Monthly Archives

January 2017

Driving Life

Better late, then never.

After about 10 years, I have finally renewed my Learners license!

Best part is that it only took me 2 ½ MONTHS to get the yellow temporary piece of paper, well they send the real one in the mail!

On November 7th, I had the day off from work and figured “What the heck, let’s go re-new my learners”. So I set out for the closest ICBC licensing office. I waited in line, got a number, sat down and waited for my call number. When my number was called I talked to a lovely lady, I told her I was here to renew my much expired Learners.

Fact: It was 10 years old.

In order to pass, I had to take the knowledge test by answering at least 40 questions right, and do an eye exam.

I passed the knowledge test!

However, I did not pass the “Eye Exam”.

I’m sure you are wondering how I failed this eye exam. Well, first off, I wouldn’t call it an eye exam. After going to the optometrist for the better part of 23 years, I know what an eye exam is. That ICBC eye exam is not an eye exam.

Anyway, I’m sure the reason I failed this “Eye exam” is because of my glasses. Apparently you can do your eye exam with and without glasses. The person behind the counter asked me to do this eye exam with my glasses on. I did because I didn’t know you had the option to do it without. Although, due to my prescription, any close up, in my face flashing lights will throw me off. Guess what was part of this “Eye exam”? You guessed it, flashing lights. So I passed the written and failed the eye exam.

But fear not!

I could take a form (Evaluation of Visual Functions (EVF)), to my optometrist to fill out, and return it later that day or up to 30 days later. Too bad the optometrist that I have been seeing for the last 15 years was located in Kamloops.

In fact, I was located in a giant mall. The hunt for an optometrist who took walk ins was on!

I located one and got an appointment for 3hours later. Did I mention I was in a mall? Once my appointment was underway, I had a lovely man tell me that I have a lot of prism in my glasses. He also told me that I was his 4th EVF of the day and that this amount of prism would throw off any test that I took well wearing glasses. Thank you random mall optometrist for taking $91.00 and telling me information that I already knew.  FILL OUT THE PAPER WORK!  What should have been a 30min appointment was now taking an hour. When he did fill out my paperwork he made some mistakes and corrected them, signed it and sent me on my way.

Back the ICBC office to hand in this now dodgy looking EVF.

The only bright side to that day was the lady who was originally helping me, let me jump the line to hand in the paper work. “I’ll be right back I just have to get my supervisor to look this over”.

That’s when I learned this lovely little fact:
It needs to be sent into RoadSafeBC (RSBC) via FAX

Also, I would need to call them in one to two weeks to find out the next steps.

ONE WEEK LATER:

I called RSBC about the status of my EVF. Turns out they were processing everything from that day and to “Call back on Friday”.

Another ONE WEEK LATER:

I called RSBC about the status of my EVF. Turns out they have no paper work or record of me calling last week and that I should go back into the ICBC office I was dealing with and get them to resend it.

ANOTHER ONE WEEK LATER:

I have the morning off from work and head back to the ICBC office. I got in line, got a number, and waited for my number to be called.
Once my number was called I explained EVERYTHING thus far to the man behind the counter.
He then called RSBC and asked what the status was. The conversation went something like this:

ICBC: “I have a client in front of me; we would like to know the status of her EVF to renew her Learners.
RSBC:  “We have no records on our end of any FAX or paper work, did you send in the paperwork?”
ICBC: “We faxed and mailed you the original copy. We have nothing here; we sent it to you two weeks ago. All I have here is the client’s photocopied copy of her EVF”.
RSBC: “We need the original copy”.
ICBC: “Yes I understand that, but we sent you those by fax and e-mail two weeks ago. I’m going to fax over the photocopy copy and I’m going to stay on the line until you get it”.
The guy then told me to call them in a week to see what the status of my EVF was.

ANOTHER WEEK LATER:

I called RSBC about the status of my EVF and that call went like this:

Me: “Hi, I’m wondering about the status of my EVF?”
RSBC: “Yes, we have received it.”
Me: “Awesome, so what is the next step for me?”
RSBC: “Well the EVF is in line for review so until it’s up for review, it’s a waiting game.”
Me: “Ok, may I ask how long that may take?”
RSBC: “Well we are currently reviewing EVFs from June.”
Me:  “So you are telling me that I won’t find out until the new year if I can renew my LEARNERS LICENSE?”
RSBC: “yes”
Me: “OKAYBYE”.

