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January 27, 2005
Japan
Japan has been towards the top of our travel list for a while and I really wanted to make an effort to go this year, so when I saw an airfare special today, we decided to go for it. Even though I had always imagined we'd be flying into Tokyo, this airfare special was to a city called Nagoya and I was a little hesitant at first but then ultimately decided that it was a good destination, since it's located near to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. We'll actually be there for our anniversary (towards the end of April) which should be cool. I'll really need to start saving up though because, besides the fact that Japan is really expensive, I know I'm going to go crazy buying cool tchochkes in Tokyo!
Posted by Jennifer at 10:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2005
Florida
Despite my stress about asking for time off from work to go, our timing for our trip to FL couldn't have been much better--we eluded the frigid temperatures and snowstorm that hit the Northeast this past weekend and got to enjoy the warm sunny weather of southern Florida. Adam's grandfather and his girlfriend live in a part of FL known for its significant elderly population and it's always odd going down there and seeing all the gated communities with their fountain festooned entrances and artificial lakes. Adam's grandfather and his girlfriend live in one of these gated communities on a house whose back faces an artificial lake and front faces a street where every house looks almost exactly the same and it always strikes me as weird that they turn on the alarm everytime they leave the house--I honestly don't know what they or any residents in this part of FL have to be afraid of but between the year-round warm weather and all the gated communities in FL, residents do seem to be living in something of a bubble whose logic may strike people like me as foreign.
This aside, we did enjoy our time there. We were, of course, pretty happy we missed all the snow and cold weather and while we didn't go to Miami as I had originally hoped, we did go to cool places like here and here. One thing I like about FL besides the warm weather are the variety of birds--there are a lot of wetlands and water bodies (both natural and artificial) which, along with the warm weather, attract a lot of waterfowl which you don't see in the Northeast. I love birds so it was a treat to see egrets, for example, nearly every time we left the house. All in all, a pretty good trip, though next time we return to FL I would like to see more of the state.
Posted by Jennifer at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2005
Off to warmer climes
Adam and I are off to FL for an extended weekend to visit his grandfather--will post by the time I return.
Posted by Jennifer at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2005
Sick
Wednesday morning I woke up achy and feverish but still went to work because I had so much work to do and I didn't want to increase my chances of my boss saying no when I ask him for time off to go to FL for an extended weekend next weekend. Within a few hours, however, I realized I probably wouldn't be able to make it until five at work so I scheduled an afternoon appointment with a doctor. After getting stuck at the doctor's office for an hour and a half, I crawled into bed which I had been awaiting all day. Thursday, I felt better and went into work around noon. Friday, my throat hurt and I wasn't feeling so great but I still went to work at 9 and went to a friend's for dinner. Last night, my throat killed me the entire night and I tossed and turned and probably had one of the worse nights in recent memory.
This morning, I grimaced to discover how cold it was outside as we headed over to the LIRR station to go to Adam's sister's, who had agreed to take us to IKEA. IKEA is overwhelming to begin with and being sick didn't help matters but I made it through picking out furniture, though I was pretty wiped out by the time we made it to the registers. The next few hours were not fun--waiting outside in the freezing cold for Adam's sister to drive up, then waiting for the car to be loaded up and things to be tied to the roof of her car, then riding in the back with the bulk of our furniture, then waiting outside in the freezing cold again while Adam transported the furniture inside our building. By the time I finally walked into our apartment, my condition was at an all time low and I crawled into our bed to sleep off my misery. I haven't been this sick in a long time--it really sucks.
Posted by Jennifer at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2005
Home sweet home
Yay! My computer's back online! So, I have a lot to update you on but, first thing's first--the new apartment is great--it's really large--much larger than we thought. We knew it was pretty spacious, of course, when we decided to bid on it but didn't realize how big it was until we saw all our stuff in the new apartment and realized there was still plenty of room to walk around (unlike our last apartment). While walking back and forth between our living room and bedroom, I marveled at the spaciousness of our new abode--this is what I had always dreamed of--a place large enough to accomodate all of our things. While lying in bed, I was impressed with the airiness of the bedroom--besides being a basement apartment, our last place had low ceilings and our bedroom was quite small so it was a much more confining space than our new bedroom. We really lucked out with this place as far as the size goes. The only drawbacks of the new apartment that we've noticed thus far is that the kitchen and bathroom are really small.
I actually didn't have to move--Adam transported some of our things with his family over the weekend and moved the bulk of our things with the professional movers we hired yesterday--but I did have to pack, of course, and that part sucked. I spent Friday night to Monday night packing with the only exceptions being a trip to the bank and Adam's uncle's 50th birthday party. By Sunday night, I was ready to collapse--I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and achy. At least the last time I moved and every other time, I was able to sleep in the next day since I was either working part-time or still in school and didn't have to go to work at nine the next morning. Having to go to work Monday morning definitely sucked since I only got three hours of sleep Sunday night.
