Last week we were down south to do the annual sealift, and to go to a wedding. More on the wedding in another post....let's focus on the sealift for the moment.
Sealift is an annual ritual for us. We've done one for the last eight years. The first one was actually done while still in Newfoundland and was hilarious bad. We had no idea what to expect or how much of anything we were going to use. How bad was it? Well, it took us three years to use up all the toilet paper, for one thing. But nothing is quite as ridiculous as the toothpaste. I'm not sure how bad we thought our dental hygiene was going to get in Nunavut, but we finally managed to use the last tube of toothpaste from the 2005 sealift back in February of this year.
We've gotten better over the years and we could, if really pressed, do it one day. Two days is a cakewalk. This year, because of circumstances, we actually had four days. Which is bad, but not something we realized at the time.
Doing a sealift requires a certain...mental preparation. You have to realize that you're going to go and drop an insane amount of money in a short period of time. If you can't mentally brace yourself to walk into a Costco and drop more than $2,000 in less than two hours, then sealift is going to be a problem for you. And that's a small sealift, by the way. We don't have kids. If you have kids, a Costco sealift run can be truly terrifying.
I figure between Costco, Walmart, Ikea, Canadian Tire and Sail (I needed a new Canada Goose coat. The old one is now eight years old and it's an XXL, which means it's a tent on me. Not good when -40C winds start blowing up it) we dropped around $5,000. Probably around another $1,200 to ship it all up. Which sounds insane, but it's a year supply of food and supplies and you do honestly save a lot of money. Plus, there is more variety than what you'll get up here.
Still, you do get looks. Costco was unusually snippy this year. Normally we just walk in, say we're doing our sealift and they set us right up. This year, when we spoke with the floor manager he huffed at us and asked why we didn't make an appointment. Because we never made one before and this is our fourth year going to that Costco to do our sealift? Seriously, we were there to spend thousands of dollars and he gave us grief about not making an appointment. Bit of a twit. We're actually friends with someone from that store and our opinion of him is apparently matched by much of the staff.
I always thought we got looks buying a year's worth of soft drinks (one can, per day, per person, for a year. Do the math on how many cases that is), but I discovered going to the cash with about 120 chocolate bars will also get you looks. I also learned the valuable lesson in previous years that chocolate and sealift does not mix. At some point, all the chocolate gets stored in a warm warehouse. Where it promptly melts and resolidifies. So I just brought them all back up with me on the plane.
The problem with this year's sealift is we had too much time. Normally we finish up and then we're on a plane somewhere for vacation. It gives you time to switch out of the spending spree mental state and into vacation mode. But since we weren't going anywhere, and were killing some time in Ottawa before heading to Kingston for a wedding, well, we had time to twack around. Window shopping in that mindset is dangerous. Next thing you know you're in Ms. Tiggy Winkle's buying the Lego Millenium Falcon (which is not on the sealift, it's up here with me, waiting for when I have time to do a Star Wars marathon. Because that's when you build things like that). Or going into MEC and the Expedition Shoppe just to look at stuff...
Anyway, we have to wait for all the stuff to show up. According to the schedule, that's supposed to be the first week of August. There's zero chance of that happening. There's still ice in the bay and the first sealift boat just buggered off to do the rest of it's run and stop back here before heading south. They habitually run at least two weeks late, so I would say the last week in August is when we'll get all of it.
So that's it for this year. Not as bad as it could have been as we got a bookshelf and elliptical up here just a few weeks before heading out. Now next year....we're thinking about a new living room set. Ack...
Last Five
1. Graceland - Paul Simon
2. Don't pull me over - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3. The scientist - Coldplay*
4. My life as a wrestler - Dear Leader
5. Honey don't - The Beatles
Sealift is an annual ritual for us. We've done one for the last eight years. The first one was actually done while still in Newfoundland and was hilarious bad. We had no idea what to expect or how much of anything we were going to use. How bad was it? Well, it took us three years to use up all the toilet paper, for one thing. But nothing is quite as ridiculous as the toothpaste. I'm not sure how bad we thought our dental hygiene was going to get in Nunavut, but we finally managed to use the last tube of toothpaste from the 2005 sealift back in February of this year.
We've gotten better over the years and we could, if really pressed, do it one day. Two days is a cakewalk. This year, because of circumstances, we actually had four days. Which is bad, but not something we realized at the time.
Doing a sealift requires a certain...mental preparation. You have to realize that you're going to go and drop an insane amount of money in a short period of time. If you can't mentally brace yourself to walk into a Costco and drop more than $2,000 in less than two hours, then sealift is going to be a problem for you. And that's a small sealift, by the way. We don't have kids. If you have kids, a Costco sealift run can be truly terrifying.
I figure between Costco, Walmart, Ikea, Canadian Tire and Sail (I needed a new Canada Goose coat. The old one is now eight years old and it's an XXL, which means it's a tent on me. Not good when -40C winds start blowing up it) we dropped around $5,000. Probably around another $1,200 to ship it all up. Which sounds insane, but it's a year supply of food and supplies and you do honestly save a lot of money. Plus, there is more variety than what you'll get up here.
Still, you do get looks. Costco was unusually snippy this year. Normally we just walk in, say we're doing our sealift and they set us right up. This year, when we spoke with the floor manager he huffed at us and asked why we didn't make an appointment. Because we never made one before and this is our fourth year going to that Costco to do our sealift? Seriously, we were there to spend thousands of dollars and he gave us grief about not making an appointment. Bit of a twit. We're actually friends with someone from that store and our opinion of him is apparently matched by much of the staff.
I always thought we got looks buying a year's worth of soft drinks (one can, per day, per person, for a year. Do the math on how many cases that is), but I discovered going to the cash with about 120 chocolate bars will also get you looks. I also learned the valuable lesson in previous years that chocolate and sealift does not mix. At some point, all the chocolate gets stored in a warm warehouse. Where it promptly melts and resolidifies. So I just brought them all back up with me on the plane.
The problem with this year's sealift is we had too much time. Normally we finish up and then we're on a plane somewhere for vacation. It gives you time to switch out of the spending spree mental state and into vacation mode. But since we weren't going anywhere, and were killing some time in Ottawa before heading to Kingston for a wedding, well, we had time to twack around. Window shopping in that mindset is dangerous. Next thing you know you're in Ms. Tiggy Winkle's buying the Lego Millenium Falcon (which is not on the sealift, it's up here with me, waiting for when I have time to do a Star Wars marathon. Because that's when you build things like that). Or going into MEC and the Expedition Shoppe just to look at stuff...
Anyway, we have to wait for all the stuff to show up. According to the schedule, that's supposed to be the first week of August. There's zero chance of that happening. There's still ice in the bay and the first sealift boat just buggered off to do the rest of it's run and stop back here before heading south. They habitually run at least two weeks late, so I would say the last week in August is when we'll get all of it.
So that's it for this year. Not as bad as it could have been as we got a bookshelf and elliptical up here just a few weeks before heading out. Now next year....we're thinking about a new living room set. Ack...
Last Five
1. Graceland - Paul Simon
2. Don't pull me over - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3. The scientist - Coldplay*
4. My life as a wrestler - Dear Leader
5. Honey don't - The Beatles
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