New Year's -- New start

 First off, Happy New Year and best wishes for 2014!!!

So I am happy to report that the hard work has paid off, and I have found a position in Toronto and will be relocating there in the summer.  In the meantime, I will shortly transfer to their downtown Vancouver location, which will be a pleasant change from my current remote location.

While it would be no easier to bike all the way to that downtown office as to my current office, I should be able to get a bike locker at 29th Street, then shower when I get to the office.  There are many, many reasons I don't like my current location, but the fact that it cut out a major form of exercise for me is in the top 5.  While technically, I could ride to the bike locker and ride in to where I am now, it would be 35+ minutes of sitting on the train in sweaty garments vs. roughly 15 to go downtown.

I certainly hope I will be able to figure out how to bike at least a portion of the work journey in Toronto, but that is a problem for another day.

I am not going to suddenly change my mind about Vancouver, now that an exit plan is in sight, but there are a few things I will try to do to take advantage of what is here:

• Do the Grouse Grind one more time, presumably in late May or early June, depending on when the trail opens.
• Take a ferry to somewhere a bit more remote than Victoria, but that may not happen.
• Get to Bard on the Beach one last summer.  I am intending to see Midsummer Night's Dream with my son and possibly The Tempest with him (but certainly on my own).
• Take the kids to the beach in the summer and to Stanley Park for a long walk in the woods.
• Make it to all the VSO concerts and Friends of Chamber Music concerts I have on the calendar.  This might get particularly tricky as I have to start traveling more for my new job, but I'll see what I can do.
• Go to the Vancouver Art Gallery in March or April for the Lawren Harris exhibit and perhaps in June for some exhibit based around the works of Douglas Coupland.

Ranging a bit further afield, I'd like to take the whole family to Seattle (in Feb.?) for the Miro exhibit at SAM.  I'm definitely concerned that my daughter has a spot of travel sickness, but think she probably can make it.  She actually made it there in the past, as well as a super long bus ride to get to the ferry to Victoria.

I'd like to make it to Portland one more time, but that might be a solo trip.  Hard to know at this point.

As far as Toronto, there are definitely many unknowns, but a few things to look forward to.  We'll almost certainly get a car.  I would have gotten one this spring or summer, but the thought of driving it across the Rockies was just too much to contemplate.  As much as I do try to take transit (even for grocery shopping), it is becoming infeasible with a family of increasingly active and restless kids.  There are a few other things that at this point, I would just rather wait until we resettle rather than buy them now and ship them.  Shipping costs will be expensive enough...