The North West Passage

Yesterday, as I was walking home from work in the early afternoon, I noticed rather a lot more “stuff” lying about the neighbourhood: furniture mostly, but also household wares, and boxes, and things. When I got in the door of my home, Juni told me we were going out again right away – she had spotted a lovely new chair and wanted to bring it home. So out we went, and got the chair, along with a new set of wheeled legs for my desk chair, and a frame for the box spring of my bed, and a plastic office drawers, two new bookshelves (one very small and the other much taller), and two new bedroom dressers. Almost all of this stuff was in *very* good condition. As Juni said it, “the neighbourhood has become a giant swap-meet!”

It’s moving weekend in Sandy Hill. All the university students were going back home and leaving behind the things that they didn’t want to bring, for whatever reason.

Around 11pm last night Juni and I were out for a walk in the park. I was feeling a little down because I couldn’t attend the work weekend at Raven’s Knoll, and a brief email from a friend of mine in Ireland was making me nostalgic for the old country again, so I wanted to sit by the river for a while. Juni was still excited about our scrounging finds of that afternoon, and wondered what we would find if we explored a more affluent neighbourhood. So off we went. Just a short walk past the Russian embassy we spotted a beautiful purple-grey coloured micro-fibre love seat. Well we checked it out, saw that it had a little bit of fraying and damage on the corners but was otherwise in great condition. And we picked it up and started carrying it home. What a great find!

But the best part of the night was the fact that as we rounded the corner of Laurier avenue, by the fountain at the top of the park, two middle-age fellows on their way home from the pub offered to carry it for us! Juni got a bit of a break from carrying it, while I and the other two guys took a side and carried it two more blocks. The guys just happened to be walking our way, and kept making excuses for why they could carry it just a little further too. The girlfriend was away, said one of them, so they can afford to dawdle a bit on the way home.

Is this a great country or what!