Week in Review: Week 300

Woohoo, Week 300! That’s a lotta weeks!

MONDAY 1.3.22

Back to work. I’m flying solo as we’re going remote for a couple days while everyone gets tested after holiday gatherings and travel. So I’m in the office but it’s nice and quiet.

With my usual beginning of the year optimism, I am giving THIS a try again, even though I’m typically out by like Day 4. Still. The annual Apartment Therapy January Cure, which guides you through some (relatively) simple activities to get a jump start on organizing your home. Today is Drawer De-cluttering Day. I’ve actually done several drawers recently, so I’m going to tackle one of the little plastic drawer units in the bathroom.

Got a covid test after work to see if it’s okay TO go back to work (after I already WENT to work today). If I DON’T get a call back tonight, that’s good. I feel optimistic, I have no symptoms. But a couple more days at home wouldn’t suck.

I was rewarded after the dr visit with this nice sky.

TUESDAY 1.4.22

Day 2 Apartment Therapy January Cure: Make a List? HA HA HA HA HA what? They think I haven’t made a LIST?? It’s like they don’t even know me. But, okay. Okay, Apartment Therapy. I’ll make your list.

Living Room: Get rid of books, decorative accessories, everything in tubs and on shelves. Get rid of shelves.

Office: Get rid of papers, files, file cabinet. Scan what I need to keep. Get rid of old electronics.

Bedroom: Move stack of unread books to now empty living room shelves. I DO still plan to read them. Get clothing down to one dresser-full. Once all clothes have been ebay/poshmarked, get rid of rolling hanging rack.

Clothes Closet: Get rid of excess clothes and all things on shelves and floor.

Other Closet: ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME, APARTMENT THERAPY??

Kitchen: Get rid of everything I do not actually use on a consistent basis. Old food, old utensils, extra dishes, etc.

Kitchen/Bathroom Pantry Closet: See “Other Closet” above.

Bathroom: Take out the 6 things I actually use from the plastic drawer storage thingies and dump the rest in the trash.

Do you sense a theme? This may be The Year of the Tiger, but it’s REALLY The Year to Get Rid of Sh*t.

I guess I’ll tackle one area a month. Kitchen and Bathroom can probably be combined into one month as they’re not so full of stuff. But other areas will take longer than a month (all three closets, I’m looking at you), so…it works out.

WEDNESDAY 1.5.22

GAH! MY LIFE’S GOAL HAS BEEN REACHED! I finally JUMPED more than 50 jumps! GO ME!!! Granted, since I started studying Korean, I have BARELY practiced, most days I wouldn’t even think of it (even though I saw the jump rope on the red velvet chair in the living room Every Damn Day). In the beginning of December I was like I HAVE GOT TO GET BACK TO THIS and I’d jump a couple days then forget, lather rinse repeat. But exercise is on my daily 2022 schedule so I’ve had it on my mind.

Driving home from work today I was like WHY? WHY CAN’T I DO IT?? It’s not that I PHYSICALLY can’t jump 50 times, cuz I’ve done that without the rope. It’s not like I don’t have the endurance cuz (see previous sentence). It was always that I’d hit the rope with a toe and that was that.

ALL OF A SUDDEN I thought…what if I could SEE the rope? What if I jumped facing the full-length mirror. What if I could SEE when to jump rather than having to guesstimate??

And bam. 56 jumps. After not having jumped for weeks. But I could SEE in the mirror WHEN to jump! How simple! I always jumped…parallel to the length of the living room so I had more rope clearance. I had to get myself situated just right to face the mirror without the rope hitting anything in front of or behind me. BUT IT WORKED! Only like a year and a half later but…

Now I have to get to SIXTY. Ha.

The Apartment Therapy activity of the day is Get a Go Box. Ha ha ha they’re so cute. I have DOZENS of Go Boxes. I put the things I don’t want in them…then don’t know what to do with the box…so it eventually gets moved back into a pile of OTHER boxes and…yeah.

