Moving, and the lackthereof

The other day I was feeling down on myself because I’m not quite brave enough to move to a new city. I’ve thought about it, I’ve applied for jobs elsewhere, but I haven’t just dove in and moved with the thought, “I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

Except for writing, I’ve never been much of a “I’ll figure it out when I get there” type of person. The idea of moving somewhere and THEN finding a job is ludicrous to me, kudos to those who can do it.

But back to when I was feeling down about this. I was feeling quite down about it, but then I realized that the vast majority of people I know who have just up and moved have done so with a significant other. That is not insignificant (pun totally intended). You see, this has always been a concern for me, moving to a place where I don’t know anyone and trying to make it work. When people move with a significant other they have a bit of an emotional safety net. They have someone to spend time with those first few months when things are getting sorted. I, as a perpetually sad single person, would not have that luxury.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it makes it different and somewhat justifies my fears. As I’ve said before, that has always been my biggest concern with moving away, not knowing anyone; especially with the act of developing friendships becoming more difficult as we get older.

The idea of moving to a new city is still always going to be a possibility for me. Just with the realization that my apprehension of doing it alone isn’t unsubstantiated is kind of nice. Not being so hard on my psyche for once.

That said, I do need to stop being so fearful and put myself out there. Apply for jobs elsewhere, maybe apply for a school abroad, or to teach English abroad. The worst they can do is say no, right?

 

Footnote: I mostly wrote this as a way to remind myself in the future. I am not weaker than (most) of those that have moved away. There are a few of those stronger than me that just took off, but many had some backup.

Nanowrimo 2015

On November 29, 2015 I completed and “won” my second year of National Novel Writing Month. I finished with 50,252 words, knowing full well that I will be going back and rewriting and editing the shit out of it. I’m not 100% satisfied with what I wrote, but I really do like Nano, it reminds me of why I like writing. It’s fun not having to worry about the editing process too much.

I’ve been editing my first novel for too long (seriously, I need to finish it, this is getting ridiculous) and I forgot how much fun it is just say “screw it, just keep writing” and not trying not to worry too much about whether what I wrote in chapter 6 follows exactly what I wrote in chapter 2. I’m going to go back through and edit it, possibly soon. I want to finish editing my first novel first. I’m so close, I only have about 5,000 words left to edit it then I want to have some readers go through it and point out things I’ve missed.

Like I told my friend Elizabeth (https://elizabethjenike.wordpress.com/) I don’t completely hate what I’ve written this time. Which, maybe I just haven’t had a chance to hate it yet 🙂 . I do need to work on the world building, I came across some questions that I just brushed past. The phrase for this month was “I’ll fix it in post” and that definitely got me to my 50k words.

But eventually I want to send it out.

I want to be an author.

 

NaNoWriMo and Beyond – aka I suck at this game

Lately, I’ve been stuck in a rut. I say this a lot and, unfortunately, I’m stuck in the same rut. I keep thinking of what I want in life and how to achieve those goals, but I’m doing a pretty shitty job of actually attaining them. I keep telling myself that things will be different if I have a job I like better/pays more/has better hours or that I would write so much more if I lived some place different. But I should really just cut the bullshit, shouldn’t I?

NaNoWriMo starts in a little over two weeks. I did it last year and “won” meeting the goal of writing 50,000 words. I haven’t touched that work since. I have been working on editing my actual, completed novel but even that I only work on for about an hour a week. That’s not enough.

I’m going to try to make goals. Small goals that are easy to accomplish but hopefully will build up to something worthwhile. I’m going to try to change how I spend my spare time. Because, while living alone is weird because I have to do all the chores. I have to cook, clean, do laundry all by myself, there’s no reason that I can’t use that time to plot my stories. Same with exercising. I listen to podcasts while I do that, but maybe I should go back to music and try plotting then as well. Granted, sometimes the podcasts give me ideas, but it’s something to consider. Maybe it’ll bolster my writing, maybe it won’t. But it’s worth a try.