At this point I was beyond frustrated and super annoyed with this whole processes. I had pretty much given up on renewing my license and taking transit until I died.

ANOTHER TWO WEEKS LATER:

I got a letter in the mail!

START THE COFFEE, CUE THE MUSIC, START THE PARADE!

The letter stated that I need glasses to drive! All I had to do was take this letter into the ICBC office with two pieces of ID and I’m ready to go. The only part about this that sucked was that it was now prime Christmas Shopping holidays at the mall and I figured I would wait it out. I hate the mall during the Christmas season.

TWO AND A HALF MONTHS IN

January 19th, I finally renewed my learners license

after waiting at the ICBC licensing office for an hour and a half.  The short of the already really long. Someone somewhere didn’t put all of my info into the box and they had to print 5 different temporary drivers’ licenses for me.

Plus side: I got to practice what my signature would look like on my ID!

Moral of the story:
Don’t let your license expire.

Life

Challenge Yourself.

One of the definitions of challenge is:

To test the ability, skill, or strength of (someone or something) : to be difficult enough to be interesting to (someone)

Last year I took part in the Instagram 365 Photo Challenge (Technically it was the 366 photo challenge as it was a leap year) and I loved it. An old co-worker of mine did the Instagram Photo Challenge in 2015 and she inspired me to take on that challenge for 2016.

So from January 1st to Dec 31st 2016 I took a total of 3,000+ Photos and made 442 posts to Instagram.

It was never about getting followers, or a number of likes, but to challenge myself to do something every day for a year. Some days it was to find something that made me happy, or brought a memory to mind, or something stupid that made me laugh. In the end, it was to challenge myself and to see how I could do the same thing in a different way, every day.

Of course like any challenge you take on in life, you are going to have some difficult times. With that said, the only time last year I felt I really struggled with the Photo Challenge was near the end. December was a hard month for me to get through. Creatively, emotionally and physically. The stress from working the holidays, my best friend was moving out and to top it off I ended up with a meniscus tear in my knee. As a result, it was hard to find the drive to finish the project.

But I did and it felt great.

I did end my photo challenge on a bit of a lower note then I originally wanted to, but I felt it was a perfect way to end the year and the photo challenge.

So it’s a new year, 2017, and I have a new challenge for myself.

One blog post a week for a year.

I’m excited about writing about my travel plans, life, love, adventures, and all the weird transit stories. But I’m mostly excited about what I’m going to get up to this year. I look forward to see what 2017 is going to throw my way and how I’m going to knock it out of the park.

Life

The Italian moved out.

I posted about the ending of my 366 photo challenge with a bit of a heavy photo.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOsP6mnjeT7/?taken-by=piratespacebee

 

Moving boxes and packed up belongings. I’ve known for a while that he was and would be moving. The Italian didn’t end up moving out until today as it snowed on Saturday.

Although it never hit me that he would be moving until I walked into the house today.

The Italian has, in fact, moved out.

Then cue me bursting into tears.

This was probably a result of me being completely burnt out at work. Or it’s because I never had the chance to have a good cry when we broke up. But the tears came out, as well as the wine and chocolate.

Why did we break up? Well, we broke up because we wanted and still want different things in life. With that said, we stayed friends and roommates.

Why did he move out? It’s simple, he needed to. For himself and for me. While it is hard right now, it’s for the best. The Italian has a life, I have a life, we need to live them.

Why didn’t you just make it work? For the sole reason that I want to be happy and I want him to be happy. On a romantic level, it didn’t work out. We want different things that we believe will add to our happiness. On a friendship level, we are golden. He’s actually one of my very good friends who I plan on keeping around until we are old.

I wont lie, I’m going to miss living with the Italian. He makes delicious food, he can make you laugh when you’ve had a bad day at work and doesn’t hold back when you’re being a butt.

But like all good things, they must come to an end and new beginnings have to start. I look forward to hearing about all the adventures that the Italian will be going on and look forward to telling him about all my adventures. At the end of the day he is still one of my very good friends, just no longer my roommate.