Apartment Livin'

Since I’ve moved back into my parents’ house, I’ve been thinking about all the differences between this and living in an apartment. For the sake of simplicity, I’m defining my college apartment living only as units in apartment complexes.

Things I’ll miss about living in apartments:

• Round-the-clock access to emergency plumbing, electricity, and other services… 95% of which get solved in a 24-hour time span.
• Amenities I use very occasionally but don’t have to maintain regularly – gym, pool, etc.
• Free coffee/tea/hot chocolate/cookies
• Hot water is (almost always) nearly instant available for showers
• Not feeling bad about 3 a.m. showers bothering anyone
• Free awesome stuff like a movie theater, unlimited use business center, or pool table
• Not being afraid to sell things on Craigslist with “must be picked up” taglines because it’s like you’re going to be living there that much longer anyway!

Things I won’t miss:

• Paper-thin walls
• Noisy neighbors, especially ones with dogs
• Anything to do with laundry rooms (restrictive hours, people who mess with your laundry, that weird not-quite-linen-fresh smell from the machines)
• Having to carry groceries up elevators/stairs and down hallways from the car to the apartment
• Needing to go through more than one door or hallway before I’m technically home
• Being stuck with ugly kitchen cabinets
• Can't install filtered water! (I hate the taste of Brita and hate buying bottled water.)
• Giving people two sets of instructions on how to get to my place -- one for the complex and one for the actual unit
• The way every single unit and hallway looks exactly the same and sometimes I have to check the number outside my door to make sure I'm in the right place.

I see skies of blue... clouds of white

(via icanread, downstream from daily be)

p.s. I love vinyl wall lettering, especially from Etsy.

Growing Up?

I'm going to try really hard not to turn this post (or the rest of this blog for that matter) into an angsty emo diary... but it's quite hard moving back into my parents house. I feel like I'm back to being a teenager, in that awkward stage between no longer being a kid and not quite being an adult yet. It's starting to make me wonder what exactly it's going to take to make me feel like I've grown up and become an adult.

A lot of things have emerged over the last few years, living in apartments off-campus and away from my parents, like all my thoughts about what to do with my own space -- i.e. when I have my own house -- like composting and solar lights, or painting my walls colors in deep colors unlike the drab slightly-off-white I have been looking at all my life. Or my style of cooking, or my need to cuddle as I sleep (or else you have poor Percy and Pooch), or having a drop-off zone when I first enter the place...

At any rate, will being able to do all those things make me feel like an adult? Or will I go on for many more years trying to figure out life as I go and wondering if I can stand on my two feet? (On legs! On human legs! 10 points if you guess the movie.)

Or will there be some defining moment that makes me realize that I'm kinda old? O.o

What do you think?

Sleeping Together

This is totally me and Clement - we never sleep well when we are apart and when we sleep together, we pretty much automatially pass out into deep slumber.

(Sinfest)

Mouth-Watering Watermelon Bars

Don't these watermelon bars look delicious?? Recipe at Right@Home.

7

Hello! You bloggerinas have been busy while I was moving; I came back to find lots of amazing stuff to catch up on!

My pal Phoenix over at Res ipsa loquitur has just tagged me in a post to share 7 things about myself! Like her, I was surprised to be tagged by an amazing writer ;-) and am totally stoked about sharing my 7!

1. I am an only child and hate it when people ask if I was lonely growing up without brothers or sisters because it doesn't seem occur to them that I had an entire childhood like that and therefore don't have any basis for comparison. (Nobody ever asks if a person disliked growing up blond or something else they couldn't help. -_-")

2. I have been to Paris twice and Taiwan twice because I have a lot of extended family in both places.

3. I speak (mostly fluent) Mandarin Chinese, which I studied for about 5 years outside of school, but can't remember any of the French I supposedly learned over 3 years in school.

4. I have never broken a limb, knock on wood.

5. When I was little, I thought being a school bus driver would be a great job. My 6-year-old brain had concluded that their jobs consisted only of picking up kids for school, dropping them off after school, and the occasional field trip. Even when I was little, I was lazy!

6. I used to be heavily addicted to World of Warcraft and was in an active raiding guild back when the cap was 60 and there were 40-man raids. (And you wonder where the "geek" part of my description came in.)

7. My boyfriend's nickname for me is "Bunny" because apparently the way I do air quotation marks looks like I'm making two pairs of bunny ears hop forward.

Tag, you're it -- I'd love to hear 7 from Jasmine, Brenda, Deb, Emily, Dionne, Nina, Lisa, and Tammi!

Strung Up on the Vitamin String Quartet

As promised, here is my compliation of Vitamin String Quartet videos!

Brief descrition from Wikipedia:

"According to their website, The Vitamin String Quartet comprises a rotating collective of Los Angeles musicians widely known for its tributes to cutting-edge rock acts. They have released a series of string quartet tribute albums, released by Vitamin Records using a wide array of instruments, but primarily violins and violas.

"Vitamin String Quartet is about applying rock n' roll attitude to classical technique," says Tom Tally, a violist and arranger who has performed on and produced over thirty-five Vitamin String Quartet albums."

"We Will Rock You" - Queen

"Don't Speak" - No Doubt

I had no idea this song could sound even sadder but I was quite wrong.

"Wonderwall" - Oasis

"When You Were Young" - Killers

Check out their YouTube channel to see if they've covered your favorites!

Oh, and can I just say, as a former violinist, how different and refreshing it is to hear the cello actually play melodies instead of just the boring harmonizing parts? Poor cello players.

Moving Forward

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

-TS Eliot

Moving out and on from San Diego. See you on the other side.