PAINT

I’ve decided to paint my apartment. This makes sense logically since most of my belongings are still packed up from when my floors were installed last week. My baseboards are also still not attached to walls yet, so that also makes it convenient.

I’ve never been 100% happy with the colour of the walls of my apartment. When I bought it, the walls were and continue to be this very safe and boring beige colour. The same colour was used in the living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. It’s just a bland colour.

I’ve decided to repaint my apartment with a very clean and pure white. It’ll go better with my new floors and it will be a timeless colour. It’ll also brighten up my entire apartment.

I am not going to paint my apartment myself. That would be a massively dumb decision. I’m gonna leave it up to the experts. I’ve already have one painting company come in and take a look. They gave me a quote and how long it will take. They said they’d be done in three days. That includes painting the walls, window sills, baseboards, closets, closet doors, doors, and door trim. They’ll even re-install my baseboards for me.

I have another company coming into to give a second quote, just so I can do a comparison. I have no idea how much painting job costs, so I figure it’s just smart to get a second quote.

By January, my apartment should look like a completely new place.

FREE STUFF

This weekend my parents asked me to help them with some packages that were delivered to their home by mistake. These were Amazon packages and they weren’t the first set of packages to show up at their door that were for someone else. They said they’ve received many of them but they just leave it at their door hoping the right recipient can track them down.

I decided to help them by calling Amazon to see if they can get their delivery service to correctly delivery these packages instead of leaving them on my parents’ doorstep. Amazon was more than willing to try to figure out what was going on. I gave them the tracking number of the latest set of packages, which they used to find out who was missing their stuff. The rep I talked to said he’d take care of everything and that my parents could keep everything that had been delivered to them. I had to ask twice to confirm that they could take possession of the items. I had not heard wrong.

After I got off the phone with Amazon, I phoned my parents and told them to bring all the boxes inside and that they could open them all and keep everything. I was hoping they’d get some expensive electronics. My Mom texted me some photos and they mostly got stuff for babies and young children. Nothing too crazy but hey, free stuff is free stuff. Luckily, my niece is almost a year old now and these items will be suitable for her.

THANKSGIVING

I work on a team that has many of my co-workers located in mostly two main locations: Vancouver and Los Angeles. The LA folks are out this Thursday and Friday for their version of Thanksgiving, leaving us Vancouver folk to close out the week by ourselves.

In particular, most of the people I work with on the team are America-based, so I’m going to be mostly working by myself for the rest of the week. I welcome the quiet end to the week. There will be no meetings, emails, random Slack messages to derail my work. I can just power through the things I need to get done before everyone comes back on Monday.

It can be a bit weird when parts of your team take different holidays than you. The reverse happened in October when I was out for Thanksgiving and the LA people had a regular working day.

I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet tomorrow!

LIKE NEW

I am quite happy with my new floors. It certainly wasn’t cheap to have this all done and I’m aware that I could have spent less money if I had shopped around a bit. I didn’t want to take the risk of going with less a reputable flooring company however. The company I went with was voted the best for floors in my local area, for what that’s worth.

It feels like I’m living in a new apartment. I probably should have replaced my floors a few years ago. The only benefit of waiting this long was that flooring technology evolved from laminate flooring to more robust and fancier versions of vinyl plank.

Now that I have new floors, I’m looking at which robot vacuum I want to buy. Bare floors work really well with robot cleaners. I am excited to get one!

NEW FLOORS

I had to wake up at 7am to be prepared for the flooring contractors to arrive at 8am this morning. That’s nearly three hours earlier than my usual wake-up time, so suffice to say that I am tired is an understatement.

Nevertheless, I have new floors now. They look great but I need to go to sleep.

SKYTRAIN

If you can see the image above, it shows you the last time I used public transit before the pandemic started. It was a Wednesday and I tapped my transit card at 6:20pm as I left Skytrain station close to where I live. I was coming home from work. I would not commute to work for the rest of the week because, my manager made it optional for my team to come into the studio. Then on Thursday, a company-wide directive instructed everyone to not come into work until further notice. I have not returned to the studio since.

