Well there's been a whirlwind of events since the last post so I'm going to stick to some bullets:

Thursday

• Lenny had his convocation and I studied. I couldn't attend because each person only gets two tickets. With an exam on Saturday and Monday though, the extra study time was welcome. I was still able to see him in his gown and take some photos though before he had to turn it back in. I'm really excited that Prof. McKay had the Convocation Brass play the theme from Indiana Jones as the recessional. This is Lenny's favourite piece / ring tone and I kind of wonder if he knew that? ;)
• Did massive amounts of cleaning. One day's cleaning garbage:
• Went out for a Fantastic dinner with his mom and brother at Bertoldi's. Can't go wrong - I love this restaurant.
• Drove back with the fam to Toronto. Unfortunately I was really pooped and couldn't really fall asleep. It seemed like the longest car ride to Toronto ever but nevertheless wasn't terribly bad.

Friday

• Lenny and his brother were at work all day and his mom was out running errands so I got a lot of studying done (much needed!). I even made it out for a run. Thankfully the whole area is as flat as a pancake; a welcome change!
• Friday night everyone was gone so it was just me and Lenny. We had some dinner with his half-sister (yay BBQ!) and then I studied some more while Lenny read up on papers for a project a work.

Saturday

• Saturday I wrote my music exam online at 10am. I have a big pet peeve with poorly written exams. Ugh. Must discuss later.
• Anyhow the rest of the day was filled with, you guessed it, more studying for me. Lenny and I met up with his best friend since kindergarten for dinner and went out for some more excellent Italian food and ice cream

Sunday

• Blah blah studying blah blah travel back to London. Not exciting. Did go to an Italian bakery for some fresh bread though - a very nice place ;)

Monday / Today

• Studied a lot for my economics exam which I wrote at 4:30pm. Got a 62 which is pretty consistent with my marks for that course. Woo pass!
• Tackled the installation of curtains:
  

• and my staircase necklace holder thingy. What a joy this thing is to put up.
  

Well now it seems very late and I am pooped. Hope you enjoyed all these updates!

The difference a day can make

It is surprising some times how much of a difference a day can make.

I was lucky enough to have a really good mind frame for studying today and got a lot done. I also managed to:

• make it out for a 30 min run
• make it to the grocery store
• bake Lenny some "Congratulations, you convocated!" cupcakes for tomorrow
• cooked some really awesome dinner - fajitas mmmm
• got my laundry all sorted to do (but unfortunately the laundry room closes at 10pm :( .... laundry tomorrow)
• tidied up the apartment quite a bit -- I can now walk down the hallway in the middle of the night and not run into anything because there's nothing there! Un miracle!

I also got the wonderful news that my Accounting midterm originally scheduled for Wednesday has been moved to Friday. SUPER happy about that. I also was understanding accounting really well tonight so I'm feeling a lot better about that exam.

Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, I'm going to do my laundry at 8am, be at MDS labs to have my yearly bloodwork done by 9:45ish, be at class from 11-2, meet up with Lenny's mother and brother at 2 for a short bit (their schedule permitting), coming back to the apartment while Lenny convocates to wash the floors (maybe)/vacuum/study/pack, go out for dinner with his family at 6:30pm, travel to Toronto to spend the weekend there. Should be a busy day, but I'm sooooooooooooo looking forward to spending time with Lenny and his family; they are a wonderful bunch. Hopefully the studying goes as well tomorrow as it did today. The goal is one chapter of music and two of economics; we'll see how that goes.

Well I'm off to sleep. Ciao for now!

A new wave of panick sets in

I have a midterm for the music class I'm taking on Saturday morning. It's worth about 20% of my final mark and I've read only about 70% of the material for it.

I have a midterm for the economics class I'm taking on Monday afternoon. It's worth 30% of my final mark and I've read 1/10 chapters for it.

I have a midterm for the accounting class I'm taking on Wednesday evening. It's worth 20% of my final mark and I've read probably 15% of the material for it.

This is not good. Not good at all. Considering under maximum study time I can do something like a maximum of two - three chapters a day this is not good. Moving into a FILTHY apartment and not having help to set up or clean while I'm overloading like a crazy woman was the worst of my ideas I've had in a long time. Terrible idea.

On the plus side, the apartment is getting less smelly by the day although I think I will feel really good once I have accomplished the remaining tasks:

• do laundry -- haven't done it in close to two weeks... starting to run pretty low
• wash the floors - supreme grossness here
• find someone with a carpet cleaner - I know it's overkill but it's seriously gross. just gross. and only going to get worse with increasing heat I'm sure
• write up a letter to get the sink fixed - my bowl that the pipe drains into overflowed today and made a mess. at least this time when i cleaned it up i didn't have to use adsorbent amounts of bleach.
• find a small desk -- my current one is too big for my room so I haven't set it up. boo
• FIX MY INTERNET / find out why it's so sloooooooooooooooow and keeps kicking me off
• hang things on walls. It'd be nice if i wasn't picking my jewelry out of a cardboard box on the floor anymore

I think that is all. I am pooped but must finish a chapter of this music text before I go to bed. There's no ending to your day quite like listening to North American powwows. :(

I can see! I can see!

