Things I Have Time for Again
With the semester over, I'm finding myself with some free time. Not too much... I'm still working, and I start classes again in two weeks... but until that time, I'm going to enjoy doing all the things I couldn't do in the past 3 months but would think about whenever I was stuck in my office writing papers.
For starters, there's a lot of housework to be done. Matt and I started rearranging the house after the piano was sold and gone, but there are still areas in the house that need fixing up. For one, my new office has turned into a catch all, so at some point I'm gonna have to suck it up and clean that room. I got some book son Feng Shui to help with ideas of how to arrange things, which has been really helpful. It at least gives me an approach to design. And after using it in the living room (which I think has turned out great) I'm excited to see what I can do in my office. Though with all the junk in there right now it's all a little overwhelming. So lately I've been focusing on more basic cleaning.... vacuuming, bathrooms, kitchen (I cleaned out the fridge and the pantry today-- that was, uh, surprising), dusting, laundry, etc etc etc.
I've also decided to start cooking dinner again. So tonight the first attempt back into the domestic culinary world was baked salmon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. It was my first attempt at cooking salmon and mashed potatoes. When I was growing up, my mom never cooked fish (other than fish sticks) so overall, I really dont know how to cook seafood, but since I'm vegetarian now, I figured that I better start learning. Overall it came out pretty well, though the salmon was a little fishy, but that's probably just due to the fact that I bought it at the grocery store. The only other thing I can think of making for dinner is pasta related... and that might get old after a while.
I've been spending a lot of time gardening too. I used to hate gardening, and I still don't absolutely love it, but I do like having the outside of the house look decent. So in the past few weeks (and especially the past few days), I've been planting lots of flowers. And I've even decided to start a herb/tea garden on my deck. It's awfully ambitious of me... we'll see how it goes. Either things will go great and I'll have lots of dried herbs and tea, or I'll lose interest in 3 weeks and have lots of dead herbs and tea. But I think I have found gardening more tolerable lately because it allows me to be outside (instead of shut up in my office glued to my computer), and doing work, without major efforts of brain power. It's kinda nice to have something that keeps my hands busy and gives me brain a rest. Though I can still only do it for about an hour to an hour and a half a day at the most. Then I lose attention and have to stop or I'll start taking short cuts.
I've also started getting ready to start working on my scrapbook again. I started it after I got married, with the intention of creating a scrapbook that documented our first year of marriage. I put a lot of planning and creativity into it, so it's taken a long time. I haven't had very much time to work on it in the past year, but I hope that will change. I got some really interesting books from the library about how to make artist journals, so I have a WHOLE bunch of new ideas to try out. Yay for creativity outlets.
I have even started playing piano again. I played for about an hour today. There are a few songs I've been wanting to learn (not just sight read through), so I started working on them today. It felt good to play too... though my piano is SEVERELY out of tune. Trust me, if I can tell it's out of tune, it is severe. And once I get my office cleaned up I'm going to start practicing bass more too. I want to start off with some punk rock songs (I've been looking at Ramones songs mostly) and eventually I want to get disciplined enough to learn my scales. Not so much because I think I need to know scales, but I think that they will help me learn where the notes are on the bass. That instrument is so FOREIGN to me compared to the piano. But that's really my reason for learning it.
And lastly, I went to the gym. Yay, no more flabby me (hopefully). I went for the first time in a LONG time on Sunday. I'm starting to feel the soreness now, I'm sure it will be worse tomorrow, but that's just how I know it works.
I'm gonna be so sad when classes start up again and I have to give up all my new and reclaimed hobbies.
For starters, there's a lot of housework to be done. Matt and I started rearranging the house after the piano was sold and gone, but there are still areas in the house that need fixing up. For one, my new office has turned into a catch all, so at some point I'm gonna have to suck it up and clean that room. I got some book son Feng Shui to help with ideas of how to arrange things, which has been really helpful. It at least gives me an approach to design. And after using it in the living room (which I think has turned out great) I'm excited to see what I can do in my office. Though with all the junk in there right now it's all a little overwhelming. So lately I've been focusing on more basic cleaning.... vacuuming, bathrooms, kitchen (I cleaned out the fridge and the pantry today-- that was, uh, surprising), dusting, laundry, etc etc etc.
I've also decided to start cooking dinner again. So tonight the first attempt back into the domestic culinary world was baked salmon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. It was my first attempt at cooking salmon and mashed potatoes. When I was growing up, my mom never cooked fish (other than fish sticks) so overall, I really dont know how to cook seafood, but since I'm vegetarian now, I figured that I better start learning. Overall it came out pretty well, though the salmon was a little fishy, but that's probably just due to the fact that I bought it at the grocery store. The only other thing I can think of making for dinner is pasta related... and that might get old after a while.
I've been spending a lot of time gardening too. I used to hate gardening, and I still don't absolutely love it, but I do like having the outside of the house look decent. So in the past few weeks (and especially the past few days), I've been planting lots of flowers. And I've even decided to start a herb/tea garden on my deck. It's awfully ambitious of me... we'll see how it goes. Either things will go great and I'll have lots of dried herbs and tea, or I'll lose interest in 3 weeks and have lots of dead herbs and tea. But I think I have found gardening more tolerable lately because it allows me to be outside (instead of shut up in my office glued to my computer), and doing work, without major efforts of brain power. It's kinda nice to have something that keeps my hands busy and gives me brain a rest. Though I can still only do it for about an hour to an hour and a half a day at the most. Then I lose attention and have to stop or I'll start taking short cuts.
I've also started getting ready to start working on my scrapbook again. I started it after I got married, with the intention of creating a scrapbook that documented our first year of marriage. I put a lot of planning and creativity into it, so it's taken a long time. I haven't had very much time to work on it in the past year, but I hope that will change. I got some really interesting books from the library about how to make artist journals, so I have a WHOLE bunch of new ideas to try out. Yay for creativity outlets.
I have even started playing piano again. I played for about an hour today. There are a few songs I've been wanting to learn (not just sight read through), so I started working on them today. It felt good to play too... though my piano is SEVERELY out of tune. Trust me, if I can tell it's out of tune, it is severe. And once I get my office cleaned up I'm going to start practicing bass more too. I want to start off with some punk rock songs (I've been looking at Ramones songs mostly) and eventually I want to get disciplined enough to learn my scales. Not so much because I think I need to know scales, but I think that they will help me learn where the notes are on the bass. That instrument is so FOREIGN to me compared to the piano. But that's really my reason for learning it.
And lastly, I went to the gym. Yay, no more flabby me (hopefully). I went for the first time in a LONG time on Sunday. I'm starting to feel the soreness now, I'm sure it will be worse tomorrow, but that's just how I know it works.
I'm gonna be so sad when classes start up again and I have to give up all my new and reclaimed hobbies.
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