Maybe I should try writing in different places. I’ve never had much success writing in coffee shops, but it might be worth a try. Maybe I should write at the kitchen table or at my desk. Maybe it would help if I cleaned out my office and made it nice to work in. These are all things I should, and will, try.

So, my goals:

1. I will clean my office and make it nicer to write in
2. I will have an outline for NaNoWriMo
3. I will try to win again this year, but will be happy if I write at least 30,000 words aka 1,000 a day instead of 1,667 (the required daily amount to win)
4. After NaNoWriMo I will try to write at least 2,500 a week (500 words for 5 days a week, some days I’m giving myself the idea that I will allow myself 2 days off a week)
5. But I will try to write every day.

Will I meet these goals? Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea as I am not clairvoyant. But if I want to be a writer, like I’ve said I’ve wanted to be since I was about 7 years old, I should probably actually, you know, write.

P.S. TWO DAY BLOG STREAK, SOMEONE GIVE ME A COOKIE.

Tomboy

Required rant of: I haven’t blogged in a year, I’m worst. Yadda yadda yadda

This blog post is going to be a response to the New York Times article “Where Have All the Tomboys Gone?” and all the stupid comments made on it, because screw you, I need to vent.

I will say I was a tomboy. I still am, if adult women can be considered tomboys. I find tomboy fairly easy to define, and since people seem not to have the same definition, here’s mine: A tomboy is a girl who prefers “rough and tumble” play. She is not afraid to get dirty, and tends to be very comfortable with boys and “boy” activities. Often, she is more comfortable in pants than skirts but she still considers herself a girl.

The quote of Liz Prince in the article could very well have been said by me:
“If you’re in high school and still dressing like that, people think you’re definitely a lesbian,” Ms. Prince said.                               “But I wanted to wear boys’ clothes and make out with them, too.”

That’s about it, to me. A tomboy is a girl that prefers the aesthetics of “boys” and doesn’t really have much to do beyond that.

The article itself is pretty good, I feel. The only thing that gave me pause was that the term “tomboy” is out-of-date and that the phrase “gender non-conforming” would be more accurate. I don’t disagree with this statement, but I feel like the phrase could be misleading. I feel like some people may think that someone is transgender, which I am not. I was born female, and feel female, I just don’t feel “girly.” That’s my only real problem with the article itself.

But the comments. Oh god, the comments.

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I’m going to take a few of the comments and yell at them like an old man yells at a cloud. 

1. Mary says: “If only equality didn’t mean that everyone has to be male-like to succeed. Just because men rule basically everything doesn’t mean that we should dress like them or act like them. We should be permitted to be the lawyer, the boss, the whatever without adopting male clothes and testosterone-fueled aggression. It’s not the dress code that is the problem, it’s unequal pay, violence against women, and invidious discrimination in all aspects of life. I’m in favor of gender identity; I just don’t think it has to be male to be good.”

Mary, Mary, Mary. No. That is not the point. I don’t feel like I need to adopt male clothes and “testosterone-fueled aggression” to be successful. I am, and was, simply being who I am comfortable being. Someone decided to give it a name and we ran with it.

2. Pooteeweet says: “Well, these days there’s a concerted effort to convince girls who would’ve been tomboys in the past, that they’re transgender.”

Pooteeweet, you ignorant slut. Transgender and tomboy is not the same. I have never felt that I was in the wrong body as transgender people do. I feel out of place in a dress, not my body.

3. RefLib says: “When I was growing up, I thought being called a tomboy was a badge of honor. It meant that I was welcome to play with the boys and I could keep up. We lived on the edge of a town by wilderness and I loved to play in creeks, ride horses, play army, or build forts with anyone who would, boy or girl. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t want to be a boy. I also liked dressing up, reading books, playing with dolls. I had it all! I want that for everyone.”

