May 2016 Monthly Entry
Last weekend I moved from my home in Port Coquitlam after nearly 4 years there. I kind of miss the place and being the last place David lived in. After 15 years, I am now back to living with my folks... temporarily so I can eventually move back to Burnaby. The move was difficult but thanks to the help of my parents, younger sister and her husband, we got everything out. I couldn't use my PC for a week so the monthly entry here was late. I met the landlord for the last time on Tuesday morning and it looks like I won't be getting the deposit back as he was damn nit-picky. My parents cleaned the entire house and did a very good job but nope, it wasn't enough. He saw what I had to deal with and given the amount of work that needed to be done, he should have given me a pass. It's funny because I was never on the lease for that house and I did the honorable thing when I stuck my neck out and paid the final month's rent so I could salvage both my things and David's. As long as he doesn't charge me beyond the security deposit ($700), I don't care if I get it. For payment with what my parents did, I will donate my own money to a religious charity of their choice since originally I was going to give them the deposit for that. I have paid for mail forwarding service for here that includes David, Agustin, and myself but I couldn't do VASM. Shaun and I are the two surviving executives and I cannot do anything with the Vancity account without him. I'll have to look into that someday soon...
Slowly I'm working on David's biography and don't know when it will be done. When I'm at a school and have lots of time left, I log onto a computer and work on the entry bit by bit. I've mainly done his childhood and now working on his younger adult years up to when he was featured on Kink. Also going through my photos and copying all pictures I have of him and putting it into a folder. They will also help in my biography and my past entries.
The weather has been sunny and pretty warm. We had a little rain the past couple of weeks but last weekend was quite hot.
School board work has picked up lately it seems. In late May I spent a week and a half cleaning Confederation Park and Brentwood Park for 4 hours each and in a pretty difficult run. In one night I'd clean 8 classrooms, 1 multipurpose classroom, 4 medium sized washrooms, 5 single washrooms, 6 portables (3 classrooms, 3 music/multipurpose), 1 daycare centre (2 rooms and washrooms), 1 small library, 1 small office, 1 small staff room, sweep all the hallways of CP, do security check and close down CP before going to BP (some days). There was no way to do thorough cleaning and it is a poorly planned run. Glad it's over for now. During one those days I picked up a few of the limited time signature donuts from Tim Hortons: Strawberry Shortcake, Raspberry Truffle, and Chocolate Whoopie Pie. Yummy and sugary! School will be over soon and we'll see what they'll do with me for the summer schedule.
To update on the amount of Burnaby schools I've been to now, about 34 of them I've counted so now I've been to over half the schools at least once.
On May 2 Agustin flew back home to Madrid. The roundtrip ticket cost me about $1000 and was the cheaper alternative compared to $1700 for one-way! A lot of the itineraries wanted him to transfer in Dallas Fort-Worth so to avoid dealing with US Customs, I had him transfer in London with a 5 hour layover for about $100 more. I won't require him to pay me back as I will inherit the funds from David's investment with Fidelity while he will get the widow's pension. I believe this is fair and while I promised David I would split the funds I'm receiving in half, given the expenses and work I had to do after his passing I feel I deserve this more. Besides, I paid for Agustin's airfare for home and didn't ask for payment! In the end, the widow's pension will one day surpass the amount of funds paid to me now and he'll get more than me. As I mentioned last month even if David and I had a legal relationship, I wouldn't be entitled to a pension because I am just under 35 years old. Anyways, Agustin arrived safely back in his home country and is on some kind of assistance to help him get on his feet. He lives outside Madrid as he cannot afford living there yet. While he was painful and exasperating to deal with, I wish him well.
My fellow Knight Wayne T. had been helping me a couple of weekends in May by donating David's books to Value Village and getting rid of some smaller junk. I'm very grateful he was giving up his weekends to help me out besides us having some much needed play time - WOOF! A few Saturdays ago I had 1-800-Got-Junk come over and take some old furniture, the washer and dryer (from the previous house we had to buy because the ones we thought we could use broke down and the landlord denied it was hers - damn bitch!), David's king sized mattress and two small boxsprings, and his piano. I thought maybe they could find something to do with it but they had about 4 or 5 guys lift it into the truck - which I sadly missed seeing - and it was on its back. After they were done, moving through the garage to the door was now possible after nearly 4 years, the laundry room has so much room now that it feels unnatural moving freely to the washer and dryer, same thing as David's bedroom. For one and a half loads, it cost me over $1100! Fuck, that shocked me. But I'm glad all that stuff is out of my hair and no longer have to deal with it. Before I dropped Wayne off at Coquitlam station, we dropped off all of David's sheet music collection and some more books at Value Village. Later, I would give Wayne his first PC which was the one David used in October 2011 all the way until he got his iMac in 2014. And speaking of the iMac, I gave it to my longest bear buddy, Wade since he needed a new computer. Even my parents got a few odd donations from me too!
