Food

I am a junk food junkie. Usually I have a sweet tooth, but every once in a while I have a salt craving. Like yesterday. I really needed some sour cream and onion potato chips. It was my first day back to work after having six days off and I was trying to reacquaint myself with day shifts, so I indulged. And then I proceeded to eat the entire bag. It wasn't a snack size bag. Granted, it wasn't a huge bag either, but it was definitely more than a serving. Recently it has been Snickers, Reese's, gummy bears and cinnamon rolls. I have eaten a LOT of junk this month. I kept telling myself it was night shifts. When you are eating your main meal at two or three in the morning your body gets confused about what it needs. You wake up at 5pm and you want breakfast, you eat at 2am and it doesn't really feel like lunch, you get home and you can't possibly have dinner because it is 8 in the morning. So I compensated with the snacks. It always feels like snack time. But I have told myself it has to stop. I am giving myself the rest of this week. I am moving on Saturday. I am stressed. And I am going to need the junk food to get through cleaning my current apartment (it has been neglected and is rather gross recently). But starting Monday it is a new apartment, a new (hopefully improved) grocery store and a new eating lifestyle. Now I just have to develop a taste for grocery shopping. And for healthy food.

*Side Note: I do realize I have blogged about food a lot recently. It just seems to be what moves me to put pen to paper...errr...fingers to keyboard??

6am Ice Cream

After staying awake for 30 hours (coming off a night shift and deciding not to go to bed), I found myself brutally awake at 2:30 this morning. A problem, because I had just fallen asleep four hours before. I spent the hours of 2:30am to 5:30am tossing and turning and alternately reading and TV watching, in an attempt to get my completely confused mind to allow my completely exhausted body to fall asleep. At 5:30 I made a deal. If I wasn't back to sleep by 6am I would get up and start my day. At 5:31 I had an ice cream craving. It hit hard. To make matters worse I knew I had ice cream. And I knew the ice cream should probably be finished before moving in a week. And thus, at 6am, still awake from thought of sugar, I woke up and headed to the freezer. It was coffee flavored with espresso chips. So that's practically like breakfast, right?

Moving...

From city to town home subdivisions to middleofnowheresville. That's right ladies and gents, I am moving to Davidsonville. We were looking at town homes in Crofton. But everything we viewed in our price range were basically crapholes (excuse the technical term). A little out of our price range found us confronted with Blue (see previous post). And the home just a little bit more outside found us dealing with an unreasonable landlord requiring a lot of upfront moolah. So we expanded our search and found a reasonably priced 1930s single family home. A good ten minutes to a decent grocery store. And surrounded by trees. Like legit trees. That have hiking paths through them. Not city trees that are surrounded by concrete. Actually, it is in a very convenient location only two miles from the fiance's work and a mile from route 50 which will help with my commute. And its just about halfway between DC and Annapolis which means city life is less than 30 minutes in either direction. With Baltimore about the same distance to the north. Moving out of the city means hopping in a car for most entertainment. So what's the difference if the movies/restaurant/bar is two minutes or ten? I keep telling myself this, hoping one time it will stick....

Actually, I am not all that upset to be leaving the city behind. I will have a driveway! With actual parking! Which means no more searching for and fighting over limited street spots. I can arrive home from work and steer my vehicle into any one of the many available driveway spots without spending five to ten minutes driving around the block. Of course, if we get a freak March blowout storm I will be responsible for shoveling said driveway, and then I'll be whistling a different tune.

The house is a one story, three bedroom, one bath home with a patio and nice outdoor space, which was a huge selling point. It also isn't a craphole which definitely helped. It has hardwood floors, a HUGE kitchen, and is impeccably up kept. Plus, while the lease starts March 1st, the new landlord has told us to move in whenever so the first load is going over this weekend!

Registering

I have been struggling with our wedding registry for MONTHS. I thought it would be easy. Shopping without having to pay!?! How cool would that be? The problem is, I feel limited. I am too much of a bargain shopper. Even though I'm picking out gifts I still want to find the best deal. The problem being it is very impractical and inconsiderate to register at ten different stores (even if I am doing it so everyone will have the best selection for the best prices). And so I have struggled with choosing items to place on the registry. They say you should register for two times (or maybe it's three) the number of gifts as people invited. Which means for our 163 person guest list I should register for at least 326 gifts. I have 137. This seems really excessive and greedy. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd love to receive 326 gifts. I love presents! I have a birthday the day before Christmas so for the last 26 years the majority of my presents have come once a year. Receiving gifts in June will be groundbreaking. But the actually registering for 326 gifts at a very select number of stores is time consuming. Plus I am very much an instant gratification person. If I pick something out, I want it now. I am having a really hard time not buying all the presents for myself. Especially since we found a place to live, and I'll be moved in by the end of the month! Wouldn't some nice new stuff for the new place be nice??

Hungry?

I have a new crutch. I am hooked on Snickers to get me through my night shifts. I have a supplier too, which is not good. I think mostly he is trying not to eat them himself, but in doing so he is passing them on to me with some regularity. I've had one each of the last two nights and I have two more in my bag just waiting for tonight. Not good. While eating my ration last night, I came across the following:

Nougatocity: A heightened yet fleeting state of accomplishment that makes you realize how unbelievably unmotivated you normally are.