I did see a fellow on TikTok doing an “anti-hoarding” decluttering challenge and he made it into kind of a game. He has this many-faceted die (singular of dice) that goes I think 1-20…and he rolls it once each day and whatever number comes up, that’s how many things he has to get rid of (put in a Go Box). While that is certainly an inefficient method, if it seems enough like a fun, challenging game that it holds his interest long enough to make a difference, then yay 🙂 I might try something similar…just to keep it entertaining.

THURSDAY 1.6.22

Day 4 of the Apartment Therapy January Cure: Clear expired things from all over your home.

Yeah. No. I’m not doing that. Ha. I don’t believe in expiration dates.

For food, I just sniff’n’taste and go with my own judgment.

For beauty/makeup, if it still feels/looks good/smells fine, I’m going to continue using it.

For drugs, both OTC and prescribed, I will try one (when I have the appropriate issue)…if it no longer works, I throw it out. If it still works, I’m keeping it. Even after all the kidney nonsense I experienced in August 2021, resulting in several new bottles of painkillers, the MOST EFFECTIVE ones are still the ones from November 2019 when I went to the emergency room with pain. They’re now over 2 years old.

NOTE: I AM NEITHER RECOMMENDING NOR ENDORSING THIS PRACTICE. It’s just what *I* do. And I have never had an issue and I’m not spending money on replacements before I need to. But that’s me. You do you.

Day 4 (also) of the new “get a zillion productive things done each day” schedule is…still going. I’ve done my TikTok blog stuff, jumped rope, posted stuff on ebay, worked on my TEFL course, and studied Korean.

Studying Korean is the MOST fun thing (and so satisfying to learn and understand new things) and sometimes (alright, always) I spend too much time there and not enough time on the other things. Cuz I don’t like stopping when I feel like I’m on a roll.

But I do try to be DONE by 8pm (except for tutoring night cuz i’m stuck in a 8-9pm timeslot) so I can make quick dinner and go to THE SOFA aka Heaven on Earth. And the drama I’m watching right now has 90-minute episodes so I don’t try to delude myself that I can watch TWO…one is just enough that I’m not falling asleep during it but it’s not TOO early to go to bed. Where, honestly, I just pick up my phone and watch MORE stuff, but.

That’s my exciting life right now. Work, shoot, jump, study study, eat, watch, sleep. And every day I try to tackle some other ISSUE from The To Do List That Would Not Die. I get so hung on phone calls. If something requires a PHONE CALL to get sorted out…yeah. Probably not happening. For a long time.

FRIDAY 1.7.22

Got to stay here an extra hour…oh the joy

SNOW DAY!!! Well, as close as we get any more. Covid Killed Snow Days (RIP Magical Gifts from Above). Now that we’re all set up to work remotely, “snow days” are now “work from home” days. Which is STILL better than “get up at 6am, get yourself clean and sparkly before you’re even awake, put on clothes, drive…to be in a place with PEOPLE all day” days. So, I’ll take it.

Plus, it’s pretty. Though it got sunny pretty early…and while I’m not generally a fan of sunny days ANYWAY, I ESPECIALLY don’t like them on snowy days. To me the snow aesthetic is about dim, grey, low contrast.

STILL.

SNOW DAY 🙂

Apartment Therapy Thingie Day 5: Clean the floors and treat yourself to flowers. Dammit. Ugh. I hate floors.  They’re so far away and cleaning them hurts my back. But. They do need to be done. I’m going to break them up over the next three days – I’ll vacuum tonight…and do kitchen and bathroom (the only uncarpeted rooms) tomorrow and Sunday.  And I’ll skip the flowers. I’ll put the money towards Korea 🙂

I attempted scallion pancakes for lunch. It’s the end of the week and there’s not much left in the house, so. It was a good, but flawed, attempt.

