The long journey for our family is finally coming to an end.  The journey I’m referring to is our move, which now feels like it’s been a year.  The reality is it’s only been three weeks but when you live out of a suitcase, time seems to drag on.  It’s one thing to do that while on vacation but it altogether different when it’s just another normal day or in our case, weeks.  It is interesting how you adjust to your circumstances.  I’ve learned that I’m clothes pig.  It appears that two suits, two pairs of dress pants,  5 dress shirts and a few ties is more than enough.  There’s going to be further purging when we move in on Friday, and in the not too distant future some homeless man will look pretty sharp.

As to our new home or as we affectionately refer to it as, the money pit, there’s a fair bit of work that awaits us.  You have to have some vision and imagination to buy a home where the redeeming quality is the lot and footprint.  Everything else about the interior?  Bye-Bye!  It’s funny to walk around the house and say, hate this, hate that, that’s hideous, and what in god’s name were the previous owners thinking when they picked this?  Feel free to insert doors, faucets, tiles, staircase, paint colour, light fixtures etc.  Indeed, work awaits.

I’m thankful that the previous owners spent less than five cents preparing their home for sale. Even more thankful is the painter we hired.   In this day and age of HGTV, not knowing how to stage a home is because you just didn’t care to learn.  That’s a mistake that many home owners make when selling their homes, and it costs them thousands of dollars.  Most people have a difficult time seeing beyond people’s questionable taste but what will turn  potential buyers off even more is if they think the house is not clean.  A coat of paint does wonders.  Every buyer will probably change the paint colour as soon as they move in but at least they’ll think the house is pristine.  And if they’re trying to decide between two homes to buy, it can be the difference maker. 

Off to the store to buys some stuff because the money pit needs to be fed.

Until next time,

Cheers.

I hate it, the end.

Just kindling, well, not about hating it but the end part.  One thing I’ve learned is you get what you pay for.  A friend of mine, John Novak, is the proprietor of the moving company Tippet-Richardson.  The company has been around for many years, and their reputation for quality service is well deserved.  A little pricey but as John has reminded me, on more than one occasion, “you time is worth money and Is the best use of your time packing boxes?”  Up until now I haven’t told him he’s right.  If you’re moving soon and you need a mover, give them a call.  A good moving company can eliminate a lot of stress.

I also learned that when you move you get nickeled and dimmed to death.  From the gas, water, electric and cable companies, all charge a disconnect fee as well as fee to start services again when you move into your new home.  Why?  Because they can.  God forbid getting someone to agree to pay a renewal fee for their mortgage, that’s simply preposterous.  But it’s perfectly acceptable to pay a reconnect fee for the privilege of watching TV. 

I’ve learned that the land transfer fee in the city of Toronto boarders on criminal.  Mayor Rob Ford promised to do away with the fee when he was campaigning, and yet here I am cutting him, and the province of Ontario, a cheque for an obscene sum of money.  Mr. Mayor, I’ll give you a pass on the land transfer tax if you provide me with added services.  Like picking me up every morning and giving me a ride to work, by piggy-back.

I also learned that the sound of boxes being tapped is really annoying.  It’s right up there with nails scratching a blackboard, a dentist’s drill and Joan Rivers voice.

Until next time,

Cheers.

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I can think of hundreds of mundane and bothersome activities that we all encounter and simply have to do.  The activities can range from going to the dentist to renewing the sticker on your license plate.  On one end of the spectrum the activity can be painful and the other end the government treats your wallet like a buffet.  But I can say unequivocally that one of the top 5 activates I hate more than others is, moving!  And that’s what awaits me tomorrow.  Ah, but tomorrow’s move is extra special for our family because we don’t get possession of our new home for another three weeks.   For the next three weeks I get to say, Boris Bozic, of no fixed address.

I’m not sure what it is about moving that I hate most.  I’ve moved more often than I care to remember, and given my so called “expertise” in this regard you would think that I would have this down to a science.  Sure, I know what to expect but the experience is always the same.  One of the experiences I go through when I move is the revelation that I’m a bit of a pack rat.  I have no idea why I save some of my stuff.  I believe that I’m a minimalist of junk only to be proven wrong when I move.   I put stuff away thinking that I’ll use it again.  Okay, so it sat there in the same box for six years from the last move, but you never know it might come back.  Who knows?  Maybe one day Clackers and Pong will be all the rage again?  Tools?  I never throw out any tools; interesting considering I have two left hands.  For god sakes I have to call an electrician when a light bulb goes out.  So hanging on to those wire strippers makes a lot of sense.  Maybe it’s a psychological thing, like discarding a tool that has the word “strippers” in its name.   I was cleaning out our shed over the weekend and there in the corner was extra carpet left over from the when the builder installed it when we moved into our home, SIX YEARS AGO.  I know we have too much stuff when I cleaned out the shed and found 10 sprinklers.  Come on, every family needs 10 sprinklers.  The reason we have so many sprinklers is because when we put it away in the fall we can never find it again in the spring.  So, you buy new one.  Clothes?  Oh my, we could dress a small third world country with all the clothes we just got rid of.  We would never throw clothes away.  I ended up taking about 47 bags of clothes to Goodwill boxes in our area.  Someone is walking around the city right now with a nice golf shirt that has Ryder Cup, 2004 embroidered on the shirt.  Hope they got the matching golf hat as well.

