I may have rented the Money Pit…

As some of you may know, I recently moved. I was so excited about it. It was out of apartment complex living and into a duplex in a quiet neighborhood. It had tile floors and two bedrooms complete with a lovely back patio. It was going to be awesome. Well, I am two weeks in and I am fairly certain I rented the Money Pit.

Luckily, I only rented it but now have to live through them trying to fix everything they apparently didn’t notice after the last tenant moved out (which I might add was almost an entire MONTH before I moved in so what they are doing, I am not sure; my faith in their ability to manage is quite low at the moment). I am also having to deal with an apartment that had a former tenant, as well as a cleaning crew that supposedly cleaned the place twice (before and after I had the keys), that clearly did not define the word “clean” as I do. Scrubbing floors by hand has been a weekend pastime since I moved in…and I’m still pulling up dirt like the floors has multiple layers of it so I’ll keep at it.

I adore the space; I do. The size of it is perfect for me. And I knew there would be challenges to a garden apartment in Florida. Logically, it shouldn’t exist but Tallahassee is one of the only places in this state it could. However, I wasn’t quite expecting the level of entertainment I’ve had so far. It will be good someday; I know it will. I just need to grin and make it through. In the meantime, they pushed back the date for wall construction so I’ll make it through a weekend where it feels more like I am camping out in the place rather than living in it. I think that might be my biggest issue so far. I can’t get settled or comfortable in the space because I can’t finish with it yet. I had gotten my office/library into some semblance of  order only to have to basically re-pack it all up again last night to find out I could have done that Sunday since they won’t be there until Monday now.

Oddly enough, for someone who has moved around as I have, I don’t actually handle change well. I plan for it; plan it to death in fact. So, when the plan doesn’t work and chaos ensues, I might not handle it well (read: I do not handle it well). At all. I don’t like what I cannot research, plan and make lists for so that I am prepared. Some would say then this is a good thing, I should learn to deal, but not when it comes to my living space. I am one of those people that adores going home at night, to my space, to hide out for a while from the rest of the world, so it’s important that that space is safe and clean and organized and….mine. It’s an introvert thing big time. This move is just…never ending it seems and my introverted self is on a short fuse (and yet always incredibly polite and not yelling at anyone).

So, in the meantime, I am trying to get back to my schedule, my routines, in the hopes that will keep me sane. So, look for my usual reviews soon!

Hello there!

I believe the move is complete! And I think I like this layout so we’re sticking with it for now anyhow.

From Tumblr, where else?

What do you all think of the new digs?!

I have a recipe ready to share that I should have up later today and before the nuttiness of this weekend commences (lots of stuff to fit into two days!)

What a Week

There are times when you just have to laugh. Like at 11:30 last Tuesday night when I was woken by the sound of loud running water. Much too loud to just be the shower running in the apartment upstairs so I got up, opened my bathroom door, and discovered my bathroom had a new waterfall feature. Of course, it was flowing from the vent in the ceiling and right onto the floor so not really one I wanted. Over the next couple of hours, after the fire department had come and gone and the water stopped running down the side of the building from the apartment above mine, I headed to a hotel for the night. The next day, I moved to a new apartment on the other side of my complex and had to face going back into my old apartment to move things as well. An apartment that had, by that time, ceiling paint hanging down everywhere, carpets that were ripped up to allow giant fans to be placed underneath and massive dehumidifiers sat running in the corner. It took the next three days to finish moving all the belongings the complex didn’t for me. I’m still working on getting my address switched everywhere. You forget how many places have your address until you have to change it everywhere – I keep remembering more places to contact. Hopefully, I don’t miss any.

On top of that, I am having surgery on Friday. I am both nervous and excited. Excited because I am ready for my body to stop hating me, ready to go back to normal though, truth? This health episode, as fun as it has been, has properly scared me. I’m 28 next month – should I be having gallbladder attacks already? Should I be taking heartburn medicine like it’s candy and worry about everything I eat making me feel like I’m having a heart attack? Clearly I need to change some things after this surgery to get rid of my wonky gallbladder because this scared me and I shouldn’t be this worried yet. My eating habits have been better but I need to add exercise back into my schedule. The last year or so it’s gotten put aside, first because TMJ made my head feel like it was exploding and I got that under control then I moved across the country and then my body decided it would rather not let me eat much more than bread and applesauce. I need to work on this.

Nervous? Well, surgery is scary. I haven’t had one since I was 9 or 10. After several operations to have tubes put in my ears, my last one not only put tubes in my ears but also took out my tonsils and adenoids. Fun fact, as a kid, I couldn’t breath through my nose correctly. Once they took my adenoids out though, that quirk was taken care of. I suppose you could also count getting my wisdom teeth removed in 10th grade though you even walk after that surgery to the recovery room. I don’t remember walking but they tell me I did. The wisdom teeth had to come out because I’d had braces for years, teeth removed, my top jaw widened to accommodate all my teeth. Wisdom teeth would have screwed up all the money my mother poured into fixing my smile.

Reading back through here, I sound like a walking health disaster and I guess on some levels I always have been so I’m hoping to start working on that if only because it’s just getting annoying now. So, wish me luck this week and hopefully things will get back to a better normal soon.

130 Books

Right before Thanksgiving, I very quietly passed my reading goal for this year. Back when I made the goal to read 130 books in January, I thought it would be an easy challenge. I had grossly underestimated myself the year before and blow my goal out of the water so I thought, I’ll aim high but within reach this year. Then I moved 2,000 miles.

