August 19, 2009 - The rest of my eating at home experiment didn't turn out the way I thought it would and I'm confused as to whether it was a success or a failure, so I'm going to call it a draw. On Wednesday I had a date and on Saturday I had a date (both with a new gentleman that we are calling Other Justin so as to avoid confusion between him and our friend Justin), so I ate out, but I didn't pay for it, so does that count or not count? Other than that, I bought lunch one day and everything else I ate at home, which is why I am declaring it a draw. If anyone wants to argue with me, please leave your argument in the comments section.
Tomorrow we have the company boat party which will entail me spending 8 hours on a boat with the guys from our offices (both NY & CA) drinking beer before taking a car to the airport and getting on an airplane to go visit my dad for a couple of days. Anyone in the ATL area, we are having a pool party on Saturday! A super huge shout out to my friend Liz who is staying at my apartment and watching my cat for me while I am away. I really, really appreciate it.
In other news I am still trying to fund raise for my Avon Breast cancer walk. I need to raise a bit over $1200 in less than 60 days, so if anyone wants to contribute, there is a link on the left hand side of the screen. Every little bit helps! If everyone who reads this blog donated $5 - well, I'd probably have $5, but it would still help!
Other than that, I am ready for my nap now and I cannot wait to go home and pack for my trip. See you next week!
Day 3 - 7 and then some
Where am I and what is going on!?!?!?
August 21, 2008 – Today (Thursday) is actually my Friday! This is the first vacation day I’ve taken all summer and I’m not doing anything! Bruce and I are actually trying to plan a full week away the second week of September, which will be nice, but the day off for no good reason is sorely needed after the last few weeks.
Lots of changes are in store for my company in the coming months. I can’t talk about too many of them because I’m not sure if any of my coworkers have found my blog. We are moving into permanent space (which I am in the process of finding), and have a lot of things planned for January 2009. It seems like that is really far away, but at the rate time passes, January 2009 might as well be next week.
The apartment is just about done. Someday, I will actually get the pictures of all my hard work up here so you will all know what I’m talking about. My spare bedroom/closet has turned out a little more childish (my mother used the word “whimsical”) than I’d planned, but it works for the moment. I did finally give into my urge to purge. Last weekend I went through ever closet in my house and got rid of a pile of stuff as tall as I am. I couldn’t figure out how I had managed to accumulate so much crap, but then I realized that I’ve been in this apartment longer than I’ve lived anywhere ever. I’m used to moving every couple of years and you always do a grand purge when you move. Hence no move, no purge.
Last night I started my first Christmas present. I’m trying to get back into doing some needle work, so I’m doing some therapeutic cross stitch. I’m hoping to turn some of my therapy into gifts for friends (thus reducing the cost of the gift giving while upping the thought that went into it), but I know needle point and cross stitch aren’t very trendy/fashionable/popular for people under the age of 197. We’ll see what I can do.
This may seem a bit fractured, but it is a good representation of what I’ve been feeling like lately. Going in a hundred different directions at the same time while trying to plan for stuff that is coming faster than I’m prepared for. Happy (almost) Friday!
August? (I also thought today was Tuesday.)
August 6, 2008 – I am now convinced that New York is located in a strange time warp whereby three minutes have passed and all of a sudden it is August! This summer has been nothing like I planned in more ways than one. I meant to go on a vacation at some point, I meant to get more done around the house and I meant to spend more time with my friends. Somehow none of that happened.
What did happen was that I spent almost every weekend at the beach (which is awesome and the thing I credit with keeping me from going insane and killing people during the week), I redecorated the bedroom (while mom was here – it looks so good that Bruce called me in the middle of a meeting the day after he saw it and just wanted to reiterate to me how much he liked it), and I’m learning how to live within my means. That last one is the most difficult and probably the most useful.
I feel a little silly because “living within my means” results in me trying to eat 2 meals at home a day. Anywhere else that sounds ridiculous, but here it is pretty much the way things work. Plus I’m counting “eating out” as any meals ordered in to the apartment. I’ll keep you posted. This month is on track to being the first month where I’ve taken care of everything that I need to and I still have money to live on. Woo-hoo!
I’ve been in the mood to drastically simplify my life recently. I keep getting the urge to go through everything in my closets and just throw away everything I haven’t used/needed. I hesitate to this because normally I do it on a whim and realize that I got rid of stuff I actually needed, however I’ve been pushing this whim down for a while, so maybe it’s time.