See, RefLib (obviously a smarty being a reference librarian) gets it and me. Hell, I could have written this comment. After the age of 5 there were no girls my age in my neighborhood. While I did have a male friend who was into “girly” stuff with me, most of the time I was tailing along with my brother and his friends, weaseling my way into street hockey games. The “girly” stuff I liked had to wait until I was with my cousin, so I embraced the “boy” stuff.

4. avery_t says: Katniss.

Alos, Beyonce’s dancing is more athletic than most traditional tomboy activities.

Tomboys were girls unafraid of physical activities. Now, in the media, there’s Katniss, Ronda Rousey, and twerking. Hip hop lent an athleticism to femininity that didn’t exist in the disco era.

I don’t really have anything to add to this comment. I like it a lot. 4 for you avery_t, you go avery_t.

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There are more comments, many of them supporting the term and activities of “tomboy” many of them just being pedantic and annoying.

Is tomboy kind of an outdated term? In my opinion, yes and no. If someone were to be describing someone to me, they could expedite things by describing a girl as a tomboy. But I do feel that the differences between “boy stuff” and “girl stuff” is being blurred, as it should be.

Tomboy is getting harder to define, as girls are not being held to the same standards that they once were. Womens’ sports are more prevalent (Btw, check out the new National Women’s Hockey League, I’m trying to decide which team I’m going to root for) and “boyfriend” fashions are in (again).

But if you ask me if I’m a tomboy, the answer is still “yes.”

Opinion Withheld

First, let me get this out of the way: I haven’t blogged since April. I am the worst blogger in the world.

Okay, now that that’s done, I want to talk about relationships for a moment. Nothing too serious, but I had this thought the other day and I wanted to write it down and maybe even have others discuss it.

A few weeks ago someone asked me if I liked someone. Not romantically, but just a general, “hey you know Walter” (I don’t actually know a Walter, I’m just throwing out a hypothetical person) “do you like Walter? Is he a good guy?”

Now what I say could possibly have repercussions about this person’s relationship with Walter. They might have thought Walter was a great guy and if I say, “nah, I’m not a fan of him” they suddenly have this weird thing in their brain constantly reminding them that “I thought Walter was cool, but Beth doesn’t like him.” Or the reverse could have happened.

My question is: Why do I have to like or dislike a person?

When I am asked this question sometimes I just say I don’t really have an opinion, and often people act like that is the strangest response.

If I haven’t had much of an interaction with someone why do I have to have a like/dislike leaning of them. Or am I expected to have a strong opinion of someone based on what they ordered at Starbuck’s? Or that they were at Starbuck’s in general? Am I expected to judge someone’s entire personality based on how they eat their bananas?That’s just ludicrous. Why can’t I just withhold opinion until I know them better? Or indefinitely?

I will point out that whether I like, dislike, or have no opinion of someone I always try to be polite and kind to them. Because that’s what civilized people do.

I just find this social norm interesting. You can’t just not have an opinion about someone. You either like or dislike them. Those are your only options.

Starting Something New as an Adult

It’s hard to start something new. I’ve heard that a lot and my response was always, “well, yeah, duh.” But I don’t think that sentence really illustrates the annoyance that goes along with starting something new.

About a year ago I decided I wanted to try to start running. My cousin had started running the year before me and I saw that she was looking healthier and seemed to be feeling healthier as well. I also decided that I wasn’t terribly happy with my athletic abilities and thought that, for the most part, running would be the easiest/least expensive thing to take up. I didn’t need to buy much more than clothes and shoes, and I didn’t need to have a bunch of people to do it with me. It would just be me.

That’s where we get into how frustrated I quickly became. I started with couch to 5k programs that I stuck with pretty well until about the 6th week. Then, for whatever reason, I stopped doing it. I think it was partially because by that week they (the program developers) said I should be able to run for X amount of time and I couldn’t. I could run more than I could when I started the program, but I wasn’t to where I thought I should be or where people thought I should be. I got discouraged. I still ran, but I wasn’t pushing myself as much as I should have. 

Then winter and the holidays came and for about 2 months I didn’t do much more than walk once a week.

