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 So my approach for this move is purge quickly, any thing useless, old, or outdated is getting thrown out/donated.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!! 

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!

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.

Whoa I Have a Blog

Time is flying by, and I haven't posted in 9 days. Oops.
So what I have done in the past 9 days:

1. I have a new "part time job!" Well kind of. I went to a Mary Kay party on the 18th, and it worked out that because I wanted to buy so much, that it was just the same price to become a consultant, and get the %50 discount (so same amount of money lots more stuff!). What I didn't realize is that the group of ladies who are Mary Kay consultants are awesome! There are training sessions every Monday night, where everyone meets up and discusses selling tips, and MK party tips, and communication techniques etc. It is a nice training session (for free!) and feels better than not doing anything!

Now I just have to get up the nerve to ask people to try out the products (If I want to get into this to make a little bit of spending money, I actually have to have clients other than myself). Hopefully I can do so in a non-pushy way, aka mentioning it passively on my blog hint hint.

2. Updating my other blog, The Totally Typical Weight Loss Challenge, and in turn keeping busy cooking healthy food, and going to the gym!

3. Tutoring has taken up a 7 hours of my week so that is productive and money making. My students are doing well, and most of them have had a test in the past week so we will see how they do!

4. I went to Sugar Moon on the weekend, a maple sugar camp and it was DELICIOUS. I love taffy on the snow, and it was totally worth the drive!

5. I applied to jobs all day today. I really really really really hope I hear something back soon!

I still haven't cleaned out my shelves, but that is ok. At the end of April I am moving out of my apartment, so the shelves will have to be de-junked by then!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: St. Patrick's Day

In Halifax, St. Patrick's Day is a big deal, and it is AWESOME. I do have strong Irish roots, so I love the holiday, and being in a east coast city makes it that much better. And so begins my tale of March 17th, 2011.

This year was the first year that I didn't have school getting in the way. I went to the gym earlyish in the morning (9-10) and by 10 am you could see the first signs of green. Green shirts, green coats, cases of beer etc. I then decided to go out for lunch with my friend, and we decided to attempt the Old Triangle, the Irishest pub in town. People line up at 6:00am to get a table for the day. They also serve beer for breakfast.

So we venture down to the pub, and as we walk by the window it is obviously busy, and as we turned the corner to the door we realized the line went down the block. So much for that plan. We went over to a British pub instead and it wasn't busy at all, and was just as delicious. After lunch we headed to the mall, and drove past Dal main campus. It was like St. Patrick's day exploded. There were green bows, and tights, and boots and shiny green leggings. It was a bit much for 2:00 pm.

That night I went out with friends and after a few other spots we ended up at Maxwell's Plum around midnight. Being the crazy folks we are, we started chanting things..like a sports team. To our amusement people joined in and we had about thirty people chanting things along with us. The wait staff was not impressed. Unfortunately when one of them told us to keep it down, the other tables would start the chant. It was hilarious. I felt bad for about a second then I realized that everyone in the bar was chanting so we really weren't impacting people having a quiet midnight drink.  We quickly finished our drinks and left to avoid the angry glares from the waitress. Good end of the night for sure.

My favorite quote about St. Patrick's Day comes from a friend who wasn't from Canada, and had never experienced it. She said "So you wear green and drink green beer? I don't get it....but it is fun!"
St. P day summarized in two sentences. We shall meet again next year.

Engineering Week

Fun fact: March is National Engineering Month in Canada. Second fun fact: Dalhousie Engineering picks one week to celebrate Engineering Week, and it is THIS WEEK!!!! You may be saying "But wait Kaylee, you are finished at Dal, why do you care?" Well, I ended up helping out the boyfriend with a few Engineering Society errands today, and that turned into a full day of helping out at the Chinese food buffet/career fair that the society hosted. Tomorrow there is a Pancake breakfast, and on Wednesday I am going to a Junior High School to help out with an Egg Drop.

For those who missed out back in the day, an Egg drop is when you have a egg, a supply of materials, and a fall of some sort, and the goal is to make sure your egg survives. It is directly related to engineering in the minds of a 9th grader, apparently. So we ( a group of students EITs, and P.Engs) go to a school and host en egg drop during engineering month. 

Last year I went to a school, and teams of students had fake money to buy their supplies. And the deal was if they broke their egg while making the contraption, they had to buy a new one with their money. So (not surprisingly) one of the kids from one team broke the egg of another team and it was a BFD. It made me happy to not be in Junior High anymore. That example aside, it is really fun to do the egg drop event because there are some teams who get really into it and you can tell they actually care. Awww cute future engineers!  

TLC "Hoarders" Scares Me

I am watching TLC's Hoarders, and now I really want to clean my room. Going back to day one of this blog I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do with my free time was to clean my room. I am by no means a hoarder to the extent of that show, but I do have a lot of stuff. I hang on to junky things for no reason, or things that are broken. And sometimes the clutter drives me nuts.

This summer I did a quiz in a magazine. It was "What kind of decorating style works best for your personality type." For every question I wanted to answer the organized, neat, type A answer, but in reality I am type B, clutter, eclectic, and creative. For example the question was: Is your closet A: color coded, with all the hangers pointed the same way, or B mismatched, with hangers everywhere. I would like for everything in my life (organization wise) to be neat and orderly (A), and sometimes it ventures into a chaotic state (B). It was interesting to see that result.  

It has gotten a lot better since school ended, mostly because now I have time to clean and organize. Especially now, my landlord is showing my apartment for next year, so I need to keep it nice and clean! Also I have gotten to a point where I know that  in the near future I will be moving out of this place, and into somewhere else (possibly a tiny condo in Toronto). I would rather get rid of stuff instead of moving it all over the country.

So last Wednesday, a local charity group was doing a clothing drive and on Tuesday night I went through all my clothes and in the span of 1 hour I got a very large garbage bag full to donate. That deadline certainly helped speed up the process. My next task is my school stuff, because I don't need it taking up space in my room, and would rather have it in a box where I don't need to look at it ever again. And one day I will take that box and move it to my office. That is a nice thought, an job with an office, and doing actual engineering work, all my text books chillin on a shelf.