Home sweet home

Yay! I've got some bad news, some bad news and some good news.
The first bad news is that even though our boss had made the necessary arrangements, we did NOT get into cinema Kosmos to see David Lynch speak (due to the 1000 people who had gotten there before us, d'oh!). Furthermore, we did NOT get our hands on the footage even though we were promised so. They did say that they would digitize the stuff asap, and get it online. According to a person who went, it was mostly "senile gibberish about transcendental meditation" which to me sounds amazingly interesting, so I can't wait to post the link.

The other bad news is that our Estonian landlady has turned out to be the ultimate bi*ch!!! We gave her a 1.5 month notice on leaving the apartment and will be signing an official 1 month notice with her tomorrow. The problem is that the apartment was originally empty and we had to buy all the beautifully color-coded blue and black furniture when we moved in. She now wants to keep some of the furniture, but refuses to pay anything but pennies for it. In addition, she complains about every little pattern in the wallpaper, claiming that it's damage that wasn't there before, in hopes of keeping the damage deposit (which is bullcrap!).
How about the 3 years of on-time payments and the fact that we had to deal with 1. washing up the previous tenants' vomit on the walls 2. putting up curtains 3. fixing the electrical outlets 4. various plumbing emergencies that she never showed up for 5. the COCKROACHES that appear in the summertime and were never taken care of until now.

Regarding the cockroaches btw - our landlady actually claims that the entire housing community is pissed off at us for complaining about the cockroaches, because now everybody has to pay a fee to get them taken care of. Apparently everybody is "talking about us" and thinks that "we should be living in the woods".

We're going to have a meeting with the landlady tomorrow. It's going to be very difficult. She is one of those people who talks and talks and talks and when you try to say something, she just drives over you with a bulldozer. Just looking at her makes me tremble with frustration and anger.

Man, am I looking forward to the Canadian mentality in these matters!
(And yes, I WILL sue her if she keeps our deposit, and report her to the police for the three years+ unpaid taxes that she has kept by coming in and retrieving the money in cash every month.. SO ANNOYING!)

Now to the good news.
We think that we have found an apartment in Vancouver! We spent about a month replying to various Craigslist ads and have finally found one that we think would be good.
(If any of you are ever planning on this btw, be prepared to receive a billion "I am an African king, my wife has the keys" scam replies, and report them to Craigslist immediately. Be sure to create an alternative (mailnull.com -yay!) account for spam protection!)
The apartment is in what they seem to call the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, north of Broadway and Fraser. It's a very reasonable price for a very reasonable-seeming apartment, owned by a cool-seeming individual, and rather centrally located.
Should be livable and alright for a temporary option.

Yay!