But now I’m trying again. This is something I want to do. I want to be able to run 3.1 miles without having to stop. I still get discouraged. I haven’t started any new hobbies since I was a teenager. It was then that I took up horseback riding, guitar, drawing, painting. It was when I was 8 that I first started writing. It’s been a long time since I started at the bottom of something and I think that got to me.

Suddenly it made sense to me how my mom felt when we took violin lessons at the same time. I was about 11, my mom was in her 30s. I never understood why she got so frustrated when she couldn’t get a particularly difficult measure. Now I do. Once you’ve gotten a handle on so many things it’s weird to be the beginner.

Anyway, I’m new to running. I’m really fucking slow at it. I run an 11 minute km (that’s like a 18 minute mile). But I still run. Even when I feel like my legs are going to fall off. And when I can’t run, I walk my dog. We did 4.77 km the other day and I felt pretty good about it. Then we got home and she chased the cat for 20 minutes. Looks like I’ll have a running partner in a few months.

Random and Stupid Story #1

I’ve decided that since this blog is just for shits and giggles and has no real point to it that I will start posting random stories and anecdotes just because I can.

When I was in London in 2011-2012 I was sitting in my hotel room one evening watching the TV quiz show Pointless. The best way I can describe Pointless is that it’s kind of a reverse Family Feud. People are tasked with answering a question correctly, but with the most obscure answer they can come up with. Before the show starts they ask 100 people the questions and assign points based on how often an answer is given. The goal is to have the least amount of points by the end of the show.

Here’s an example question:
COUNTRIES THAT BORDER TURKEY
Greece- 50
Azerbajain- Pointless
Armania- 3
Georgia- 8
Bulgaria- 17
Syria- 24
Iran- 24
Iraq- 25

Anyway, we’re watching this show and the question comes up “CHARACTERS THAT APPEAR IN HAMLET THAT ARE NOT HAMLET HIMSELF AND ARE NOT IN THE MOUSE TRAP, THE PLAY WITHIN A PLAY.” Right. Pretty straight forward, though difficult if you know absolutely nothing about Hamlet. I think the only three I could recall without much thought was Ophelia, Horatio, and Polonius (my mom added Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to those). The players answered with Yorick. Yorick is not a character in Hamlet, he’s a prop.

CHARACTERS IN HAMLET
Free recall- Won’t accept Hamlet himself or anyone from ‘The Mouse Trap’, the play within a play.
Polonius- 10
Marcellus- Pointless
Fortinbras- Pointless
Barnardo- Pointless
Reynaldo- 2
Osric- 2
Cornelius- 2
Valtermand- 2
Francisco- 3
Laetres- 5
Rosencrantz- 6
Guildenstern- 6
Ghost of Hamlet- 8
King Claudius- 11
Horatio- 12
Gertrude- 12
Ophelia- 20

Anyway, British quiz shows are 10 times better than American ones.

I was an Amazon Warehouse Worker

Today I saw this article and was reminded that I’ve been meaning to write this long-winded post for awhile about my experiences of working in the Amazon warehouse.

I only worked there for 7 weeks, I started in August right before I started my last semester of grad school and decided to quit a few weeks later because I couldn’t possibly finish my capstone project while working 50 hours a week (I’ll get to that in a few moments).

About 90% of the people that work at Amazon warehouses either are temps or started as temps and got hired on. So, when you get a job there, you know that you are only going to be there for about 6 months. After that you have to take some time off (I believe it’s 2 months) before you can start another 6 month-long stretch. Occasionally, they’ll hire you on permanently as a full-fledged Amazon employee, (moving from a “white badge” to a “blue badge” employee) instead of an employee of the temp agency. From what I could tell/what I can remember, not much changed in the way of pay, but you received benefits.

