This is happening.

Many stories centre around Chief Factor John Rowand, who was in charge of Fort Edmonton for many years. No one was so completely master on the western plains as Rowand, the great little martinet who built the big house at Edmonton which they called "Rowand's Folly." It is related that, to impress the savage Indians with whom he had to deal, he had the room in which he received them "painted with such barbaric gaudiness, and the ceiling so filled with fantastic gilt scrolls, that no white man ever entered it for the first time, without a start."

I put the deposit down on it today. It's this little two-bedroom apartment at the bottom of Bellamy Hill, the oldest fucking high-rise in Edmonton (also called Rowand House - we plainsmen have our myths, and we stick with 'em), on the seventh floor with this completely amazing view. I've never had a view before, people. Not of anything that wasn't a) a decrepit old red barn, b) hundreds of acres of flat marshland (which doesn't sound so bad now but was just a bit empty, soul-speaking, to look at for five years), c) the median of a traffic circle and a giant helium ape waving from atop the SuperCuts across the other side, d) my asshole neighbor and his unfathomable series of white pickup trucks.

This view is of the most beautiful landscape in all of Alberta: Edmonton's River Valley.

It's going to be small for me. We have just so goddamned much stuff, and I figure we're going to have to cut it by at least a third. I'd like to keep the garage of this place for storage, but I understand that a garage is part of the appeal of house life and if it's at all possible I should include it in the deal. Most of all I just want a good tenant, and everything I can do to sweeten the deal is something I should try to do.

This means work. Sanding the hardwoods. Painting over the cerulean walls in the bathroom. (Who the fuck was I when I picked that colour?) Cleaning this messy house like it's never been done before. A garage sale would make sense, but who's got the time, the time, the precious time? There's three more weeks left in this month. I work a lot of it. I am freaking out. I'm panicking. I'm totally elbow-chewingly mad with dread and anticipation and as I sit here my brain is sweating so hard I'm getting thirsty.

Sadly, my piano is going to have to find a new home. It simply can't make the journey up into the sky with us. I think that'll be the saddest thing of all.

I don't think I'll miss this house. There were a lot of really great parties here, and just as many times when I lost my fucking mind in a melting depression brought on by too much booze and too much pot, or not enough of either. I tried to rock the world from this house. I called it the Mirador de Beacon Heights, though it was only a bungalow. It was definitely some kind of dominion. But all the way along, there were things that never matched up for me about this house. In a way, all the space kind of bugged me. Especially when my roommates, my bandmates, my buddies, one by one had left for their own place and their own healthy adult life. It always felt too big for me.

Too: the backyard is unconscionably rectangular, and it's broken up by this apple tree that stands right squat in the center of it like a referee. I always meant to cut it down and put a firepit there, but that would've just led to the same problem, aesthetically.

The front lawn is constantly being killed by these enormous spruces which, while admittedly gorgeous, just aren't what most people see when they look at a house. Most people see the lawn. Our lawn is this pathetic dry brown ring of vegetation around the edges, ceding the bulk of space to a figure-eight of mud and spruce needles. It's embarassing to mow it.

I am so, so sick of shoveling snow. That's over. I shovel enough at work, anyways, fuck I wanna come home and do it fer?

One thing I definitely am not going to miss this hellhole of a neighborhood. Olde Towne Beverly, honey, you need to stuff your tits back in your dress.