and a subway tying so many places together.  (My own hoped-for subway and bus ride to school would be just over an hour from leaving home to getting to York, with all kinds of reading and reflective time available instead of traffic-dodging.)

After so many months of waiting, there's just a little more waiting to go, and if all goes according to plan, our lives will be transplanted from Minneapolis to Toronto in just under three weeks, with the first nervous dips of the big toe into the water of a new town already in the process of happening.  There's so much, and it's just a matter of being patient with it all, seeing the people I can in the Twin Cities before we leave for this new place, full of wonder and opportunity.

It's costing tens of thousands of dollars, but the ticket is punched to a new kind of Ellis Island, and unlike anytime before in my life, I truly believe that anything is possible.

You can't peel back the onion when you're holding a rotten apple

Received the study permit admission letter (the ticket to Canada) yesterday with our returned passports and promptly booked myself a too-early-morning solo trip back to T.O. on the 29th.  Jen and I will decide on a moving company pronto and I'll get the Canadian power-of-attorney drafted to bring along for a lease signing.  Gladly being a responsible adult, doing what needs to be done.


I found myself looking at the expiration dates on food products at home yesterday (and on those that we brought home during last night's downpour) and thinking about where we'll be, how different it'll be in some ways, the percentage of people I've known that I may never see again, but most of whom I haven't seen in ages anyway.  Not a bad thing, just evidence of my changed priorities.

Still thinking through why I got so emotional yesterday talking with Jen, who can't understand why people would do DIY basement shows with all of the risks involved and the potential for so much trouble.  The thing is, I agreed with her objections; I just know that those were the kinds of spaces where nine years ago I was able to develop, places that weren't always stuffed (like they were towards the end) of crusty punk kids and (in the worst houses) the billows of cigarette smoke and calling-card drinking.  The price I paid to be in those environments, the practical restrictions on playing legitimate venues in some cases... did I settle for it just to have a chance to play in a band with good friends?  There were so many great shows in so many places, but where do I fit musically at age 38 as an MBA student with no patience left for empty rhetoric in a small, self-deluding scene?  I have to believe that Toronto will have a cavalcade of more compatible playing options, but when it comes to "the scene" that I'm glad to be away from, it's almost better if people just kept their mouths shut in the first place, rather that take part in a physically dirty, conservative groupthink exercise where people just cultivate unhealthy anger to fit in.


("So how do you REALLY feel?")


And as if on cue, a carbon copy of my old Dodge van rolls through the parking lot as I think about getting together with old friends.


The last 18 months of work did take its toll on my perspective and my creative side, but was it the office environment, or the nature of the work itself?  I look back on my work lives and see that so much of what I did - pretty much everything since 1999 - was just repetitive, no different in the main from stereotypical factory work, the tasks following an explicitly designed framework, where occasional chances to flex and refine critical thinking skills were always bucking up against the explicitly designed framework (due to industry constraints imposed upon my employers).  I knew how good I had it in a work-control sense with PDW, but had no idea how hard it would be to enable and foster that same independent spirit at a real living wage.  Over ten years!  And only now does there seem to be a convergence of views I hold towards segments of society that have evolved, essentially, to where I've needed them to evolve.


In the past, it seems like I always had to have an answer, always had to justify my actions.  That's probably the connecting thread with why I got so bent with Jen yesterday: so many of my life decisions have been second-guessed when they didn't lead to the promised land of traditional financial rewards train that I wasn't often trying to catch, as I insistently wanted to flex my creative side on my own terms and willingly paid the price for that.  It's been great to align things to this point, though I'll soon be six-figures deep in red ink, as I've been able to fight off the contaminants of toxic opinions.

Truly, it's a blessing to be able to explain rather than be forced to justify.

And yet, somehow, and the obvious

Once again, Jen wins: to my astonishment, the Canadian Consulate approved my student visa application already, not even a week after the Express Mail package was received.  She'll enter Canada with me as a visitor as my common-law spouse under Canadian non-immigrant visa provisions, and then we'll apply for the work permits straightaway.