I have no idea what nougatocity is, but the 'fleeting state of accomplishment' rings a bell. This is totally me. On the average day I am an incredibly unmotivated procrastinator. Every so often, however, I have these spurts of productivity. For a few hours, half a day, sometimes even a couple afternoons in a row, I can become very driven and motivated. I rampage my apartment on a cleaning frenzy. I spit out three or four blogs to post at a later date, I check a few items off my perpetual 'to do' list. And then I have an apartment messier than when I started, blogs half written and unedited, and a list slightly shorter but still hanging over my head. If only these Snickers could actually live up to their claims and fuel me enough for real motivation. Then the empty calories just might be worth it.
Hungry? Why wait? Tired? Why not?

Night Shifts...

...are kicking my butt. That 5am Snickers saved my life.

Complaints

I'm a complainer. It is what I do. I try to be positive. I try to internalize my aggravations and not let on to the world that I have negative thoughts. But the truth is I do. Rather frequently. Usually I complain to the fiance. Or the mother, or the sister, or the friend. Rarely do I complain to the perfect stranger. And every so often something annoys me so much I feel the need to complain to the reliable customer service personnel. I hate the phone, and I get flustered making my case in person, so this usually entails a well thought out and strongly worded email. As much as I hate writing (it's true, I do) and as much as I struggle with it, writing these emails are a bit of a release. Almost as soon as I hit send, I can let the annoyance go and forget about it. All is forgiven. Until the poor schmuck who was unlucky enough to draw my email from the database of complaints responds.

Most recently I found issue with Delta airlines. On our trip to Vegas my fiance was told he had to check his baggage. This was not the issue. The bag was quite obviously over carry on limits and we were trying to sneak it on. The issue was HOW he was told he would have to check it. The employee was out right rude. This set the tone for the remainder of our trip, and every small inconvenience or perceived slight from then on escalated my annoyance and made the trip seem that much more unfortunate. To the point that by the time we landed in Vegas I was seething over the rude, unprofessional employees, broken sun shields and seat back entertainment, and failure to universally enforce the rules, which resulted in lack of storage space for my perfectly dimensional bag. And all these little annoyances seemed like legitimate complaints. It stuck with me too. On the flights home four days later I was looking for issues, sure that Delta couldn't possibly pull off two acceptable flights. So, to get things off my chest I composed an email and sent it into cyber space outlining all the small aggravations and admitting they probably wouldn't have been such an issue had the first employee we dealt with just been nice.

As compensation poor Delta dude forced to resond sent two $50 vouchers to apologize and (hopefully) make us fly with them again. We probably won't use them, but just the offer makes me feel a bit better. I've gotten a few other compensations in the past. Out of a $200 DC parking ticket. Four days of parking at a New Orleans Hilton reimbursed. I'm pretty sure all this says about me is I like complaining and I am good at getting things out of it. A good thing? Not so much. But that's the cold hard truth. And if something is really bothering me it's a way to let it go. If people want to throw consolation prizes my way, who am I to stop them?

Suburbs

Dear DC,
It's been fun. Four years of college, followed by three and a half years of living, in three different apartments. There have been some good times. But I am moving back to the home state. Maryland suburbs here I come. I promise to visit. Three days a week for 12 hour shifts. And maybe some occasional weekends. I won't be far.

That's right, I'm moving. Again. It seems I can't stay any one place for more than 15 months. And that time has come. This time, I'm moving out of the city and into the burbs. Crofton, to be exact. The perk of this is we are looking at townhouses, which have exponentially more space than my current apartment and for about the same monthly rent as my previous overpriced one bedroom. We can have decks! Or basements! Or patio spaces! Unfortunately, we can't have all three. We went searching today and looked at five different townhouses. And I have to say, while there were definitely perks to almost all of them, there are reasons these places are rentals. Outdated kitchens and bathrooms, loud furnaces, closets with doors and "basements" that were a flight of stairs to a back door, we saw some strange things. One basement featured a white and black retro tiled...thing. Entertainment center? Bar? Stage? We weren't quite sure what to make of it. But I'm sure the owner had a purpose when he added it. I hope.

The current front runner has a powder blue toilet in the master bath. I am not sure I can live with that. I mean, I know its just a toilet. And while it is used for official business the color doesn't affect the functionality. But it's powder blue. As is the sink. It reminds me of old people. Like a grandpa driving around in a powder blue buick. I feel like I read that in a book somewhere. The powder blue could be doable, but the guest bathroom's tub is pink! It's a very 70s feel to the upstairs which is sad for two reasons. One, because while the house was in fact built in the 70s the main level is very nicely updated with granite counter tops and new appliances. And two, because both bathrooms were, BY FAR, the nicest we viewed today. It would seem Crofton landlords are stuck in the past and don't care so much about the grooming areas of a home.

I'll keep you posted on whether Blue wins out, or a newer updated model knocks him out of competition.

STOMP

Saturday night we went to see STOMP at the Warner Theater in DC. I had seen the show before, and walked away thinking it was incredibly cool. It is difficult to entertain an audience for an hour and a half without uttering a single word. STOMP, however, manages to make you laugh out loud with gestures and expressions. The percussion music is incredibly cool as well. They take ordinary, everyday objects, and make awesome music. Some of my favs are the number "played" with lighters and plastic bags. I find it pretty amazing that someone can take an ordinary plastic bag and make good music out of it. Check them out http://www.stomponline.com/index-us.php