Blessed by the Potato

I’ve been using the same towel for two weeks now, and it doesn’t smell like death. Living mould-free is the way to go, I tell you.

I’ve been amazed at how quickly my desk re-cluttered. Not 3 weeks ago everything was packed up into boxes for the move, or thrown out as junk. For the first week or two I kept my desk as clean as possible so that there was plenty of open space to do double duty as my eating table (since the kitchen table was piled high with boxes of kitchen stuff to be properly put away after the move). Now after just a few days of working on my lecture for this morning, it’s every bit as bad as it was before the move, if not worse. Pop cans, candy wrappers, and papers piled everywhere.

Finally, a teaser: John Hempton at Bronte Capital had an interesting post about the demographic crunch coming our way in a few decades, and what that might mean for socialized medicine. Once I catch up on my sleep I plan on doing a short post on the matter.

As I alluded to a few days ago, the accelerator pedal brou-ha-ha at Toyota may open the door for a good deal on a Prius (or, it may not, since it’s one of the few cars they can still sell). I’m going to email a few dealers for quotes tonight, so we’ll see what they say.

The Prius is a very strange and polarizing car: a lot of people have a very visceral and inexplicable dislike of the car. I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve said bad things about it at the merest mention that I may, at some point in the future, buy one. Pretty much all of them are myths (many of which have been debunked right here), or incomplete ideas about cost and payback (or apples-to-oranges comparisons). There are of course some valid criticisms, such as that the acceleration is not sports-car-like (it’s fast enough for a highway merge, which is all that matters to me), or that there are cheaper options if I’m focused purely on the financial aspect (I’m not — it’s one I talk about a lot, but the car has a lot of other merits). In particular, a used car would be cheaper (the hybrids keep their value too well, so it doesn’t make sense to me to get a used Prius). One of the best criticisms came from my friend Ryan who said “The thing about the Prius is this: it’s fuel efficient. It doesn’t use gas. And I make gas, so that’s bad.” [He’s a petrochemical engineer]

Nonetheless, people seem to want to criticize this car choice. I’ve made every attempt to look at it from all angles. I’ve updated my payback/savings spreadsheet with current gas prices and used a Matrix XR with automatic as my comparison car. You can download the 2010 version here if you like (or go to the Them’s Fighting Words post, which explains many of the factors that come into this kind of decision. Since gas prices have come down I’ve become more conservative with my gas price assumption, but even if gas prices stay at 95 cents/L for the next decade, the Prius will still save me several thousand dollars over a Matrix (even though the Prius is more than $5k more expensive up front!). That should handily pay for a battery replacement in the unlikely event one becomes necessary.

So we’ll see what the Toyota dealer says, but assuming they offer me a good deal, this may be your last chance to talk me out of it!

Well, the move is just about done. It took forever and was a huge pain in the ass. “One more move, and then we’re dying in that house.” Wayfare told me. I have to agree.

We hired professional movers for the big move to Toronto — no way was I going to try driving a big truck myself in the winter, or take 10 trips in a cargo van. To help our last move go smoothly we hired professionals as well, and we weren’t very satisfied: while they did get us fully moved in just a few hours and saved our backs a lot of agony, a lot of our stuff ended up scratched or dirty, and they didn’t bring the promised protective blankets, etc. So we tried looking around online for reviews before picking our movers for this round.

To my surprise, it was kind of hard to find any reviews at all for most moving companies. We ended up going with Campbell Bros, which were rated highly by the BBB. We were a little nervous at first since our contact at the company didn’t seem to understand email — we’d get one-line responses that didn’t address all our questions, and one of the quotes he gave us specified a delivery window of about 2 weeks when we were expecting a same-day move. However in person everyone was great — they not only brought the quilts to protect our furniture, they also had roll-out carpets to protect the floors that we worked so hard to get clean! They were done each half of the move in under two hours (it took me and 3 friends almost 3 hours to move just two rooms to my new London apartment). They were also really good at their jobs. It took them no time at all to realize Wayfare’s enormous desk wasn’t going to fit through the door to her office, and had the top off the desk and the door off the hinges in minutes, and then all back together again lickety-split. I think that alone would have taken the better part of the day if we were trying to move ourselves.

Moving the utilities went fairly smoothly this time around — Bell didn’t cut our phone service off a month early or anything. We did have some issues setting up the gas at the new house since apparently the old tenant wasn’t paying his bills, and Enbridge couldn’t figure out whether the gas was on or off (and it was somehow a different process to activate my account if it was off), so I had to have my mom physically go to the house before we moved in to see if there was a lock on the gas meter. Also, Rogers was offering a $30 credit if you set up your move yourself via their website. Their self-move website, naturally, didn’t work. Specifically, it told me that I needed at least 5 business days notice for my move, which I was trying to set up 12 calendar days ahead of time. So I had to call them, and they wouldn’t give me the $30 credit for trying to do it myself (though I’m going to call back again as soon as I have some time to sit down and breathe — blogging time doesn’t count).

With all the stress, all the packing, all the unpacking, plus getting used to a new place (and rewiring the phones, caulking the washroom, and all the other things we seem to do at every new place we move to) I can’t wait to never move again.

PS: To whoever rents the house after us: Congratulations, you’ve just won a free desk you can never take out of the office!