First Week in the New House

I moved in on Saturday last week now and tomorrow it will be a full week in this new house. The first day I got here, my mom helped move all my stuff inside and then took me grocery shopping. It was nice having her around in my room to help out with a couple of things, but she didn't stick around long. 

We went shopping and I had no idea what I wanted to buy to get myself through the next month in food. I didn't come with any food so I had to get the simple things like coffee, sugar, creamer, salt, pepper and etc. My mom kept saying that I should get things that are unhealthy and easy to make, but after losing fifteen pounds this summer, I didn't want anything unhealthy in the house. I ended up getting a lot of stuff and the bill went up super fast, and I was insanely luck to have had my mother there to pay for it. If she didn't offer to pay for the food, I wouldn't have gotten as much as I did. 

Full List:

Pre-Cooked Bacon

Canned Chicken

Heat n Serve Sausage Links

Frozen Chicken Breast

Cinnamon Roll Creamer

Sugar

Salt Grinder

Pepper Grinder

Milk

Vanilla Yogurt

Sour Cream

Taco Style Shredded Cheese

Pepper Jack Cheese Slices

Taco Seasoning

Taco Hard Corn Shells

Frozen Spicy Chicken Fries

Pineapple Mango Juice

Orange Juice

Two Cartons of Eggs

Syrup

Bananas

Popcorn

Flavored Water

and... lots of paper products.

When we got home, my mom helped me carry all the groceries in and then she was ready to leave and I had to like run over to her just to get a hug. I am only living an hour and a half away from my family, so she basically doesn't care. 

I didn't know where to put anything in the kitchen when I got here so I only put away things that I thought I knew had places in the cupboards and whatever needed to be in the fridge and freezer. The rest of my stuff I found one empty cupboard inside of the island in the middle of the kitchen and kinda shoved everything inside of there. 

After putting away all of the food, I had a LOT more to unpack in terms of my bedroom. The entire room was completely full of totes and there was essentially no where to walk and if my bed wasn't raised the entire floor would probably be covered with totes. The TV and curtains were already up because of my mom, but I had to unpack my clothing into the closet, set up my desk and organize everything into it's permanent place. 

I still have about 5 totes that are still full of stuff. I have two totes filled to the brim with my winter/fall clothing, which my boyfriend called my 3/4ths of the year clothing. I have a whole tote filled with Halloween decorations which I want to put up, but will wait until the rest of my housemates show up. I also have a tote of clothes about halfway filled with graphic tees that I don't really wear anymore, but don't want to give up because of memories. The final tote is filled with old textbooks and notebooks that I think might be useful this year. 

Otherwise my entire bed is made and I hung my tapestry and my lights, I put my mirror on the back of my closet door. The mirror was a pain in the butt because I tried to hand it with command hooks, but it wouldn't stay and fell about 6 times before I decided to hook it onto the door mount. My mom even tried to hang it appropriately before she left, but her attempt failed and the bottom of the frame of the mirror broke and is now weirdly broken at the corner and along one of the wooden grooves in the frame. 

I quickly found that I was having troubles with space even after everything was unpacked. I have a long black cloth tote that I was storing my collection of bath and body works candles in, and it fit so awkwardly on my brown shelf. I decided that it was fine for the night and went to sleep for the first night in the house. 

This night was one of the first in a really long time that I could stay up and not have to have an alarm to wake me up in the morning. I had just finished a six week long Physics class and the day before I had my final exam which I got a seventy on and was feeling pretty good about. I relaxed a bit, lit a candle and turned on the new Netflix original, "To all the Boys I Loved Before". I get really emotionally attached to the character that I watch on TV and find that I tend to experience the emotions that the main character in movies experience and find myself crying so intensely when watching dramatic and emotional movies. I really love this though because it allows me to release emotions so intense and I get to live in another world for just a little bit,

The next morning I woke up and wanted to make some scrambled eggs, but found that I didn't really like any of their pans. I gave up on the eggs for a second and got my favorite Gudetama mug out of the cupboard and started the coffee. Just the week before my mom had accidentally chipped the mug while washing it, and there was a crack down the side, but I had used it all of the week before without problems so I proceeded to pour and mix my coffee in the mug. 

