House Update and Laundry Room Makeover

Seamus and Calvin say hello!

It's hard to believe, but we've lived in Wilmington just shy of one month. In that time, we've done our best to make our more-than-slightly-disappointing rental house into a home. And even though it's felt more like four years than four weeks, I'm proud of the progress we've made. This past week, despite a hurricane and three days without power, a lot of things have finally come together in the most wonderful way.

• We bought a new mattress (Queen sized, mostly for the dogs) and Nathan finished building two beautiful bed frames - one for our old mattress, now the guest bed, and one for our Queen. 
• After getting the run around from AT&T since August 5th, I finally broke up with them and Time Warner was able to get us hooked up to the Internet on the first try, in less than an hour. (Great service, even if they had to call me four times to confirm the appointment and once after so I could rate my experience. For the record, the only negative was the excessive phone calls. Stop calling me!) 
• Our house didn't come with a washing machine or a dryer so we scored a great set for super cheap on Craigslist as soon as we moved in... only to find the hook up for the washer was rotted to the point of no return. After three weeks of playing phone tag with our landlady and getting second opinions from plumbers, we finally have a fixed pipe and the ability to do laundry at home. For two people who sweat exercise like we do, this is definitely a necessity.
• We ordered a couch from Ikea on August 5th. It was just delivered this past Friday, twenty days later. I don't know who was more excited - Seamus, or me! 

Nathan is still building furniture and many of the rooms in our home, while vastly improved, are not quite ready for blog stardom. The laundry room, however, is! Sure, it's not the most glamorous room in the house. But considering in our last home, the washing machine and dryer were stacked in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator, it's a huge improvement.

First, the before:

An empty square of a room. A rusted pipe in the corner. An ugly floor. A cabinet filled with random tubes, empty cigarette cartons, and containers of motor oil. Nothing much to write home about in it's initial state, but full of possibility.

And now, the after!

Ah. Much better! 

This washing machine and dryer set was listed on Craigslist for $250. However, when we arrived to pick it up from a man how lived in a fancy part of town, he knocked the price down to $200 just because. We didn't even ask! The machines work perfectly and I am so thrilled with the deal. I know large appliances on Craigslist are a gamble, but when you have very little money to spend on such luxuries, it's worth the risk.

One of the downsides of our house is the fact that the bedrooms have extremely minuscule closets. The guest bedroom's closet is mostly taken up with the water heater, so yeah - not exactly functional. We decided to hang two large wooden rods in the laundry room and make the most of this space by using it as a glorified closet, shared by Nathan and myself. A great solution and it makes putting away laundry very easy indeed.

And that concludes the first stop on the thrilling tour of our home improvement adventures! Never fear - there's plenty more to come.

Weathering the Storm

A wet and windy hurricane.

In case you hadn’t figured it out from Facebook and Twitter, we survived Hurricane Irene! She arrived on the North Carolina coast sometime Friday. By early afternoon, we already had rain and wind. By early evening, trees were bending, limbs were breaking and transformers were blowing through the neighborhood. Have you ever heard a transformer blow up? It makes a low, grinding whine, and then there’s a popping sound, and then silence – often accompanied by a sudden loss of power and a plunge into darkness. Which is exactly what happened to us at about 7pm Friday night. One minute we watching Blue Planet, sipping wine and staying dry. The next we were sitting in the dark with only the sound of the wind and two whining dogs to keep us company.

The French press does not require electricity.

After the sun went down the wind got worse. We braved the storm to sit on our screened in porch with a battery operated radio, tuned to the local NPR station, and listened to the reports roll in – flooding in Carolina Beach, the bridge to Wilmington closed for the night, power outages across the city and, to top it all off, a tornado warning. I have to admit – as I sat next to Nathan, huddled in the dark with a glass of wine in my hand, I couldn’t help but admire the power and wrath of nature. When your house isn’t flooded and your windows are intact, it’s easier to appreciate the beauty of a good hurricane. 

