Third trip to the storage space

Arrived home last nite from Calgary. During our trip home we encountered an early snow fall. It seemed impossible, for its not the end of October yet but i was quickly reminded, if you want to know what the weather is like in Edmonton, ask in five minutes. This first white blanket was just a skiff, but it made a trip to the storage space a necessity, remove the boxes and get out the one that held our winter clothes. So thats what i did, hauled the box up and proceeded to go through it, removing my warm winter clothes, getting ready for when it really snows here...

Letters

While down in the storage room, once again trying to organize the space and de-junk, i came across a small box containing letters. Further review revealed they were letters i had written to my mother 40 years ago, when i was a young lad and traveling through Europe. The though came upon me that i should now try to catalogue these letters and perhaps write a bit about my adventures on my blog. Unlike the slides, these letters have meaning to me, so over the next couple of days, I'm going to sift through the letters, put them in chronological order and then start posting them on my blog. I'll try to capture some of the experiences i had, seen through the eyes of a 20 year old, some 40 years ago. More to follow...

the slide carousel

Went back to our storage space today. This, because i made it a goal to have the slides removed from their carousel and catalogued. I went down after lunch, fully intending to complete my goal, removed the slides from the storage space and looked. Twelve boxes of slides, thirty six slides to a box. These slides were all taken by my late father, and he dutifully marked each box indicating what the slides were. Nothing there showed they were pictures of family. Pictures of trips he and my mother had taken, pictures of Mexico, Australia, hong kong, Europe. Pictures that i realized, after reading the carousel, meant nothing to me. I have been carrying these carousels around for years and my thought now was, what am i going to do with them. Am i going to take them out of the carousel, catalogue them, only to but them back into storage for who knows how many more years? Am i going to take them in and have them converted onto photo CD's, only to store them somewhere again? Do all these slides have meaning to me? After a short pondering, i decided they really meant nothing to me, i didn't go to any of those places, so there are no memories. So i left them in the plastic storage container, carried them to our garbage container, and put them in. I didn't accomplish my original goal, and that was to catalogue the slides, but i did manage to have less stuff.

Clean-up

We made a to do list when we arrived home. The idea was to make use of our time before we travel elsewhere and we felt we needed to dejunk. We decided before we could dejunk our living space upstairs, we had to clear out our storage space downstairs, a task which seemed overwhelming to us, but, we were determined. So after having a sleep in, we tickled the storage space in the mid afternoon. We pulled all the boxes from the storage room, put them in our parking spot and started going through them . We made a throw away spot, a goodwill spot and a keeper spot. We manage to put five cardboard boxes into two plastic boxes, we made a pile for good will which included a couple of folding chairs, a picnic box, a picnic table and some xmas items we knew we would never use. We broke the cardboard boxes down for recycling, and we went through the remaining boxes. We managed to put all our pictures into one box, the xmas stuff we think we'll use into another box. I have about 12 carousels of old slides, which although i didn't get at today, my task is to go through them, pulling them from the carousel, cataloging them and putting them into a smaller box. I've made this may priority to have it completed by the end of the week. We'll see about that one. We reorganized the plastic storage boxes, putting the ones we know we will not need immediately on the bottom.
It was a fun exercise. Its amazing how much "stuff" you collect over time. We feel we made a good start, we'll leave what we have for now, and then revisit the space in a month or two and go through the process again. You have to wonder if this is necessary, but, dejunking is not easy. The question of, I'll need that, always crops up, even though we haven't used any of those items in months. I'll give us a 7 out of 10, because we started and i think each time you deal with you "stuff" it gets easier the next time. I'm hoping one day I'll go into my storage space and all I'll see is a couple of boxes, or, maybe none.

Back Home

We're back home now. Having spend the last three weeks in Saskatoon working, its always great to be home. Saskatoon was another great adventure. Our job as floaters is giving us a real insight into how different facilities are run. Although it is the ultimate goal of the company to have all its facilities run the same, its a difficult task, which makes it challenging for us as we float from one facility to another.
While is Saskatoon, we did our usual adventures. We traveled north to La Ronge and toured some of the lake country that is so plentiful in northern Saskatchewan. We went to Waskesiu and took the scenic route home. This area is absolutely fabulous and was full of color. There are many lakes in the area and we had the opportunity to check a few out. Beautiful parks, plenty of space and great picnic sites. It was too bad during this trip the weather was against us, raining, preventing us from stopping in more places and getting out to explore. Its an area we would definitely consider coming back to. One area we did stop into was Elk Ridge. This is a relatively new resort development, offering a 27 hole golf course, a resort spa, condo's and single family residents. We dropped into their pub for lunch. A great fare, potato bacon soup, served hot and a BLT with sweet potato fries. An wonderful lunch served at a reasonable. Another area we would like to go back to. We're home now, for awhile, and its good to be here

bound for saskatoon

Heading to saskatoon on september 29th started in our usual fashion. We were approximately 15 kms out of edmonton when, uhhuh, wrong turn, headed south instead of east. This "getting lost" is really starting to bother me. There was a time when i could go somewhere once, and then months, or even years later, i could go back without getting lost. Could it be due to the fact i'm older now or ?. In any event, we did manage to turn around, get back on track, and without further delay, except a stop for lunch, bathroom breaks and a quick smoke, arrived in saskatoon mid-afternoon. Finding our work place in saskatoon was easier than when we worked in regina. Perhaps it was because we had directions or arrived in daylight, instead of darkness. In any event we settled into our suite. We're lucky. We get to take our kids, harry, dawg and daisy with us and usually get a one bedroom apartment, allowing enough room for the five of us. Working as floating managers is interesting. We get paid to travel to the place of work, we get paid mileage to get there, and we get paid while we are there. We get all the benefits, yet none of the responsibilty. In a nut shell, we are the babysitters; we get to raid the fridge, eat the food, drink the pop, and when "mom and dad" come home, we get paid and leave. How sweet is that?? Along with all the perks we have the oportunity to turn down work if we choose to do so. So, unlike before where we got all stressed and burned out, we can pick and choose the amount of time we want to work and the best part of it all is we get to go home after we're done. Life is good!!
We're in saskatoon until the 18th of october. We have thursday and friday off work and then work saturday, sunday, and monday. Three days you say. not bad stuff, but keep in mind, those are three 24 hour days. We're planning some day trips and i'll be back with further updates.