MeghanIsMe

The people who encourage everyone to vote, no matter who for are well-intentioned, but still supporting fascism. I want everyone voting for Kamala Harris to get out and vote. I hope everyone else has their cars break down or they get lost on the way to the polls or something.

My home country may or may not be about to vote a party into power that acts as though I am fundamentally a sexual predator who deserves jail or death, but at least I have a mini freezer set up in the basement now? I just picked one up while out this morning.

As we suspected might happen, Miriam's contract with the university will not be renewed in August. Since she is currently our only source of income, we are deciding what to do next. We could:

*Stay in Regina and find new income, somehow?
*Find new employment for Miriam or myself and move to wherever that is.
*Move in with Miriam's parents until we accomplish the preceding and move to the new job.
Moving in with my mother is not an option, in large part because we would not have health care in the United States.

One seems unlikely. Two is more likely, but I'm not holding my breath (though I'm continuing to apply for jobs). 3 seems to be the most likely outcome for us.

So I'm going to start trying to do some packing up and getting ready to move. I expect that most of the stuff here will go into storage. It will probably stay there until we find a place to live that's more stable than with Miriam's parents. I would dearly love more stability in my life, but many of the jobs I'm applying for are term positions, so when I find something I may *still* not have the kind of stability that would make moving all my stuff across a country seem reasonable, let alone getting the rest of my stuff from my mother's place. I guess this is my life.

So we're trying to figure out a bunch of things. The mortgage on our condo is due for renewal in August as well so we need to figure out a bunch of stuff in relation to that. How much the new payment will be. How long it might take to sell the place here and how much it would be worth. Whether it make sense to try to hire a property management company to manage it as a rental instead of selling. Neither of us planned to be landlords and I honestly feel like the use of simple ownership of property as a source of income is unethical, but just as there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is in large part no way to just exist in a capitalist system ethically and we are trying to do our best.

I messaged Montana Girl today and said that, maybe, before I move away, I'd take a trip to see weird tourist stuff between here and Billings and visit her in person once before I go and she liked that idea. But it's possible that, afterward, I said some things about how everyone deserves access to healthcare regardless of immigration status that may have upset her, so I don't know. I've been really enjoying talking with her up until now.

There are, of course, other concerns too.
Continuity of medical care for Miriam is one of the foremost things, since her health and pain and uncertainty have been shaping our lives. She doesn't have a diagnosis yet and is not likely to have one before August. MRIs have been requisitioned by her rheumatologist, but they or may not be done before August. Either way, we'd have to find a new rheumatologist who doesn't suck like the first one did if we moved somewhere new and hope that they would continue on her case.

Also of importance to me is that if I move out of province, I think I'll probably lose my place on the waiting list for bottom surgery and have to start over again somewhere else. Then, I may not be wherever that is long enough to get to the front of the line and I'd have to start over again in a third (and fourth...) place. If that happens, I'm probably going to get my nipples pierced as a consolation prize :3

I dunno if there's much else to say right now. Miriam and I have been through so much in the past few years and we'll get through this and more stress and instability in the future too. I'm just so tired.

The IKEA delivery did not arrive yesterday even though their order info says it would. Today, it *still* says it will arrive yesterday. Miriam called the delivery company yesterday for an update and they said it would be delivered today (with no explanation about the delay, but the rep was also really hard to understand), but no word from them yet so we still have no info about when or if that supposedly is happening.

Miriam is chatting with a rep at IKEA now who says that it will have to rescheduled for Wednesday. (They also tried to tell us that "your delivery company" only offers 12 hour windows. Miriam told them that IKEA chose that company - it is *their* company, not *ours*.

I know I'm already low on patience and cope these days, but I am so pissed. We can't move in until that order arrives. It's a good thing we didn't have to be out of our current place this past Friday; someone could very conceivably been in that position and now be screwed.

We (technically Miriam) are closing on the condo tomorrow and getting the keys at noon. We're picking up the truck at 4. I picked up a hand truck earlier today too, so that's set. But I'm still anxious and running around and feeling like I should be doing *all the things*.

