We live here now.

We went back to Toronto in December for the first time since our move. Strangely, our first visit wasn’t for family, but for business: we spent two days in Toronto almost as tourists, staying at the Sheraton Centre where I was attending a meeting of the board of the Agile Alliance. Now we’ve stayed in Toronto hotels before, and even quite nice ones, like the Westin Prince, but this was the first time I felt like a visitor to Toronto since I grew up in Brampton. It was a little odd. The following week we came back “for real”, and it felt more like home, even though we mostly stayed outside the city in, of all places, Oshawa. (Ew.)

We visited friends and family for pre-Christmas, a happy accident, since it gave us time to meet up with friends before they got sucked in to visiting only family. I got to see friends from high school, university, and even rode the TTC, even though I had to buy a Day Pass for the first time in over a decade. If it weren’t a business expense, I’d frame it. In the large, of course, Toronto hadn’t changed much in six months, so I don’t quite know what I was expecting. It felt quite familiar, although I truly did sense myself a visitor. Most notably, none of the keys in my pocket opened a lock anywhere in the city. I had nowhere to stay in the city that I could call my own. I wouldn’t be returning up the Yonge line to Sheppard, then getting on the Sheppard line to Bayview, then walking a few hundred meters to the door. I didn’t see Bayview Village on the way out nor on the way home. I did, however, go back to Spadina/Bloor, a neighborhood I hadn’t frequented since my aborted graduate studies at University of Toronto. It was an odd mix.

So what did I get from the First Visit Back? People miss us. It’s a little ironic that we’ll probably see them more now than we did when we lived up to an hour away. Also, we’ve bought a bunch of tickets to Blue Jays games. We’ll probably see 11 or more in 2008, compared to the two or three we got to when we lived there. I suppose I have to admit it: Toronto is now a tourist destination for me, just like New York or Stockholm. Winnipeg is now “the city” for me. I really do live here now.

We are in the house. It’s still unfinished, but the work is coming along, and we’re trying to live here for one night. We can’t shower and we can’t cook, but we can sleep, watch TV and be online. In fact, this is the first communication from the new house, and at pretty high speeds, thanks to Westman Cable Internet.

After this, the next step is to be able to cook or shower, I don’t really care which. Our friend John will be working non-stop for about the next 3 days, and he’ll make great progress in that time. Our saga with Wasauna’s shipping department continues, but that’s for another entry.

For the first time in 65 nights, we’re sleeping in our home. That’s important.

Pictures are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah11918

Plane ride was good - uneventful. We were seated in an exit row for both legs, and for the transatlantic trip, we were right behind the bathroom so we didn’t have people in front of us (a bit more space that way) and it was a short trip to the loo! (And, easy to know when it was empty - very convenient.) Joe slept for most of the flight, although he did spend at least a couple of hours awake, which is more than he usually does.

We arrived just before 7:00 a.m. local time and caught the train to Como. A little bit of confusion, since the line leading out of Malpensa airport is called the Malpensa express to Milan, and I knew we didn’t want to go to Milan. But, it turns out we did in fact want to take that line for a couple of stops to the next transfer point, then switch to the Como-bound line.

The train station was literally a two minute walk from the hotel, so it was a good thing Joe was wearing one of his geek shirts . . . I mean, past conference shirts, because someone standing at the bus stop outside the station just looked at him and said, “I think you want to go that way.” He informed us that there was no need to hail a cab since it was only 200-300 meters away. Good thing, or the same thing probably would have happened to us as did to another conference attendee: he hailed a cab who put all his baggage in the trunk, then refused to take him once the driver found out where he was going.

Our hotel isn’t the conference hotel, but it’s right next door. The conference hotel seems to be very modern whereas ours is more “charming” (as it says on the website). But, we’ve been pleased with the hotel so far, even if the conference organization has left something to be desired.

Since we arrived so early (9:00 a.m. local time) in the morning, our room wasn’t ready, and wouldn’t be until 1pm. So, we found no shortage of people to grab food with, and spent a couple of hours in the hotel lobby with.

Food and company on the first day was good. We checked into the room around 3pm and I relaxed in the hotel room until about 7:30 pm while Joe checked out what was going on over at the conference hotel. Dinner then back at the hotel by 11:30 pm for an early night since we’d been a good day or two without much sleep.

This morning we had the hotel breakfast buffet which was quite satisfactory: pastries, bread, cold meats, fruit salads, yogurt, cereal, juice and coffees. I went out to take more pictures while Joe went to the conference for the morning. After just uploading the morning pictures, I’m off to meet Joe for lunch next door.

Ciao!