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| thanks freehdwall.com |
This week, I replaced the rear tire on my bicycle. Mostly because I've had three flats in 10 days.
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| thanks animated-gifs.tumblr.com |
***PRO TIP!*** It's best to replace your tires before they are completely bald. Learning!
Showing posts with label minimalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label minimalism. Show all posts
bike commuting tips: flat tire edition
Oh hey everyone!
How are you?
This week, I replaced the rear tire on my bicycle. Mostly because I've had three flats in 10 days.
***PRO TIP!*** It's best to replace your tires before they are completely bald. Learning!
This week, I replaced the rear tire on my bicycle. Mostly because I've had three flats in 10 days.
***PRO TIP!*** It's best to replace your tires before they are completely bald. Learning!
car-freedom:
Hey there everyone! As you may remember, I sold my car when I moved to this new town to begin this odd internship. Here are some things that are pretty awesome about car-free living:
1. Parking is always convenient (bike racks are plentiful and usually covered).
2. My transportation costs are absurdly low:
Car-share membership - $35/year
Bike maintenance - ~$50/year
Gas - $0
Car insurance - $0
Car payment - $0
Car maintenance - $0
Parking (home) - $0
Hospital parking pass - $0
3. I get fresh air and exercise commuting to and from work, complete with the daily challenge of dodge-the-texting-undergrads on the bike path.
4. Biking uses renewable energy - it's powered by me!
5. It's fun to meet other cycling commuters at the bike rack. The seasoned bike folks provide a large amount of useful information, tips, and encouragement for new bike commuters.
1. Parking is always convenient (bike racks are plentiful and usually covered).
2. My transportation costs are absurdly low:
Car-share membership - $35/year
Bike maintenance - ~$50/year
Gas - $0
Car insurance - $0
Car payment - $0
Car maintenance - $0
Parking (home) - $0
Hospital parking pass - $0
3. I get fresh air and exercise commuting to and from work, complete with the daily challenge of dodge-the-texting-undergrads on the bike path.
4. Biking uses renewable energy - it's powered by me!
5. It's fun to meet other cycling commuters at the bike rack. The seasoned bike folks provide a large amount of useful information, tips, and encouragement for new bike commuters.
furrrrrniture:
My new state is a reasonable driving distance (a little over six hours) from the University of Awesome. So! Moving was simpler than it might have been otherwise. All of the stuff in my apartment fit into the back of a pickup truck and a car, even with the front seat reserved for a certain someone:
My cat is awesome, btw. I met her in a palpation lab at the vet school during my first year, and at the time she was as fat as a house. She weighed approximately twice what her trim body weight should be. She sat fatly in her metal cage sternly regarding the world around her. I scooped her up in my arms (my lab partner said, "Lift with your legs!") and I instantly loved her.
She has since lost a significant amount of poundage, and enjoys snarfing every morsel of food she can find. We share the same name (I did not name her, she came with it), so for a time the two technicians in charge of the labs called us "Alacrity" and "Fat Alacrity". As in,
"Hey Alacrity! How's Fat Alacrity doing?"
She is also an excellent traveler, and always very polite. Sometimes she bites.
Anyway!
This was supposed to be a post about furniture.
I didn't have all that much furniture in my last apartment, but in the spirit of minimalism and having fewer heavy things to carry whilst moving, I winnowed said furniture down to the following:
1. Futon and frame
2. Nightstand
3. Coffee table
4. Two folding shelves
5. Meditation bench
6. Two stools
7. Freestanding kitchen butcher-block structure
8. Fish tank stand
9. Three disassemble-able small shelves for shoes, etc.
10. Sturdy plastic storage container with drawers
Also (not furniture exactly but heavy, big, and/or fragile:
1. Full-length mirror
2. Two small lamps
3. One tall lamp
4. Toaster oven
Here are some things I learned about moving a) furniture, and b) things that are heavy, big, and/or fragile:
1. Take the lightbulbs out of your lamps.
2. Get a box designed to move art for your big mirror (or your art also), or really extensively/absurdly wrap the mirror in soft, comfy blankets.
3. TAKE PICTURES OF HOW THINGS GO TOGETHER BEFORE YOU TAKE THEM APART.
4. Put all the screws and washers in a bag together for each piece of furniture and label them.
5. Do not let cords dangle and trip you while you are carrying a corded appliance.
6. If you are moving something with drawers without emptying said drawers, tape the drawers shut.
Happy packing! Hopefully you will lose your screwdriver, hammer and scissors fewer times than I did.
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| ALWAYS WATCHING |
She has since lost a significant amount of poundage, and enjoys snarfing every morsel of food she can find. We share the same name (I did not name her, she came with it), so for a time the two technicians in charge of the labs called us "Alacrity" and "Fat Alacrity". As in,
"Hey Alacrity! How's Fat Alacrity doing?"
She is also an excellent traveler, and always very polite. Sometimes she bites.
Anyway!
This was supposed to be a post about furniture.