We finally went to bed around midnight, only to wake again at 3:30 in the morning for another hour of porch sitting and listening to the wind howl and the crack of limbs breaking. In the morning, when we were up for good, we surveyed the damage from the safety of our home – we were still experiencing heavy winds and it wasn’t safe to go outdoors until late afternoon. We were lucky, as usual. Besides losing power for about three days, throwing out a lot of frozen food and spending all of Sunday cleaning our yard, we emerged unscathed. I know a lot of other people weren’t so lucky, so I am not complaining in the least.

This is me, in front of a fallen tree.

Tea lights - important hurricane survival gear.

Thanks for all the blog comments, Twitter messages and Facebook posts checking up on us and asking if we were okay. We were and we are. Best of all, an hour after we got power back this morning, we also finally got our Internet connection hooked up at the house. Which means I can now resume my habit of blogging regularly.  Irene, maybe you're not so bad after all!

Soon: a recap of my first week at school (including my first time teaching!), an update on half marathon training, and Project 365. Until then!

How To Survive a Hurricane In Three Easy Steps

As Irene makes her way to the East coast, I can't help but think back to the last two hurricanes we weathered in Texas - Rita in 2004 and Ike in 2008. Now seems like an appropriate time to share some important lessons from those storms.



1. Stock up on the essentials. This will vary with each person. For us it includes wine (no refrigeration required!), peanut butter, dehydrated camping meals, a few gallons of water and dog food. But mostly wine.






2. Be organized. Yesterday we gathered up our indoor survival gear (batteries, medical supplies, flashlights, radio, gun, etc) and put them in a central location. That way, if the power goes out or looters show up, we won't have to waste time searching for things in the dark.

3. Pack your bags. We don't plan to evacuate prematurely, preferring to hunker down, get drunk and guard the homestead, but we're not stupid. If the county has a mandatory evacuation, we're out. We have packed bags with three days worth of clothes, gathered our important documents and promised to bring along a car-less friend.

That's pretty much it. Stay indoors, drink wine and keep an eye on the weather reports. I'm actually looking forward to being trapped indoors for 24 hours - reading by candlelight is a pretty sweet way to spend a weekend.

If you find yourself in the path of Irene, stay safe! See y'all on the other side.

It Begins

Today marks the first day of the fall semester and the official start of my time as a real, live MFA student. I'm excited, despite the fact that I don't actually have any classes on Wednesdays. That didn't stop me from waking up at 6:30 (even though I didn't go to bed until 1AM), writing 1,000 words of a new story (crap, but aren't all beginnings?) and figuring out what to do with the class I'm teaching tomorrow afternoon.

Did I say teaching? I did! I was lucky enough to snag a spot as a teaching assistant and this semester I'm co-teaching Introduction to Creative Writing along with 12 other TA's. The class meets twice a week - once in a large group a lecture led by the professor, and then again in groups of ten, one of which I'll be solely in charge. I will be facilitating discussions, running workshops and grading my students. It sounds both thrilling and terrifying, and I can't wait to start.

The class I teach tomorrow is actually the first one I'll attend in my MFA career. After that class, I have my class about teaching, to which I am also looking forward. I'll have to wait until next week to see what my fiction workshop and lit class are all about (if a hurricane doesn't wipe us away first, that is) and I'm also really, really excited about those. Are you seeing a theme here?

I was on the phone with my mom a few days ago and she was remembering how, every year on the last day of school, all the kids were thrilled to be done for the summer and celebrating their freedom. Not me. I got off the bus sobbing, because I loved school so much and didn't want it to end.

Some things never change.