Today, I was informed by my school to re-apply for the Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans, then was surprised to find that I wasn't able to go through the same process on the Sallie Mae website - they only have links to the Smart Option student loan.  A quick Google search explained to me why that was the case:

Sallie Mae can't offer those loans anymore.  They've been replaced by the U.S. government as a direct lender.

I should know better than to ask why the Sallie Mae rep didn't tell me this (because like any scumbag lending operation, they're only looking to get money in their own pockets, not to give people the best option for themselves when they themselves can no longer offer that best option) or why my school rep didn't tell me this (honestly I have no idea, other than that overwhelmed people often aren't able to cull forth the common sense of a simple answer, and I know 'cause I've been there, with that answer being it's a brand-new website called StudentLoans.gov, ya dummy! It's not Sallie Mae anymore!)


Added hilarity is that the first Google result brought up a Fox News article that touched on how the student loan overhaul was buried within the health care bill.  (Maybe they're wrong on that, even; it is Fox News after all, but it's late and sourcing it really doesn't matter at this hour.)


So, now I apply for the same student loans that "were cancelled by my school on July 2nd" (screw you, you duplicitous Sallie Mae jackass) on a different website.  And in the spirit of idiot-proofing, I'll let them know the website I used to apply for them.  I could have avoided a wheelbarrow full of B.S. if I'd just been informed of the right way to go about it with the new process that just began on July 1st...but now's the time to celebrate the small victory, knock down that second aborted funding attempt, and scale the walls for the third attempt, which will hopefully be the charm.


Money may buy happiness for some, but it sure doesn't guarantee common sense for the rest of us.

"Domino, motherfucker."

So I re-applied for the king-size one-fits-all loan yesterday and print it out at Kinko's over by the U (since Jen sold some clothes to Everyday People) and printed out the new king-size loan application, only to be told today by the same financial aid person that I bugged out on via email yesterday that yes, York grad students will be able to obtain Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans, unlike what I had been told.

Imagine that, Sallie Mae was wrong!  Imagine that.

Despite all of yesterday's post-nuclear efforts, I was unable to relax and went on auto-pilot for most of today after finding that out.  I figure it's up to the school to distribute that anyway, and I'll find out if they'll simply re-instate the loans I applied for in May that were canceled, or if I have to do that yet again, as I'm not going to subject my credit to yet another hit with another application started and canceled.  I'll just have to wait on what the Consulate now has, and hope that things work out (I almost wrote "hope that I don't get fucked over", but am trying very hard to alter my perspective and be more positive about what I can't control).

Since I can't count on the financial aid, I executed Plan A, which was to liquidate my last 401(k) for about $3000 which will cover the first/last month's rent on whatever place Jen and I get.  That's right, yours truly now officially has no retirement funds whatsoever.  But whatever... if Social Security hasn't been completely demolished in 25 years when I'm supposedly supposed to think about "retiring" then I'll be very surprised.  This whole adventure is about trying to start fresh, make good, and make good money.  And for all of my own planning and concern, I feel a lot better than I'd expect with more family members involved in this decision and process of mine, as I'm sure I'd be peppered with projected anxieties and worries about it all being so expensive, how far away I was moving from my family, and such a risk to take without a guaranteed return.


That, of course, is exactly the point.  As far as I'm concerned, there are people who accept what is laid out before them and those who strive for something more intrinsic that requires something more drastic.  There is no "right" time - I made up my mind and set my course.  (One might say that I stubbornly maintain the idealism that I've been encouraged to compromise or abandon by various people and forces that have been in my life at one point or another.)  It's only now that the process of getting to Canada seems more arduous than it was getting accepted into the program; in a couple of months I will be grateful for the time I had at this very moment to type this, deluged as I'll be with hundreds of pages of reading and analysis and classes and small group meetings.


