Finally, a chance to make a post.

Finally, a morning I can sit down and write something while drinking my coffee. It's been mostly Actifit posts from me for a while because that's all I've had time for.

Making posts has sort of taken a back seat for a little while. Life just got busy with the moving for a little bit and it's not really slowing down just yet, either. Little by little, it's all coming together. Friday we officially closed on the old house and it's no longer ours. I'm so glad to be rid of that province and that was one of our last ties there.

It's the little things when you move from one house to another that take so much time. When a house is all straightened away and everything is in its place, it's easy to do jobs around the house because it's easy to gather up everything to do the job. Want to hang some pictures? Sure thing, grab the hammer, some small nails, and a tape measure from the work shop and in a few minutes you've got some pictures hanging on the wall. When a house has recently been unpacked and nothing is where its supposed to be, it makes the littlest of jobs so much longer.

"Have you seen those little nails?"

"Who was using the hammer last?"

"I guess we can't hang pictures until we find the tape measure."

Hanging pictures isn't a big deal. But it's only one of many things that end up coming to a standstill because something is missing to finish the job. We can't do Task A until we do Task B, which can't be done until we finish Task C - and so on. It's all just a process and boy does it take some time to sort out.

This is also compounded with the weather being really nice here. Who would want to stay inside doing mundane things like hanging pictures when the sun is out, the birds are chirping, and temperature is great. Not that there isn't work to be done outside. There is a ton.

But now, things are starting to find their place. The garage is pretty much sorted out so I can start some bigger projects. The den in the basement is, for the most part, all good to go and half the guitars are hanging safely on the wall. The living room and kitchen are pretty good. Even the closets are pretty much sorted out now.

One of the biggest challenges we've encountered with this move is the abundance of stuff we have. Our old house in Quebec had 4 bedrooms, a large workshop, tons of storage space, and a garage that could fit a small wood shop, garden equipment, and a car. Now, we've got 3 bedrooms, a much smaller workshop, barely any storage, and a single car garage (a wood shop with no chance of fitting a car). We bought a smaller house on purpose because the last one was just too big. This new house, once everything is sorted, will be much easier to maintain. We also planned to make sure we have more property with this house. We went from a 1/3 of an acre lot in Quebec to 2.4 acres here and man is it wonderful.

With the larger property, I felt the need for a ride on lawnmower. Not only does this take the labour and time involved in mowing the grass down, but I rigged up a hitch for it so now I can haul things around the property with a small utility trailer without having to carry everything by hand. When we first got here, the last owner had left a bunch of cut down trees right on the edge of the tree line in the back yard. This wasn't just an odd branch here and there. There were multiple trees just cut up and laying all along the back yard just rotting. It was impossible to walk into the woods and the dogs were having a hard time getting by it all so I had to clean it up. I've got most of it cleaned up now, and the lawn tractor and trailer sure played a big part in that. It's taken me about 6-8 hours of work over the last week to move all these trees either to to fire pit or to a pile back farther in the woods. Without the tractor, it would have easily taken me 20-30 hours to move it all by hand.

We've been selling as much as we can to free up space. As long as the price is right, it's easy to get rid of old things you don't need. A few days ago, I posted two air conditioners for sale, $50 each. Within an hour I had close to 100 messages of people wanting these. Maybe the price was too low, but I got rid of them very quickly which freed up a lot of space.

There's still so many things to get rid of, but that all takes time, too. Getting the pictures of everything, making a post on Facebook or Kijiji, and communicating/haggling the price with people all takes time. When there's other things to be done, it's hard to keep that up as well. But, we've freed up a lot of space in the months that we've been here. There are other things like books and kids toys that we've also given away to daycares around the area. There's no need to hang on to that stuff when it gets outgrown and giving it away for other kids to use is super easy. People will always take free stuff.

And now I'm really on to the bigger stuff to get rid of. I've got two kayaks going up for sale this week and a sailboat that should be ready to sell shortly. The boat would be good to go now, but the trailer needs to be registered for Nova Scotia first and the engine needs some servicing because there is a gas leak that needs fixing as well as a tune-up.

That sort of thing really comes down to funds at this stage in the move. There are so many things I want to do that require money. @landonator wants a tree fort, we need a baby barn for garden equipment, I have some plumbing work, new vents for the air exchanger, @inkpixie wants new end tables, sealing the driveway, etc. It all takes money for supplies. And since we had a month between buying this house and selling the old one, I've been covering two mortgages for the last little bit, so funds have been tight.

One of the biggest things is the lack of garden area here. There are only two small areas in front of the house with some plants there, and they are more for decoration than anything. There are some apple trees going out front, though. One is definitely crab apples, but the other two might be something edible right off the tree. I sure hope so. Even crab apples are good for apple jelly, though.

I'm going to make two large raised-bed gardens in between the house and the garage. This area is one of the few spots that gets sun all day and would be perfect for a garden. There is drainage from the roof of both the house and the garage that I could divert directly into the beds to help water them. They'll have to look really nice though because they will be visible from the road. I'm hoping to get them done in the fall so they are ready for the planting season next spring. It sucks I missed out on the garden this year, but on the bright side, it's legal to grow cannabis here so I'll definitely be trying that out when things settle down.

Here's a quick preliminary sketch I did to give myself an idea what the garden beds might look like. It's pretty crude but I think it will look good. I'll start the real plans before too long when I get a chance for some measurements.

Starting over at a new house also means starting over with spare material. I have absolutely no lumber here except some 4x4's the movers put on the truck for me. I don't even have a scrap piece of 2x4 to use. At the old house, I had all kinds of extra lumber that I ended up taking to the dump or burning. It's all the extra stuff that are left over from larger projects that really come in handy when smaller projects need to be done. That sort of stock will come in time, I just need to do a large project that requires some lumber.

And on another note still, I've rejoined my old band, Midnight Genny. We already have 2 gigs lined up for the end of August - one of them a 2 hour set - so I've also been practicing like crazy to get myself up to speed with 2 hours worth of songs. It's all coming together and I'm sure we'll rock the shit out of the two festivals in a few weeks.

Once we are done with these gigs, I'll be introducing the band to the steem blockchain and hopefully we'll get in on some of the open mic's. Stay tuned for some of that in the coming weeks. I haven't tried mentioning anything cryptocurrency related to them yet. I don't want to push things too quickly. I'll start dropping little Bitcoin comments first and see how the other band members react. Then I'll try steem, choon, and musicoin. Technology is not everyone's strong suit and the band has been using email to communicate. I'm not sure why, but I'll have to get them all going on Discord or something because email is not the fastest way to discuss anything anymore. Trying to sort through emails and keep them straight is quite a pain in the ass when dealing with schedules, set lists, practice times, gig times, etc. Discord, with it's dedicated channels, direct messaging, and even voice audio would be perfect for keeping things organized. Being able to pin current set lists in a certain channel alone would be way easier than searching back through emails to find the most up to date list.

I supposed this is enough of a rant for today. I didn't really have a clear topic in mind and somehow I smashed out almost 2000 words without really having a clear agenda; other than the topic of moving.

If you made it to the end, congrats.