The Facility

I worked at the Hebron location where there are 3 different buildings housing different products (I worked in building #1 which mostly soft and small items. Lots of clothes and watches and belts and things going through). The building was large and barely air conditioned (the air condition was a new thing in itself. The previous year all they had were fans) but it didn’t help too much. You always got warm within a few minutes of working. There were 2 break rooms, one lounging area with couches and a tv, three bathrooms, and a first aid area (that was stupidly NOT open on the weekends). To get from one part of the warehouse to the other you walked along taped off walkways. This was mostly so you didn’t get run over by a forklift.

How the Job Worked

When you start as a temp, they basically divide the new hires into two different groups: pickers and packers.

Pickers are the people that walk the entire length of the warehouse several times a day, using a scanning gun to find the item to put in the box and send it down to the packers.

The packers pack. Do I honestly need to tell you that?

I was a packer, so I’ll mostly tell you about that. I’ll just run you through how my day went, shall I?

6:15 AM: Show up to work and park. Enter through the outer door and use my badge to get through the walk-through cage thing to get into the facility. Hang a left and go into the “new” break room (when I worked there it was recently finished and larger than the other one). Place my belongings I wasn’t going to need and put them on the open shelving unit under the window (only permanent employees had lockers). Depending on when I got there I’d have a drink of gatorade (there were 2 fountains free for employee use) and then fill up my water bottle before going out onto the floor.

6:30 AM: Clock in and stand in a giant group for announcements and warm up. Look at the television screen that would tell me what I would be doing for the first five hours of my shift. Since I was a packer this became 6 different types of packing. Amazon single or multi bag and Amazon single or multi box or the same thing with MyHabit single and multi, box and bag. I always hoped for bag single. It was easiest and fastest and got your rates up really quickly. Anyway, you saw where you were headed and did your required warm-ups before starting your shift. These exercises were REQUIRED meaning if you refused to do them you could be sent home for the day and be penalized.

6:45 AM-11:30 AM: Find the station you’ve been assigned and set up shop. Set your water bottle down and make sure you have everything that you need to get started, mainly bags of varying sizes and paper for printing invoices. If you were working multi you grab a large cart with slots on each shelf (each slot contained one order). Begin working.

If you were doing singles, a conveyor belt brought large plastic bins down a line and you just grabbed one and put it on a resting spot at your station. You scanned the box and it brought up a list of items that should be in the bin. You’d scan an item, place it in the appropriately-sized bag and, if there were any, place any papers in with it. Sometimes we’d forget to put the invoices in (so so so sorry if I ever did this, I felt guilty about it every time I did forget) you’d seal the bag, place a printed barcode on it and throw it on another conveyor belt to be shipped out. You did this for five hours (with a 15 minute break). Occasionally, there would be an item missing from your bin meaning you couldn’t complete it so you would flip on a light to have someone (I believe they were called runners?) come and take care of it for you. Same thing if you had superfluous items in your bin. From what I could tell, those people just stood around until needed.

11:30 AM-12:00 PM: LUNCH! You weren’t allowed to leave your station until lunch started. You, hopefully, had already logged out and taken care of any housekeeping sort of stuff you had to do like restocking supplies. You’d then go and wait in line to clock out, because, for whatever reason, they only had to clock out stations at each entrance. So you’d have about 100 people trying to get to the clock. After clocking out you’d hit a button that was basically a randomizer. If it came up green you got to go straight to lunch, red and you had to go through a security screening.  Most of the time it didn’t bother me, getting screened, though sometimes it got annoying when each 15 minute break and lunch and to leave I had to get screened. Granted, some days I didn’t get screened at all, but after awhile you wonder if you’re getting targeted.

12:00 PM-5:00 PM: Sit through announcements and do your stretches again. The biggest thing about post-lunch announcements is they would often announce at that time if you had to come in on one of your days off for mandatory overtime. They could make the announcement as late as lunch on Friday. Potentially be moved to another section to pack, but the biggest thing was you had to change directions. See, they felt if you had the conveyor belt on the right side of you in the morning then it should be on the left side of you in the afternoon. This was to keep you from getting cramps while working, which kind of didn’t help at all because you still got sore from doing the same repetitive motion every day.

