Adjusting to Roommates

For the last 3 months I have been living on my own in a two bedroom apartment. It wasn't really planned. The original plan was to move-in and find a roommate within a month. Unfortunately, things don't always work out the way you plan. After much tribulation and prayer, I was finally able to find a roommate only to have her move- out two weeks later without telling me when I was gone for 1.5 hours one Saturday morning. You might ask me if she signed the lease and the short answer is, no, because the landlord happened to be out of town those two weeks. There was no reason to suspect she would do this. She passed a credit check, moved all her stuff in and even painted her room!

I have since found another roommate and she has now moved-in and been here almost a week. She is warm and friendly and I find myself enjoying her company. She a hard worker and seems to have goals for her life's accomplishments. However,I find myself having difficulties adjusting to having someone else being around.

Here is a list of things that I have noticed since she has been here.
1) we wanna shower about the same time in the morning, forcing one of us have a cold shower...
2) she used my favorite bowl fresh out of the dishwasher when I usually wait to use it til its the last clean bowl left
3) she likes to sleep with the heat at 72 when I'm accustomed to turning it down to 65 to prevent my night outbreaks of sweat
4) she locks the front door knob when I usually just lock the dead-bolt (mostly because they unlock with two different keys and I'm lazy)
5) she enjoys watching TV... a lot

Ok, I admit it. I'm being neurotic. And a control freak. And overly observant. But you gotta cut me some slack. By living by myself for 3 months I have developed a sort of OCD. I've come to expect things to stay where I put them and know that all the lights are turned out when they are not being used and know exactly how much trash is in the kitchen trash-can, and so on. What's surprising, is that when I was first living by myself I didn't like it. It was too quiet and lonely. In fact, I would purposely hang out longer than usual at activities just so I didn't have to go home to a quiet house. I'm not sure when that changed.

Like I said, I do enjoy the company when I'm home. And I'm sure there are some things about me that she finds unusual. That being said, I'm just going to have to adapt back to roommate mode. And I can do it, but that doesn't mean I can't look forward to the day when I can afford to live by myself again.

NOAA Tower

I try and keep this blog more focused on my personal thoughts on life and what I've been doing with my spare time. However, I was able to do something so fun associated with school that I felt like it deserved a little blurb.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration happens to have one of their central offices here in Boulder. As part of that, they have a 300 meter tall instrumentation tower located about 30-40 minutes from here. (For those of you stuck in English units its about 1000 ft.) Part of my senior design project has to do with dropping deployable sensor packages from an unmanned aerial vehicle in the Arctic. Needless to say, we have to test said sensor packages (sondes) before sending them off to the most pristine environment on Earth. So, we got to drop things off a 300 m tower. :) If you're interested in seeing the footage you can check out one of the videos on youtube.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eleNomImeWw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpysHKlkKI

It was a little intimidating at first. The first day we wen't it was freezing and so windy we couldn't go to the top! And the second day we went it was 75-80 outside and one of the most beatiful days you could have asked for. I guess that's Colorado for you.


Ryan and I at the top of the tower. There's not much room to move around.


A look down the center of the tower from the very top. Seriously, it disappears into nowhere!


A view of the upper half of the tower from the parking lot. It was impossible to get the whole thing in one shot.

Ahhh... much better

Although it is white and boring, I can now enter into my room and feel at home. Plus this saves me from having to paint it back when I move out next summer. And this white is so white I feel like its not a normal color.

Unfortunately, I have no Halloween pics to share. Meaning, I did not dress up even though I had a great idea. I was kinda bummed about it but I'll just be sure to share it next year.

This morning I went running. I have decided to try and improve my run time. And since running regularly isn't doing it for me, I decided to try some some sprints. I don't think I've run sprints since I was a kid!! I forgot how incredibly draining they are.

Just a quick note before I sign off. My friend who was in Iraq is now safely back in Germany where she is stationed. Many prayers of gratitude are in order.