And you know what?  In two months I'll also be able to walk out my door and take in the Toronto International Film Festival.  Or not,if I so choose.  The new options are so vast and I'd be lying if I said that I had any real idea of what Jen and I will encounter to stretch ourselves and grow as people.  Suffice to say, at the end of the day, I'm less tired than I am satisfied with where things are going, and each incremental goal reached is a big deal.

Worn, crisis averted, more waiting on the dominoes.

After deciding to apply for more loan funds through the Smart Option Student Loan Plan as a contingency against the move costs, car insurance and unplanned post-move expenses, I checked on the status of the Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I'd applied for back in early May.  Imagine my shock when they were no longer showing up on the website, so I called Sallie Mae to see what was up.  And what a what's up it was.

Turns out my school decided that with the changes that the Department of Ed put through, that they were no longer accepting Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I was told to apply for weeks earlier, and that the school had canceled those loan applications on July 2nd.

Without telling me.


For several hours I was mad enough to launch a nuclear warhead - just when the fuck were they going to tell me, when I'm utterly dependent on the loans to pull this off?  I've been on the other side where applications (or, in this case, needed communications) just fall through the cracks, so it was also a reminder of how utterly overloaded I was at my previous job where there just weren't enough staff to handle it all.  A staff member at the school let me know that the person who was nominally in charge has been away from the office for multiple stretches this year - saying in not so many words that there have been problems and likely not feeling great about the turn of events.

I was very lucky, then, to feel that the large sum of money initially applied for, when broken down further, seemed uncomfortably thin, and that I should try to secure that cushion, spendy though it was.  Had I not done so, it probably wouldn't have been until early August when the Consulate wouldn't have been able to verify my source of funds, since I sent them now-canceled "credit-approved" loan applications.  I went to Kinko's and spent more money than needed to full out a new SOSLP application for the whole nine yards, then print out the pages that I'll fax to the Consulate to supersede the original submission.  Jen mentioned that this kind of b.s. is to be expected from Sallie Mae, and the guy on the phone just repeated his spiel calmly after I said "fuck" while exhaling.  (Wasn't so calm with my message to the covering staff member at school, which though obscenity-free still resulted in some remorse, having been on the receiving end of countless calls like that in my professional career for something that landed in my lap that now became my problem to solve.)

I found all of this out today only twenty minutes before I met with the first of three moving company reps, whose estimates ranged from much less than expected ($2900) to about what I expected ($4200) but using markedly different weight counts.  It's too much material to read and it's going to have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday to decipher and digest, but it'll also come with some furniture upgrades to be acquired to pitch some of our junky/creaky/somewhat unstable items such as a sectional couch with a hideaway bed, a better computer desk to replace the particle board, and a bedside bookcase to replace the crummy Leaning-Tower one I have that was an Ikea cheapie and crumbled during some home maintenance.  Paradoxically, I feel calmer about the financial aid snafu with new stuff on the mind - it's something I have some control over, unlike the visa decision, the financial aid (re-)decision and disbursement, and the eventual arrival of our stuff in Toronto that will be preceded by our sleeping on a yet-to-be-acquired air mattress.

Will be on the prowl for no-payments-until-X with my good U.S. credit, but until then, it's time to collapse into bed to begin my abbreviated, second-to-last workweek for some time.

The universal icon in the middle is the one

Lots of good things happened this week.  We got the visa photos taken on Tuesday after I got off of work, then finally got the visa applications mailed off to the Consulate in Detroit, where the Express Mail was received on Thursday.  If it processes in the time frame that they indicated that should, then we should see our new student and dependent visas in our passports by August 5th or so.  Celebrated that small victory at a great little spot with dinner and a foofoo drink with Jen and Emily, then called three moving companies a couple of days later and scheduled appointments to meet with them all throughout this coming Monday afternoon.  By the end of next week, my school may have distributed my financial aid, so I can then really dive back into the apartment search - many places are looking for employment letters and credit checks (when I won't have the first and will have to take time to build the latter there, as my U.S. credit score isn't what they use).  And in less than three hours, Jen and I will take the cats to the vet to get their overdue rabies shots so that we can present that paperwork at the U.S./Canada border next month.

