Tomorrow, we move home.

And apparently we have a moving-home tradition. And by “we”, I mean “Karen”. Karen has a moving-home tradition. And that tradition is this:

Do something physically exhausting a week after the move.

Last time she celebrated our move by giving birth the next week.

This time, she’s taking it easy. Just a simple walk. A twenty-six mile walk. At night. To raise money for Cancer Research UK. In memory of my mother.

It should be noted that my wife may be crazy.

But I like her this way, and think you should support her in this insanity – and support Cancer Research UK in the process. Please go sponsor her.

It seems that I missed an anniversary last week. Shame on me.

Five years and seven days ago, I boarded a plane at Toronto’s Pearson airport. Five years and six days ago, I got off a plane at Heathrow airport for the first time. I dragged my jetlagged self through passport control, picked up my two maximum-weight bags and found my way to the Picadilly Line.

Some time later, I was wandering around the streets of central London for the first time. Evening approached, and I made my way to Swiss Cottage where a new home and a new bed were waiting for me.

It’s hard to believe that it has been five years.

Since then, I have had three new jobs, two new employers and one child. I’ve lived north of the river, south of the river, in east London, in west London. Half of my career has now been spent in London (the first half was in the wilds of southern Ontario), and London has, indisputably, become my home.

But I can still recall stepping onto a London street for the first time like it was yesterday. The fear and excitement of leaving Canada to a place where I knew only a single individual, leaving my safety net behind. I don’t think I ever expected to find a new home — I expected to have a few adventures, and find myself back in Canada in a year, or two years, or four years.

Making it to five years here? Quite a surprise. And now there is no end in sight, no plan to go back to Canada. Getting on a plane to Toronto feels like leaving home, not returning there.

And I couldn’t be happier.

You may have noticed that, when we posted on Monday, the tone suggested that there would be more posts this week.

We here at the Big Bad Blog did not intend to lie to you. But we did.

When we moved in to our new flat, we knew we would have to wait for our Internet connection. We were expecting to have to wait until late October, in fact. A Long Time.

But, lo and behold, we moved in and could plug our router into the wall and it worked.

“Lazy Internet companies,” we thought, “they haven’t even bothered to turn off the former tenants’ internet connection.” And we avoided using it, except when absolutely necessary, because it wasn’t ours. You know?

Then our Internet Provider — Sky — told us that it would take until mid-November to get our phone connection up and running. And, as the Internet is accessed via the phone connection, even longer to get connected back to the Internet.

Seeing as we were being screwed over by two Internet Providers (our old provider — Virgin Media — is charging us a cut-off fee so high that I feel that there should be some sort of TSA-patdown involved), we stopped feeling guilty about using the free Internet. It’s hard to feel guilty when you are using a crappy version of the service you’re paying too much money not to have.

And the Big Bad Blog came back to life. Until Monday. That’s when Sky finally got around to getting the phone service off the ground. The side effect of this is that it knocked out the home Internet connection.

Our real Internet connection should be coming soon. In relative terms. Britain seems to be unaware that it’s supposed to be a first world country, and takes months to do things which take less than 48 hours in Canada and France. Like hook a house up to the Internet. Sky requires up to three weeks to remotely trigger the start of broadband at home, and (no matter how much fuss I make) nobody can seem to do anything to make it go faster.

Yes, they admit that it is remotely triggered by them. They just cannot bypass a system that — for no apparent reason — forces their customers to wait weeks.

See you in December.

We hope.

We are now at a countdown of one.

Or seven, if you prefer to go by days rather than weeks.

I have this program on my iPhone that gives a week-by-week pregnancy breakdown. This morning I woke up and opened it to see what the new week brings.

It begins with this:

Congratulations! You’ve reached the end of your pregnancy

That’s a scary thing to read first thing in the morning.

Luckily I had just left Karen sleeping in the bed moments before, and she was still quite pregnant and sleeping soundly. If that sleep is pregnancy coming to an end, I could use a little bit of this “labour” myself.

So this baby is somewhere between moments and weeks away, and Karen and I have spent most of the last four days packing. There is precious little in the house which is not in a box. Those few things are necessities to get through to Saturday, which is moving day. We have a contingency plan or two, but truth be told, if the baby decides to make an early appearance, things will get a bit manic around here.

And by a bit manic, I mean incredibly more manic than a baby’s arrival would normally be.

So, little lady — since I know you can read, and visit Daddy’s weblog daily — stay in until after we have moved. And put your bed together. You’ll want somewhere to sleep.

Please?