So this is it.
Old attitude out, new attitude in.
I feel like I am resting. On my laurels. More like on my butt. I took a five month hiatus from working (save making targets for my father -- not real work, mostly watching TV while waiting for spray adhesive to dry) and took a road trip. We went from Boston, to Florida, to Louisiana, to Minnesota, to Colorado, to Southern California, to Seattle (see --> http://www.adventuresunday.com/.) I spent a lot of time sitting and thinking in the car. Or sitting and singing. Or sitting and wishing the air conditioning worked.
Now that we're settled in Seattle, I find myself complaining, more often than not. Inside my head, but complaining, none the less. Every little thing annoys me: Getting up in the morning. Not having money to spend on the things I want. Not having a larger work wardrobe (completely my own fault, by the way. To be fair, I've never had a job that required business-wear, so I've ignored that part of the clothing world for as long as possible.) The ten-straight days of rain on the Weather forecast (it's, of course, currently sunny and beautiful outside.)
Really, I have very little to complain about. I have this awesome job, where the recruiter contacted ME to come in for an interview. I love the people I work with. Our apartment is in a prime location, and it takes me less than twenty minutes to walk to work (and the only reason it takes that long is the HUGE hill that our building sits on top of makes it hard to walk quickly up or down for first/last five minutes.) We are not completely broke. We can afford food, rent and some extra things to make our life comfortable.
And the one thing I do have to complain about, our landlord is fixing, and making it as difficult as possible to actually have any complaints. We discovered, after the last couple weeks of constant rain and snow and general dampness, the five windows in our little corner apartment are completely covered in black mold. Like, they're fuzzy, and the one in the kitchen even has mold gel growing near the lock in the middle. Ewwwww. Luckily, there's an apartment on the third floor in our building that was recently vacated. It's larger, but our rent will stay the same for as long as we want to live in that apartment. The hardest thing we had to do was move all of our stuff down two floors and call the cable rep to come switch where our cable is coming to. Our landlord is even switching our electricity for us. They're going to replace the windows upstairs, and then we can either stay in the new apartment, or move back to our old one.
It's fortunate and unfortunate in some ways, and I wish we could combine my favorite features of the two apartments, but we'll probably wind up staying in the new apartment simply so we don't have to move again. We've been in Seattle for a little over two months, and considering all the bitching and moaning we were doing while we were carting things downstairs yesterday, we won't want to move again.
Old Apartment Pros/Cons:
+ hallway closet at the entrance for coats/shoes/outdoor things.
- small living space (we had a hard time fitting two oversized chairs in the space so that we could walk and see the tv)
+ awesome enormous pass-through to the kitchen w/ large breakfast bar that we could get cool barstools for
- bathroom exited directly into living area
+ double sink in the kitchen, plus it has a built-in cutting board.
- less than ample cabinet space...and the one large one we did have was strangely shaped)
+ long shelf w/ bar installed in the closet
- (free) bed (from craigslist) too large for the bedroom, so with the closet doors open, you couldn't walk on that side of the bed. (also means no nightstands, but we had space-saving ideas for such a problem we just hadn't gotten around to yet...)
+ cable/internet ready in both living and bedroom
New Apartment Pros/Cons:
+ larger square footage in general, both in the living room and bedroom
- smaller pass through, w/ smaller breakfast bar. it feels more like a drive-through window. and the bar is right next to the front door, so any stools we could get to eat there would have to fit under the bar
+ larger closet for shoes/coats/outdoor things
- closet is in the back of the apartment, so you have to take your shoes off and carry them there. or risk tracking whatever is on them through the whole apartment.
+ larger closet in the bedroom
- there are no studs in the closet in the bedroom to hold our awesome shelf w/ bar that we brought down from our other apartment, so it keeps ripping out of the wall. we're having the landlord look at it, b/c the closetmaid shelving that was in there just isn't gonna cut it
+ bathroom exits into a small hallway that leads, first past the kitchen and then into the living space. i think this is awesome. Nate didn't seem so impressed, but this is my list, not his.
- kitchen is smaller. like a hallway, with stuff on either side. i think there might be less counter space than in the other apartment, however...
+ kitchen has WAY more cabinet space. for some reason, they like to make the top shelves super high, to the point where you can't use them. but there's only one cabinet like this in the new kitchen, whereas ALL the cabinet were like this in the old apartment. so now we only lose 2 shelves out of 17, instead of 4 out of 11. A much better ratio.
- there is one cable hookup. next to the door, in a horrid spot in the living room. nothing in the bedroom. I believe Nate is trying to make the cable rep drill a hole through to the bedroom for another cable as we speak.
+ bigger bedroom = more space around the bed. and the closet doors don't open out anymore, they slide to the side, so there is ample walking space on either side of the bed. we might even get nightstands in the not too distant future. exciting!
- the guy who lived there painted the walls orange. and the blinds...and the baseboards, and some of the tile on the breakfast bar. he did a lousy job, so there are orange splatters in various places. stupid. orange is stupid.
+ FREE COUCH. the guy who was living there just left it. so...awesome.
I personally think the new apartment is the winner, but I will miss the awesome pass-through and breakfast bar from the old apartment.
In any case, the purpose of this blog is to keep my whining in check. Hopefully someone besides me will read it, and tell me to quit my bitching and moaning. If I start to ramble on about how bad things are, just smack me. Well, virtually, anyhow.
The other thing I'm going to track is my weight. We're getting Wii Fit Plus this weekend (one of our Christmas gifts to ourselves, since our original Wii Fit seems to have disappeared in the move,) plus I'm going to actually start keeping track of my weight (and weigh myself in the morning, when I get up, before I stuff my face for the day, and count my calories consumed/expended with my awesome Lose It app for my iPhone. I am by no means fat, but I don't like the way I look. And unfortunately, this means I've been having a really awful time letting Nate like the way I look, so I'd like to remedy that. Also unfortunately, I put a heaping amount of sugar in my coffee this morning (which has just got to stop -- it's no wonder I crash by lunchtime,) on top of the sweetened creamer I add. I'm just gonna have to get used to my coffee not tasting like ice cream. Sad day.
Fortunately, I am down about 10-12lbs from where I was when we "started" our trip (ie: stayed with Nate's parents in New Hampshire for five weeks while the seized engine in our car was replaced,) just by counting calories and measuring out portions, so I feel like another 10lbs is very achievable in the next couples months. I am blessed with a fast metabolism, but since I stopped dancing/working out basically every day, the amount/type of food that I like to eat has caught up with me. Mostly losing weight means the following things:
1) one coffee or one half-sized coke a day. not both. not a giant coke from the vending machine at work. not a coffee from starbucks when Brian/Charli offers. (and less sugar/creamer in the coffe i do drink)
2) knowing my calorie count for the day and measuring out snacks apparopriately.
3) not drinking multiple nights after work. i need my beauty sleep, anyway.
4) measuring DINNER portions. this is a big one, b/c this is where I tend to eat the most food.
5) not thinking that going over my calorie count is by just a "little bit" is ok.
6) working off what i do go over.
I love that the Lose It app has so many activities included in its "exercise" category. Like typing. Or "household" walking (which is mostly what i do around the office.) I need to also just start walking around the office more. But my personal heater at my desk is so nice and toasty, and it's so cold everywhere else. Le sigh.
-C
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