While the first load by the trash guys was being hauled away, I have donated to Vancouver Men in Leather David's St. Andrew's Cross and stockades. The current president and a friend of his picked them up. I first offered it to Freddie & Claude (a leather couple that got married because David encouraged it!) but then they passed the word around to others and the president, Shawn, contacted me. They were gone by the time the second haul truck came. I'm glad I could give them away while I hung unto David's sling and toys - hidden in boxes from my folks.
I got into my first mini-car accident last Wednesday morning. On my way to work (late as usual) I was heading west on Highway 1 and was about to turn onto the Willingdon exit when the car in front of me slowed down considerably while I was speeding a little bit above the limit. I was following a little too close and once I noticed I was getting too close to the car, slammed on my brakes. It as too late and I hit the car a bit from behind! We both pulled over at the side of the road. A young woman approached from the car and asked if she was all right and she said yes and asked if I was all right too and I said yes also. She asked what happened and I said that I sped a little too much and didn't notice her slowing down. We then took down our information and went back to our cars. Since she was in front of me, I was waiting for her to go first but then she got out of her car and came back to me saying that she cannot start her car and that he nose was feeling a little bit of discomfort! She wasn't bleeding or anything but it did give me cause for concern. She called 911 from her car and while no cops and ambulance came, the Burnaby Fire Department did. They talked to me and asked if I was all right and we looked at the lack of damage to both our cars. My front bumper only has a slight nick while her back bumper had a slight scratch. After all that, they said I could go. The entire ordeal took over 40 minutes and it took me the whole day to recover from the shock. At about 2pm that afternoon, ICBC calls me and I confirm the information given. The representative had to confirm if I sustained any injury from the crash and I said no (and I sill feel nothing to this day) and if I'm claiming damages which I also denied. By the end of it she said I would get an assessment in the mail which will let me know the extent of all this. Most likely, my premium will go up. While all this did impact me for the next couple of days, I've recovered and I'm hoping I learn from it. especially when it comes to space margins and keeping more toward the speed limit. I'll admit that the young woman handled this professionally (in fact, it was her first accident too) and no drama was between us.
I'll be spending my weekends working on David's books first and then later, going through things. I'm separating the Judaic books and will be mailing them to Ben & Scott in stages. They will pay me back despite it costing hundreds of dollars to do this given David has around a thousand Jewish books! I'm not sure what to do with the GLBT books, some go back to the 70's and 80's and are well out-of-print. I may give them to Little Sisters bookstore or possibly Qmunity, the GLBT resource centre if they still have a library to take books. I've taken very few books for myself and the vast majority of David's books are being donated so I no longer have to deal with them again.
After moving in, my Zelda Wind Waker Ganondorf Exclusive figurine from First 4 Figures finally came in. I got a basic look at it but haven't put it together. Once I do, pictures will be forthcoming but man, does it look sweet and Ganondorf is fucking woofy!
On Xbox Live I rented Captain America: The First Avenger a few weeks ago. Since I want to watch the new Civil War movie, I have to see the first two Captain America movies as I haven't seen them yet. I liked it and Chris Evans was a surprisingly good choice as Steve Rogers. Hugo Weaving as Red Skull I suppose was a good choice too.
To see Doug Walker's review of this movie. go here or below:
Click to viewHaven't watched the last episode of Season 6 of Star Trek DS9 yet. Perhaps sometime when things settle down I'll get to it and have the review of the season uploaded.
Outside of Dragon Ball Origins 2, I haven't touched Witcher 2 and Dragon Quest VIII. Again, when things settle down more I'll go back to working on them.
Last Movie: Batman vs. Superman (Theatrical), Captain America: The First Avenger (Xbox Video)
Last Book: KJV Holy Bible - Revelation
Last Game: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Current Book: The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Mere Christianity
Current Games: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition (Xbox 360) & Dragon Ball Origins 2 (DS) & Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2)