Saturday, March 27
Recently I set up to receive “alerts” from Kijiji when condos near Winnipeg, south and/or east of the city, become available for sale. This morning I received a Kijiji alert for a lovely seniors’ condo for sale in Steinbach, a community about 35 miles / 56 km. southeast of Winnipeg. We have long been interested in Steinbach, now Manitoba’s third largest city, but still a very small city with a population less than 20,000.
The seniors’ condominium building is now 22 years old. The unit for sale is a one bedroom with den unit, with a balcony that has been enclosed to become a sunroom.
Very nice !
Sunday, March 28
Today was the final opportunity for us to haul unwanted items to the local landfill site. It’s only open Sundays and Wednesdays, and we will not be available to haul stuff to the dump next Wednesday, our final day at our Riverside RV Park Resort home.
So … off to the dump we went ! We discarded everything that we had that was not worth moving to Manitoba, nor donated to charity. Except … two items that could very well have been repurposed … if only people weren’t so lazy ! I tried, for three weeks, with a variety of online classified ads, to give away my desk. And I received quite a few telephone calls and online responses but … it was always “OH … it’s an hour away from me ? OH … tsk tsk !”
BUT … <sputter> … the one that really got to me was … I ended up discarding my perfectly good fifth wheel hitch, 18 years old but in excellent condition, and arguably worth $200. I reduced my asking price every two days from $200 down to … yes, yes … zero dollars ! And couldn’t even get someone to drive out to our place for a free $200 fifth wheel hitch ! ! ! So … to the dump it went, to be processed as scrap metal ! That’s nagging at me !
Monday, March 28
With a lot of valiant effort by the listing real estate agent in Winnipeg, and conflicting pressures brought to bear on him by an impatient, cranky old man (me) and his bosses, we bought the seniors’ condo unit in Steinbach. WOO-HOO, WOO-HOO, WOO-HOO ! ! ! ! ! Thank you Daniel F (the real estate agent) for a tough job done well, under pressure.
Today we finished packing the contents of our home, and loading them into the U-Haul U-Box. After completing that late in the afternoon we moved into the truck camper for our last few days here.
Tuesday, March 30 ; home to Westbank/West Kelowna to Oliver to home
This morning we pulled the truck out from underneath the camper, hitched up to the U-Haul trailer that the U-Box was sitting on, and hauled the U-Box back to U-Haul in Westbank/West Kelowna. We bought a small electric toaster (for the next two months that we will be living in our camper) at Value Village across the street from U-Haul, had a very quick and late lunch at McDonald’s, then headed quickly back south towards Oliver where we met our home buyer’s lawyer to sign some documents.
The pompous ****h charged us $280 to witness our signatures ! ! ! ! !
Wednesday, March 31
Our final day at Riverside RV Park Resort. Joanne spent much of the day cleaning the house. I installed the camper onto the truck, made a reservation at the Gallagher Lake Resort to live there for the next month or month and a half, depending on whether or not Manitoba will still require travellers arriving in May from outside of the province to quarantine for two weeks.
Thursday, April 1
A beautiful, sunny spring day in the Okanagan.
Before leaving our Riverside RV Park Resort for the last time we went for our regular lunch time exercise walk, stopping at the dog park (where his ashes are scattered) to say goodbye to Ozzie’s spirit. In our yard, at our vegetable garden, where her ashes are scattered, we said our final farewell to the spirit of Emma.
We pulled out of our driveway, in both vehicles, for the final time, at 11:36 AM. With me in the lead in the truck and camper, Joanne following in the minivan, we drove to our home buyer’s pompous lawyer’s office in Oliver to deliver the house key and pick up our payment cheque. We both drove in the minivan back to Osoyoos to deposit the cheque at the Bank of Montreal. We returned to Oliver and ate a late lunch in the camper. We bought some groceries at Buy-Low Foods and some household supplies at Dollarama, then drove a short distance north of Oliver to Gallagher Lake Resort, our campground home for the next month or more.
Good Friday, April 2
We slept late this morning, very tired from the efforts of the last few weeks to get moved out of our home.
The campground at Gallagher Lake Resort was expecting to be mostly empty from April 1 until the May long weekend, but … a forecast of very nice weather for the upcoming Easter weekend resulted in a barrage of arrivals all day, until by early evening the campground was almost full. No problem, they’ll all be gone on Monday, and we’ll have a mostly empty campground to ourselves for the rest of the month.
Saturday, April 3
Today I did a task that I have been dreading doing for the last few days. I advised the Lorette, Manitoba seniors’ condominium development project (that is now about two years behind schedule !) that we will not be buying one of their units after all. They are (allegedly) very close to starting construction, and will be needing the pre-purchase payments very soon from their committed buyers, to enable the project to get its construction financing.
<shrug> A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush !
