New Beginnings.
HELLLLOOOOOO.
I’m sitting here at work on a slow night thinking about ways I can further improve my health. The obvious being eating healthier + exercising. But really, I need to focus on my total well being. It has been a rough 6 months between friends moving, relationships ending, and a close friend being diagnosed with Leukemia. Between work + stress + visiting the hospital, I have neglected myself. I’ve been eating terribly and any free time has been spent laying on the couch watching TV because I just can’t convince myself to do anything else.
A few weeks ago, the stress hit me hard and I had a mini-breakdown. There was a lot of crying, but I got a lot of stuff off of my mind and have been in an oddly positive mood since then. I’m starting to watch what I eat (TRYING to consume less sugar, but working in a bakery makes this very difficult), and slowly reincorporating exercise into my daily routine. It feels great.
KETTLEBELL! I love this thing. It gives such a great workout in a short period of time. Anytime I use it to exercise, I feel amazing afterwards. I may start blogging about fitness progress..it could help. I don’t know yet. It’s not like I really blog anyways! Haha.
Here is to new beginnings. Taking care of myself. Being happy. Focusing on my life.
Reinvention!
Hello everyone! All negative 3 of you that read.. Anyways. Please excuse the messy HTML/CSS for the time being. I’m going to be sprucing this place up and posting more often, but right now everything is a mess! Haha.
See you soon!
Butter London.
For the most part, all of my nail polishes are China Glaze. I love the formula, the color options, and I can generaly find bottles online for a good price. HOWEVER. I recenty came across a good deal on Butter London polishes via an internet friend. Since Butter London is out of my budget for polishes, I decided to take advantage of the deal. I ended up with four BL bottles for less than $30! How exciting!
Pilar Box Red, All Hail The Queen, Bluey and Rosie Lee. From left to right.
When I received the first two, All Hail The Queen and Bluey, I couldn’t wait to try them out! Annnnd..I couldn’t figure out which one I wanted to try first, so I put both on. Hah. The polishes are pretty awesome in application. So smooth, and I only used two coats of each. Usually, I’m a three coat girl, but these didn’t need the extra layer.
All Hail The Queen. Seeing the polish in the bottle, and multiple swatches online, I expected this to have a really holographic look, but was slightl disappointed when it was on the nail. Don’t get me wrong..I think it’s a beautiful beige/grey and the holo that you DO see, is lovely. I just expected more. Here is a close up of the color where you can see the holo.
Bluey. This polish was much more turquoise than I thought it’d be! The website had it out to be blue, not teal. I still love it, regardless. It has a teal, jelly like base with blue/turquoise duochrome glitter pieces. Just like AHTQ, it has a super smooth application. I love when a polish makes my nails look like little beetles. Bwahah.
The only downside to trying these Butter London polishes is that..well, I want more! Maybe some day.
CG In The City
Nail polish. If there is one thing about my appearance that I care about, it is having my nails clean, shaped and polished. I don’t wear make up, and well..my hair is usually all over the place BUT my nails will always look nice. It has been an obsession of mine since I was about 7 years old. Haha. Anyways..I think I’m going to start sharing my collection of polish on here.
This beauty is one of my newest polishes. China Glaze’s CG In The City from their Metro Collection. It is a beautiful dark lavendar sparkle polish and has some silver, gold and bronze glitter flecks. Also seems like there is some kind of jade/teal in there as well! Somewhat hard to photograph, but truly awesome in person.
From a distance in this photo, it almost looks like a smokey, dark grey glitter polish. Definitely not this dark in person. And much more of a purple color!
Tight close up to show some detials. It has that glittery texture to it so it’s a little bit rought, but easy to apply. You can see some of the bronzy flecks in the polish. They aren’t that noticeable outside of photos, which is kind of a bummer because the purple + bronze combination is beautiful. Either way, this polish is fantastic! I don’t have anything else like it!
The Outer Banks.
Good afternoon, all! I’m back and settled from my vacation to the Outer Banks. It was a glorious time. There is just something about the coast that eases my soul. It was the recharge I needed so desperately, but was unfortunately cut short due to Hurricane Irene. On Wednesday evening, there was a mandatory evacuation issued for Dare county, so we had to skidattle, and having been in an evacuation from the OBX before, we left super early Thursday morning (4AM) to beat the traffic.
This post will be picture heavy, so there will be a cut below. If you love the beach, you will follow through!
The Aviary.
Yesterday was Nathan’s birthday. We decided to head over to the National Aviary over in the North Side for the afternoon. These photos are from my iPhone, so the quality isn’t amazing.
Birds are interesting. Often times, you’ll be walking through these open areas admiring the birds – but also dodging their crap and hoping they aren’t going to swoop down and peck your eyes out. Mostly harmless. Mostly. The fact that the NATIONAL aviary is in Pittsburgh is pretty awesome, I think. The birds are great, and it’s a nice place to visit, but it is very small. It might be a bit disappointing to visit if you are traveling from afar.
The penguins are the best! So friendly, one even let me pet it’s back! And if you really wanted a full on penguin experience, you can pay $30 for an up close encounter. I may have to keep this in mind for the future.
The most impressive birds, however, are the Stellar Sea Eagles. Oh my gosh. I can’t even properly describe their ominous presence. Just..look:
Yeah. Overall a good day.
The Vacation To-Do List.
Going on vacation! After much confusion, stress and deliberation, everything is finalized. Six of us (+ two dogs) will be off to the Outer Banks in a week and a half. So excited!
You see, OBX is my favorite place. We try to go to Duck, NC every year since my great aunt owns a condo in that small community on the island. It’s such a relaxing place for an old soul like myself. Anyways. Since I have no idea of how much longer I’ll be able to go there, I made a list of all the things I want to do this year.