Walking to the subway station we've walked to every weekday morning for the last three and a half years, and getting out at an unfamiliar station after work and walking into the new apartment was definitely a strange feeling. But the strangeness eventually disappated into elation, partly induced by the apartment, partly induced by alcohol (we went out for dinner with Adam's friend and shared a bottle of wine) and then fatigue. I had none of the trouble sleeping last night that I experienced the last three nights. Now that some of the anxiety associated with the co-op has been alleviated, I only wish that work could be less stressful..
Posted by Jennifer at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2005
Brain chatter
It's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep. Usually, I have no trouble falling asleep, but when I have a lot on my mind and I go to bed, sometimes I have difficulty doing so as was the case tonight. I had come across a photograph of one of Adam's friends' old bathroom-- a really cool bathroom that was covered with aviation maps. I had forgotten about their loft and seeing the photograph reminded me of it again and the loft was one of the things I thought about while I lay in bed. It was my dream abode--huge, in downtown Manhattan in a culinary haven, and a room which stood out in my mind. Adam and I had entertained the thought of moving for a second, but the rent was too high for us but as I thought about the place tonight, I thought about all the ways we could've tried to live there (the loft had two bedrooms so I was thinking of people we could've shared it with, among other things).
I developed a roll of film recently and it didn't have some photos I expected it to and I remembered while trying to sleep that I had taken photos the day we went horsebackriding and these weren't in the roll I just developed and started worrying that perhaps the roll with the photos was the roll in my camera and that I had ruined both the photos I took and any future photos I take. Then, I remembered that one of my favorite webloggers probably got married this past week and perhaps she had posted photos from the wedding which is why I'm up now. Ugh, I really need to go to sleep so I can get up early to pack tomorrow..
Posted by Jennifer at 02:02 AM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2005
Packing
I tried to prepare for the move, but with the tenuous nature of the co-op buying process, I didn't want to invest too much in the move until it was a sure thing. I slowly weeded through my things as late as last weekend and didn't start packing until the night we went to the co-op for the final inspection. Packing (or unpacking, for that matter) has never been my forte, in part because I've accumulated so much stuff over the years and discarding things is such a slow process for me. I spent the nearly the entire day today going through my paper based things, weeding out the things I didn't need, and trying to pack them in an at least somewhat organized fashion. Tomorrow we have Adam's uncle's 50th birthday to go to so I'll only have the morning and evening to pack (the big move is happening first thing Monday morning so I have to have everything packed by tomorrow night). I don't look forward to the last minute scramble to finish packing. I don't look forward to having to unpack. I do look forward to moving into a new place that we own and hopefully making it into the presentable apartment our current one never was.
Posted by Jennifer at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2005
Homeowners
After waiting eights months to get to this point, we finally closed on a co-op today. The closing was actually a lot easier than I thought--I had been told closings could take two to five hours and to be prepared to sign countless documents, but ours only took an hour and we didn't really have that much to sign. The only hitch was learning that we can't move on Saturday as we had originally planned because the co-op doesn't allow moving on weekends which is kinda sucky. Yesterday, we went to do a final inspection of the co-op and the seller and his girlfriend, who are very nice in person (as a seller, however, he was a pain to deal with), talked our ears off. And they're extreme conversation jumpers--they'd go from talking about serious health conditions to asking if we wanted lamps, to talking about how they met, to ex's and other random subjects. I don't know--I could never reveal that much about myself to a total stranger but I like listening to people, particularly if it involves hearing interesting things, so I didn't mind so much.
Posted by Jennifer at 10:05 PM | Comments (1)
January 02, 2005
New Year's = no cupcakes
It's been impossible getting cupcakes this weekend. On New Year's Eve, we went to a party in Brooklyn not too far from Downtown Atlantic which, according to posters on Chowhound, has amazing cupcakes. Since we're never in this part of Brooklyn, I was really looking forward to trying their cupcakes but, alas, we schlepped all the way there only to discover they had run out.
On Saturday, I went to the Poetry Project's annual New Year's poetry marathon which isn't too far from my usual haunt, Sweet Sugar Sunshine. Having tried to go to different restaurants for lunch with a friend and discovered that all were closed, I had the foresight to call Sugar Sweet to see if they were open first but, unfortunately, they were not.
Today, we celebrated my friend Liliane's birthday by Union Square at a restaurant a block away from 'Witchcraft, which I've also heard has amazing cupcakes but they had also sold out . I guess I'm not the only cupcake-obsessed person this weekend.
Mother nature did give us the best New Year's present by giving us the warmest New Year's in recent memory. Coming back from L.A. too this was a particularly pleasant surprise.
Posted by Jennifer at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)