That’s Apartment Life

1 October 2009, 10:41 am by Giggles
Categories: Random

My current apartment days are numbered! Of course there are three different ways to number them depending on how you count, but there is an end. In fact, today we celebrate my last rent check! :woot: My check today is for this month and next month because I am just that ready to be finished with it all.

So I present here for you the list of things I like, and don’t like, about living in apartments.

First the good.

  • On site maintenance. Except, in these apartments when I go tell them something’s broke, they hand me the part and expect me to fix it myself. It’s why there’s an air conditioning filter in my hallway instead of in the vent.
  • Pool. This is good. Pools are nice, but they are also a lot of work. I don’t have to do anything but enjoy it with an apartment one.
  • Easy drop-off for packages. Packages are all delivered at the office where there is always someone to sign for it. So there’s no waiting around all day for the delivery man. It’s very convenient.

Okay. Now the things I won’t miss.

  • Neighbor sounds. The guy above me in Utah had squeaky bed springs. That can get uncomfortable. I wish the people above me had squeaky bed springs, it might drown out some other noise. And he snores. And the kid next to me here for a while liked to randomly scream. At least that wall was in the kitchen. And then the kid who would ride his skateboard up and down the sidewalk outside my apartment and try to do jumps off everyone’s porches. Not enjoying that sound.
  • Drunken swearing contests at 1am. This is just a more specific example of neighbor sounds. I was woken in the middle of the night in June by the people in the building next to mine enjoying the middle of the night on their porch with some friends, and for some reason one of them felt the need to just repeat swear words for a good ten minutes. Wasn’t saying any other words. That was not for a good night. And it wasn’t the only time either. It’s happened rather frequently.
  • Neighbor smells. WHY do smokers think their dirty habit doesn’t affect everyone around them? My apartment smelled like a cheap motel (and I mean motel, not hotel) all last summer. It was disgusting! This wasn’t really so much a problem in Utah.
  • No in-house laundry. Oh how I love doing laundry at my own place. I could in my last apartment. But I could not find any one bedroom apartments in Tucson that had hook-ups. Apparently people in one bedroom apartments aren’t supposed to do laundry.
  • Weed blowers outside my bedroom window at 7am. Okay, so 7am isn’t really that early. But when the “quiet hours” for the complex are until 9am, I find it very rude for the apartment complex grounds people to be blowing their blowers right outside my window that early in the morning! I actually feel a bit of hate in my stomach now whenever I hear one of those no matter where I am or what time of day it is.
  • Teeny tiny kitchens. Oh to have counter space! And cupboards!
  • No yard. I did okay with my pot garden in Utah. This one here didn’t do that great this year, just about everything died. Oddly, my tomato plant started making flowers again this week. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.
  • Walking across a parking lot with my groceries.
  • A 2.5 foot tall water heater. It’s barely enough hot water for a good shower.

In short, I’m not really going to miss apartment living at all. Yeah! 😀

4 Shared thoughts

The marathon waiver

30 September 2009, 7:32 am by Giggles
Categories: Exercise

Marathon registration forms always have a paragraph that reads something like this:

2.  Waiver.

You understand that participation in the event is potentially hazardous, and that a registered party should not participate unless they are medically able and properly trained. You understand that events may be held over public roads and facilites open to the public during the event and upon which hazards are to be expected. Participation carries with it certain inherent risks that cannot be eliminated completely ranging from minor injuries to catastrophic injuries including death. You understand and agree that in consideration of being permitted to participate in the event, you and any registered party, the heirs, personal representatives or assigns of you or the registered party do hereby release, waive, discharge and convenant not to sue Active for any and all liability from any and all claims arising from participation in the event by you or any registered party.

It makes me smile. Basically I’m saying I realize this is crazy and I could die, and because I realize this nobody can sue the race people if something does happen.

Should it concern me that there were two typos in this one?

Oh, and I agreed to it. I’ve registered for the Tucson Marathon in 2.5 months. I did a nine mile run on Saturday and felt real good about it, even had faster miles than my seven mile run two weeks previously.

