July 2008 Archives
Last night I had a dream that I had a pet snake and also pet hampsters. In the dream Kara and I discussed the idea of breeding the hampsters and then feeding the babies to the snake... Seems kind of mean, but at the same time, it kind of makes sense... Weird.
Kara has the next 4 days off from work (and I'm on break between semesters) so we're going to New Zealand! We wanted to go somewhere warm, but flights were too expensive for our college student budget.
We're flying into Christchurch tomorrow afternoon and driving up to Hanmer Springs where we'll stay for two nights. It's pretty cold over there right now, but we'll be spending all day Friday staying warm in the hot springs! Saturday morning we're driving over to Kaikoura which is supposed to have seals, dolphins, and whales practically growing on trees. We're spending the night in Kaikoura, then Sunday morning we'll drive south along the coast back to Christchurch where we'll site-see and spend the night. We catch a plane back early Monday morning, and then Kara has to go straight into work, ouch!
Here's a map of our planned trip:
Man, life is an adventure... We spent four glorious days in New Zealand last week, and on our Monday morning return, two sheriffs showed up at our front door to serve us an eviction notice. Apparently our landlord hasn't been paying his mortgage and has defaulted on his loan. The bank takes possession next Wednesday morning at 10am, and there is to be no mercy for the innocent, unsuspecting tenants (that's Kara and me).
Just stop for a sec and try to imagine being in that situation. Yesterday: life as normal. Today: you must pack up your whole place and move out in 9 days... oh and don't forget to find a new place to live. What are you doing still reading this blog?!? Get to work!
Sydney has an insane rental market (for renters anyway) with a vacancy rate below 1%. I looked at a junky flat today, and there were at least 10 other people walking through the unit at the same time. It's extremely unlikely, wait make that ludicrous, that we'll find a place by this weekend (I mean that's a crazy proposition even in a city with regular vacancy rates!) So I should be freaking out right now, right? I mean like OMG, hair on fire, jumping through every plate glass window in sight, freaking out... but I'm not. Maybe the situation is just so absurd that my mind won't accept it as fact? I prefer to believe that it's because I've learned something valuable in the past 30 years.
The end.
Oh wait, you want to know the valuable lesson that I've learned? It's that 1) cats always land on their feet and 2) I'm more resourceful than a cat. Q.E.D.
P.S. Tough situations are made even more bearable thanks to the kindness of friends. I suspect that someone in our church will put us up for a week or two while we continue our apartment search. But if not, we'll be in a budget hotel with our stuff in storage. Who cares about money when you've got a life this eventful!