I see a lot of complaints about working at Amazon. And I understand them, to a point. There were a lot of questionable things like how the point system worked for attendance and the mandatory overtime thing was kind of shitty because of how late of notice they could give you. But for the pay for an unskilled job it wasn’t absolutely horrible. Would I want to do it again? Not really. Would I? Yes.

If you have any questions feel free to ask them.

My experience house hunting

So, today I was dicking around on buzzfeed and saw this article of 79 Thoughts You Always Have While Watching House Hunters and was inspired by one comment about what someone thought when they were house hunting. And I thought, yes, that is a good idea I wish to do this on my blog that nobody reads. So that’s what this post is about, house hunting.

I will say that I started out looking at houses and later decided on condos. I probably ended up looking at (at least) 20 properties. I will not go into what I thought about every single one of those property (some of them were terrifying, no lie), so instead I’ll go over my thoughts on the 3 condos that I bid on.

First, a list of things I wanted in the property I ended up with:
“Must Haves”
1. Two bedrooms
2. One and a half baths, minimum
3. Outdoor space
4. In either Campbell or Kenton county
“Nice to Haves”
1. A garage (preferably connected)
2. A pool in the complex
3. A fireplace

That’s it, that’s all I wanted. I also wanted it to be move-in ready, but when I started that wasn’t a big deal because I had a lot of time before I had to move.

Condo #1
The first condo we looked at because my Realtor suggested that I would be happier with a condo than a house. So, after looking at some houses, she asked if we’d be interested in looking at this condo that recently went on the market. It could be a good deal, but was definitely in need of a remodel. The complex was nice, right off a fairly major road, but the unit we were going to look at was farther back. It was in Campbell County and had all of my “must haves” (HGTV has corrupted me into having these lists).

The unit was on the first floor and an end unit. It had its own front door (which was really on the side, but it had no common hallway). We walked in and the first thing we noticed was this was what you thought about when you thought “foreclosure.” The flooring had been removed to reveal only the poured concrete underneath which basically made me thing “awesome, I can put in wood, or laminate or something.” There was a gas fireplace, which I liked, but there was a weird cubby above it for your TV. Since it was built in 1996, the idea of flatscreen was non-existent at the time which resulted in that weird cubby. I didn’t have a clue what I put there. I thought maybe I’d get some big artwork and hang it over it and hide things in there or maybe I’d put some books and knickknacks and ignore the outlet in it. We moved on to the kitchen. At first glance it wasn’t too bad, but once we really started looking we noticed what bad shape the cabinets were in. “Not the end of the world,” I thought, “at least it comes with some appliances.” There was an oven, microwave and dishwasher. I stupidly opened the dishwasher to find dirty dishes left in it and mouse shit all over. “That’s going to the curb,” my mother said. No matter, we still thought this unit was a good option. We’d basically have to gut the kitchen and redo the guest bath (that had some weird black stains that ran down the front of the cabinets. Seriously, wtf did they do in there?) And the master bedroom closet didn’t have any shelving in it because, apparently, whoever lived there got pissy they were foreclosed on and ripped them out. It was overwhelming to begin with, but after discussing it with my parents there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be done or would cost too much.

We put in a bid, thinking that if we got it for what we bid at, we would have enough money to do all the things we wanted done. After a couple of weeks our bid was accepted. Yay! But, you may have noticed this is condo #1 our of 3. What went wrong? Well, whoever held the mortgage on this place didn’t know where the papers were. They searched all of the local counties and for the life of them could not figure out where the necessary papers were being held. We waited months for them to find them and when they didn’t, we told them forget it and moved onward.