Because I began working from home, I didn’t need to use public transit five days a week. Because of the pandemic and because I wanted to err on the side of caution, I stopped using public transit all together. Whether it’s buses or train cars, when it’s busy, you are packed in tight with people and frequently ventilation is poor, especially on buses. It just didn’t seem smart to subject myself to such conditions when I didn’t need to.

I started driving more and last August, I bought a much newer car that was more reliable and more safe. Sometimes the car is more convenient but other times taking the train is the better choice. It can be faster and you don’t have to worry about parking.

On Friday, I had to get downtown by 6:00pm to attend a dinner. I worked almost to 5:30pm. If I wanted to drive, I would have to contend with people driving into the downtown core for a Canucks hockey game and also Lions football game. Then there is the question of parking. Friday night is busy most of the time but it would be extra busy that night.

I made the decision to take the train into the downtown core. I had been thinking about taking public transit again on and off for a few weeks now. Since the pandemic started, I am now fully vaccinated and the vaccination rates for the Vancouver proper area is quite high. Masks are also required at all times on trains and buses. There has also been no evidence of mass infection events linked to a single trip on the train. It seemed to me that while the risk was non-zero, it was probably low.

I dug out my transit card which took me a minute. I had to go online to see if I had any money on it. In the past, I purchased monthly passes but there was no need to do that with work from home. Luckily, I still had $16 left on the card. That would be enough to take me downtown and back.

I got dressed and I made my way to the train platforms. I had not been this close to the platform is almost two years. It felt familiar and comfortable but odd at the same time. As I approached the gates, I tapped my card. The gate said, “Card Updated” after I tapped.

I walked on through and there I was on the familiar train platform. Again, it was as if nothing had changed but then again, so much had changed. In the time since I was last here they replaced old 1980s LED signage that announced when a train was arriving. In its place was full-colour, high resolution signage, that could display more lines of text and thus more information.

Since it was rush hour, there were many trains in service, so a train was pulling in as I entered the platform. I was also going west, as most people were going east, increasing my chances of having a fairly empty train car. I went to the last car at the end, which is usually less crowded. I was rewarded with a seat near the end of the car, with no one around me.

As I sat down, it felt like putting on an old glove. It felt alright. I did the actual math and it was 1 year, 8 months, and 8 days between public transit trips for me. The ride downtown was uneventful and almost mundane. It reminded me of why I loved taking the train before the pandemic. It was fast, convenient, less stressful than driving, and allowed my mind to just wander.

I don’t think I’ll start taking public transit everywhere again but if I’m going downtown again, it will definitely be a consideration.

LAST PACKING

As my work day wraps up tomorrow, I’ll be able to pack up my desktop computer, monitors, and peripherals. I took Monday and Tuesday off so I’ll have time to deal with my flooring installation.

I’m gonna put some stuff in my car on Sunday night because I can’t think of anywhere else I can put it. Maybe a blanket, some pillows, and a few other miscellaneous things.

I’m excited to get new floors but I know I’ll have to endure some inconvenience for a few days before it’ll be all done.

FURNITURE UPDATE

I no longer have a couch nor a coffee table anymore. It got hauled away this afternoon. With my impending flooring installation coming up, it made me think about how much easier it would be to install the floors without my couch or my coffee table. These two items took up the most area in my living room. I also have had these two items for about ten years. With new floors, I thought it was a good time to also get new furniture.

There is now much more room for the flooring installers to work with, so that should go smoother. The interesting thing is, I haven’t chosen any replacement furniture yet. I did go look at some couches and coffee tables last weekend but nothing stuck out to me as the perfect couch or coffee table. One was the perfect size but the armrests had no padding, so you could feel the wood underneath and it was very uncomfortable. Another felt great but was much longer than my old couch and would probably be way too big for my living room.

The search will continue and I hope I won’t be couchless for too long.

MAINTENANCE

My Internet provider is supposed to be doing maintenance for six hours tonight and during this time I won’t have access to the Internet. The network is supposed to be down already but so far it’s still working so I’m trying to hammer out this post before it finally goes.

I’m a little annoyed it’s a six-hour maintenance window but I guess it’s better than having it during the day. I feel for anyone who works from home during the night.