Monday, April 25, 2011

Packing

I hate packing. Despise it with a passion. I am not very good at throwing stuff out, so over the years my collection of stuff grows and packing makes me go through it all, and assess every item in a hoarder-like fashion. 


I have lived in the same apartment for 3 years. I moved in directly out of residence (fitting all my stuff into that space was fun..not) and have stayed/subletted the place since then. Finally, I am moving out. I found subletters for the summer, so at least all the furniture and kitchen stuff doesn't need to be moved now. 


I am moving over to my boyfriends house across town (to the dark side) and at some point hopefully going to be moving again to Toronto for a full time job. So my approach for this move is purge quickly, any thing useless, old, or outdated is getting thrown out/donated. Then once I am settled I can go through every thing with a fine tooth comb, so my move semi across country will be fairly straight forward. 


A few things I discovered while packing:
1. I have moved an expired bottle of sun screen around with me for 5 years. It expired in 2006, when I first moved to university. The same can be said for some medicines (Tylenol from 2007) and lotions (Moisturizer that has been opened since at least 2004). 
2. I have 5 pairs of nail clippers, most of which got stolen by the cats at some point this year and were found during packing. 
3. I actually don't have that many clothes. I went through my stuff recently, so I got that paired down. 
4. I do have a lot of shoes. 


44 pairs to be exact. 8 pairs of black heels, 3 pairs of other colour heels, 6 pairs of heeled sandals, 11 pairs of flats, 5 flipflopish shoes, 3 sneakers, 6 boots, and one pair of steel toed boots and one pair of tap shoes (never used).  The bigger issue is that I have worn every single one of them, except for the tap shoes, in the past year. I can justify keeping all of them...so I will. And I never know when I may need tap shoes. 


One day I will have a closet to justify the shoe collection...like Christina Aguilera's from NyMag:
Or Mariah Carey's (from decorpad.com)
Compared to those pictures, my collection doesn't seem like much of a problem at all!! 

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Holmes on Homes and Growing up

As a Civil Engineer-in-Training-Almost and a home design/home construction enthusiast, I love the show Holmes Inspection on HGTV. Tonight he inspected a little bungalow that a had a minor water problem, and in fact Mike Holmes found water, asbestos, a bad chimney, bad wiring,  and a hidden cold room in the basement (!). It would creep me out to have a hidden room in my basement, but that is beyond the point. 


In this show he always finds tons of problems, most are just the house being old, or from shoddy work done by contractors. This makes me so scared to ever own a house. Especially if it is an older construction. I mean there are things like wiring, asbestos and all that jazz, and then there are sink holes, and trees falling, and differential settling and flooding and AHHH! 


Perhaps this nervousness is just an extension of the whole post grad thing. I am very shortly going to be buying a car, and getting a real job, and growing up, and at one point buying a house. I have got the whole laundry, cooking, paying bills thing down, but having actual possessions of worth is a very grown up thing. Whoooaaa real life is sneaking up on me quite quickly. 


If I think back to going high school to university, that was a big deal. Now it seems like such easy decisions. I am sure I will look back at this point in my life and be like "HA that was such a easy time!!" 


Hindsight is 20/20 as they say!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Tis the Season...

...for exams.

This is the first spring that I don't have exams and all that other end of term school stuff. It is weird. I am definitely not complaining about it! My roomies and boyfriend are all in the midst of senior projects and report writing and pre-studying. I am actually home alone now, chillin, writing my blog post, while the rest of the world (university world) is hunkering down to finish the term.

I actually liked exam time. They were probably my favorite part of the academic side of school. I hated midterms because it was like exams only there were a million assignments to do on top of studying. And  actually going to classes and doing assignments, don't miss that part about school at ALL!  Exam time comes around, and suddenly there is only one thing to focus on. I have always liked studying and there is something about rocking out to some good music while making a cheat sheet that I kinda miss. And the best feeling was writing exams that go well, rocking out to the study music inside my head. Even the exams that didn't go well had a certain finality (he he FINALity). "Well at least it is over", "Nothing I can do about it now" was my motto of choice, and it worked for me!

Even in high school I liked exams. Winter exams were in January, so I would start studying over Christmas break, and space out my study-age, so by the time the actual exam week came around I was super prepared, so I just relaxed on my non-exam times. It was a good excuse to lock my self in my room and "study" when actually I was reading or watching TV. I was such a rebel.

But alas (HA) I am all done with exams, and have moved on to bigger and better things: dishes, laundry, and job applications.