In my defense, I had cake flour, not all-purpose flour, if that made a difference. The eggs were old (expiration February 2021 HA HA HA HA. I will throw them out now and get new ones). They didn’t TASTE bad but they were very dry and thick…which means I had to add a lot of water to the batter to thin it out, which diluted the seasoning. I also didn’t have as many green onions as I would have liked. I should have made the batter thinner and cooked on higher heat so the pancakes would have been thinner and crispier, with a better scallion:pancake ratio. I made a little dipping sauce out of soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, some hot chili oil, and a little honey. Next time, less soy, more honey and chili oil. It was a relatively easy concoction/process and next time will be better.

SATURDAY 1.8.22

Mmm…I know I DID stuff, but I didn’t write it down so now I forget.

EXCEPT for my BRILLIANT health/beauty lifestyle hack cuz apparently, I am a health/beauty lifestyle GENIUS. And that’s this: when I was cleaning out the bathroom drawers the other day, I pulled out a package of face masks I bought in FEBRUARY 2017. I bought them to take with me to Maine when I went there with a co-worker to collect the accouterments of a peanut brittle company that had been donated to us? Don’t ask. I just remember how CRAPPY I felt, bleeding ALL THE TIME, zero energy, I know I was not fun to be on a work trip with…and like 10 days after we got back I got my cancer diagnosis. ANYWAY – all these memories are wrapped up in these face masks. We did each do one (I think there’s like 7,000 of them in the package) but…the rest I have been SAVING. You know, for that magical perfect event in my life when I would need 7,000 sheet face masks. Cuz they’re the last ones on earth and must be preserved at all costs.

Ugh.

ANYWAY. I had the idea to take them OUT of the drawer and put them in the LIVING ROOM on the table next to the SOFA where I sit every night to watch TV! So I will be reminded to put on a face mask a couple nights a week. You’d think I could just remember to walk to the bathroom and grab one BEFORE I go to the sofa, but apparently not. It’s 5 years later and there are still 6,998 sheet masks left.

Well, NOW there are only 6,997 BECAUSE I USED ONE LAST NIGHT CUZ IT WAS RIGHT THERE BY WHERE I WAS SITTING.

I’m a GENIUS.

An actual genius.

OH! I know what I did yesterday morning. I spent over an hour trying to get into Bangtan Academy (BA), which is a BTSArmy run, online Korean language…school? Program? Group? Anyway, since I started learning Korean (was that like…May??) I’ve been hearing about it and it sounds really great, it’s FREE, they have all different programs, there’s great support systems…and they’re all BTS fans.

BUT. It’s REALLY hard to get into.

Once a month they post a link to their Twitter page that stays open for five minutes. If you’re lucky enough to be available to click the link during that small window, you’re taken to a Discord server (I’m a Discord Dummy, just sayin’) where you travel through a maze of Do This Don’t Do That and hope you get through to the actual application process where you answer some questions and write a brief explanation of why you want to learn Korean…and then you HOPE you haven’t exceeded the time limit and you’re still in…and there’s lots of waiting and wondering if you did everything right cuz the servers are slow cuz SO many people are trying to get in.

It’s not at all unlike trying to get BTS tickets – the level of anxiety.

ANYWAY…yesterday, after 6 months of trying, I finally got all the way through to the “application completed” step…and now I have to wait to see if I’m accepted (you’ll hear within 2 weeks if you’re accepted). They said around 500 applied yesterday and only 150 will be chosen for the month. I don’t really know on what basis you get chosen, if everyone’s name just goes into a random name selector thingie, or if they actually read all the applications and hand-pick who they think are the best candidates. They take it very seriously and you have to spend a certain amount of time “in” the program, studying and participating, or you get kicked out. Which is fine by me, I’m not worried about not being able to keep up with the required participation level.

I’m going to be letting go of tutoring at the end of this month when Matthew returns to Seoul…so I can be saving that tutoring money every month. So BA would replace that tutoring/practice time.

So. Fingers crossed that I get in 🙂

SUNDAY 1.9.22

Sunday Sunday. Deli breakfast. Packed some ebay things that sold (do you guys want to see what I’m selling?). Watched some YouTube, went through some TEFL lessons (I’m up to the very exciting VERBS THAT AREN’T REALLY VERBS section).

