Hello, and welcome to another chapter in the Thingo family's ongoing transition from west to east, from the US to Canada, from student to teacher, from loudmouth to... er... well, we shouldn't try to change everything all at once. Once again, this installment comes from our new world headquarters, high atop smalltown Ontario.

As planned, I went down to the customs yard on Wednesday morning with the timely help of Chris, who happened to have a car for the day. The process was quite painless, with no inspections, strip searches or bribes. A few hours later, all our belongings were piled up in the new apartment, waiting to be unloaded and arranged. Nothing seems to have been lost. A few pieces of furniture suffered some cosmetic damage, almost never noticeable given the generally scuffed appearance of our furniture to begin with. The only real damage was to the tall Sten shelving unit we were using as an entertainment unit. The driver had disassembled the unit for transport. Amusingly, when it was unpacked, some of the pieces looked as if they simply didn't belong. Two long vertical pieces appeared to have lost the blue stain Nath had applied, and in general had a rougher look to them. The driver eventually admitted that the two original pieces had broken when he disassembled the unit, and that he cut two new pieces from stock. Was he trying to slip them in unnoticed, or was he planning to 'fess up? Either way, I settled the damage with him in cash, and in any case it's such a ridiculously cheap piece of furniture that it hardle matters at all.

Motivated by the imminent arrival of my parents of Friday, unpacking proceeded at a goodly rate, so that most of the apartment was quite comfortable by Friday. At this point, we're left with some miscellaneous items in the second bedroom and office, and a big mess of cardboard that needs to be recycled. Because the building doesn't recycle cardboard, we're waiting until we have access to a car in order to go to the transfer station.

Mostly, I've been taking it easy --- for example, a large part of this past week was given over to watching all twenty-six episodes of the sixth season of ST:TNG. But I have been making some trips over to campus to deal with administrative issues and reimbursements, and occasionally to join my future research group in meetings. I'm looking forward to joining their ranks full time in about three weeks.

That's pretty much the whole story right now. My reservoir of guilt over not getting any research done is nearly full, and soon (hopefully right now) I'll have to get back to work. In theory, I'm still a research assistant for a few more days. Of course, in theory my soon-to-be-former advisor is a professor, but that doesn't stop him from spending most of December in Bhutan...

Greetings from the new Canadian offices of Thingo Central, on the eighth floor of Thingo Plaza, located in southwestern Ontario. It is from this majestic new facility that we bring you the latest in the Stuff series, the ongoing saga of our transition back to Canada.

Well, everything seems to be proceeding according to plan. The movers came and packed our belongings methodically and efficiently. They returned the next day to load it all onto a truck. Once our stuff was inaccessible to us, we stayed quite comfortably with our generous neighbours. The fact that the cats had already begun their journey on Tuesday made this process much more manageable.

Friday morning, the ever helpful Jenny took us to the airport. The flight itself was entirely forgettable, which is the best outcome we could hope for. Zebula was cooperative, spending most of the time asleep and never complaining about air pressure (though she'll probably grow to have ear problems like her dad). The wonderfully considerate Brian picked us up at the airport, took us to reclaim the cats nearby, and then ferried the entire Thingo clan to our new home. He even provided butter tarts for the trip.

Since then, we've been slowly getting acclimated, adjusted, and settled, to the extent that we can in the absence of the majority of our belongings. There has been a lot of administrative nonsense, dealing with helpful but unaccommodating banks, licensing bureaus, and utilities at both ends of the move. The resulting frustration has been balanced by a great deal of time spent in the warm company of old friends, mostly resuming the erstwhile practice of quoting shared cultural references. A couple of these "friends" also lent us a Playstation, which has proven to be a rather unfortunate presence in the apartment, constantly beckoning me to enter its mind-numbing embrace. Surely my time would be better spent reading Chabon's Wonder Boys or, dare I say, updating Thingo.

The next chapter of the Stuff series should play out Wednesday. That's when I travel down to the customs yard to have an agent sign off on my belongings. Then they will be brought up to the apartment and unloaded. If the stuff is reasonably unloaded by Wednesday and the weather holds up, we will then have the good fortune to host my parents this coming weekend. No doubt they are champing at the bit in their rush to see Zebula.

[update: 05 December at 19:07]: My brother asks whether I had meant to say "chomping at the bit", rather than "champing at the bit". Indeed, for many years I had assumed that the correct expression was the former. I don't remember when I learned that "champing" was correct. It certainly doesn't help that the two words have very similar meanings. Here's a page that gives some details about the difference.