Spring cleaning

Have revisited the blog for the first time since June last year. Plenty of water under the bridge since then.

Item one; first visit to the UK since I left in 2007. Amazed by the plethora of health and safety inspired signs all over the UK. Amusing and disappointing visits with old friends. I do miss them sometimes, but not so much as to want to return to the UK. Some walked past me without recognising my face. Have I really changed that much?

Item two; have got my permanent residency, so no more work permits.

Item three; novel length MSS completed. Second in series almost so. First readers are already asking when the second will be ready. Another month if all goes well.

Item four; new job. Part time, which suits my current lifestyle.

Item five; am thinking about self publication more and more, and the possibility of using social media to draw attention to my work. Facebook might not be the best way forward, but Twitter sounds like a worthwhile even money bet. See if I can put together my own Audio versions, and donate some eBook copies and sound files to VIRL. I've been told I have a pleasant reading voice, and my dulcet tones can be heard booming out from the Coal Mine exhibit at Nanaimo District Museum. Feels rather spooky to hear my own voice sometimes when passing by the entrance and someone is listening to one of the brief passages I'm narrating. It's nice to think my drama training finally found a venue.

Item six; planning another visit to the UK in July 2011. Laura and Joanna will be graduating from their respective Universities, and Angie and I will be there to celebrate their success. Side trips to France are in the mix, as is a possible stop off in Dublin, one of the few European capitals I've yet to visit.

Item seven; Completed new Tampions for our two Cannon at the Museum, also the display stand for the Sculling outboard. Looking forward to seeing them in place. The Nanaimo Bastion reopens this May after a significant refurbishment. Displays have to be reorganised and put in situ, or as David the curator says with one of his gamine little grins, that will be another little job I can help them with.

Have done a little spring cleaning on the blog, and am debating whether to begin afresh for the novel marketing, or use this one.

Moving

A lot of moving going on of late. Over Christmas and new year I moved house. Angie had the common sense to absent herself to visit the kids and her mother back in the UK, leaving me on my ownsome to do everything.

At the Museum there is always motion. The new Coal Mining exhibit which I've been helping out with every Tuesday, the Bastion Cannons, which have just had their carriages refurbished, and the contents of Nanaimo Bastion itself. While the Cannons are Bailey and Pegg six pounders, the Carronades have a 'P MMM 1809' foundry mark on the barrel. I'm sure there's some form of reference out there somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

The two Bastion Cannons have had their carriages refurbished prior to safety checks on the barrels prior to firing, and we spent last Tuesday morning putting the carriages together for moving. The Quoins or elevating wedges, were fitted before we moved the carriages out of the old Museum premises before fitting the iron shod wheels. Cue much wisecracking about wheel balancing and tyre mileage. Then they were loaded and despatched to have the barrels remounted, which is a specialist task.

The Bastion, or the 'leaning tower of Nanaimo' as it is coming to be known needs around a quarter million dollars to remove, recarpenter and replace rotted structural timbers. At present, the temporary expedient of steel bracing is holding everything together. The only problem with said bracing is the weight of structurally unsupported steelwork putting extra stress on the internal wooden structure, causing it to sag to one side. For example; inside the first floor the main cross timber has two heavy steel C sections bolted along either side running almost, but not quite the full width of the first floor. The rot within the cross timber has spread to the point where the bracing C sections bolted to either side are beginning to have an adverse effect on the structural integrity of this historic building. The only real cure is to strip out the old 10 by 12 inch Cedar cross and supporting timbers and replace with new ones. The new timbers will need to be Fir or Spruce, as the City building code quite rightly doesn't allow Cedar as a structural material.

My own pet project, which is currently an overhead display projection on a nine foot diameter printed satellite photograph proceeds in fits and starts. Focal length is an issue, simply because even with a special short throw lens, there is not a great enough distance between the projector and the screen to fit the projected image. Next week I'm talking to an Astronomer with a view to rigging the current setup to create a special 3D solar display relayed via the Internet from a solar observatory on Mount Benson. Providing I can get into the workshop up at the old annexe, I can build a slightly better overhead projection setup, which should give almost a full image width, but what with me only there five or six hours a week, time is not on my side. Still, it's all interesting stuff, and there is so much to learn. Pictures may follow.