Project 365: Week 1

First of all, I want to thank everyone who took the time to comment on my last post about having it all. I really enjoyed reading your thoughtful responses, even if some of you felt you needed more coffee to truly make sense. I knew what you meant and it was perfect. ;)

Today I'm switching gears with a lighter post. For years, I've watched and admired people who have completed Project 365 - a photo every day, for a whole year. I've thought about taking on the challenge many times but felt intimidated and overwhelmed at the prospect. Then three big things happened at about the same time. I moved from Nacogdoches, TX to Wilmington, NC, I'm about start my MFA program, and I turned 29. I can't think of a better time to document a year of my life then one full of huge change, new challenges and the end of my twenties.

I've decided to post my photos once a week, so as not to overwhelm my readers or turn this into a daily photo blog. Plus I like the idea of having a visual way to look back on each week. Just to warn you: I'm not the best photographer and find myself looking for photos or scenes that tell a story, and I predict that there will be times I'll get frustrated and feel uninspired and take a bunch of photos of my dogs. If you've done a Project 365 challenge before and have any advice or tips, please share them. I will need all the help I can get.

I started this challenge on August 11, 2011. Here are my photos from week one.

Day One: Nathan is going to build a lot of the furniture for our new house. There's an amazing store near us that sells gorgeous wood. We spent a few hours learning about and looking at the different varieties.

Day Two: We came home in the middle of a crazy storm and realized that our driveway is more of a river when it rains. We practically had to swim to the front door. On our list of home improvements: clean out and replace the rain gutters. ASAP.

Day Three: This crazy spider lives in the back of my yard. I mostly steer clear of her - I took this photo using the zoom on my camera.

Day Four: Buckwheat noodles, tofu, veggies and peanut sauce. I've promised myself that I will try to limit the food photos to one a week.

Day Five: A can of PBR. Nathan and I are pretty snobby about beer, but now that I'm poor and back in school, I am trying to acquire a taste for the less-fine things in life. PBR is actually not that bad. We drank quite a bit of it during trivia night at a bar. My team (mostly MFA people from my program) won. That might have been because we had the biggest team, but I can't say for sure.

Day Six: Every time I am downtown in Wilmington, I see this trolley driving around. One day I will ride it and see where it goes.

Day Seven: My first friend in the program is named E. and she has this awesome rhino head in her apartment. Don't worry - it's not real.

Thanks for looking! I'll be posting my Project 355 photos every Thursday until August of 2012. I'm already looking forward to next week. :)

A Saturday in Wilmington

Downtown Wilmington.

 

 

As you can probably tell by my sporadic posting and general silence when it comes to writing and responding to comments, we still don’t have Internet at our new place. I have been calling an automated number regularly and the recording at the other end keeps telling me the issue keeping us from being connected will be solved in two days. Of course, that two-day deadline shifts on a daily basis, but I am both stubborn and hopeful - a bad combination when it comes to these things. The newest date is August 16, so please keep those fingers crossed! 

 

I’m used to blogging fairly regularly and to be honest, I feel anxious when so much time passes between posts. How can I catch you up and document my life without overwhelming our screens? I can’t, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll just jump right in with the usual Weekend Adventures and pretend that it hasn’t been a week since my last decent post. Deal? Deal. 

 

So: this weekend was pretty great! It was our second weekend in Wilmington, which is really hard to believe. It feels like we’ve already been here forever. Saturday started early with an easy three mile run, a quick shower and then a drive over to Tidal Creek Co-op, which has delicious, albeit expensive, organic and veggie-friendly foods, for the community yard sale they were hosting. I hoped to find some cheap and not-too-ugly outdoor furniture for our screened in porch, but all I came away with was a $2 boogie board for the beach. An excellent consolation prize.

 

 

After the yard sale we drove downtown to check out the Riverfront Farmers’ Market. It was a cute little market and I scored a dozen eggs, a bunch of kale, some cucumbers, a vegan breakfast bar (so good!) and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers for just five bucks. All in all, a great haul. 