Whilst sitting at the island and sipping my coffee I noticed that there was a build up of coffee on the outside of the mug right at the crack and finally decided I should put the mug out of order. It was then I realized how much money I wasn't going to have at the end of this new experience. I grabbed my wallet, phone and keys and looked up the closest "Dollar Tree" on my phone GPS. I don't know what I was thinking going to Dollar Tree because I knew I wanted to get a frying pan and there was no way they were going to sell one for only a dollar.

I pulled into the Dollar Tree from the driveway behind the store and my car moved back and forth along the pot hole filled pavement and it reminded me of home in some weird way. 

I had just the day before spent some time with my friend before I had to move an hour and a half away. We stopped into a "Family Dollar" and I grabbed my curtain rod kits and a couple of other things. While trying to leave the store I had to turn the key more than nine times before getting the car to actually start. It was kind of super embarrassing because it was lightly raining and just before getting in the car there was a man outside on the right of the car that had complimented my friend and made her super uncomfortable. Normally when my car doesn't start we do this thing where we pop the lid and she pretends to know what she is doing and touches random stuff in the car. I then attempt to turn the car on again. We were both extremely conflicted because it was not exactly the perfect situation to run our little charade. Eventually the man left the right side of our car and we were able to get out in the rain and open the lid. I then checked the oil in the car, but unknowingly checked the wrong oil and from then thought I was low on oil and was going to buy some, but decided not to when the car started. During the time of me and my friend being outside the car somebody that my friend knew drove by the car and said that I needed a jump, but she didn't have jumper cables and told me to keep trying. I know my car didn't need a jump because I had just replaced the battery last fall when my car actually wouldn't start. Overall the experience really was something to end my summer in Buffalo. 

So, I pulled into a spot in the Dollar Tree and did my rounds in the store and looked at all the Halloween and Fall Decorations that they had and got excited for my favorite season. I quickly realized that this store wasn't going to have what I needed and put "Family Dollar" into my GPS and drove through some back streets to get there. When I arrived I again took in all of the Halloween decor immediately, but found my way back to the area where the kitchen appliances were. I saw a pan perfect for what I wanted, but it was $7.50 and I am not made of money. There was a set of three pans for $10.50 and while that was a better deal, I really didn't need three pans because other people in the house had pans. I also grabbed a metal spatula and some kitchen rags. I spent a really long time walking around the store trying to find some cheap mugs only to find out that they were in the same isle as the pans, just on the other side. I found simple black mugs for a dollar and grabbed the three that they had left. 

While in the store I remembered my room storage situation and wanted to grab some type of shelf. I was also having another problem with limited storage in the bathroom and having no where to put my stuff. I debated getting an over the toilet storage shelf, but grabbed a five tier shelf instead just for my room. It was definitely overpriced at twenty dollars, but I would not spend money on something that the house could pitch in on. I grabbed my stuff and headed for checkout where I stood behind this woman and her daughter. They reminded me of me and my mom because they were both grabbing snacks in the store. Me and my mom both don't normally eat meals and have lived of sweets and snacks the last few years of our lives. The daughter asked the mom is she could trade her Reese's for a drink and the mom's response was, "I don't think they have any dollar drinks here". I was eager to respond, but wasn't sure it was really my place. I still replied, "They have ninety nine cent Arizona". The daughter made her way to the fridges where she ended up finding the one dollar brisks and found her way back into the line with her mom. It came my time to check out and then I put everything into my car and drove home. 

I got home and struggled initially setting up the shelf that I bought because I was trying to squish these little plugs into the wrong holes. I was going to use the hammer I had, but my mom ended up taking it home on accident. I had to use my Computer Science textbook from last semester to hammer in the little plugs so that I could screw on the legs. After that the shelf went up relatively quickly and I was able to move my candles from the awkward bin into their own place on the shelf. I went downstairs afterwards and made myself some scrambled eggs and heated up some sausage links. It was a nice first meal in the house. I spent the day trying to work on a video I was editing for a friend and getting myself more organized. Adobe Premiere wasn't working correctly and I was having problems trying to decipher which clips were what. I hadn't edited videos since my senior year in high school and the software was throwing me for a loop. I didn't get a lot of the video done and ended up watching some Terrace House that night before falling to sleep. 

