Where Does the Time Go?:

Is April nearly over already?

The last month has streaked by far to fast. I am now unpacked and semi-moved in to my new place. I say "semi-moved in" because there are still a few relatively important (though not essential, I suppose) appliances and pieces of furniture that have yet to be purchased. Thanks BMO for attending the Air Canada school of customer support.

I suppose that the blame shouldn't be put entirely at BMO's feet. I should have been wary enough to make sure that I had the paperwork all taken care of before I left Calgary. I'm also not too thrilled at my current bank down here right now. When I learned that I couldn't arrange to wire my money from Calgary without being at the BMO in person I wrote myself a couple of cheques. The bank here said it would take two, maybe three weeks to get them deposited. We're now into the fourth week, and I found out on Friday that they've changed their tune and it's now 4 - 6 weeks. My rage is endless.

Anyhow, on to happier matters. As I said, I've unpacked. I suppose it speaks volumes about my cooking geekery that it took me longer to unpack my kitchen than the rest of my house combined. I actually managed to get through the extended version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy while doing it and still have more kitchen unpacking to do.

Also, I found that unpacking is a lot like Christmas morning with all of the niceties thrown out the window. The movers packed everything up themselves, so I had no idea what anything was. It was somewhat fun to try to guess what the heck most of the stuff was as I unwrapped it, and more than a little liberating to go "why the hell did I keep this?" and throw some of the stuff in the trash.

Weather down here is improving. We went through a cool snap last week (I think it was last week) but it's been getting better since then with mid to high 20's since. The humidity's also been rising relatively steadily. It's not bad now, but I imagine in another month I'll be soaking.

Of course, with the heat and humidity comes bugs. Mosquitoes haven't been too bad down here but they've got some pretty good sized beetle-type things that are everywhere. There's also a lot of spiders. Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with insects in small amounts, as long as they stay out of my house. It seems like every day, though, there's 3 or four spiders or smaller versions of the beetle-things crawling around in my place. I keep hoping that I've killed the last of them, but every time I come home there's another one. Fortunately, I haven't woken up with a Brown Recluse spider on me yet.

The weather also seems conducive to growing plants. I took some time last week to get my herb garden planted (I'm going to wait until I get my money transferred down here before I work on the orchard). So far, only the cilantro isn't doing well. Not too bad considering my past history with plants. I do wonder about the coincidence that I first started seeing rabbits in my back yard about a day after I got my herbs. I'm not too worried though. I'm waiting for the little buggers to try chewing on the serrano peppers that I'm growing.

Last weekend was one of the few that I've had down here completely off. I celebrated by stocking my fridge & liquor cabinet and spending the entire weekend cooking. It was glorious. Of course, now I have to do something with all the food in there. I'll have to think these plans through a little more thoroughly next time.