Home Sweet Home

For all of you asking about the apartment Stephen and I live in now (or those who haven't asked, but are curious) here you go! A video walkthrough by yours truly, showing you the apartment from our front door to our bedroom.

Enjoy!

Sickness, Sushi, and Self

It seems that all of us are adjusting well to life here in Mountain View. I've been taking care of the apartment - cleaning and organizing things, trying to figure out how best to organize the furniture (and even what furniture we want - thanks Ikea!). It's been fun.

In less fortunate news, Absinthe has gotten sick. On Monday I went to check on the cage, only to find dark red urine on the second full level. It took me much of the day to figure out which of the girls it had come from. The next day I took Absinthe in to a nearby vet (which I'll talk about later). Fortunately it doesn't appear that she has a tumor (which would have surprised me, but was a possibility), and instead she has a UTI - a basic urinary tract infection. Now she's on a medication regime, which she (and I) hates. I'll be done next Monday. Hopefully after that it will be cleared up.

Last night, Tene, Bancus, and I went to a newly opened sushi bar - Sushi 85 - and I ate real sushi for the first time. I didn't like it. Well, there was one type that I enjoyed - but overall I've decided that sushi isn't for me. Which is fine - there are plenty of other delicious Asians food that I do like - and I'm glad I finally found out.

As for myself: I'm still doing alright. My depression and motivation isn't quite as great as I would like, but now Tene and I have registered for our benefits, so I should be able to go talk to a psychiatrist sometime soon.

Changes to Be Made

As I mentioned before, I'm now in California with Tene. It's been an exciting two weeks.

We now have an apartment, and on Saturday we finally got everything moved into said apartment. Now I'm just trying to go through boxes and unpack all of the things we own.

I've been having bad dreams lately - they seem to be caused by the combination of stress from the Major Lifestyle Change of moving from Utah to California and the anxiety of the same. I seem to be clenching my teeth as a result, though, which is less than ideal and makes me unhappy. I've been waking up with headaches.

On a different side of things, I've been a little disappointed in my own reaction to the move. I had apparently been thinking - more strongly than just idle daydreams - that simply moving out of Utah would be enough to bump me out of the rut I've been living in for the last .... five? six years? It wasn't. I'm still the same girl I was in Utah, I'm just not wearing winter-clothes anymore. I don't like who I am, and I don't know how to change who that person is into someone I would like.

I have a severe case of akrasia - failure of will - when it comes to motivation. It's hard for me to get the energy to do anything that might be mildly unpleasant (pretty much anything I don't want to do ... and even some things I do want to do). So instead of actually doing anything I just watch stuff on hulu.com and youtube. I just don't care. I feel fine watching things, and when I do feel guilty ... it's not a very strong feeling.

I'm considering doing a complete overhaul of myself, of my personality. First I'm thinking of doing something similar to what Alicorn talked about over at Less Wrong - basically actively rewriting my emotional states, rather than just passively feeling and acting as though my emotional states are something that are out of  my control that I cannot control. Hopefully this will help with my depression as well as with my motivation. I'm also looking into some mindhacks to help me with my motivational issues (the link is another post at Less Wrong, this one about Pain Motivation vs Gain Motivation - I am very much "pain motivated"). I know the person I want to be, and I have some ideas of how to become that person ... I just need to actually enact them.

Another thing I'm considering is possibly taking on a new name - or doing something that is tangible or obvious to say, to show that I'm a different person than I was. That I'm going to become a different person.

I'm not certain if that makes sense, but it's just something I'm thinking about now.

A New Nest

We're in our new nest!

Tene and I moved the last of our belongings from storage into our new apartment yesterday with the help of Bancus and his girl. Can I just say I am so happy that we're no longer sleeping on a couch, a holey air mattress, or the floor? We've got our bed back, and oh - how I missed it.


The new apartment is rather nice - I have a large area outside (a private patio) that I plan to use part of as a garden area. I have no idea what I'm going to plant, yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. Two bedrooms (one is going to be a work room/office), a decent-sized living room, a full-sized kitchen (yay! I have a real stove now!), a dining area, and two bathrooms. I'm quite pleased with it.

The next things on our list of making our apartment our home are getting some more furniture and sheets and the like, and getting internet access set up.

Possible Changes

I'm considering integrating the majority of this blog to my newest (yep, another one) blog, A Nest For Two. I may not, but right now I'm thinking about changing this blog to being completely about the rats, while I talk about Tene and I on A Nest For Two.

I'm not certain what to do.