The next morning I was supposed to wake up and drive out to Canandaigua to see my boyfriend relatively early in the morning, but I ended up sleeping in. Luckily he hadn't left Syracuse yet and we ended up arriving at the same time. It was so nice spending time with him. We drove out to this lake we visited months before, Honoeye Lake, but found out that the beach was closed because of blue-green algae a week after our previous visit. We laid on our blanket under the sun for a bit and watched a couple families show up and also get the news that the beach was closed. We didn't stay very long and soon drove back to his apartment where we chilled out for a little bit and then decided to go out to pier by Canandaigua Lake and then afterwards went and got burgers at our favorite burger place, BeeHive. We had gone the weekend or two before and it was a really nice experience because it was late at night and we got to sit outside surrounded by their string lights. This time it was kind of busy outside and it wasn't dark so it was different. I ordered the same thing as last time, but also got a side of their mac and cheese of the day, which was Buffalo Chicken Mac and Cheese. I was super excited because I love all things Buffalo Chicken, being from Buffalo, but my excited came to a halt when she brought the dish out and it was unseasoned grilled chicken on top of average mac and cheese. After dinner we stopped home for a bit and then later went out for ice cream by the pier at a place called Scoops. I love this ice cream parlor because it serves my favorite Perry's flavor, Lemoncillo. Lemoncillo is an ice cream that is lemon favored with lemon cookie bits in it. Another fun thing about this place is that it has outdoor seating that is all in the shape of melting ice cream in a waffle cone. It is kind of funny because a while back I had been commissioned to make the exact same chairs and table in a three dimensional model. It was super exciting to see them in real life and made me think of a how sub par of a replication I made. The entire night I was debating going home that night instead of leaving when my boyfriend had to leave for work in the morning. I ended up getting utterly exhausted and stayed the night anyway and left early in the morning the same time my boyfriend left for work. 

I returned to Rochester Monday morning and had a couple things that I needed to get done in terms of getting ready for the semester. I stopped home and grabbed some important documents from my files so that I could stop by school and get my student employment card. I had to park really far away because the main lot was completely full and I had no idea where the student employment office was so I had to look it up online and then find a map on campus. When I got to the map I realized I had to trek quite a bit across campus to get there, but decided to nonetheless. I got into the building it was in and was momentarily confused until I saw a big sign that said Student Employment Office. It took barely five minutes to get the student employment card, but the longest time was spend on me trying to load rit.edu/myrit because I needed to look up my university id number. I used to have it saved in my phone notes, but I had to get a new phone recently so it was no longer saved. 

I made my way back to my car and proceeded to drive to the university bookstore to get the books I would need for the coming semester. I had gone two days before, but it was closed because of summer hours. I didn't want to have to buy a lot of books so I found as many online versions of textbooks as possible. Luckily my storytelling class is okay with us reading e-books and I was able to rent both of the required materials for class. I had to buy my linear algebra book and online access and the web assign for my Probability and Statistics class and just that totaled to two-hundred and fifty dollars. 

After that I was able to go back to my house and try to get more done on my computer. I ended up watching a lot of Youtube and doing pretty much no work. I was frustrated with Premiere Pro and my computer in general because I had this malware which would randomly close any website link that had the word "reset" or "malware" on the page. It made it really hard to get any work done. I did end up getting a graphic done for a Circle K info graphic that I had wanted to create for a while now.  I didn't make the entire info graphic, I only created the decoration I wanted to put at the bottom. I spent the rest of the day getting random work done on my computer and talking to my boyfriend on the phone. 

That night my friend Jenna was moving into Rochester as well and she was updating me via Snapchat as she got to Rochester and began moving her stuff in. She was not very happy with her apartment and move-in situation because she had a really good situation until a month ago when her boyfriend broke up with her via text message. This is the same night that the first house mate ended up moving in and his mom, sister and hockey friends were occupying the kitchen and dining space while he was one the phone with a couple banks trying to get money in order to purchase a new car. Jenna came over super later, but it was nice to be able to talk to her about everything and we agreed that I would come over the next morning to help her move in and situate everything. 