 

We got home from our morning adventures at about 10:30am and were greeted by two very excited dogs. Seamus and Calvin have become spoiled by the dog park that is located a mile from our house and demand to be taken there every single morning. Once we have jobs and school starts, this will most likely cease being an every day occurrence so we’re enjoying the routine while we can. We bring our coffee to the park and stay for about an hour most mornings. This weekend we finally broke into the “inner circle” of dog owners – that is, the regulars who gather in a group while the dogs chase each other around their feet. They’re not an unwelcoming group, but it seems new people require a week of being sniffed out before they’re absorbed into the circle. Dog park politics are very strange and interesting. I should write a story about it one day. 

 

Saturday evening included not one but two big events. The first was the last home bout of the season for the Cape Fear Rollergirls. My new MFA friend E. joined Nathan and I and we watched, cheered and jeered as the Cape Fear All Stars slaughtered the visiting team. I think the final score was something like 250 to 60. I was impressed with a lot of the players on the Cape Fear team and picked up a recruitment flyer – tryouts are at the end of the month. I’m tempted to join but I’m still on the fence. It depends mostly on how much dues are and how much time it will take up. I love roller derby but I know all too well how it can take over your life, and I’m not sure I’m in a place to make that kind of commitment. We’ll see. At the very least, it’s awesome to have a local league to support.

 

 

After the bout, E., Nathan and myself headed to the home of a second year MFA student for a party held to welcome the new kids to the program. I met a ton of fellow students, put a few faces to names, and did the whole, “Where are you from, what is your genre, where are you living, how long have you been in Wilmington?” thing for about four hours. From what I have gathered, the MFA program at UNCW is pretty social and the people in it are a lot more laid back and fun then I anticipated. I was afraid that everyone would be serious and intimidating and much cooler/smarter/talented/worldly than myself, and while the people that I’ve met are all of those things, none of them made me feel inferior or self-conscious. It was a good party and an excellent way to kick off the social side of my new writing life. Now I just need to kick off the writing side! 

 

And I think that about covers Saturday. Clearly I will not be recapping every day to such a degree, but I wanted to give y’all a taste of life in Wilmington. I have a few more posts clanking around in my head that will be more focused, but you’ll have to wait for those. Until then!

Calvin enjoys life in Wilmington!

29 and Holding

I have to admit: my birthday this year had me worried. I moved to a brand new town, in a brand new state, just over a week ago. I've met a few people but I don't really have any friends yet. And I'm still dealing with NOT dealing with the fact that I left such fine people behind in Texas. People with whom I've spent the last six or seven birthdays. The potential for disaster and depression was high.

The one person I do have made sure that nothing like that happened. With Nathan by my side, we celebrated the start of my 29th year with one of the best days I've had in a while.

It started bright and early, when I headed out for an easy three mile run through my new neighborhood. After the run, Nathan joined me for the now customary yoga tradition - 29 sun salutations, plus one to grow on. My yoga buddies in Nacogdoches, Albania and Rhode Island also completed salutations in my honor, and I was indeed honored. I highly recommend starting a new year with this tradition. Each salutation gives you time to reflect on years past and appreciate how far you've come - and how far you left to go.

While we were saluting the sun, the dogs were pacing and whining behind our yoga mats. As soon as we were finished we poured coffee into travel mugs and took the boys to the dog park. Our new house is only about a mile from a pretty great park - it's totally fenced in, provides plenty of poop bags, and is loaded with a variety of funny and friendly dogs. I love dog parks and living so close to one is definitely a highlight of our home.

After the dogs were worn out, we headed home where Nathan poured us mimosas and presented me with my gifts. We'd already used my birthday as an excuse to split the cost of a beautiful but too expensive desk (photos coming soon!) so I wasn't expecting much. Nathan surprised me with a great gift, especially as I start grad school in just a few weeks - a Kindle!

I've been wanting a Kindle for a while, so I was thrilled to finally have one in my hands. He also got me a Kindle case and a $50 gift card to start my e-book collection. Very thoughtful and very exciting. My boyfriend is awesome.

