Big Brother

I've never watched Big Brother before until yesterday. I was extremely bored and my friend told me to watch it so I did. The show is absolutely stupid, yet I'm hooked. I have caught up with this season. 16 people are in a house and they have to do certain activities and competitions and then people vote to see if they go home. They are trapped in the house without Internet, cell phones, TV or any technology. The winner gets $500,000. I think I'm hooked because I like watching competitions because I want to know who wins. There is so much drama in the show though and it's ridiculous. Oh well, I'm hooked now and have to watch every show to see who wins and how they win it.

Cockroaches

I know I've written a lot about bugs in this blog. This is my grossest encounter yet. When I was looking at this apartment in January before deciding to move in, I saw two dead cockroaches in this apartment. One was in the bathroom and the other was on the windowsill. The realtor told me that no matter where I lived I would see these "waterbugs". Throughout the last couple of months, I have seen a few dead cockroaches in my house or some that were barely alive. I quickly killed them and got rid of them. Last night, I heard a noise coming from my window. I saw a wing through the blinds and thought it was a moth. I grabbed a book and killed it and saw it was a disgusting cockroach. About an hour later, I was walking towards my kitchen and I saw another huge cockroach crawling really fast on the counter! Before I could murder it, it went to a spot I couldn't get to. I wasn't going to do anything else until I killed it. I started spraying around the counter until it revealed itself. I sprayed the thing and laughed as it tried to swim away from the spray. I killed the thing and have been on edge since last night looking everywhere in my house hoping not to see any roaches. Ugh! Needless to say, my first call tomorrow will be to the company I rent through to see if they can get an exterminator here to spray everywhere! If I see another cockroach in my lifetime, it will be too soon!

Fireworks

I saw fireworks last night for the first time in many years. I traveled to Fort Bragg to see them. Fort Bragg is only about 5 miles from me. However, once I got through the checkpoint, I had no idea where to go. There were no signs and no cars. My friend and I finally found out where to go and we shockingly got a parking spot that gave us a perfect view of the fireworks. They went on for about 15 minutes. They were decent. I'm sure fireworks all over the nation were relatively the same. They are fun to watch but the thrill is gone quickly afterwards.

Firecracker 4 Miler

I did my first 4 mile race today. It started in pretty much the same spot it did last race I ran. I had to go up the same massive hill I did last race. Only this time, it was about a quarter mile after the start. One thing I liked about this race was that there were plenty of arrows throughout the course telling me where to go. They also had a mile marker for mile 1, 2, and 3 and water at each of those mile marks. There were 484 runners in this race! That's about 2 and a half times more people than I am used to. My goal was 32 minutes which is 8 minutes a mile. I was hoping to get top 3 in my age group of 25-29 but I didn't get anywhere near that. I ended up getting 76th out of 484 with a time of 32:18. I was really happy with my time because I felt like I was going slower than that pace and I didn't walk at all. I got 16th out of 35 in my age group. The winning time was 21:00. I probably finished about 2.5 miles when the first place finisher completed the race. I will never run a 4 mile race that fast! There are plenty more runs in the near future I can sign up for but I don't have any booked yet. We will see which one I do next.

Moving

I helped a friend move today. It is not fun! It probably wasn't smart of me either because during my 4 mile race tomorrow, my legs will probably feel like jello. I was thinking about how I'm going to move my stuff when the time comes. My lease is done around January 20. I had no plans to move out of my current apartment. However, there have been so many Internet issues and other more important house issues that are really annoying me. I live on the 3rd floor. Moving my couch, chair, bed, and furniture will not be easy whenever the time comes. Maybe I'll just live here the rest of my life so I don't have to worry about it. Moving is definitely much more trouble than it's worth.

Apartment vs. House

There are pros and cons to living in an apartment and living in a house. Pros of living in an apartment: There's not as much space to clean. I don't have to mow the lawn, rake the leaves, shovel, or do any other yard work. If there is something in the apartment that isn't mine that isn't working, they will fix it for free. My owner probably hates me because I have had the screen door fixed, the dryer replaced, and garbage disposal fixed (it doesn't work again), and now my toilet doesn't fill with water all of the way. It's a pain to call someone to fix those things, but then again, I'll deal with it because it's free! Cons: I am putting money into nothing. I pay rent each month and that money goes nowhere. Neighbors are really close to you, which can sometimes be a problem. Any problems with the road leading to my apartment get fixed on North Carolina time (whenever they feel like it). The pool took forever to get fixed. Speed bumps. Pros of living in a house: a mortgage payment goes towards owning the house. You can do whatever you want to it because it's yours. Cons: You have to mow the lawn, rake, shovel, and fix up anything that's wrong in the house. Anything that's broken and needs to be fixed professionally will cost a lot of money. I can't think of anything else right now but I'm sure there are many more pros and cons of each.

No Cell Phone

My cell phone that I've had for only 6 months decided to stop working today. It turned off on its own and never turned on again. I was just at the Apple Store in Raleigh this past Saturday! Now I have to drive about 150 miles round trip just to get my iPhone replaced tomorrow. I am not happy about that. I actually miss my cell phone. I'm sure no one is trying to contact me anyway. At least I still have working Internet and Facebook.