PreludeInZ's Profile

Yeah, our TomTom or whatever the hell it is sits in the office closet, and when we go anywhere, I get given my husband's Droid and get told "Navigate" By which he basically means "I prefer your voice to the voice that comes with the phone, please tell me where to go."

Funnily enough, after a year and a half, the husband and I are on the brink of leaving our first apartment, so this is rather a poignant time to tell this story. So. We were married in May 2009, and a year later, after all the immigration got sorted out, I was going to be moving to Vegas with my husband, he was moving from Florida, I was moving from Canada and he would be arriving a few months before me. He was crazy busy with packing and work, and I love this kind of thing, so I said I'd look into apartments online. My family moved around a lot when I was little, so I learned to love looking at houses. I love moving. I love that feeling of being in a brand new, empty house, and it being all strange and unfamiliar, and that first night in a new house with its different noises and its queer creakings and settlings. This was the first time my input into where I was going to be living would be central, and not just adjunct to my parents' final decision, so I went a little nuts.

I researched extensively for about two months. Craigslist, Hotpads, Google real estate, etc. Documented costs/benefits, pros/cons, researched neighbourhoods (nitty gritty data about rates of crime, average rental price, that kind of thing). Looked at renting houses versus apartments, looked for places with pet policies to keep our options open if we wanted to get a cat or dog (or, as I was thinking at the time, rats). Vegas is a strange city, and after being here for a year and a half, honestly not a place that I ever want to live again. But I was so excited at the time, that I'd convinced myself it was paradise, and I made little keening noises every time I looked at a particularly nice place.

So. I got the husband's input every stage of the way, of course, but in typical (male) fashion, he was fairly unconcerned with the same details I was. Finally the time for his move rolled about, and as he set out from Florida I started putting together my final list of likely places. While I AGONIZED about negative reviews of the management of different complexes and different parking configurations, he was blithely driving across the country, calling me when he stopped in assorted cities so I could direct him to hotels with free wi-fi.

Finally he got to Vegas. And I presented him with a map. An incredible map, a map detailed with the routes from his chosen hotel to assorted apartments and rental homes, a custom google map RICH in data, replete with information, just oozing with all the things he'd need to make an evaluation of each particular location, their pros, their cons, their calculated distance from his workplace, all that good stuff I'd worked at for the past two months.

And he chose the first place he visited, without even looking at the other dozen. The end.

(Epilogue: And now he bitches about the parking and the fact that the management are pricks. I, on the other hand, think it's fine.)

Tamarind was a migraine trigger for my mom, but I know they're not universal, so I'd advise wariness on that front. www.foodsubs.com is my favourite website in the world, and might be worth a look.

This is perfect for me, actually. I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner. I layer my noodles in opposite directions, but I've never thought to actually double them up and weave them. As far as too many noodles go, I've been making paper thin noodles of fresh pasta with my pasta machine that are lovely and delicate (a la Thousand Layer Lasagna from 101 Cookbooks http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/thousand-layer-lasagna-recipe.html), but lack the bulk to really hold up to a meat sauce. This might be a good way to maintain the delicacy of the noodles, but add a little bit more heft. Will be trying this out on the in-laws over the weekend :D

Honestly, I'm in the "get a proper bed" camp, but more on the grounds of real estate than comfort, necessarily. I was sleeping with my husband on a full size mattress that's probably older than I am (not that it's much of a defense, but in fairness I'm only 22) for half a year after I moved in. It was his bed and he loved it, it'd been with him for pretty much forever. Trouble was, he slept on it alone, and though a full is ample space for one person, no matter how much you love each other, it's a little crowded for two. And while the sloping hollow that had formed in the middle where the springs had compressed was a great place for him to nest on his own, it led to him straying into the middle of the bed, and then encroaching on my "half". And if I may flirt with the borders of TMI territory? Those horrible, creaky, worn out old springs. The noise. 'Nuff said.

Now, I don't know what your boyfriend is like. Perhaps he cuddles you gently all night in a way that's mutually comfortable. But I sleep with a man who becomes an unholy bastard when he sleeps. His sleeping self is the Hyde to his daytime Jekyll. He twists up in the sheets and blankets. He flings his elbows out. He latches onto anything he can get his arms around. He murmurs gibberish. He snores intermittently. One time--and he swears he doesn't remember doing this--he stole the pillow right from underneath my head and flung it across the room. And he loves that horrible old mattress. Some would argue that the appropriate response to this would be to wake him up, chew him out, and get on with my night, but I'm Canadian, and the sheer rudeness of waking a sleeper grates on my cultural heritage. Besides, he's cranky when he gets woken up. So instead I finally convinced him a bigger, newer, longer bed would make both of us happy.

And it HAS. Oh, has it ever. And the best part? He likes it too. He likes that his feet don't hang off the bed, he likes that he can come home late from work and not wake me up if I'm already sleeping. I like that I can wake up early and not wake HIM up if he's sleeping. I like that there's room for me to turn over in the middle of the night, and to lie on my back, and to be safe from his nighttime flailings.

TL;DR - If you've ever lain awake at night, with an elbow in your kidney, half a cubic foot of blanket to your name, and the wind through his sinuses gently eroding your sanity, thinking that maybe, just maybe, sleeping can be better than this; I urge you, get a proper bed.

How many square feet is your place? And did you try it out on carpet at all? My space is about 1000 square feet, all carpeted except for the kitchen and bathrooms. Do you think this thing is up to it?

Being a gamer of some minor dedication, there are a handful from video games that have always appealed to me:

- The kitchen at the Snowpeak Ruins, in Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess. It's one of the few parts of the manor that are actually in use, and it's got a homey, rusticness about it that I've always liked.

- The kitchen in Peach's palace in Paper Mario 64. As well as Tayce T.'s kitchen. Paper Mario is and always has been one of my favourite VG series, it's just so obscenely cute.

- The basement kitchen's of Guardia Castle in Chrono Trigger. It's quite frantic, in the two ages that you can visit it, with people running around and a crazy chef yelling orders.

- All of the kitchen's in my Jamie Oliver video game. I love that game! It's got about 90% of everything I need to simulate having free reign in the kitchen.

I don't dress up, but I may try it the next time I feel like cleaning...there's a slinky red cocktail dress in the closet that may facilitate this. I do have a trick for getting the house clean if I've been slacking and letting things get a little on the messy side--if you don't do so normally, buy some flowers and display them prominently. Having fresh flowers in the house makes me feel like I need to make the place DESERVING of fresh flowers. Guilts me into cleaning.

Cranberry soda/Vanilla ice cream. It's delicious and sweet and tart and frothy, especially if you use cheap ice cream with a high overrun.

My mom did this with (I think) more success to a lamp in her Etsy store:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38757013

The pictures do an okay job, but it's much more evident in person that the pattern changes based on whether the light is on or off, and that's a better thing to try and achieve, I think. It's a neat technique to use, in any case :)