Travels With Miranda

My cheque from Intact insurance for the car settlement arrived this morning! Since I’d already done several hours of work today, I decided to take a break and walked over to BMO to pay off the car loan and have the balance given to me as a draft.

I was concerned that because the cheque was made to my name and BMO’s, they could try to apply the balance of the cheque to the motorhome loan, meaning I would have to take the cheque back, have the insurance company pay BMO directly, and then wait for a new cheque for the balance. I almost went that route and kicked myself for not going through with it.

Needless to say, my pulse started racing when the teller said, “Okay, this more than covers the car loan. Do you want me to apply the balance to the motorhome loan?”

“No! Please! I’m on foot! I can’t use my motorhome as a daily driver!”

She laughed. “No. No. Don’t worry. I have to call the insurance company to confirm that the cheque is good. At the same time, I’ll make sure that it’s for the car and not related to the motorhome loan. Then, I can do a draft for the balance.”

It took nearly an hour for all of that to happen, but I walked out with a bank draft for nearly $8,000, which is more than enough for the truck, towing equipment, a year’s worth of insurance, and some left over to get work done on Miranda.

Next, I walked to CIBC to deposit the bank draft. I was shocked to learn that they have to put a week-long hold on it! It’s a bank draft, as good as cash! Apparently, this is a brand new policy; the memo came out just a couple of days ago. The teller said that she would ‘fax Toronto’ and that I could call them this evening or tomorrow morning and they will lift the hold. Anyway, it’s unlikely that I will be flying to Alberta this week, so a few days’ hold is fine.

Thumbs up to Intact insurance. This was a painless claim!

From CIBC, I decided I might as well go pick up cat food and decided that an extra couple of kilometres would be less tiring than going to the grocery store across from the bank and carrying the bag all the way home. So I’d planned on a 5.5KM walk and ended up doing 7.5KM. After several days of typing, it sure felt good to get out and take in some fresh air!

Tonight marks the 32nd night of protests and near riots in Montreal in response to the government’s decision to hike up tuition costs. This resulted in the provincial government adopting a draconian law limiting public protests. This law is considered second only to Trudeau invoking the War Measures Act during the October Crisis.

It’s a really complex issue and I’m not that up to speed on it, but the situation is bad enough that the US government actually issued a diplomatic memo warning travelers that Montreal is unstable.

I can tell that Quebec is going through something major right now at a cultural level, something that could end up being as major to the province’s development as was the Quiet Revolution. It’s just weird to be watching this from the sidelines. This province’s destiny no longer has any bearing on mine.

More info:

Quebec unrest gets noticed around the world (Toronto)

Montreal unrest on world radar (Winnipeg)

This afternoon, I was able to not only take a couple of hours off, but I also had access to my mother’s car. I went to the RV place my sister recommended, but they only work on trailers. They sent me up the road a ways to VR Express in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. They can do all the work on my list. I need to go in ASAP with Miranda for them to create an estimate for both halves of the work, what I want to pay out of pocket and what the insurance will cover.

I emailed the info to my adjuster and asked her how I need to proceed at this point. The service tech thinks that Aviva will want to send a Quebec adjuster to where I am parked right now, after which time I can move the rig to VR Express so they can do their estimates. I’m still hoping to time this with the trip to Alberta, but that’s more and more doubtful. I also haven’t received confirmation that the cheque for the car is in the mail, which is making it all the more difficult to plan anything. Anyway, the pieces will fall into place as they always do so no sense stressing about it.

My upgrade to OSX Lion did not go smoothly because Snow Leopard ate my internet connection. It came on and off until it finally decided to stay long enough for me to get the necessary software updates to download Lion overnight.

It took about an hour this morning to install Lion. Everything seemed fine until I tried to open Mail and I kept on getting error messages. I decided to trash the imported files and restore from my last Leopard backup, which worked. The new Mail looks weird and is taking some getting used to, but it now has threads, so I know I’m going to love it.

My only other complaint is that I had a dickens of a time with my transcription today. The file would stop and freeze periodically, like my foot pedal was jamming. If this had happened a couple of times, I would consider the behaviour coincidental to installing Lion, but the number of times it occurred is concerning me. It was a very frustrating transcription day.

Another thing I need to get used to is ‘reverse scrolling’ in that I have to roll the mouse wheel upwards to scroll down a page (or swipe upwards on the track pad). For some reason, this isn’t irking me at all and I think that I will get used to it quickly.

iCal has a pretty skin (looks like a physical desktop calendar), but I find the colours too muted. I put all my financial stuff in red and the bold red boxes were impossible to ignore while the meek pink ones kind of fade into the background.

I like the Address Book skin, too. It looks like the Address Book skin on the iPad, more like a real book.

The new Finder window is missing a crucial piece of information that I check all the time: the amount of space on my hard drive. I’ll have to get used to periodically getting the info from the hard drive icon on the desk top.

If I don’t have any transcription tomorrow, I’ll be taking the day off to explore some Lion financial apps. I’ve been wanting to move from my buggy free suite to bug-free paid software for some time. I also need to remove Office for Mac 2004 in such a way that I could restore it should I decide to go back to Leopard if Lion ever explodes in my face. Finally, I’m going to poke around iWork ’09 to see if it’s worth upgrading or not.

With Mountain Lion coming out shortly and so many apps now being updated for Lion only, it really was time to make the switch. The speed bumps aren’t much fun, but I’ll get through them. In the long run, upgrading to a new OS is almost as much fun as getting a new computer!

Jody just emailed over a scan of my vehicle registration papers for Miranda. Total cost for a year, $84 and change. It was about $100 the Yukon and it was a whopping $650 in Quebec. Am I glad I don’t have to register a motorhome here again! The amount for the car would have been the same and will be the same for my new toad.

That said, registering a trailer in Quebec is about as cheap as in Alberta and has the same benefit: it’s a one-time registration fee. My sister just bought a travel trailer and I think her registration was $7o. Add $270 per year to register a personal vehicle (have I mentioned that I’m glad I don’t live in Quebec anymore?), such as a truck to tow the RV, and it makes sense to own a towable in Quebec. I wonder if I would have considered this route way back when had I known what I didn’t know.

Now, I just need to figure out how to advise Alberta that I won’t be renewing the car registration seeing as the car is six feet under and will soon by replaced by a cute little pickup. I think my grieving period is over.