I still have hopes for a vacation, although the chance of it happening before the fall is not high at this point. I just need some time away. Last year I didn’t take enough time off and they forced me to take three days at the last minute so I wouldn’t implode and it sucked.
The training for the Avon Walk has been nonexistent. I really need to kick that into gear, or I’ll be hurting come October. Dallas has not been wanting to train at all and I somehow got left out of the loop for training walks (I imagine because Dallas opted out, I got left out), but hopefully I’ll be in the loop coming up and really get some stuff done. I still need to raise like $1700, so if anyone out there in blog land wants to donate to my cause, please shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment and I’ll get you all the information you need.
Here’s to hoping that everyone out there in the world has been having a wonderful summer!
Betting Pools and Finishing my Apartment…
As some may know, my office is pretty much a frat house. As a result, there is a lot of betting going on. So far, the most shameless pool we’ve had was the BKup Kidney Stone pool where we bet on the day and the window of hours when BKup would pass her kidney stone. (Full disclosure: I won.) At the moment we have a pool for The Masters (golf) where we each drafted 5 players in the tournament. I know nothing about golf, but my players are Angel Cabrera, Jim Furyk, Justin Rose, Henrik Stenson, and Steve Striker. I know nothing about golf, so if anyone knows how I picked, please let me know…
As far as finishing the apartment goes, I only need a bedside table to complete the furniture acquisition at the moment. I need to make covers for the two new chairs that we got, but the size and shape are great for my space. All I need to do structurally is patch the holes in the drywall in the living room from the shelves that were hanging up there before we got the new bar cabinet and patch and paint the wall where we took out the built in hanging rod (in the middle of the living room – why?) and I need to finish and paint the piece of drywall I had to replace after our White Trash Christmas in July party two years ago (we replaced the drywall about 6 months ago and haven’t gotten round to finishing it yet). After that, I think I can call the apartment done – until I find something else to do.
At some point I'll post pictures when I'm all done.
Nearly Done!
So, I recently painted part of my hallway with stripes. I liked it so much that I decided to do the whole hallway. Needless to say, that is a large pain in the ass to do alone. Luckily the BF is in town this week. Last night we taped out all the lines and it took only a little over an hour to tape the whole hallway (it took me an hour to just do the short wall I did by myself). He doesn’t like to paint, but he is a champion taper. We also managed to get the bedroom picked up and ever vacuumed part of the living room. It is amazing how quickly these things happen when you actually have help. I like it! I will post pictures of my beautimous hallway when it is done so everyone can appropriately “Ooooh!” and “Ahhh!” over the work.
All I have left to do in the house now is reorganize the kitchen, take the stuff for donations, buy a coffee table, figure out what we're doing for a bar area and then I think we're done. Maybe.
Cue the Choir of Angels!
I officially have no roommate! The house is completely destroyed and no one came to help her move, but she’s out and it appears like we managed to save our friendship as well. In addition to that, I got a Wii (technically it was for my birthday, but it came last Friday, so I opened it and started playing) and tonight I am getting an iPhone (which I won from the office because we did over $200,000 in billing last month $160,000 of which was billed by my team). Given all that, things are going pretty well for me these days. I’ve picked out a color for the other bedroom and I think I might paint the hallway the same color. I cannot wait to get started on that project.
Even Bruce is excited. He said that he hesitated to do anything around the house before because he didn’t want to do anything for her or that would benefit her. Now that she’s gone, he says things are going to be different. We’ll see. Both he and Justin have said that I seem noticeably happier just in the day or so since she’s been gone.
Hopefully this is just the beginning of more wonderful things to come!
Halleluiah! There is a light at the end of the tunnel!
She has an apartment and she has a move in date and, God willing, I’ll have my apartment to myself as of the weekend of March 1st. I am thinking about buying the paint to repaint her room this weekend so that I can be completely prepared to take over that room as soon as she is out. I’m taking suggestions on the color (it is two different colors of bright green now). I was thinking of just doing a much lighter green, but maybe I should let the BF pick the color since I picked out all the other ones. Maybe I’ll just give him some options to choose from…
I’ll have a closet! My clothes won’t be hanging in the living room and I’ll be able to see which suits are where rather than trying to figure out what is hanging in the bedroom and what is in the living room. I’ll have a spare room that is more than a junk room and I’ll have some storage back!
Can you tell that I am very excited?