The next item on our Day of Birthday Awesomeness list was a trip to the beach. We live about 15 minutes from Wrightsville Beach but hadn't yet had a chance to dip our toes in the ocean. Yesterday we packed some snacks, put on our suits and headed out.

The beach here is amazing! Beautiful and the perfect temperate - not too warm, not too cold. The current was strong and the waves were rough, and we had a great and exhausting time trying to ride the waves (I'm out of practice) and swimming through the salty surf. I did learn two important things: I need to get a boogie board ASAP, and my bathing suit, while adorable and perfect for calm, East Texas lakes, is no match for the Atlantic Ocean. I had to keep pulling up my bikini or risk swimming in my birthday suit. Which, while appropriate considering the day, did not seem like the best idea.

Once we'd had our fill of sun and sand, we drove home, cleaned up and headed out to dinner at Big Thai, a restaurant that I'd read about in the local independent newspaper. (Side note: living by the beach means that there is sand on the floors of your house at all times. I shall learn to live with this.) Big Thai ended up being a great choice - we loved the restaurant and will definitely be back. Plus, it gave me a chance to take photos of pretty appetizers and entrees.

Basil rolls with veggies and tofu. I love that dipping sauce with the peanuts sprinkled on top.

I got vegan pad thai (tofu and hold the eggs) and Nathan got drunken noodles (not pictured). While Nathan's dish was more flavorful than mine, it was also a little too spicy for my taste. The pad thai was pretty great, but much more subtle. Next time, I shall try the curry.

Clearly, I enjoyed my meal. No noodle left behind. Birthdays are a great way to work up an appetite.

We were going to have a drink at a dog friendly bar after dinner, in order to test out the pups when it wasn't so crowded, but I was too tired to go out. Instead, we rented True Grit (excellent movie!) and had a glass of wine on our makeshift "couch" (two chairs pushed together). All in all, it was a great day and a wonderful way to start a fresh year.


Do you still celebrate birthdays? I always do and always will. I have no problem with getting older, especially since life only seems to improve with each year.

Back in the Saddle

Happy Monday! It is Monday, isn't it? Did you know that tomorrow is my birthday? I had to double check. This is the first year I haven't been shouting my up-coming birthday from the roof tops for weeks prior to the day. It's not because I'm too old for that (I will be 29, which I consider very young), or because I think birthdays are silly (they're the best day of the year!) but because we've been so BUSY. Moving is extremely distracting.

On the home front, our improvements are paying off. A lot of people have commented that our house doesn't look so horrible, and they're right. Despite it's quirks, it's a nice little home. The main problem upon our arrival was the filth and grime that covered it, which is now mostly gone. For example, just today I realized the streaks on the bedroom wall were not, in fact, a bad paint job, but a bad wash job. One hour and five dirty rags later, the walls look much better.



In non-home news, two pretty exciting things have happened. First, I joined a yoga studio! It seems like a nice and comfortable place, and offers 80 classes a week in a bunch of styles, at a variety of temperatures. Yesterday I went to a hot power Vinyasa class and sweated out all the wine I've had since I moved here. It was wonderful and I can't wait to go back.

The second thing is that this morning, I woke up early and went for a run. Since I don't know the area very well, I downloaded the Map My Run app (free!) and took my iPhone with me. The app told me how far I'd gone and at the end of my run, created a map of my route. I ran three miles at an easy pace, stopping to snap photos of a bike trail near our house (above) and a sweet little bunny (below). When I finally finished up I was sweaty and sore. The first run back is always the hardest.




Today, we are installing shoe molding in the living room and study and I'm trying to decide what I want to do for my birthday. I'm pretty sure the beach will be involved, as well as Thai food and vegan cupcakes. Whatever we decide to do, I'm sure I'll blog all about it. Until then!

