Look Mom I'm Blogging!

Hmmm let's see what has happened in Katie world. Good Lord I don't know where to start. I guess I'll just start with about a two months ago and work towards today. You may be in for quite a journal. So the few things I've been juggling here in my world have been finding an apartment/house in Asheville, finding a roommate for said apt/house, getting nursing school squared away, funding nursing school, and figuring out the whole boy situation.

Since about two months I've been looking on craigslist for both an a place to live as well as a tolerable roommate. I began to search for a roommate initially on roommates.com, thinking it would be easier to find a place if I had someone to look with. I will go ahead and mark that off as a mistake I've learned from. I did meet one girl on the roommate sight and she seemed fairly sane as far as I could tell via e-mails and phone calls. I found a list of houses to make appointments to view from craigslist and met up with her in Asheville. I met her and her boyfriend (insert eyeroll) at their friend's house. She was going to be moving up from Louisiana to just start something new in a new place since she'd just graduated college. Well she seemed really nice... a little on the southern belle, preppy side, but nothing I couldn't deal with. Everything seemed fine for the most part, though I could have done with out her boyfriend being there. I don't really like dealing with 'those' girls...but of course I know I'm guilty of being one from time to time so whatever. Anywho he goes with us to look at the places (another eyeroll) and upon hitting the road the first question I'm asked is "So what denomination are you?". Just imagine a great mental sigh at hearing this question. I said "methodist" because what the heck...I guess that's the most accurate as far as upbringing. I could get into what I really think about people giving a crap what denomination I am, but I'll leave it be. Basically, I'd like to just tell these people to shove it, grow up, and get a mind of their own. Anywho. We went to a few different places, me thinking that it would be two bedrooms that we'd be seeking. This was not the case apparently. She'd decided that she was going to invite a friend of hers from Alabama to live with us..this meant we only looked at three bedroom places. At the point of being told this I was ok, I could deal with that, sure it was annoying to have that sprung on me, but oh well. So 3 bedroom after 3 bedroom.... one huge room, two baby rooms. Every single time, unless it was a 3 baby room deal. With as much furniture as I have bedroom-wise I wasn't going to be able to work with one of these bite-size rooms and I could tell there would be a battle for the master bedroom. By lunch time I'd been feeling a little squimish about this prospective roommate. It was just harder than it needed to be I thought. I didn't like how conservative she was..not that I'm just a raging liberal, but I'd like to think I have a somewhat open-mind. It was when we went to lunch and were talking about the new Sex and the City movie that I started to question just how out of touch she was. I told her how much I liked it and that I was really happy with the ending. She said that she didn't really care for it because she didn't realize that SEX and the City would be so provocative. I have little patience for this. I'll just be honest. I was just thinking to myself...seriously? It was a real surprise for you...all the sex....in the city? Anywho not because of that alone, but because I was growing fairly tired of our endless issues w/ finding a three bedroom suitable in our price range and her insistance on having her friend from Alabama movie up. I basically was frustrated with the sudden change in room number and the feeling that I would be living with someone who thought a bit two differently than myself. Again, there were other things that just didn't click, but I just got an overall feeling of having to censor most everything that came out of my mouth. Man...I sound like a real badass. Well I totally am (final eyeroll).

So I let her down via e-mail. I know completely a coward move.

Hmm let's see at this stage.

School Fund: Had applied to the Applebee's on Cedar Bluff since it was close to my full-time job.

Apt/House: nada, but still had two and a half months to look

Roommate: starting to get worried that it might be harder to find a good one than first thought.

Nursing school: in..but still getting medical records together and having tests done to prior to being completely accepted.

Boy: kinda talking to Bryce...kinda not. No other prospects. (Had not yet heard about Laura's find at the Red Robin lol)

So I kept looking online for both a place I could afford and a roommate. I had decided to junk my roommates.com account. There just weren't that many people looking on that site. Craigslist seemd to be where everything was happening Asheville-wise. At some point I received and e-mail from a girl that would be moving from Chicago and wanted to meet up to check some places out. I agreed to meet with her one weekend, but prior to doing that I decided to look into purchasing a Garmin to navigating a good deal easier. That was one of the nice things about having the previous girl's boyfriend along. He'd had one in her car so we could just type a house's address in and head that way w/o having to ask directions or try to locate it on a map. Soooo..I ordered this one from Wal-mart. They actually ended up having the cheapest price on the model I wanted.