I didn't have all that much furniture in my last apartment, but in the spirit of minimalism and having fewer heavy things to carry whilst moving, I winnowed said furniture down to the following:
1. Futon and frame
2. Nightstand
3. Coffee table
4. Two folding shelves
5. Meditation bench
6. Two stools
7. Freestanding kitchen butcher-block structure
8. Fish tank stand
9. Three disassemble-able small shelves for shoes, etc.
10. Sturdy plastic storage container with drawers
Also (not furniture exactly but heavy, big, and/or fragile:
1. Full-length mirror
2. Two small lamps
3. One tall lamp
4. Toaster oven
Here are some things I learned about moving a) furniture, and b) things that are heavy, big, and/or fragile:
1. Take the lightbulbs out of your lamps.
2. Get a box designed to move art for your big mirror (or your art also), or really extensively/absurdly wrap the mirror in soft, comfy blankets.
3. TAKE PICTURES OF HOW THINGS GO TOGETHER BEFORE YOU TAKE THEM APART.
4. Put all the screws and washers in a bag together for each piece of furniture and label them.
5. Do not let cords dangle and trip you while you are carrying a corded appliance.
6. If you are moving something with drawers without emptying said drawers, tape the drawers shut.
Happy packing! Hopefully you will lose your screwdriver, hammer and scissors fewer times than I did.
minimalism and khakis:
Fact: I love minimalism primarily because I despise moving.
When I was in college, my parents (quite graciously, I might add. Hi, Mom!) came to help me pack all of my dorm room things into a storage pod after every year of school. Every year, I would say to myself, "Okay this time I will actually be mostly packed by the time my folks get here.".
Alas, every year, my mother would open the door to my room and say some permutation of, "WOW you have so much stuff. How does it all fit in here?". Sigh.
I'd always start packing while I was taking finals, which admittedly was not the wisest plan in the world. I'd pack the easy things first - books I never read, winter clothing, that giant array of crafty things on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, SO MUCH YARN, et cetera. This meant of course that all the annoying/oddly shaped things were the ones left to pack by the time my parents arrived.
Tangent! One year, I decided to store my stuff in the creepy basement of the house I lived in over the summer instead of using a storage pod. I'm not sure why I decided to do this, since one of my first experiences at college was bleach-staining my pants trying to salvage a new buddy's stuff that she'd stored downstairs...and an entire gallon of bleach had spilled on her things. Gah.
Anyways, the stuff stored in the "trunk room" had to meet various and sundry standards to avoid being thrown out over the summer. No storage of furniture was allowed, yet anything that could be packaged into a box was permitted. My mother constructed a large, awkward box for my papasan chair. When I praised her for cleverly skirting the rules, she said, "It's not sneaky - it's technical compliance!".
Once in vet school, I realized - hey, if I have less stuff, I will have less of it to move. The seemingly endless horrible dusty-handed, achy-armed, cobwebs-in-hair ordeal will not last as long. THIS IS AWESOME.
Anti-consumerism, tiny living, and simplicity are all well and good, but I kid you not when I say that this is the thing that got me on the minimalism train.
So, you know, now I have two pairs of khakis, which is usually fine. As a vet student on clinics, I can budge in enough time to do laundry approximately once a week.
However, sometimes it's rough when a dog explosively defecates all over your last clean pair of khakis (it's okay, it wasn't his fault). That's the moment when I fleetingly really want about eight pairs of khakis, all stain resistant and exactly the same.
When I was in college, my parents (quite graciously, I might add. Hi, Mom!) came to help me pack all of my dorm room things into a storage pod after every year of school. Every year, I would say to myself, "Okay this time I will actually be mostly packed by the time my folks get here.".
Alas, every year, my mother would open the door to my room and say some permutation of, "WOW you have so much stuff. How does it all fit in here?". Sigh.
I'd always start packing while I was taking finals, which admittedly was not the wisest plan in the world. I'd pack the easy things first - books I never read, winter clothing, that giant array of crafty things on the bottom shelf of the bookcase, SO MUCH YARN, et cetera. This meant of course that all the annoying/oddly shaped things were the ones left to pack by the time my parents arrived.
Tangent! One year, I decided to store my stuff in the creepy basement of the house I lived in over the summer instead of using a storage pod. I'm not sure why I decided to do this, since one of my first experiences at college was bleach-staining my pants trying to salvage a new buddy's stuff that she'd stored downstairs...and an entire gallon of bleach had spilled on her things. Gah.
Anyways, the stuff stored in the "trunk room" had to meet various and sundry standards to avoid being thrown out over the summer. No storage of furniture was allowed, yet anything that could be packaged into a box was permitted. My mother constructed a large, awkward box for my papasan chair. When I praised her for cleverly skirting the rules, she said, "It's not sneaky - it's technical compliance!".
Once in vet school, I realized - hey, if I have less stuff, I will have less of it to move. The seemingly endless horrible dusty-handed, achy-armed, cobwebs-in-hair ordeal will not last as long. THIS IS AWESOME.
Anti-consumerism, tiny living, and simplicity are all well and good, but I kid you not when I say that this is the thing that got me on the minimalism train.
So, you know, now I have two pairs of khakis, which is usually fine. As a vet student on clinics, I can budge in enough time to do laundry approximately once a week.
However, sometimes it's rough when a dog explosively defecates all over your last clean pair of khakis (it's okay, it wasn't his fault). That's the moment when I fleetingly really want about eight pairs of khakis, all stain resistant and exactly the same.
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