Condo #2
This second condo was in Kenton County in a newer complex. It was built in 2007 and was an even nicer complex than the previous one. It had 2 pools, a workout room, a nature trail and paved paths all around. It was nice. The bad thing was that when we went to look at it, we weren’t aware it was a short sale but we were there, so why not give it a look. It was a second floor unit with its own entrance. There was a (very large) connected garage that entered into the private entrance hall and then stairs that went up to the living area. It had nice vaulted ceilings, and a large pantry in the kitchen. This one was different from the last because it had no required work. The only thing I would have done is removed a lot of the wallpaper (eventually) and probably cleaned the rugs real well. That’s it. I really liked it. Thinking back now, it would have been an absolute pain this winter with the ice and snow we got considering the complex was on a fairly rural road, and my work NEVER FRIGGING CLOSED. Anyway, we liked it and we had our Realtor (did you know that is capitalized for reasons I don’t understand?) called the Realtor in charge of the property and asked the likelihood of our bid being accepted. He said, considering we were offering what had previously been accepted in another deal it wouldn’t be a problem. We bid.

Weeks later, my Dad and I decide to drive past the condo to look at it again like a couple of weirdos to find a notice on the door. It was going to auction. ALL OF MY WHAT. So we show up at the court house to make another bid on it, hoping maybe we’ll get it even cheaper. NOPE. The stupid bank in all of it stupidness bought it for a good $30k more than what we offered for it. So the bank bought it from itself to cover what it owed the in taxes and all that. What happened is while our offer was in the process of being accepted, nobody in that branch of the bank bothered to tell the other branch of the bank so it went to auction. We literally lost a condo because the bank was extra stupid.

(This condo ended up selling for about $5k less than what we offered.)

Condo #3
The winning condo! The condo I live in now! It was a basement unit with a garage! While I was a bit bummed out that the garage didn’t enter directly into the unit, it was one of the units in the complex that had the garage in the same building as the unit instead of being a separate building. This wasn’t a huge deal, but I liked that a lot, because the last thing I want to deal with while getting my groceries out of the car is a garage door, and a building door, and a unit door. Just too many doors. This was a bit easier. Anyway, there’s a common hallway but I only share it with 2 other units each on a different floor. If I really wanted to I could always enter in the back patio. You see how excited I’m getting just talking about where I currently live? The thing is, if I had my choice between all 3 condos right now, guaranteed to get whichever I picked, the one I live in would not be it. But I’ve come to really like my condo. It has its faults, sure, but I like it all the same. It has some space out back where I can plant things (on my to-do list for this spring) and it looks out over a wooded hill, not a parking lot. When I went into the condo I liked it immediately. It wasn’t as fancy as the others we had seen but it had storage the others didn’t have and it was basically a blank slate. The kitchen is nice and pretty big and the appliances work (besides the ice maker in the fridge). The bedrooms are big and besides the fact it has white carpet (honestly, WHY WHITE CARPET?) I like just about everything about it. I thought that when I went in and the fact it wasn’t a short sale or foreclosure did wonders. Our offer was accepted quickly.

 

House hunting is pretty ridiculously exciting. It’s the whole wrapping up that’s a big pain in the ass.

Nothing Really Going On Right Now

I don’t really have a post ready for publishing right now. I have a couple I’m working on, but nothing that really warrants a post. So instead, here’s what’s going on with me lately.

-So, mostly I’ve simply been working lately. I realized today that my job is pretty much a dead-end job unless I decide to get another master’s degree and that bums me out to no end. I want a different job, but I’m also one of those people that fears change. If I were brave I’d look into other cities, but right now I like where I am for the most part. We’ll see how I feel about that in a couple of months.

-I’m slowly working on my running. I started running last year, and am pretty much the world’s slowest runner. I currently have been running about 3.5 km (so, 2.17 miles) in 37 minutes. This is very slow. This is like a 17 minute mile, people. My coworker runs like, an 8 minute mile. Granted, he’s about six inches shorter than myself and 100 pounds lighter, but I still wish I could be anywhere near as fast as he is. But at this point that is insanity and I’d just be happy to shave 2 minutes off my time to run a 15 minute mile. I’d still be slow as hell, but at least I’d be faster than I am now.

-I’m still revising my novel. Slow and steady wins this race, right?

Other than that I’m reading and trying to keep my condo from looking like a sty. What’s up with you?