Ok so I get to the hostel that the Chicago roommate is staying. First off, I had no idea there were hostels in the US, but I mean...I guess that makes sense although I had a disturbing image of what one would look like in my mind. Fortunately it was actually a cute little house in west Asheville sans any tourist-torturing crazies...as far as I could tell. So this girl seemed nice...certainly of the green, tree hugging variety, but bearable haha. Oh...this is out of context, but I thought it was funny that on my trips to Asheville I had seen both a person cruising around town on a segue as well as a man just casually wheeling down a residential road on a unicycle...just found that amusing. So we went to go eat lunch and plan out where we were going to look since I again had come equipped with a stack of about twelve potential places printed off of craigslist. She..didn't have anything. This was a flag...should have seen it. So I ordered a turkey swiss sandwich and she ate her gluten-free, vegan whatever and we called some places to make appointments. She began talking about how she was really stressing out about finding a place to look and finding a roommate...she was on some sort of time crunch since she could only stay at the hostel for so long. I told her it should be fine and that if it came down to it I could most likely help out paying for a place until I was able to move. I mean I could have moved earlier if I HAD to (I just didn't want to).






So we were able to book five viewings out of all the choices I'd printed out. The first was a five bedroom (one of which was a hallway shaped, apparently enclosed balcony...no thanks), had oil heat (the idea of that just scares me), and had decorative "murals" on the walls. These were more like abstract doodles. The house was reminiscent of something you'd see dirty college students living in in an early 90's movie. (that's just what comes to mind)





Second house 6, yes 6 bedrooms. Oh no these were not intended to be bedrooms, but apparently they wanted to charge more money. So one room became two and again balconies became bedrooms. This one was in a super nice part of town. Think old money meets old south...and its close to downtown which is big to me. Well apart from the fact that it was three floors (moving would have SUCKED) and poorly ventilated there were two full bathrooms for the 6 people to split. Hell to the no! PLUS, one of the full bathrooms was entered into via the living room...that's just weird to me. I don't want to shower and then walk out into the den where everyone is. No thanks.





Third house was one of those that had pictures of all the prettiest parts of the home and none of the realistic ones. Plus it had a super creepy basement with one of those entrances that you see families rushing into in movies during a tornado and a well in the backyard. I still have issues after having seen The Ring so that wasn't going to work. **Let me state that I am not at all a movie-buff despite the large number of references thus far. ** This house had a very nice kitchen except for two things: no dishwasher (I guess I could live) and the refrigerator had been stuck in a doorway..yes it was a nice new stainless fridge, but it was in a totally ridiculous place and hiding shelving for that matter. Dumb.





Fourth places was...just eh. It was a townhouse apartment, but nothing all that exciting. The rooms were a bit too small, but other than that it was perfectly fine.





Fifth place I went to see by myself because the girl I was looking with had to go to work. It was AWESOME. 3Bedroom 2.5 bath. It had been flipped, but done really well. Totally new kitchen. Fully furnished with really nice everything. There was a really pretty gardent on the right side of the house that had an arbor of sorts with grapes vines growing around it. The man who was flipping it was extremely nice and seemed pretty trustworthy. His daughter even lived in the house behind the one that had been flipped. The man was even going to purchase for the new renters to use if they'd like (there were a bunch of parks close by for this).






So that was the end of house hunting for that day. I sent the girl a text after seeing that house telling her to check it out since I knew she'd like it. It was by far the best we'd seen. So I was really interested in getting it. Well...a couple e-mails later sent, not received. I decide this chick is sending out the flakey vibe so I start looking for other possible living arrangments. Three weeks later she sends me an e-mail apologizing and saying that she freaked out about time constraints and what not. I don't really remember all it said I just kinda...deleted it without really caring. I just considered it to be a spastic roommate avoided.






Sooo let's see where we are at this point. I think it was probably nearing mid-June by this time:






School Fund: got the job at Applebee's w/ only one day of training before I could work as regular server. That was one of the main reasons I went there. I knew I'd be able to start making money pretty quickly w/o having to train for a week or two.






Apt/House: nada, but about a month and half to go. so...not too stressed



Roommate: annoyed and fairly stressed by the selection available so far. I just wanted someone quasi-normal.