Got paid yesterday, paid one of my credit card bills on time, and was reminded again of just how little we'll have to live on until that financial aid comes through, as I have to wait until the next paycheck comes to make my car payment that I'd otherwise be making today.  As it is, I have to cash out my last 401(k) to come up with the first and last months' rent for a new place and hopefully have a little left over - funny how reading "The Big Short", where people earned and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, makes me feel more at ease about the continuing check-to-check existence that I have, especially since my team at work hasn't brought in as many loans and my commission took a beating with one bad customer survey for the funds I'll get later this month.  How much money I may have lost for something that wasn't my fault isn't the point - the point is to keep where I've been and not be motivated or demotivated by it.  I've always believed that the money will come when it needs to, and it always has, somehow.

I also feel liberated from having to hold in my secret around my coworkers, which for all of my usual forthrightness has been really hard to do.  People have been excited about what I've explained to them about my plans for the immediate future and I can see the gears turning on their faces, which is inspiring, thinking about what they themselves might want to do differently.  I've spent too much time in the mortgage complex and I've seen how a number of people screwed themselves by revealing too much about their plans for themselves, which is another sad way that the modern workplace keeps people isolated from one another.  (At least, I sure felt like I isolated myself over the last four months.)  And I felt more bummed and less triumphant than expected when I put in my three-week notice, as the managers really do their best with mentoring and communication, though the growing pains of the company are still there.  (Even the head of the JV simply announced in an email some days ago that he was asked to head up a new JV for the parent company and will be doing so, which says a lot about the communication culture.)  In my next work, hopefully I'll be able to find a place where the communication is more open, or I'll be in a position to initiate and guide overt changes.


My next work won't be in a cube or behind a desk, though - it'll be in classrooms and small group meetings, at coffee shops and on the Toronto subways, under trees in the shade on nice days before fall and winter come around.  And I think about the high-rise home that we'll probably find (what with the innumerable buildings reaching into the sky there) and the power-of-attorney document that we'll draw up to Canadian standards so that I can sign for a lease for Jen when (as I'm expecting) I have to fly back there (with the trip adding another four-digit bill to a credit card, but whatever!) and meet with landlords and property managers in person to fill out applications.


The workers down the street are currently demolishing the LaSalle bridge over Interstate 94, which is kind of how I'm living my life right now: my usual way is going away, and I'm finding my way up another street, still familiar, but completely different in so many ways.


My fire is stoked, and the dominoes are finally starting to fall in the order that they need to.  Here we go, ever so slow...

I thought the coffee was alright, MAYBE you could try a comment card next time?

It was a very, very good thing that we were moved out to the boonies (a.k.a. Scarborough, about 15 minutes out of Toronto proper) or else this might have been what we looked out the window and saw.

It makes me feel strangely conservative to be angry at the protesters who seemed to have no other goal than to smash property.  I don't have any lofty goals of owning property and becoming a bloated fool in a tight suit whose veins bulge at the thought, much less the sight, of something I own being damaged or destroyed.  It's just the senselessness of it - no capitalist system is going to be brought down by a few broken windows and balloons full of excrement, but it will annoy the piss out of those who are paid (in many cases, poorly) to clean up the mess.  It's like breaking someone's things at a house party, or the stupid kid (or adult with problems) that gets a DIY punk show shut down, or can't handle their own aggressive tendencies and ends up punching someone in the face (which only happened at the one show that I ever played in Chattanooga, TN).  Black Bloc, or slavery to hipster-approved "alternative media": it's all just garbage, a phase for some kids to pass through until they get hired by the same entities that they rail against, perhaps then writing something like this instead.  Maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't stuck in the mortgage industry for three more weeks (as I'll be putting in my notice tomorrow) and was in a position to be in dialogue with others about it in another setting, but for now, it's another reminder that there's little room for subtlety to get any attention in the world, what with all of the screaming.  How do the quiet make their difference?