The good thing about moving is that it forces you to purge, trash, liquidate and perform a junk enema.   As you’re doing it you feel good but there are mixed emotions.  The purging represents new beginnings but you can’t help but think about the money you have wasted.  You’re reminded that a lot of stuff you’ve accumulated was for just because.  But when you make that difficult decision to discard you’re comforted by the fact that you’ll have less to pack; unless of course you’re talking about woman’s shoes.  Well, that’s another blog all together.

Until next time,

Cheers.
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“Now all I have to deal with is the cotton mouth.  I can’t produce enough saliva to swallow.  It really is laughable.
The reason is simple; I’m just not used to this kind of pressure.”

If you’re successful in your professional life it’s due in large part to repetition.  You work on your skill sets day in and day out.  After years it gets to the point that you just do things without thinking.   It almost becomes second nature, and you learn to trust your internal GPS.  Ah, but when you do something that doesn’t come close to being second nature the results can be fascinating.

 I had such an experience this week.  As a point of background, every year around this time I join 23 of my industry colleagues to participate in the Mortario Cup.  What is the Mortario Cup?  It’s two and a half days of make believe; it’s 24 golfers who gather together to play a Ryder Cup style golf tournament.  The make believe part is we get to pretend we’re just like the pro’s.  We all have matching tour golf bags, each team wears the same coloured golf shirts during the  competition, we all wear the same coloured jacket to the champions dinner, each team wears matching ties, we even have matching cufflinks!  Unfortunately, just because you dress up like the pros doesn’t mean you play like one.  Every golfer at this tournament has probably played over a 1,000 rounds of golf over their life time. Some of the golfers have put their time to good use based on how good they are.  It doesn’t matter what the skill level is something happens to each of us at this tournament.

I know this may sound crazy but nerves can get the best of me at this tournament.  I’m not playing for money, the results will not impact my real life one bit, and yet I struggle to keep my emotions in check.  Maybe it’s the responsibility I have to my team members.  If you lose your matches you feel like you have let your eleven team members down.  The tournament is made of two teams of 12, Team Blue which was captioned by Terry Dolson this year,  and the bastards, I mean Team Red, captained by Bryan Devries this year, going head to head.  As you may have surmised I’m on Team Blue, and have been for the last eight years.  The bastard reference to Team Red is all in jest, kind of.  Bryan is a good buddy of mine and damn good player.  I want Bryan and Team Red to play well but I want Team Blue to beat their brains in.  That’s the truth.

So there I am on the first tee, and it’s amazing what goes through your head, “Please god, don’t hit into the woods.  Just put a good swing on it.  Christ, stop thinking about this. Oh man, if I poop the bed on my first shot my team members will think I stink!”  This conversation between my ears all takes place during my warm up swings, which is about three seconds.  I’ve taken thousands of golf swings over the years yet this is different.  I finally pull the trigger and think, “well, now it’s in god’s hands”.  No it’s not you idiot, god’s way too busy to be worrying about my swing.  Then the club finally makes contact with the ball and I see it flying majestically, landing in the middle of the fairway.  Then I nonchalantly bend over, pick up my tee and pretend like there was no doubt.   I can’t wait to get to my ball in the fairway so I can start breathing normally again.  I finally get to my ball and I take a bit of extra time to get my pulse rate back to normal.  Now all I have to deal with is the cotton mouth.  I can’t produce enough saliva to swallow.  It really is laughable.  I’ve done public speaking in front of hundreds of people and yet I don’t experience the same nervous reaction that I do when I play in this tournament.  The reason is simple; I’m just not used to this kind of pressure.  Over the years I’ve played really well at this tournament only to choke on the last few holes.  I can feel myself squeezing the club tighter, and I can just feel that something bad is going to happen.  And you know what? It does.  When it happens I ask myself, “WHY NOW?”  The answer is simple – I’m out of my element.

I must be handling the pressure little better because the last two years I’ve been fortunate enough to close out my opponents.  There’s a difference in being beaten by an opponent rather than beating yourself.  I played fairly well, for my skill level, by earning the maximum three points for our team.  But that matters little because we lost to Bryan Devries and Team Red.  They out played us and were deserving of victory. I hate to lose but if lose I must, it might as well be to a great bunch of guys.  I’m already looking forward to next year’s tournament; for redemption? Maybe a little, but what I look forward to is that 24 men get together to be little boys again.

 Until next time

 Cheers,

Not buying it? Neither did my grade four teacher, Mrs. Cops.  I still remember her after all these years.  What I remember the most about her is the accuracy she had when throwing chalk at us.  She would be writing on the board and in one fluid motion turn, fire and nail you right in the forehead.  It was uncanny.  That’s why I always tried to sit behind the kid with biggest head in the class.  I was just trying to work the odds.  Speaking of odds, after posting over 104 blogs, without fail, there’s was bound to be a day when I just couldn’t come up with anything.  Maybe it’s the heat wave we’re going through in Toronto, maybe it’s trying to catch up after all the travel or simply a cranial cramp.  I got nothing. 

I wonder what would have happened if I was totally honest with Mrs. Cops?  “My homework?…To be honest Mrs. Cops I didn’t feel like doing it”.  Just got a shiver.

Until next time,

 Cheers.