Saturday, September 02, 2006

Apartment life

The thing to remember about something being too good to be true is that it normally is. For the last few pay periods I noticed I wasn't getting tagged on three things - EI, CPP and rent. The rent was something I was afraid was going to be tangly. Myself and Cathy have been lucky in that we've qualified for a government subsidized apartment in Iqaluit. It's hard for many people to land housing these days because there's big demand and the government is trying to get out of it in Iqaluit. But Cathy had it with her job and when I got my new job, it also came with housing. Although we had put in for a transfer under Cathy's, it was quicker for me to just take the housing they were offering.

Like I said, a touch confusing. Especially when rent comes out of the paychecks. That means the government owed Cathy money as they took rent out for August for a place we no longer live in.

And with me moving into a new place and everything else, well, it seems they forgot to take rent out of mine. There's also been no EI or CPP deductions.

Now, the easy way is to just hope they never notice. But I find that crossing your fingers and hoping governments or businesses never notice they forgot to take money from you is never a good game plan. They will find out sooner or later. And then they want all the money at once. Normally after you've spent it all too...

So I put in the call and it turns out I've paid all my EI and CPP payments for the year. Which is good, although I have no idea how that happened. However, it also turns out they forgot to deduct my rent for August and part of July. Which means they're going to have to take it out of the next bunch of paychecks. Which sucks. Yes, I've been overpaid the last few checks. Still, having it tagged over the next two months to make up for it is annoying.

Ah well. There are worse problems to have to deal with.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the apartment looks like, below are some photos. Because far be it for me to be the only northern blogger without pictures of boxes all over their apartment. One of the apartment empty, one when I managed to cram all the boxes in and one with the kitchen and living room set up. Oh, and one of our new view out the window.

By the way, the look of the new apartment, unsurprisingly, is Cathy's. I broke the back of getting things unpacked, but she's the one who figured out where everything went to make it look and to make our small apartment look more spacious.



This is what the place looked like when I first saw it. I'm pretty much standing in the closet on the far wall. Granted, my camera doesn't have a good wide angle lens, but you still get the idea. Kind of small.



This is what looked like when I finally got all the boxes in the place. Taken from the same spot as above, there's pretty much zero floor space. A lot of stuff into a wee space. I was feeling a little pessimistic at this point.



But here it is looking all nice and organized. Miracles can happen. Notice the kitchen table had to go. Not eneough room for it.



And the view out one of the windows. It's actually pretty nice around sunset. I'd get some nice pictures, but the cables kind of ruin things a bit.

3 comments:

Jaime said...

Nice stuff! I like the windows, they look like they let a lot of light in. We were lucky that our apartment had curtains already.

Just out of curiousity, where about did Cathy live in Rankin? Was she in one of the apartment buildings?

Jeff wants me to tell you that you only pay CPP on your first $42 100 and EI is similar.

tanker belle said...

I'm not sure of the reason why, but gov't front-loads the EI/CPP stuff, it'll happen every year.

towniebastard said...

Jamie, Cathy did live in one of the aprt buildings, but not the one you're in now as she was nowhere near the college. Oh, she also advises you to not freak out when the bldg starts swaying during the winter when the winds get really high. They're supposed to do that.

Darcy, one year you might get away with it, but I wouldn't want to bet on it. Nor would I bet against the long arm of the government reaching out to get the money regardless. As we're here, if all goes to plan, until at least 2009 if not longer, why risk it.

And as for the CPP/EI thing, I guess you learn something new every day. Although I guess it says something about how much I was getting paid in previous jobs that I didn't know that...