Blogging by Candlelight

So we had some craziness in our condo building this afternoon. Aparently someone was repairing the floor in one of the condos in our building, and in the process struck a water line that runs under the floor. They had to turn the water off in the building because of this, so we were without water. Then, soon after the water stopped working, the fire alarm goes off. After helping an older woman and her dog get safely down the stairs (we are on the 4th floor), we come outside. But on the way down, a man leaving the building points out that in the hallway two floors below our condo unit there is water leaking from the ceiling! And as we make it downstairs there is water leaking down from the ceiling, dripping down the exit signs, and onto the floor.
We wait outside, the fireman come and say it’s okay, we can go back inside. So we do- only to find that now we are without power. After an hour or so of no power and no water we decide to venture out to get pizza for dinner since it doesn’t look like any cooking will be taking place in our condo. On our way out to get pizza, a man tells us the rest of the story. Aparently they turned the water back on in the building, but the issue with the waterline in the condo with the floor being repaired wasn’t completely fixed, and there was a break in the main water line or something that caused a lot of water to leak from the third floor down to the second and first floors when they tried turning the water back on. This large water leak then caused the fire alarms to go off (maybe because the water was mixing with the electricity?), and then the water mixing with the electricity caused the electricity to go off automatically… and here I am sitting in my dark condo by the light of my labtop and a few candles and the power still hasn’t been turned back on. But I am very thankful that we live on the 4th floor and not on the second or first, or my condo might be wet as well as dark. Currently I have four hours left on my labtop battery. It was an adventure getting back into my condo after eating pizza, because Kyle went to hear a speaker at the university, and I was by myself with Rebekah, and the hallway to my condo was very very dark (the emergency lights that had previously been on had run out of batteries). I tried finding my condo (all the way at the end of the dark hallway), but after running into the wall several times I went back down, and asked one of the workmen if I could borrow a flashlight and bring it back to him after I got the flashlight in my condo, but he was nice enough to escort me up to my condo. And now here I am, waiting for Kyle to return. Luckily the water is back on. And one nice thing is that after the alarm went off and we were standing outside, we were able to meet some of the people in our building, and met one woman with a four year old who is related to a woman Kyle works with, and she may be willing to trade babysitting with us. That would be awesome. I acctually baked lots of chocolate chip cookies last night and was planning to take them to people on our hall to hopefully meet them and say hello this afternoon, and then all of this happened. So hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to take cookies to some people and meet some new ones and re-meet a few we met today.
I have started using picassa for photos because it is so much easier to upload them onto there. So here are some photos from the last month or so during my time at Clallum Bay, Seattle, and the ferry back to Victoria. Lots of pretty pictures- click here to see them!

And just as I’ve finished this, the power has come back on… which is good because I couldn’t post this online until it came back on! (my internet wasn’t working without the power).

transitory

I’m spending two weeks in Seattle right now while the owners of our condo use it for their previously planned vacation (planned with plane tickets booked long before they knew they would decide to rent it out to us for two years). On Friday I will move back in for good (for two years).

It’s given me some good alone time, which has been good and refreshing, but also hard to stay present in it and not want to just skip to the future when more is happening.

Kyle is staying in Victoria during this time in another temporarily rented place, but he came to Seattle last weekend. Also, our friends from college, Matt and Annie, spent the weekend with us in Seattle and it was great to see them. They live in Taiwan, so it was such a treat to have them visit. I hope that someday we will get to visit them in Taiwan, although that probably would be a ways down the road.

Rebekah is doing well throughout all of this transition (it has now been like a month and a half that we’ve been moving every two weeks). She can now walk about 5 or 6 steps by herself and stand up on her own. She has finally gotten her first tooth. She is such a joy and loves to make friends with people. Or people like to make friends with her. The day before I left Victoria, I was sitting outside of a café with her, drinking my coffee, and she sat in her stroller watching the people go by on the sidewalk. Just about every person who went by said something to her and she “said” something back, or they commented on her missing sock or on how cute she is. It is kind of funny how much people will say hello to babies they don’t know, but not to adults. I think if we all spoke to each other in the way that people speak to babies, the world would be a happier place.

I found a mom’s group in Victoria from the “meet up” website, and met once with some Moms (or “Mums” as they say there). I hope to meet with them more in the future. Other than that, I think I need to be bold and make some cookies and take them to our neighbors in our condo when I get back. Hopefully we will meet a few more people that way.

Lots of new pics, but sadly I forgot my cord to upload them from my camera. So when I get back to Victoria I will post some.