Weekend Update

This weekend was pretty good as I was actually social. Friday night the apartment management hosted a cook out for the complex which was well attended by people of all ages (well not really many people my age but that's beside the point). I ended up meeting several neighbors and ate a hamburger. One thing that I couldn't help thinking was what brought these people to this apartment complex. I guess my thinking has always been geared towards apartments being temporary places for me to live until I grow up and buy a house. I met a couple of long term residents, one that has lived here 13 years and another 9 years. My life has been so transient the last 6-7 years during school that I have no concept of staying in one place that long. There were also quite a few families with their kids in attendance as well. Even though I work in apartment finance and think higher density development is a good thing I don't know if I could do apartment living for that length of time. It's a very different mentaliity I guess and one I haven't fully grasped. It was an interesting revelation. It's also pretty interesting to people watch, especially people that have something in common like living in an apartmnet complex yet do not know each other and to ponder what brought them there, what they do for a living, and who they really are. I gained some insight on Friday night but still have a lot of questions. That sociology class I took at Tech still is kicking around in my head.

Saturday I was pretty lazy during the morning, wanting to take easy as I'm still recovering from being sick last week. I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a new comforter and sheets set since I've been using Emily's down comforter since I got the queen bed she used at UNC when she moved back to Wellesley this spring since she'll probably use it this summer during summer school back at UNC. It helped that I had a 20% off coupon for Bed Bath and Beyond. I'll post pics when I put it on the bed.

Saturday night was another social event. One of my friends from the Planning/MBA program graduated this weekend and had a party at his house in Chapel Hill last night. It was good to get out of the house and see old faces from my graduating class and to meet some new folks. I really missed out being a teatotling fuddy duddy during my 2 years in Chapel Hill. I should have made myself go out and get to know more people in my department. I guess it's never to late to build those friendships though and having a common bond through school definitely helps. Talking to some people about school and I realized that I was just burned out on school that whole time and it gave me an overall negative impression on school. While I'm glad I went straight through undergrad and grad school and happy with the job I got as a result of the masters program, I think I would gotten way more out of it if I'd worked first then gone back to school. At the same time I wouldn't have met the people I did or had the experiences I did if I had waited. Things happen for a reason.

Today I went to my grandparents' to celebrate Mother's Day. My grandmother surprises me sometime, they're both really frugal people but every once in a while I'll go over to their house and I'll see a random something she bought off a tv commercial or one of the home shopping channels. Today's surprise was that she bought a pilates exercise machine because it is supposed to be good for people that have had heart problems (she had a bypass a couple of years ago). I put the machine together for them and tested it out and it seems like it would be a good exercise, I just have reservations about an 80 year old woman that hasn't really exercised in a long while getting on the floor to do strenous exercises when she has problems walking on the treadmill. I told her my reservations and if she gets stuck to call me and tell me she's fallen and she can't get up and I'll come help her out. If things don't work out for them I said I'd take the machine of their hands.

Overall a good weekend capped by seeing a couple of rainbows on the way home from Elon.

Edited to add: I stopped by The Fresh Market today before heading to Elon to get my gmother some flowers and I ended up picking out a potted white orchid. I think she liked it. The other day I noticed when I drove by they had a stand of herb plants outside so I also picked up a small basil plant. It'll be nice to have some plant life around the apartment and now maybe I can make some homemade pesto. If this herb grows well I may branch out into something more exotic as well. As an aside, on the care tag it said basil insites passion, so if you're looking for something passion inducing here ya go.

Edited again to add: That's a sorry looking plant, I watered it and over night it perked up a lot.