Fall cleaning

Traditionally I hear of people doing spring cleaning, but this past weekend I did some MAJOR fall cleaning. Our house had been becoming progressively more sloppy and I would just do the bare minimum to straighten everything up because, as the previous post indicates, I've been very busy lately. But this weekend was the first that I didn't have something really big going on and because Keegan has been working weekends (booo) I had a lot of time to do some deep cleaning. Just walking into our house I feel SO MUCH BETTER because I'm usually exhausted when I get home from work/lab/TAing and then walking into a house that was just completely disorganized and a bit grimy was really not all that relaxing. Plus I can see a big difference in how it looked before and just seeing the difference makes me feel accomplished.

I started out just by going through like 3 months of mail that had been piling up. I mean, we take care of the bills and everything right away (but now most of them are posted online anyway) but there was the random junk mail, credit card ads, and Crate and Barrel magazines (which are much more entertaining since I began looking at Catalog Living over the summer!). Once all of this was off of the floor/coffee table/end tables/kitchen table, I moved on to picking everything up off the floor so that I could then dust and vacuum everything.

The next big project was tackling the kitchen floor. This involved going out to buy a bucket to actually fill with water + floor cleaner to scrub the floor, on my hands and knees, being overcome with the smell of "cleanliness". This is the area where I can see the biggest difference because even though I sweep the floor regularly it really just needed to be scrubbed to be really clean. I also cleaned all the counters and the stove-top.

The bathroom floors and showers also needed to be scrubbed, so I did the same thing upstairs as I did in the kitchen, and then also cleaned the mirrors, sinks, faucets, and toilets. Woooo. I got a lot of other small things done this weekend too that had been nagging me. Like doing a load of towels (we were waiting until we had a bunch to wash instead of only a few) and cleaning my car. Buying Halloween candy, a pumpkin, and some chrysanthemums.

Lesson for next time: keep on top of your cleaning.

Campout, BMES, and Austin City Limits 2010

It has been a long time since I have updated! The last three weeks have passed in a haze of tiredness, but things are calming down a little bit now. The first weekend in October was basketball campout. Unfortunately I didn't win tickets (but that increases my chances for next year!) but I still had a lot of fun. I tented with the BME crowd, which was loud and insane and everything I expected it would be. I went into the weekend knowing that I wouldn't sleep and I would most likely be in a very bad mood by Sunday, but it really wasn't that bad. I guess now I know I should just approach these things with very low expectations so that I'm always pleasantly surprised. The first night I slept about 4 hours, and it was actually these non-BME jerks in the tent next to me that kept me up with their insane techno music. I mean, c'mon. TECHNO music? I can ignore things that have regular patterns, but there's just no hope for blocking that out. But again, I expected it and wasn't really disappointed. The second night I only slept for about 1.5 hours and I had a running countdown going in my head of how many hours I had left to endure.

I left for BMES on Wednesday after campout, and at that point I was still tired then I spent 5 days in Austin having a ridiculous time. The crowds there were amazing -- Franklin Street has absolutely nothing on 6th Street. The first night in Austin I relaxed, but the rest of the nights we went out and explored (the bars, live music, and UT's campus). The conference was really good too; I had about 10 people talk to me seriously about my work, and two of them even asked for my contact information so that I could explain more of what I do with the encapsulation procedures. It's weird! Now all of a sudden I'm someone who people go to with questions?

Keegan and I went to Austin City Limits on Sunday, and there are really not words to describe what it was like. A HUGE park with 6 or 7 large stages with simultaneous concerts and 70000 attendees. The weather was pretty much perfect, and we were able to enjoy music by several new groups I hadn't heard of, as well as some of the bands we already knew we loved. Bands we saw included Blind Pilot, Portugal. The Man, The Relatives, The Constellations, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Foals, Robert Earl Keen, Midlake, Rebelution, The Flaming Lips, The National, and of course, The Eagles.

We got back to Raleigh on Monday night, then on Tuesday I had class and I needed to run a bunch of errands (oil change, renew passport, etc) and I had a test in my polymers class on Friday to start preparing for. I missed two classes right before the test, so there was a lot of me to catch up on. I think the test went well, but I'm still very run-down from all of the events from the past weeks. I've slept a bunch this weekend and I even took a nap today but I'm still a bit under-the-weather.

There are many other things going on with me now, but I guess I'll have to update on them later because I'm ready to fall asleep at my laptop.