The kitchen counters and the kitchen table! I also discovered why the cupboard under the kitchen sink smelled so bad -- the drainage pipe leaks (like a LOT) into the bottom cupboard. I put a bowl down there for now and bleached the crap out of all the grossness down there, but I will definitely have to get that attended to by the landlord. Between my constantly running toilet and the kitchen sink I'm sure my new landlord is loving me oodles right now! PS I'm also starting to wonder how someone can live with these problems for such an extended period of time and not get them fixed?!?

Anyhoo, here are some pictures from today's successes (click to enlarge):

Le kitchen avec un microwave that doesn't work at all; well it does work as a clock but that's it. Debating taking it to the microwave/tv repair shop across the street b/c, hey, it's there, but I dunno it's been a fun challenge to live without a microwave.
The kitchen table!!! SO exciting! I still need to vacuum, but I think I will definitely eat something there tomorrow.

You've probably noticed that there's not a whole lot of storage in this kitchen so my crate-creation has made a comeback. I'm thinking about perhaps investing in some sort of pantry thing but we'll see what happens when the other roomie comes back in September maybe.
A special shout out to Lenny who's moved backed to Toronto for the summer. I will see him on Thursday though for convocation so it doesn't seem so bad at all!

Night night everyone.

Progress Continues

A quick post for everyone seeing as it is almost 9:30 and I should be out of here for class at 11 by 10:15!

The kitchen is getting cleaner! There's still a lot of work to be done here but it doesn't repulse you away from eating anymore.

My closet is more or less finished now. I've had to put some of the stuff that would normally be on my desk in the closet for now until I get a smaller desk.

I finished the bookshelves in the living room. I now can sit on the couch to watch TV (or study of course!) and not get overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to do because at least I'm staring at a big project that's already done! :)

Well today will consist of Operations Management from 11-2 & Economics from 7-10. I'm hoping to get lots of studying for my OM exam tomorrow morning in between classes. I might even try to fit in some cooking in there too.

Cheerio!

Adventures in the Purple Palace continued

Day two was considerably more busy than Day one. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class in the early morning and late at night; way more time at school/traveling = less cleaning :( . I promised myself that I would start studying for my midterm on Friday but I don't even really have a place to sit without experiencing massive amounts of clutter within two feet of me.... Moving while overloading at school is a BAD idea. Bad.

On the positive side of things, I was able to get up one bookshelf and make considerable progress on the other, nearly completed everything for my music course (it makes me the most frustrated so I try to get it out of the way as fast as I can), cleaned the dishwasher followed by all of my new dishes & cutlery (thanks to mom and dad!), and two of three meals. woo! Got to take pride in the little successes here. If only there were about 100 more hours in the day.

Here are some pictures to keep you entertained as promised, then I'm off to finish the bookshelf so I can have a sort of tidy living room. ugh. Anybody want to come help clean / build furniture ;) ???

Lenny made some great chicken last night for dinner. He's been a great help getting settled in considering he's in the process of packing to leave on Saturday and sorting out lots of grad school stuff.
Yesterday when I was cleaning the cupboards I found an antique onion... Well actually there were two but this is the "best" one.


Lenny and I went to dispose of an old gross moldy chair on the balcony but when we moved it, we discovered a papa pigeon and mama pigeon who was roosting eggs... Guess the moving will have to wait.

Well I'm off to finish the bookshelf. Ciao!

Heather Enters the Purple Palace

Back to the blog.

A lot of people have asked where the blog has been and why not start up again? I took a break to refrain from complaining about work when that's all I was doing (it was a great job though; don't get me wrong). Now that I'm back in school and having fun adventures with Lenny, I thought it'd be a good time to resume.

I moved into my new apartment on Sunday. It is considerably cheaper than where I've been living and therefore should help the good ol' budget line as I return to school as a student. I plan on staying until at least the end of December at which point I will either move or get another roommate (my current one, who is away planting trees until September, will be graduating and leaving in December). It's a lot closer to the downtown core than any of my previous living arrangements which will be most welcome. It is a little further away from campus and actually my first place not within walking distance of class. Should be interesting... I will be getting a free bus pass with my tuition in September though so that will be nice. Anyhoo, on with the pictures!

This is the Purple Palace. aka my new bedroom. I most definitely did not choose this purple-y colour and am kind of hoping the landlord will paint it beige. The purple does get less disgusting with time though believe it or not. [click on the pictures to make them bigger]Today I decided to tidy up the storage closet so that I could put my boxes & suit cases in there as I emptied them (I came to this conclusion only after tripping over empty suitcases several times...). Above are the before and after pictures! I'll have to put another pic up on the blog with all my stuff in it at a later date; it's already filling up quite quickly though.

Before #1

Before #2
After #1
After #2

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to post some more pictures. I do have a lot of school work to catch up on- reading four chapters of accounting by Wednesday (about 250 pages); six chapters of economics by Tuesday night - HA! (about 400 pages); about 10-15 hours of global music by Wednesday night (eeeks); and as much time as I can manage to prepare for my Operations Management exam on Friday... All this while trying to unpack and clean the dirtiest place I've ever moved into. G-ross.

All things considered though, I'm extremely happy! The move went sooo well (Lenny & Dad to the rescue!) and life, while busy, is finally heading where I've wanted it to be going for so many years. w00t!

In the near future I'm planning on sharing a bit more about my current and on-the-horizon school situation, introduce you all to Lenny (the coolest bean you ever did meet), and post some more pictures of my updated apartment. Ciao for now! Must enjoy my new muchos quieter apartment for some sleepy time.