+ Visit Jockey’s Ridge State Park. I’ve been to the Outer Banks probably 8 times, and I’ve never been here. I need to experience the dunes in all of their glory.
+ Visit all of the lighthouses on the main islands and go up in AT LEAST one. That would include: Currituck, Bodie, and Hatteras. I would LOVE to get down to Ocracoke Island, but I don’t know if that is possible.
+ Check out the Wright Brothers Memorial. I’ve been here before, but it has probably been about 10 years.
+ Go crabbing and kayaking on the sound.
+ Track down as much wildlife as possible: horses and dolphins especially.
+ Watch/photograph the sun rising over the ocean.
+ Maybe check out Oregon Inlet? Seeing the day’s catch is usually interesting.
+ Try to successfully skimboard. MAYBE.
I’m sure there will be more to this list, but for right now, I’m going to say that is a good amount to accomplish in a week’s time. Of course, there is going to be plenty of rest and relaxation on the beach and tasty food items as well. Ahh, I’m so excited!
Fingers are crossed in hopes that a hurricane doesn’t pop up in the next week!
The Move.
I want to talk about ‘The Move’ before I forget it all due to stress. You see, ‘The Move’ was one of the most ridiculously stressful things that has happened to me in recent history. And I just want to get this straight..this blog isn’t going to be about rants, I just need to share this. Because of the ridiculousness.
SO.
About a month and a half ago, Nathan and I turned in our lease renewal for our beautiful 1BR apartment after deciding we were actually too poor to move at the moment. Well, you see, our landlords are actually slumlords. We have known this for the four years we’ve lived here but we’ve never encountered any problems. They get back to us later that week and told us they already rented our apartment out to someone else starting August 1.
My heart sank. What were we going to do? Well. We asked if they had any other open apartments and luckily they had one just down the hall. He told us it was ‘identical’ to the one we were living in currently. It was kind of confusing, though. Why would they rent out our apartment and not the ‘identical, OPEN’ apartment just down the hall? We begged them to consider switching the leases so we wouldn’t have to move. They refused. For no reason. And we signed a lease for an apartment without seeing it because we were assured it was ‘identical‘.
Two weeks before the move took place, either Nathan or myself would call our landlord just about everyday to see when we could move in. No answer. In fact, they didn’t give us an answer until 7/29, a day before our lease was up. They told us we could move in on 8/1. And that we only had the one day. I ASSUMED that by us moving in on 8/1, it meant that the people moving into our apartment weren’t actually moving in that day, too. Turns out, they were moving in, or at least, that was their plan. The landlord is so disfunctional that the people showed up to move in, but oh! We were still there because that’s when we were told to move. I felt bad for those people because it felt like it was our fault even thought it was not.
The night before our move, I tried opening our new apartment door to get a glimpse of what we were in store for and it was open! Oh the horror. Identical is not the word to describe it. Scratchy carpeting, off white walls, a turquoise chandelier, a bathroom that they haven’t remodeled yet (but plan to) and a kitchen that SOMEHOW had even LESS counterspace than ours (which I didn’t think possible). I was exploding inside. I cried. For hours. I cried all night. Talk about the worst night of sleep right before a very stressful move day. I woke up sick. I felt like vomiting everywhere. I begged Nathan to go talk to the landlord and see if there was any hope of switching the leases. Nope. We got the keys and were told to move.
When we finally got in the new apartment and saw it in daylight, it wasn’t as terrible. I’d miss my stark white walls and beautiful honey colored hard wood floors, but I suppose this was livable. The only downside? The apartment was filthy. Someone clearly smoked in here at some point..the walls were covered in a layer of black and the carpets weren’t cleaned. We decided to clean the apartment before moving in, since there was much to be done. My tears subsided just enough to be functional. While we were cleaning the walls/shampooing the carpets, the landlords secretary came over in a huff and said that we needed to be MOVING and not CLEANING. She then showed us a reciept for the carpet cleaning (we should have shown her the dirt we got out of the carpet) and then the deal breaker. She told us at 1:30PM that if we were not out of our old apartment by 2:00PM, they would be charging us $100. O_O Are. You. Kidding. Me? Dare I even mention that I found a ROTTING MOUSE right BESIDE the radiator? In clear view? OR that there are BEES coming in the apartment?
We were under the impression that we had all day to move. And they gave us a half an hour buffer. We didn’t even begin to move by that time because we were still cleaning. I cried. A lot. It was at this point that we realized how shitty our landlord actually is and we considered calling up a UHaul and moving home. I couldn’t believe it. We’ve lived here for four years, never had any problems before, ALWAYS paid rent on time and in full, and yet they couldn’t give us ONE full day to move.
Everything is mostly settled now in the new apartment. I’m typing this as I sit on my couch in my dingy looking living room still longing for my old apartment back. Thinking about all the money we’ve given them over the past four years makes me sick. It’s about half the price of a decent house. This is going to be our last year here. And even though we are in no position to buy a house, I’m totally considering it. Paying about the same price as rent would cost..to OWN a house? Seems like a good investment.
The Beginning.
Heeelllooooo, blogging world!
You can consider this an introduction post. It may just be another boring blog or it may not. I’m not sure of the direction Nerdy-Nonsense will take and I’m also not sure if that name will stick. HOWEVER. That’s not important. What is important, is that I need an outlet. Whether anyone will ever read anything on this blog is another story.
I’ve blogged before. A different style, of course, being a private blog on livejournal where I just rant and rant and rant. It was effective for my sanity but after a few years, it got mundane and repetitive. I didn’t like focusing on the negative aspects of my life, but I never did anything to focus on the positive. Things were okay for a while, but recently, life has been handing me lemons and I’m having a hard time turning them into lemon tarts.
I want this blog to inspire me to be creative.
With all of that said: Hello. I am Mary.