Oddly, our apartment landlords want to inspect the place between noon and 4. They already did an inspection at the beginning of the month, and including tomorrow we have 6 more days to get our stuff out and clean. I keep feeling anxious because the place *isn't* clean or organized right now and I'm worried they'll do something negative about that.

But there's not really anything negative for them to do? And we still have plenty of time to do all the moving, so I'm trying to just chill. It makes a lot more sense to wash floors and clean appliances and everything after all the stuff is gone, and I don't want to add work for myself by doing it now too! So I'm trying to just relax and kind of ignore the whole thing. We may or may not be home when they inspect, depending on their timing, but whatever.

Two of Miriam's coworkers have offered to come help move, but I remain concerned about Covid. They've been on the university campus where most people are not masking, and I'm leaning toward declining the help unless I get to a point where I just don't think I can do it.

Tonight, I'm hoping to load a bunch of stuff like clothes in the car for the trip up there tomorrow to get a start on things. Maybe in the morning I'll put my computer and audio stuff in there too. Oh, right: I need to unload the 250-ish CDs out of the changer before I move it. I better do that!

It finally looks like buying the condo is a done deal. We close on the 26th, and I'm preparing for the move.

I'm going to rent a truck, borrow a hand truck from a local person on the trans Discord, and do the moving myself.

Miriam is concerned about my ability to manage this on my own, and to be honest I've been a little concerned too and have done some thinking about it. But I also feel like it's safer to do it myself and keep minimizing Covid exposure. And save money too. I can't think of anything we have that won't come apart into bite-sized pieces to wheel out with a hand truck. It just might take a while.

I'm definitely going to buy the mover some pizza.

We have two options for internet: Access and Sasktel. Sasktel has a fiber-to-the-home option that has *vastly* better upload speeds, but though their site says it will be in our area in 2022 it's not available at our address yet. The condo board minutes actually mention contacting Sasktel to ask about the status, but it's not yet an option.

To get decent pricing, we need to buy in to a 2-year contract, and speeds for equivalently priced 2 year contracts are vastly better with Access, until fiber becomes an option. It would be nice to sign up with Sasktel and just wait for fiber on the assumption they'll let us change services under contract, but they offer 50 down and 10 up for $70/month, whereas Access offers 175 down and 10 up for $60.

The fiber-to-the-home option is 150 down and 75 up for $65/month. But again, that's not an option. So we're going to go with the option from Access and just live with the low upload speed for 2 years. It probably won't make much of a difference for our purposes anyway.

So much to catch up on here. For now, though, we are finally moved into our new apartment in Regina, Saskatchewan. I just got my computer set up on the floor in the smaller bedroom and having internet helps make it feel like home. Music helps a lot too.

They Might Be Giants just keep getting better at writing happy, poppy songs about things like mental illness and upcoming apocalypses.

I just got my second vaccination, to my great happiness and relief.

To be exempt from quarantine requirements in Canada, I must have received my second vaccine dose no less than 14 days prior to arrival. This is literally the last day that I could have gotten the shot to be eligible for exemption. We didn't actually plan this; the scheduling just turned out that way.

Off the top of my head, I'm not quite sure how long I've been in Amstelween now, but I am at last in a state where I can start keeping days straight!

It's about five-thirty in the morning here. I just got my first shower since before leaving the US. My options for water temperature seemed to range from 'alarmingly hot' to 'lava', but it felt wonderful regardless, once I acclimated. Shaving was a really good thing as well.

I don't have a computer monitor here, but the TV has an HDMI port (I was tickled to see that the TV also has SCART connectors; I've never seen one of those in the wild before!), so I'm set up in the corner of the room on the floor in front of the TV stand. Seregil is curled up in a ball to my right and has been his typical cuddly self since getting out of the pet carrier he was in for twelve hours or so. He was having some tummy issues after not peeing or pooping that whole time, but my innards haven't been terribly happy either. Things have mostly settled down now. We have a large (maybe 12 feet wide) window overlooking the street a floor below that Seregil just adores, and it's good to see him happy.