In the morning I didn't wake up again super early, but just in time for Jenna to pick me up and we headed to Walmart. Jenna found a lot of stuff that she needed and I grabbed an electric sweeper because I was getting annoyed with crumbs sticking to my feet when walking around the kitchen. I also got brownie mix so that I could make brownies in my brownie pan that my boyfriend bought me in the beginning of the summer for the new place. Jenna wanted a couple organizational things. She got thumb tacks so that she could tack things to the wall and she also got a door shoe organizer. We headed back to her place where we unpacked a bunch of boxes into the kitchen. Jenna's mom is a head chef at Wegmans so she had a lot of different tools for different cooking. Her kitchen supplies are far different from mine. 

We went to my home again and made some brownies and I swept the floor and boiled some eggs while they were baking. I put them on a place under some tin foil for other people in the house to eat and left to go to her apartment. Her apartment was very nice in my opinion just because of all the space she has and how she only has to share it with one person, compared to my four other people situation. On the other hand, her apartment was also not in great shape. The fridge was plugged into an extension cord plugged into the wall, which is definitely not safe and the entire kitchen was just kind of gross. We persisted and cleaned off the counter and packed her stuff into them. She had a lot of large utensils and we decided we should get a big cup for them so they didn't take up so much drawer space, especially when they still needed to designate a drawer to silverware. Jenna was shocked because her roommate had been there an entire week and had still not unpacked essentially all her stuff and still was not unpacking. 

So we left to go to the Dollar Tree to grab some other things for Jenna's apartment. We got the cups for the utensils along with some small candle glasses, razors, and hangers because Jenna forgot her box of hangers. 

We drove back to Jenna's apartment and organized a little more before we decided spur of the moment to go to Goodbye Goodbuy, which is a thrift sale RIT holds at the beginning of every semester. I had volunteered in the spring collecting stuff for the sale and sorting it. It was nice to volunteer but because I did, I knew that I would know the people volunteering today. Me and Jenna were having trouble parking again because it was freshman move in day and ended up parking pretty far away. On our walk to the sale we saw somebody carrying one of those behind the toilet organizers that I had wanted for the house. Jenna said there probably wasn't another one of them, but low and behold there was one at the sale. It was broken, but it was still relatively good and it was definitely fixable. Jenna was looking for some type of shelving for her place and didn't find anything, but ended up finding a tall standing mirror in the middle of the electronics and I had forgotten my purse at her house so she paid for me and I later paypaled her the money. We both carries our rather large items back to her car and struggled getting the shelf in the car without breaking it down, but got it in and headed to dollar tree for some lighters and then back to her house to get my purse. I had gotten a text from my boyfriend that he would drive up to hang out so I wanted to be home relatively soon to prepare myself and get the bathroom stand fixed. 

It ended up being easy to fix because it only had one foot screwed into it and there was a bolt missing that was connecting the bars of the bottom left side. I took the foot and screwed it into the hole where the missing bolt was knowing they were the same size. I then took it to the bathroom to see how it looked and to my surprise it went up to the exact height of the towel rack and sits awkwardly in front of it, but after sending a photo to the housemates they agreed that nobody uses the towel rack and that the the bathroom rack was more useful. 

Soon after my boy showed up outside the house and we ended up popping some popcorn and finishing a movie that we had started a couple nights before. My lofted bed is supposed to only support up to one-hundred and fifty pounds so I am extremely nervous about both of us being on the bed at any point. It was nice still to sit up there with him and watch a movie. After finishing the movie it was getting pretty late and he left at about nine. I had just updated Adobe Premiere and it was working alright again, so I edited the rest of the video and exported it and ended up accidentally staying up until one in the morning. Jenna had mentioned that day that we could go together out to the nail salon, but when I asked her the next day she divulged that her ex-boyfriend had stayed the night, so I figured I would go by myself. I left my computer trying to clean itself of malware and took a trip to Walmart alone. It was the first trip that I had taken by myself in my car in a whole two days and it was kind of serene. The nail salon inside of Walmart was only taking cash so I bought the planner I intended to buy and got some cash back. I only got out forty dollars knowing that if I got out more I would spend more. When I went back to the salon I found out that if I wanted the manicure and pedicure it would be fifty five dollars. I decided that I would only get the gel manicure. I have stopped biting my nails and it has been extremely hard on me and I still put my nails in my mouth constantly so I thought if I paid thirty dollars on a manicure then I wouldn't be so inclined to ruin something that cost me a lot of money. 