Nursing school: all information sent..completely accepted now. Registration appt made. P.S. I only have to take two classes a semester since so much UT stuff transfered. I'm told this will help me out BIG time. I can't add anymore classes since its a set curriculum . Just have to be patient and go through with everone else.





Boy: Talking to Bryce a little more. We do lots of friend things...as in we go out with my friends a lot and at that point had a party planned involving hamburgers, Sangria, and Cranium lol. (I made the Sangria and it was delicious :)




Here are some pictures to spice this wordy blog up:















Let's see so a couple days after these photos I went for a third time to Asheville to check out a prospective roommate and apartment as well as to take care of some things for school.


This time was much more successful. I started by going to campus to register for classes and getting my student nurse ID card made. Which I had planned on photo-ing for this blog, but kept forgetting to. So I am no registered for Fundamentals of Nursing and Pharmacology. Which equals out to a little over 8 hours worth of stuff. Fundamentals on Tuesday is from 8 a.m. to 1:50p.m......should be fun. Luckily I only go to school MTW and am off the rest of the week. Also there are no big gaps between classes so I don' t have to just "hang out" at any point.


After that I called the roommate I was going to go meet (again off of craigslist). We decided to meet for lunch at a place called The Yacht Club downtown. Its kind of a caribbean style restaurant. Downtown is LOADED with neat and unique restaurants. I love that! Anywho...this roommate was normal..made normal people jokes..wore normal people clothing...and ate normal people things. lol So I think we hung out downtown a little longer and then she showed me the apartment she had. This was a person seeking other roommate deal. She already had a place. The apartment is nice...save that its on the 3rd floor. Bigger than what I have now 3 bedroom/3bath and walk-in closets. The actual bedroom is smaller than mine now obviously (the one I have now is meant to be for two people per room). A combination of being happy to have found someone normal, the security of the type of place I would be renting from, and the determination to finally have something set in Asheville led to me signing a lease. So yeah!!! I have a home in NC now!





Apt stats:

• individual leases in a 3br/3bath


• w/d in apt


• fully furnished, yet only leaving what I need in the bedroom since I have so much furniture already


• $500/month


• includes all utilities (internet, heat/air, cable, water, trash)


• maybe 2 minutes from downtown


• nice area


• private bathroom


• pet friendly


• gym on site

So, yep I'm very happy to have that taken care of. Suni (pronounced Sunny, but not a hippy) and hung out the rest of the day and went to go eat a place called...Modesto I think. It was latin american food..pretty good. After that we went on a hunt for a cupcake shop. The literal cupcake shop was closed so we found a restaurant guide and walked around town until we found something that looked good. Its so nice to have a downtown you can just walk around and go from shop to shop or to the different restaurants w/o having to get in your car and drive there. We ended up going to a french chocolate shop called the Chocolate Lounge. We split some sort of buttercream cake that had sea salt sprinkled on it....I was hesitant, but it was ok. We both got a liquid truffle too which apparently is pretty much a melted piece of chocolate mixed with spices and maaayyybe a couple drops of milk/cream. Those were very good. I'd tell you what was in mine, but aside from the pistachio I couldn't identify any of the rest...something Indian. Sunny and I have decided to go to a new restaurant each week just to check them all out...and because that's just fun to do.

And that brings us pretty much to now. So let's check it out :)

School Fund: looking pretty healthy. All the money I make from Applebee's goes to savings for tuition and what not. I should be ok (knock on wood) by August when everything is due.

Apt/House: taken care of officially. Lease signed now I just need to move in...which will have to be sometime between August 1st and the 11th.

Roommate: check....and normal!!!

Nursing school: registered; just waiting on orientation which I believe is the 14th of August.(oh by the way. As far as scrubs go Mommy, I have to buy the ones they order there so that everyone matches. I asked)

Boy: Still chatting it up with Bryce lol. He's in Alberta visiting family until next Tuesday. I think I have him tentatively signed up to help me move. He moves from his place to his old boss's house in a couple weeks too. His ex-boss from ORNL and family have gone to some Asian country to live for whatever reason and had asked if he'd like to live there rent free for ...what I want to say was 3 years. I think that's right either 1 or 3 years...I know thats a big difference. lol Oh well.

Ok here's a final pic for analysis. Laura will he do? You're too far away to question ;) So the pic will have to do.

P.S. I currently have to work Saturday, but am trying to get out of that shift so that I can go see Anna. Cross your fingers!