Home Sweet Home: The Before Photos

Hello blog friends! Oh, how I've missed reading, posting and commenting on blogs these last few days. Our Internet still isn't hooked up (AT&T has to first install a pole of some kind, and we don't know how long that will take) and Internet-ing from my phone just isn't the same.

But I'm not going to use my precious coffee shop time to gripe about the Internet. I'm going to use it to share some long-awaited and mostly horrifying photos of our place when we first moved in five days ago. (Has it really only been five days? It seems more like five weeks!) I'm happy to say that we've made a lot of progress on the house by painting the living room, cleaning the Bejesus out of the kitchen and reconstructing the crown molding on the ceilings, and that today I can actually say with a straight face that I like our house. I never would have thought this was possible five days ago. It's been a long week.

While we've improved the rooms, they're all still in progress. I hope to have one or two rooms finished by the end of next week, so you'll have to wait until then for the after photos. For now, enjoy the following pictures. It helps if you try to imagine seeing this in person, after spending two long days on the road and already feeling depressed about leaving your home and all your lovely friends behind. Plus, it looks much worse in person.

This is our guest room. It's pretty small cozy. I think we're going to stick with the color in the bedrooms but give them a fresh coat - the paint is chipped in many places. 

The "master" bedroom is actually the same color as the guest room, but the lighting was weird when I took this photo and it looks more gray than green. The bedrooms are basically just square, missing the shoe molding along the floor, and have about zero closet space. The blinds are also in bad shape - stained, dusty and missing plastic pieces. Oh, well. 

The bathroom, while very small, is actually quite cute and clean. This was a surprise, considering the dirty disaster that was the rest of the house upon our arrival. 

Hallway that leads to both rooms and bathroom. The floor has a square piece that is nailed down to it. I don't know what's down there. I don't think I want to know. I do like that fancy little lighting fixture hanging from the ceiling, but I am not a fan of the glaring bare bulb that it contains. 

When we arrived, the living room and study (which are attached) had been primed but not painted. Which was perfect for us! Our landlady will deduct the cost of paint and we've already finished this job. It looks great - you'll see it soon. I really like the arched doorway here. This is actually my favorite part of the house - it will be super cozy once we have some furniture in it. 

The... pantry? For some reason, all the cabinet spaces smell really dank and musty when you open the doors. Lysol helped, but not enough. I am getting over it and putting things in drawers anyway, but I hold my nose when I open them. 

The dining room, as seen through the kitchen. I am pretty sure that this section of the house was added later, as it is large and strange and out of place. I guess we'll put a table and chairs here when we acquire some/Nathan builds them. The tile on the floor is terrible and the walls are painted an okay blue color. They need a good scrubbing, but that will have to wait until we're totally unpacked. And who knows when that will be. 

The kitchen itself has old, peeling wallpaper that is stained and just straight up missing in some places. I would love to eventually remove it and just paint the walls, but I don't know if that's in my landlady's budget. It's definitely not in mine!

 We drank a lot of wine those first few days. Then we switched to beer.

We have plans to eventually replace the shoe molding. It will make the floors look a lot cleaner.

All the doors look like this on the bottoms. Nasty.

The laundry room. It did not come with a washer or dryer but we got a great deal on a set via Craigslist. I have also cleared that little cabinet of all the garbage it came with. I repeat: nasty!

Here is a close up of the kitchen floor. Really terrible linoleum and a spot where it's been torn. Not sure what to do about that either. Luckily, it's near the backdoor and the dogs are the only ones who really use this entrance/exit. The dogs are more forgiving than I.

So that's the tour of the before! I plan to post more photos room by room as we paint, clean, fix and fill them. So far, our small improvements have already made a big difference and I have high hopes for this house. I will post the laundry room and kitchen next week, so look forward to that. And if you see an typos in this post, I apologize - my battery is about to die and coffee shop patrons are beginning to circle my table like vultures. Plus Lowe's is calling and I must answer.

Until next time!