Utah Phillips once quoted Ammon Hennacy as saying "an anarchist is someone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do."  Maybe not, but this world is full of worthless people who rape, kill, torture animals, and lie (nothing like a nice catch-all at the end), and the police continue to exist because of those people.  Not every police officer is a Pinkerton descendant and not every protester is a saint, much less someone I'd like to have a drink with.  The news stories from the Toronto G20 lay bare just how complex the issues and reactions are, with no one side able to claim victory, but all able to come away dissatisfied - if they choose to.

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In lighter news (also known as "the time when Jen and I weren't watching CP24 in the hotel room watching the G20 protest inflammation"), we had a wonderful time in our newly adopted soon-to-be home, getting to know the neighborhoods and the GTA to the tune of 300 km of driving and a fair amount of walking (with plenty of the latter at the Toronto Zoo on our last day there, leaving the grounds just as the rain decided to fall).  I caught a break when I checked the hotel's Internet and found that my school was keeping the 2010-2011 the same as it had been for the year previous, but with no disbursement of loan funds, finding an apartment was not going to happen.  I'm hoping to get that from the school soon so that I can kill the visa and residence birds with one financial stone, since I want to have Jen's faith in the financial aid system coming through for me (since it did for her when she studied in London), but my past dealings with the INS in a prior career have my suspicions on alert, since we STILL need to get a quote from a moving company and need to throw a dart at the August calender to see when we should schedule the movers.

I feel like a bit of a sleepwalking zombie, wishing I was there already, but I have a number of people I still want to see before we leave, and I'm trying to cherish it.  I've already broken my eggs for the omelet and don't expect to make everyone happy, but I'll do my level best, and the sun will rise and set regardless.

(Hell, I may be singing like a schoolgirl just 24 hours from now, after I've quit my job and had some time to savor it... who knows?)

The curse of the blog: not posting

A full month has passed since my last entry, which might be the result of a few things:

- more time pressure at work, with purchase loans needing to close by June 30th to qualify for the Federal tax credit;
- burning out on over-thinking the move; or maybe just
- not being as stressed about the move.


I found out a week after booking the flight that we'll be there right in the midst of the G20 economic summit, with (probably not coincidentally) being bumped from our hotel downtown to one in the suburbs (but a bump up to a 3 1/2-star hotel, which will be nice) and very close to the Toronto Zoo.  It's the feeling of "hey, it's a big city, things like this are to be expected and worked around," not one of inconvenience.  Travel is all about being adaptable, and that'll be part and parcel of finding my way around anyhow, and if it's chaotic downtown with the expected protests and heightened police presence, it'll be a relief to get a better night's sleep than I might if all of that was happening almost right outside our window.


The thing I love about traveling is the random exploration; the thing I'm not liking as much about moving is not knowing where to live except for the twin goals of being near a subway stop and not being in a ground-level apartment for safety reasons. (Plus the other goal of not living in a far-flung suburb far from the city center - having the school some distance is enough.)  Anytime I chance to read something in a Twin Cities publication or see something advertised on television, I instantly have a mental map of where it is; I don't want to trust someone who's simply trying to rent a hard-to-rent unit in a part of town where there's no convenience store within walking distance to get a gallon of milk, or with poor public transit access that will make it hard for Jen to get to a job, or where it's simply not safe.  But, like so much with this whole experience, going with my gut has led me to the answers I've needed to find, and I'm confident that this will be no different.


There's so much wonder and hope to discover, and we'll begin discovering that in earnest in just ten days.