I have to say, relearning English is not NEARLY as fun or satisfying as learning an entirely new language. There’s so much shame with trying to re-learn English For Real…cuz I feel like I should already KNOW this stuff.

But I don’t. So.

Time to get ready for the week.

WHAT I’M WATCHING

YouTube: Moving to S Korea/Apartment Hunting/Apartment Tours. They’re just way too entertaining and exciting.

Look at this one in Busan…You Guys! That VIEW!!! And the apartment is $500/month US. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! I can’t. I just cannot.

This is one is much larger, a lofted space, also in Busan, with a giant window and tons of light…but no particular view. It’s $540/month US.

I’m trying to watch and read a lot about Busan because I’m trying to convince myself that that’s where I should go. I’d RATHER go to Seoul (and obviously I have no personal experience to base this on, just vlogs, blogs, TikTok/IG, kdramas, etc.). But Seoul is more expensive. The school options there are in the $12,000 range (will I EVER be able to save that much money??) and the apartments (that I’d be happy with) are in the$500-700 range (obvi there are some lower and MANY higher, but I’m comfortable in that price range). In Busan, the schools are in the $7,000 range…and nice apartments (see above) can be found for $400-600.

Seoul is the capitol and largest city of S Korea…comparable to Manhattan (well, it’s 2x the population of NYC), let’s say. Busan is the second-largest city (half the population of Seoul), and on the beach. So the main determining factors are cost and city vs beach. They both have mountains (and I love mountain views). The top school choices in each area seem comparable (except for price), so that’s not a help in my decision-making.

Busan seems newer, fresher, and maybe more…touristy? Seoul has both modern and older city areas. I feel like you LIVE in Seoul…and you VISIT Busan. But in the end it might just come down to money.

This is $700 in Seoul. She posted some pics on her IG once she was settled in and the space is lovely. And that LIGHT. I would cry with joy every day when that sunset light came in.

I am DISGARSTED anytime I happen to see an NYC apartment tour/hunt video now. For the low low price of $1500 you can live in a dark poorly laid-out basement. Why.

I’m not even there yet and I don’t even know how I’m going to be able to come back. Like…mentally/emotionally.

Anyway, that’s my current entertainment…well, and the kdrama that I’ve been watching for WEEKS cuz it’s two 16-episode seasons and each episode is 90 minutes long. But it is a really nice show. I’ve mentioned it before, Hospital Playlist, aka Korean Grey’s Anatomy (yes, I’m STILL watching that!). But they are SUCH good people, such GOOD friends. Every episode makes me laugh a bit and cry a bit. Which is a nice change from the HIGH EMOTION dramas I usually like, ha ha.

But this is another one I would recommend to a first-time k-drama watcher (along with Crash Landing on You).

WHAT I’M READING

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover.

Whoa. I read ANOTHER BOOK. That’s the nice thing about actually STICKING to my ridiculous schedule, is I do have “recreation” time scheduled in. Week One of Ridiculous Schedule went pretty well, even though I had a couple after-work appointments that cut into my productive time.

Mmmmm…it’s an outlier to the type of thing I normally read, but I just wanted something sort of easy, not complex, something I didn’t have to THINK about, a book where I could just let the story entertain me. And it did all that. I can’t give it a FOUR cuz…I just can’t…but it deserves a little better than a 3, so…3.25? I neither laughed nor cried (my personal barometer for how good something is), but it kept me wanting to turn the pages…and stay up late to continue reading.

Woman has to make a decision between first love returned…or new dream man…with flaws. It might be better than I’m giving it credit for…? I’m just sort of not into “woman struggling to pick a MAN” stories these days.

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO

Pandora. Trying to get an influx of new music into my Spotify playlist. There are over 1,000 songs but the algorithm plays the ones I don’t pass on more than the others…so I end up with a much smaller actual playlist. And since I have music on like ALL THE TIME now, things are getting overplayed. But it’s hard to find new stuff to like. So I’m hoping Pandora can introduce me to some new stuff based on my likes and dislikes.

And That’s All, Folks!