Oddly, the weirdest part was listing not my age on race day (that’s been different than my age when I’ve registered for past marathons), but my name. My name will be different by then. That was weird.

6 Shared thoughts

Site statistics

29 September 2009, 3:19 pm by Giggles
Categories: Random, Science & Tech

My website celebrates its sixth anniversary next month. As I’m typing this I have had 29,532 visits in that time. I wonder if I can get to 30,000 by the anniversary. That would be two milestones in one day.

I average between 13 and 20 a day (some weeks I get more traffic than others). I’d have to average 22 a day to do it.

Maybe I’ll have to get busy and start posting interesting things more frequently so people would have a reason to come here.

Of course none of this would be possible without my mom.

We’ll see how it goes.

1 Shared thought

Word Clouds

28 September 2009, 11:08 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things, Learn Something, Science & Tech

I was looking up how to make a word cloud for someone else and got quite a bit distracted making them for myself. A word cloud takes text and analyzes which words are used the most and then makes those words bigger. It’s kind of like looking at maybe what the theme of what was written is. It then can arrange the words in different shapes and colors to add variety. Wordle is a word cloud generator I found and it was a lot of fun. I would imagine I’ll be making several more of these at different times.

Here are the ones I did tonight. I’ve included a link to the text so that you can see what it pulled from. If you click on the image it will open up larger for you.

For a Reason – this is the guest post I wrote for Segullah about being single.

single

Brett is the Best – my story about waking up with kidney stones.42D

pain

Our Story – the story of how Brett and I met.

brett_lisa

Meet Brett – how Brett introduced himself on our family website.

brett

Meet Lisa – how I introduced myself on our family website.

lisa

And this is what this post would look like as a word cloud:

word

2 Shared thoughts

I’m going to FREEZE!!

26 September 2009, 9:59 am by Giggles
Categories: Life

Tucson is currently trying to have summer again. Temperatures will be 100 or more through the weekend and into early next week. I thought we were done with this!!

But it got me thinking. What’s the weather going to be like the day we get married? So I looked up what the averages are for that day along the Wasatch front.

High – 49
Low – 31

Um, I’m going to freeze. I already kind of figured that and I’m working on knitting a wide scarf/skinny shawl to wear with my black wool coat. If my finger nails appear purple, that won’t be because I used a purple nail polish to match our colors. It’ll be because I’m cold. Although maybe I should just jump the gun on that one and use purple nail polish. I’ll have to think about that one.

Then, just to compare, I looked up the average Tucson temperatures for that day.

High – 73
Low – 46

Good thing Brett is good at keeping me warm. :cactus: 42D

4 Shared thoughts

Einstein

22 September 2009, 8:06 am by Giggles
Categories: Random, Science & Tech

Einstein isn’t the only person to have ever come up with an equation that changed the world. But he’s the only one the majority of people can recognize and his is the only equation the majority of people remember.

Do you think he’d be so well known if he’d had a normal hair cut and a smaller mustache?

These are the things I wonder when I’ve been watching a lot of NOVA and then I spend a morning on morphine (yes, I’ve been wondering this for more than a week now).

3 Shared thoughts

The wedding stuff

20 September 2009, 7:43 am by Giggles
Categories: Relationships

I’m keeping track of all the sappy details of the wedding planning elsewhere for a smaller group. But I thought I’d put a basic update on everything here for all to see.

  • :x: Ceremony – scheduled
  • :x: Reception (which includes set up, clean up, decorations, food, cake) – scheduled
  • :x: Website – published
  • :x: Invitations – mailed
  • :x: Cake “topper” – finished 😀
  • :x: Photographer – scheduled
  • Music – in progress (“DJ” scheduled :x: )
  • Dresses – in progress
  • Flowers – in progress
  • Honeymoon – in progress
  • Moving – in progress
  • Tux – will get
  • Wedding bands – will get
  • Wedding recommends – will get
  • Wedding license – will get

And that’s about it.

Brett proposed three months ago today. And in 55 days we’ll be married. I’m super duper excited.

1 Shared thought