Real life continues to throw surprises my way. On top of being scavenger-in-chief locally for Tetra, I've been asked to serve on the board of Directors for another non profit. Unpaid of course. I swear this whole town would cease to function without volunteers. Not that I mind overmuch, it's just that paying work I'm allowed to do is currently a bit thin on the ground. This, along with recent currency fluctuations, have necessitated a clampdown on spending. Once the right piece of immigration paperwork is stamped our immediate restricted financial situation will ease as I will be able to take up several job offers without breaking the immigration regulations and risking deportation.

I have heard tell of would-be immigrant families who just get fed up with the long wait, give up and go back to their country of origin. All we can do in the meantime is keep up the voluntary work, try and keep our skill sets current and hope for the best.

Getting better

Spring has finally arrived thank goodness, and we've had the all the doors and windows open this weekend to air our current domicile out a little. This Easter I'm hoping it will be warm enough to open everything up and hoover it to perdition. The pet freshening spray and baking powder shake 'n vac can only deal with so much dog.

Work permit documentation finally arrived last week, ncessitating visits to both Service Canada to update my Social Insurance Number and Service BC for Health Insurance. Hit the front desk of Service Canada at one minute past nine, and were out before twenty past. Considering there's usually an hours wait before you get to see a clerk, that's blindingly fast. Even Angie was impressed.

I have several new volunteers to look after, and things seem to be picking up on that front. Tomorrow is scheduled to be the day we fit a voice activated switch which one of my Tetra guys built for a lady with MS. After that I shall be doing the rounds of the local publications to drum up a little support, and perhaps a few cash donations for Tetra off the resultant publicity. That should amuse my boss in Vancouver.

On the voluntary front, today's little challenge has been fixing the First Nations Intranet display for Nanaimo Museum. Not a little HTML coding was required to remove all the tricksy little external links which were causing the display to crash all the time. The sound has been disabled because the Adobe flash in the remote browser was throwing up conflicts, and since the machine has no Internet connection, there was no simple and direct way of fixing the code by downloading the right update. Hey, I'm only a volunteer for six hours a week, and shouldn't really be getting this deeply involved, except that David the curator knows I love a challenge and will be back next Tuesday with the answer to his problem. Then the display will be sound enabled once more.

A second 'little challenge' for the Museum was working out a solution for duplicating one of the tompions in the cannon at the Bastion exhibit up on Front Street. That's another for next week as it involves making a direct silicone rubber mould off the original, and using that to make cast resin replicas which we will paint. I've also decided to work out some kind of lockable device for the cannon touch holes to stop the late night drunks stuffing sweet papers into them. There's a couple of ideas idling around in my subconscious, and when I go back and take a second look, I'm sure the solution will be pretty simple. Maybe a large Torx headed expanding bolt which fits flush with the top of the touch hole. Unless whichever merrymaker has a large enough multi tool with the right driver head, it should do the trick.

The old Magic Lantern project is almost completed, although with so many other things competing for my time, I'm not sure when I'll finish. Must ring its owner to let him know.

Angie is talking about trips to Victoria and Vancouver, and as we have her Mother coming over from England at the end of the month I'm looking for excuses to go fishing, even if I never do catch anything. Fishing is partly a contemplative exercise; it's not just about getting a big one on your hook, although that would be nice. Haven't bought a freshwater permit yet, as I'm not sure whether or not my two brothers in law will be interested in getting away from the womenfolk for a while. I should really remind both of them that I am bribeable with a decent single malt. Angie can take the girls shopping in the van, and I'll take the Bronco, after a suitable defurring of the back seat. Amos our dog loves having his own seat, but he does shed hair so, even despite a serious shearing three weeks ago.

Tomorrow is buying fishing lures and weights in the morning at Canadian Tire, and dropping Angie off at Literacy Nanaimo while I attend my Tetra meeting. I'll arrange another project meeting in a couple of weeks to get to know my new volunteers a little better over coffee, and update them on what's happening next. Whatever that turns out to be.

Work permits, stress and other stuff

Immigration to Canada can be a nerve testing business, especially when you see the processing times. My work permit was submitted for renewal in plenty of time, but after a forty minute phone call the other day, I found that there is almost a ninety day lead time on renewals if done via the processing centre at Vegreville, Alberta. The upside is that I'm allowed to stay and work because while my application is in the stack waiting to be processed, I have what is called 'implied consent' to continue as normal.