Moving tends to disrupt one’s life in case you haven’t noticed. It creates a whole set of problems that seem to take months to sort out. Add in the fact that I had major furniture losses during my move, I couldn’t even unpack my books until a month after I got to Tallahassee. It was distressing. But I made it to the public library and slowly tried to get back into my reading groove. And then I got cable back…

I didn’t have cable back in ND. With Netflix, it wasn’t really a cost I could justify. But with the move, I was up for the introductory packages again and suddenly I had BBC America, ABC Family, Hallmark for cheesy movies and a myriad of other channels to lose myself in. Reading was something that I kept pushing off. Then I was 12 books off the pace to reaching my goal. Now, that wouldn’t be so bad as I am a fast reader but I was losing momentum by the day. Something needed to kick me into gear.

Now when I say I am a fast reader, I am one of those people who can demolish a book in a couple of hours if I find it interesting enough. I like to know what will happen next 🙂 And luckily in October, rather oddly, I got into a Christmas mood and went to the library looking for a good fix. I found a ton of cheesy Christmas Regency books. I may have od’ed on them in the end but it got me back on track to start tackling my reading list more. Perhaps not the most highbrow reading but hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.

My original goal for this year was to read my to-read list in order. I will be the first to admit that did not happen. At times it did but most of the time if a book came up to the top and I wasn’t in the mood, I would just go to the next book on the list or move that book out of my way. It’s really hard to keep to a straight list! A lot of the books are on there haphazardly or all 20 books of a series are in a row and I like some variety to my reading.

On the other hand, I sometimes plow through a series because I have to know what happens next. Take the Softwire series I read this month. It was a four book young adult science fiction series that I read over the course of two weeks basically. But I was invested in the characters and their plight and so I just kept reading. Plus, I never take for granted a series I can read in its entirety when I start. Harry Potter has made me very appreciative of a series I find after the fact because waiting for those books to come out was torturous. I also got back into the Amelia Peabody series in the last few months. Amelia is always nice to come back to and read a few books and then flit off again for a bit knowing I have half a series left there. I do want to get two more books in before I flit this time though – a particular relationship has to be coming to head soon!

So, a reading goal for next year…I’m working on that. I’m not sure if I want to aim for a higher number or maybe work on a particular genre on my to-read list. I have my favorite genres. Maybe I should challenge myself with some of the ones I don’t read from enough or maybe I’ll just give myself a year to read whatever with no real goal in mind. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Hello Tallahassee!

I made it! Another cross country move later, I have officially relocated to Tallahassee, Florida. I don’t have much else to report yet. I haven’t been here a week and I’m finding my way through my first week of work at a new (HUGE) university. On the plus side, I’ve only gotten lost once so far and that is because I managed to type the wrong address into my GPS after triple checking that it was right (go me!). I have managed to find a really tasty fish sandwich though at Barnacle Bill’s (the name caught the eye, the delicious food meant I’d actually go back).

My first impressions is that it rains a lot here. Even as I type this it is pouring down rain faster than I thought possible accompanied with thunder that is shaking the building. And yet I can see blue sky from where I sit…The old saying of if you don’t like the weather just wait 15 minutes is actually true here! The rest of the country, the portion I just drove through over four days, is in drought and I’m under flash flood warnings here. A bit of a different world. Also, the humidity, heavens have I missed you! Walking out of the library is like hitting a brick wall of heavy air and I love it. I don’t think my hair does but I rejoice. I’m certainly not cold around here. Unless I happen to be in a building because apparently if the A/C is on around here, it must be set permanently on the Arctic setting. So I wear a sweater all day and take it off to go outside. Talk about a reversal of the norm!

I am still getting settled in my apartment and it will take longer than planned. The moving company managed to get all of my belongings here and if it was in a box, it was mostly in one piece. If it was furniture however, it was apparently free game. I lost both my bookshelves and my desk so it will take me awhile to replace those as well as hunt down a new sofa for the apartment. My living room currently looks very sad. I also have all my Christmas boxes stuffed into a corner of my dining room as I have to get plastic bins for them before I can move them out into my storage closet off the patio. BUT I have my own washer and dryer and a walk in closet big enough to be a guest room if I wanted. It certainly blows Harry Potter’s Cupboard Under the Stairs out of the water. There is also a pool though I haven’t been in the apartment (and without rain) long enough to do more than run up and take a picture of it. Even when I did that the storm clouds were rolling in.

I am hoping this weekend to get out and explore. I know I want to check out the movie theater (I found one closer to my apartment than I thought!) and maybe head up to see the other mall in town where Barnes & Noble’s lives. I also need to try to dig up the second hand bookstore in this town as well as the library branch down on my side of town. As I won’t have cable/internet installed until the 18th, I have to find some way to entertain myself!

A New Adventure…

So, one of the reasons I haven’t been writing very much on the blog in the last few months was I have been busy getting ready for a move. Two and half years ago, I started an adventure. I moved to North Dakota in the middle of winter to start my first digital library job out of grad school. I had no idea what I was getting myself into – I learned more about myself and my skills in one month here than I ever had before. I have certainly grown up a lot since moving out here and I am thankful for the time I’ve had. But, it’s time to start the next adventure.

Later this week, I say goodbye to North Dakota and make another big cross country move to Florida. I am excited to be moving back to the east coast, closer to family and friends who live in that part of the country and to be starting a new and challenging job at Florida State University. I will be taking everything I’ve learned over the past few years and using it in a new setting, hopefully to great success. I’ll also be learning again, which is always a good thing, and sharing my adventures in my new city with family, friends and anyone else who cares to join in!

Onwards!