The manicure turned out really cute, I got a pink sparkly color and was impressed afterwards that my nails were indeed my nails because I am so used to having little short frail nails. The gel definitely makes your nail thicker and I think that helps me a lot. I head back to my place and had a few things i wanted to get done. I wanted to take a shower, clean my computer of malware, and finish editing and compiling the video for my friend. I ended up calling my dad to see if he had any ideas and I landed on having to restore my computer, but not too far into the call he had realized I wasn't in safe mode when trying to get rid of the malware. After this I hung up and said goodbye to my dad and finished editing the video and began export. I showered during the export and then uploaded it online for my friend. When it officially uploaded I then put my computer into safe mode and ran the chameleon MalwareBytes program. I then got a text from my boyfriend about him being in town and done with work so he was going to come by and pick me up. He told me to come up  with something fun for us to do. I thought we could go to the mall, but we didn't end up doing this because Spirit Halloween was open. I wanted to stop in because it only has limited hours right now and I was excited to see how the store looked seeing as I had worked in a Spirit Halloween back home two years in a row. I miss working so much, but I know that I need to think of my grades. 

After that we decided to got to RIT and find out where all my classes were instead of going to the mall. It was weird and nice being back on campus again. My boyfriend had never seen the freshman orientation before so that was a spectacle for him. We quickly found my classes and then decided to just walk around campus. We ended up finding free ice cream and my friend Boris that is a freshman this year. I might have embarrassed him in front of his orientation group, but my boyfriend ended up knowing his orientation leader via Volleyball class. We decided to try going through tunnels, but ended up stuck behind a group of freshman and quickly made our way out of the tunnels. As we surfaced my boyfriend ended up seeing two people he knew. He was his old RA and his friend from his computer science theory class last semester. So we sat and chatted for a bit and then me and Kevin began our journey back to the other side of campus to go get something to eat. 

I ended up running into my friend Erin from my computer science for AP students class. It was nice to see somebody I knew and it is always nice to see Erin because she is so positive and so fun to be around. We both did relay for life with our respective organizations last spring and it was a lot of fun. 

As we approached Salsaritas where we intended to grab some food I also ran into my friend Bryce whom I had just gone out for a drive with a couple days before. We went to target to get him a TV stand and then to grab some boba tea. We just briefly said hello because Bryce was surrounded by his other friends. 

It was really nice getting a big burrito again and it reminded me of the previous times me and my boyfriend has gone and got burritos at Salsas before. We sat outside under an umbrella because it was sprinkling on and off and as we ate a bunch of people that I knew from around campus passed us and said hello. It was about six in the afternoon when we left campus and got back to my place. We settled in and ended up napping together before my boy had to get up and go because he had work the next day.

Now we are on today! I definitely skipped a lot of little things that went on throughout the days like emailing my academic advisor, getting my final physics grade, getting my schedule situated, helping Boris find the liberal arts haul and my first real conversation with Pete (the first housemate). It has really been an absolute ride this entire week. I am having so many new and fun experiences. I used to be so afraid of change and now I can't wait for more change. I am so excited to make this place more my own and hopefully get some money in my bank account so that I don't have to worry about my savings disappearing in a year. I have already spent more of my savings that I had projected for this year.  I need to apply for more scholarships and definitely start looking out for co-ops because I need a way to make money relatively soon. I also didn't mention that I am going to be a substitute note-taker for my computer science theory class. 

If you got this far through the blog, kudos to you!

Thanks for Reading, 

Carson