X/Y post 1

Seven years ago Crystal signed up for a 6/7 X/Y... aka voluntary forced savings scheme.  The school board squirrels away 6/7ths of your salary so that in the seventh year you don't have to work and you still get paid!  Deal.  I got on the ball a little late but have caught up.  And well, the seventh year is upon us.  The excitement has not yet started but there has been plenty of excitement already.  

The first major decision point fell in March when we had to decide whether to defer.  Covid had thrown a huge, global pandemic size wrench in our plans and we sweated over what the heck to do for some time.  In the end we went for the live for the moment mantra.  So far, one vaccine down, two more booked, it is looking like we may have got it right.  But whatever happens we will have got it right because we will make something of this year, one way or another.  

The next big decision was how to rent out our house.  With all the uncertainty around travel it seemed obvious that making ourselves homeless would afford us the greatest freedom to pick up and go as and when we can.  And while it might seem an easy thing, renting out a house that is, we soon got wound up in whether to go with a property manager, a realtor, do it privately, do it privately and then get a property manager.... Take any decision and we will find a way to make it complicated.  In the end Facebook got the ball rolling when a friend forwarded a post by someone looking for a rental.  They asked for pictures, we panicked, hid a lot of stuff, took some terrible photos, came within a whisker of making a deal with them before they backed out because they didn't want to be tied into a year. But the horse was out of the barn door and there was no way to bolt the door before the horse bolted so we just mixed our metaphors, knuckled down, and ploughed on.  A soft launch on a few local Facebook community pages led to a Marketplace ad and a Kijiji post and before we knew it lots of dead end propsects were knocking down the door.  At the time of writing, we think we may have tied someone down after a little fandangling on the start date.  More to follow...

And in the meantime why not rent a uhaul and move the first bunch of stuff to Sab and Allison’s garage?!

And while all this was going on, a painting company came by and offered us a quote.  Several thousand dollars later and we have a blue house, trim paint that is no longer (or not yet) peeling off it's dastardly oil based undercoat, and, I kid you not, Dinner Party Red doors.  And because it is covid, while they worked upstairs, we sealed ourselves off downstairs, and then when they needed to be downstairs, we spent a whole day banished to the upstairs, online working and schooling merrily.

Add into the mix of x/y should we, shouldn't we, there was also my knee, torn meniscus finally settled after the ill-fated October wrestling incident, but still in need of surgery.  Right now, I go under the anthroscopic, minimally invasive tools May 5th, but it's covid and anything can change.

So that is where our year off is at.  I wanted to capture some of this build up because otherwise it will all seem to have been tropical beaches and European cafes (or quarantine hotels and covid tests) without any of the worry, uncertainty and logistical grind.  That's all for now.