We are living directly upstairs from an electronics shop that makes me dearly wish I had my gear here. They sell components and tools, as well as the power cable and HDMI cable I went over and bought today to make the PC work. Looking at the shelves behind the counter, I saw that they also do repair on AV gear. I want to be friends! As have all of the handful of people I've interacted with here, the salesman (maybe owner; it's a small place) spoke English. Like a dork, when he asked how long a cable I wanted I said "Six feet?"

"I don't know feet," he said. Oops! I said that I'm so embarrassed that my country still uses imperial and that three meters would do.

The trees along the block my building is on do not look at all familiar to me. I will post a pictures some time when it's light out. I walked to Albert Hein, one of the nearby grocery stores, for some supplies for us while Danae was working. Folks were wearing coats and scarves, but I made the walk in a t-shirt; it's pretty pleasant weather to me. The grocery store is different enough that it will take some experience with it to feel comfortable. I'll probably write about that too.

I don't have a bank account or in-country debit card yet, but Danae gave me some euros in cash and I have my Transferwise card that I can put a balance in euros on. I also used that card to buy some hot chocolate at a vending machine in the Copenhagen airport. I wasn't sure if I could use it to pay in kroner, but it worked fine. (I'd thought the whole EU except England was on the euro, but obviously that is not the case.)

I did some cleaning and organizing this past day. I have emptied three of the six large pieces of luggage I traveled with and made inroads on the others. I've started washing all my clothes too, since I'm not really sure what's clean and what isn't after packing everything in a hurry. We have an in-unit machine that's a combination washer/dryer. I like the ease of use, but running both cycles takes quite a while and it's not very large, so getting through everything is going to take a while.

After reading up on how to deal with refuse in Amstelween (https://www.amstelveen.nl/at-home-in-amstelveen/publicatie/waste_waste-collection) I took some of our trash and recycling out. The collection area is right across the street from our apartment, and I was lucky enough to see a collection happen today. Refuse is dumped in above-ground receptacles that empty into underground bins. A sensor detects when the bin is full and a truck comes to empty it. The truck has a crane that picks up the entire bin (they look to be a few feet square by maybe eight feet tall) and lifts it out of the ground, dumping it into the truck through a flap at the bottom. So cool!

Best for last, it's just wonderful to be with Danae again. It will be a while before I get past all the mental distress of the past month or so, but a couple days spent with my partner here without having to worry about cleaning out a condo or packing all my things away is really the best start at it. Here I am with her, looking rather bedraggled but happy I think...



Hopefully I'll be around here more again as I settle in and I can keep my future self, as well as my readers, apprised of how it's going.

I've given my official notice and started telling people around the office: my last day at work is Friday the 20th. I'll have the week of Christmas and into the new year to visit with folks, and then I'm flying to Amsterdam. Hopefully the first week of January, but maybe the second if there's a big price difference. New Years may make things more expensive for a bit?

Danae has not sold her condo yet, but we have a couple months' worth of the HOA dues and mortgage set aside during which I can find some kind of job. And once it sells, we'll assess whether I can do school again. I think I want an MLIS.

People here are asking me how I feel. Mostly, it's anxious. I'm scared of doing things like actually booking a flight for fear I'll get it wrong somehow. But I will get through this.

I finished packing one box and packed a second one to ship to NL this evening. The service I'm going to use, Sendmybag.com, charges $95 for boxes up to 33lbs and $145 for boxes up to 66lbs. The first box is mostly clothes with a few other bits and pieces like power adapters and camera gear tossed in. The second box is board games. All of the games we're planning to ship fit in with room to spare, but that made the box weigh nearly 40 lbs. I ended up taking Heart of Crown back out (it's surprisingly heavy for its size) along with a couple other things. Then I used some of my skirts and tops to wrap the games up in and returned them to the box. That used up most of the room. In the remainder, I put my ski jacket and a handful of cloth shopping bags. All together, after taping and sealing, it weighs 32.5lbs according to my bathroom scale. I hope it's accurate!