Angie is delighted because she finally has bagged a proper job and praise the Lord is all smiles again. We went down to the border to get her work permit last week, and for a change everything went as smooth as silk. No hitches, comments, hangups or anything; apart from finding that we had three files open instead of one. However, this is due to our Permanent Residency still in the queue for processing with 18 months still to go before someone actually looks at our application. Everyone was terribly nice to us, even when we went to do what is called a 'Flagpole' which is leaving Canada for the USA, stopping at the border post and after a perfunctory check at US customs, heading back to Canadian customs for the documents Angie needed. "When are you coming for a proper visit?" Asked the US border guard with a quick grin. Canadian customs were likewise easy to deal with. We even managed to catch the 12:45 ferry back from Tsawwassen instead of having to wait until 3:15.

Another pleasant surprise greeted us the following day upon application for a temporary Social Insurance Card Number at Service Canada. "Use your old one." Angie was told. This was a bit of a surprise, as her old immigration documents, including SIN card, were siezed last January by a Border Guard at the Peace Arch crossing. I recall her annoyance at being told "These aren't valid, you shouldn't have them." The Service Canada tax people and even our local immigration officer now say, and not without a little embarrassment, that the guard in question shouldn't have taken Angie's old SIN card and certificate of landing, even if the 2006 immigration rule change rendered them currently unuseable. Said documentation, we have been assured, will be returned upon processing of our Permanent Residency application.

Despite the relative ease of the transition I'm mentally exhausted. I've been living off my nerves for the past four months and it shows. I feel run down and tired, stressed out and just generally out of sorts. Nothing specific, just an all round lassitude that saps my normal exuberance. I've not been on form at all. My usual "go git 'em floyd" attitude is conspicuous by it's absence. Mister Brain is not playing ball, either, and processing capacity is distinctly reduced. Mental tasks that once took milliseconds hiccup like a scratched CD. Trains of thought have shunted themselves into rusty sidings and are refusing to move without half a gallon of coffee and a Tim Hortons Blueberry fritter as fuel.

All of this comes from the last five months when Angie was offered a job, denied a work permit because her would-be employers weren't paying the proper rate for the job, and her endless worrying at the bone of employment has eroded my own resiliance. Now she's all bouncy and chipper, and I feel like death warmed over.

Concerns over money have also been at the forefront of our anxieties, what with the exchange rate doing a nosedive. Only having one shot of cash a month has been worrying, but now we've transferred last years interest on our capital over here, and Angie will be pulling in a modest wage, things will ease up. We've spent close on CDN$1000 on fixing the brake system on our old Ford Windstar van last weekend, and there are costs like the Dog's booster innoculations, wash and trim, and dog licence. Then our Ford Bronco II needs some attention to the parking brake and fuel filter, then I need to replace my old laptop, which has just died. We can afford all these things now, thank goodness.

Upon reflection I think I'd like a Mac, as the retailers still trying to offload machines loaded with the Microsoft Vista operating system, which no-one I know likes at all. The various shops will 'roll back' the machines O/S to XP, but I'd rather have 2000, which is just as stable as XP, and rarely gave me any issues.

Am stopping volunteering for the Canadian Red Cross. Not really for any one reason, but just because I'm not getting anything out of it any more. There was also the issue that I felt excluded over the 150th Birthday celebrations in Victoria on 31st January. Everyone at the Nanaimo office was offered an invitation, even those who didn't want one, but me. I replied to the round robin e-mail, said "Ooh yes please." When asked verbally, yet never got onto the guest list. I'm vaguely annoyed about the whole business.

Have put my name down as a volunteer for the Nanaimo Global Film Festival in March, and will continue my work with artefacts and display building at the Nanaimo Museum. That and attending every meeting under the sun to promote Tetra. I'm confident this strategy will pay off in the long run. By the time I'm done, Tetra will have an office and workshop, so that people who need one-off aids for the disabled can drop in and at least talk to a human being.

The Museum volunteering is useful because we get invited to various functions and it helps us meet people like the Mayor, local MP, and various other dignitaries who can help our cause. It's a slow business, but quite interesting, and in the interim I get to work on old technology circa 1900 like Movie Projectors, Magic Lanterns and gramophones.

I'm currently spending a little time every week restoring an 1890's Magic lantern, the trademark of which is proving somewhat obscure. From what I can make out, it's a common tinplate model which were purchased in bulk by the Provincial Educational boards. The firebox is missing, as is the mahogany slide assembly, but I can fake those and as the lenses are in good condition, another few sessions and I'll have it working properly.

In the meantime I'm still writing and punting stuff out to publishers and agents. Maybe one of them will actually read my work, and like it enough to take a chance on a relative unknown like me. It's like promoting a charity, all it takes is time and persistance.