Death by sealift

Here at Townie Bastard, we live to fill your base, craven need for Knowledge. So to help appease your filthy habit I am making myself a bitch to Science.

Because, you see, at this time of the year I am getting a lot of hits on the blog wondering about moving to Iqaluit, and what you need, and what the hell is a sealift anyway.

A Sealift is basically a small stroke that you inflict on yourself so you don't endure a much larger one later on. Or, put another way, you go and spend the better part of $7,000 on supplies over the period of a few days so you don't spend something in the order of $14,000 during the course of an entire year living in the north.

Logically, this makes sense. The key thing is to remind yourself of this (and to keep breathing) when someone at Costco asks you for $2,400 please and thank you. Which is what happened today. Seriously, my Costco bill is about two feet long. It took six carts to contain everything we bought today. And we were good. Normally when we hit Costco all sorts of unnecessary things find their way into our cart, but aside from a pair of books, one video game and the BBC Life DVD set (with Richard Attenborough, not Oprah Winfrey, doing the commentary. These differences are important) we bought all useful things for the next year.

So what, you may ask, does $2,500 buy? Well, let's see"
20 kg of flour - $12
8 kg of sugar - $7.40
8 cases of 32 cans of Diet Coke at $11.99 each
3 1.85L of salsa at $6.89 each
A big bloody box of Honey Nut Cheerios at $8.55

And so on and so forth. Really, I'm not typing out the whole bill. I'll be here all night.

Alas, that was not our only stop for the day. After leaving our six carts of Costco goods with them, where they will be picked up on Monday by our shipping company, we headed off to IKEA. First of all, let me say this, if you're cruising the parking lot of an IKEA in a Smart Car, I think you might be hitting out of your league. For example, we brought a big bloody Ford Escape and still barely managed, so I don't know who you're kidding with a Smart Car.

Yes, IKEA managed to drain us for $1,200. That was for a cabinet, leather chair cushions, baskets, lamps and some other odds and ends. Which we loaded into the back of the Escape and dropped off to TSC. We joined a considerable line up of other people from Nunavut doing the exact same thing, except most of them appeared to be shipping up enough beer to keep a bar going for several weeks.

Then, after deciding we clearly had not spent enough money for this day, we went off to Rona because Cathy had a hankering for laminate flooring. The logic works like this - we have carpet in our three bedroom. Carpet is disgusting because it gets so dirty and is bad for allergies. Nevermind we have a Dyson that could suck dirt from the moon from our living room. Therefore, we will rip up all the carpet and replace it with click laminate. At some point, blood will be spilled, either when we try to deliberately kill each other, or merely accidentally when we try to use the different saws we also purchased to cut up the flooring.

Naturally we'll have to buy rugs to put on the laminate flooring, because it can be cold on the feet during the winter. This will complete the carpet-flooring-rug cycle and likely cause my brain to explode.

We got enough flooring for three bedrooms which was mercifully on sale, 40% off, so it and the saws only cost $1,100.

For those of you keep track at home, that's a grand total of $4,700 we spent in a little under 12 hours.

There are three additional facts to consider:
1. We're not actually finished yet. Yes, we still have to hit Wal-Mart and Loblaws, possibly Bulk Barn. Because we couldn't find certain things, like scent-free Tide or Sprite during our Costco adventures. So I anticipate an additional $700 yet to come.

2. None of this includes the actual cost of crating and shipping it to Iqaluit, which I estimate will likely cost $1,000 to $1,500. So, at a ball park this will be about a $7,000 sealift.

3. This is putting my TV set in jeopardy. The set I was looking at was a 46in LED Samsung. Alas, the cheapest place I've seen it has it for sale at $1,900, which has caused Cathy to do a serious balk. So I have two options...either go back to a 42in set, which will be around $1,500, something that will cause Cathy to have a minor aneurysm as opposed to a massive one or simply wait to buy it at Christmas when the price might drop. However, I will likely still have no way to get it up here.

A finally decision will be made on Sunday. Stay tuned, science lovers.

That's how things currently stand. So for those of you contemplating moving to Iqaluit or doing a sealift, this is what you will face. If this terrifies you, well, you may want to reconsider your options. If you go "Weeeee, shopping spree!" welcome to the north.

Last Five
1. Subterranean homesick alien - Radiohead
2. Dark eyes - Bob Dylan
3. For the pleasure of your company - Lloyd Cole
4. Fuck and run - Liz Phair*
5. The bends - Radiohead