World Penguin Day

Today is world penguin day....one of the best days of the year! :)  I absolutely love penguins.  One of the great things about living in Royal Oak is the Detroit Zoo is actually in Royal Oak- and they have a penguinarium!  I can't wait to visit the zoo.  Which brings me to today's post (it actually isn't all about penguins believe it or not)-I need to start exploring.

I/We haven't had an opportunity to really explore what this area has to offer.  We've been focusing so much on getting the house set that we just haven't been to any of the big attractions.  After this weekend I think our new place will really start to feel like ours (hopefully).  We're planning on hitting up some rummage sales this weekend to find some decent bargains on furniture and other random things and to tackle some of the yard work.  I'm really hoping that after this weekend we can start using the weekends to explore some of the museums, towns, and sights this area has.  I feel like I did a fairly good job of familiarizing myself with the layout of the town and some of the downtown area.  Now I think it's time we start branching out more.

I have found one way to get out of the house-starting tomorrow I will be volunteering at the Metro Detroit Gilda's Club which is right here in Royal Oak.  I met the Development Director at my first AFP meeting and then submitted my volunteer application.  The Development Director gave me a call and she needs help with some event planning.  So I'm starting tomorrow!  I'm pretty excited to help an organization that I feel a real connection to and to start making some more solid connections and relationships with people in the nonprofit world here.  I also think it'll be good for me to have a reason to get up and leave the house in the morning!

Well it's about time that I get outside and enjoy the beautiful sunshine.  There is a wonderful lack of wind today so I think it's a great day for me to go out and start trimming back some of the overgrown plants/shrubs/weeds.  I've posted some "before" pictures of the outside of the house.  I'll post pictures occasionally to show the progress!

   

 

Progress!

We have finally seen some progress on things!  Thank goodness!

We now have access to all of our house for the first time which is wonderful.  All of the boxes (except 2 stragglers that I'm still figuring out what to do with) are now either unpacked or put in the basement.  We have a nice newly redone laundry room-complete with a brand new washer and dryer!  Best of all-we have a completely inhabitable master bedroom!  The management company ended up having to completely rip out and replace the carpet and padding in the master bedroom.  Its fantastic to not be crammed into the spare room with all of our stuff all over.  We now have more space than we know what to do with.

There are definitely still some things that need to be attended to but we can really start making this place our home now.  I feel much more comfortable.  We even got cable and internet hooked up today!  I can actually write this post from home! 

On a slightly less positive note we had a crazy windy day this week and my car unfortunately took a bit of hit....literally.  We now know that we shouldn't park our cars under the tree in our driveway during storms-the branches seem to snap off fairly easily.  I guess we just had to learn that one the hard way.

Now that things have settled down with the house a bit I can start working on some projects, decorating, and finding a job.  Oh the fun part of relocating!  I'm hoping being able to search from home will help me be a bit more productive on the job search front.

This weekend we are heading back to Madison for the UW Varsity Band Spring Concert.  I'm extremely excited to go to the concert and be back in Madison for a couple of days.  I'm hoping I will come back ready to really get going on things here!

A Few Firsts

Well I've officially been in Michigan for over a week now.  The first week definitely went differently than I'd expected and more quickly than I thought it would.  I think my biggest accomplishment thus far is that I haven't just isolated myself within our house!  Matt and I have had a few outings together and I've made it a point to leave the house and go somewhere new each day on my own.  I think this quote by Frederick Buechner sums up my attitude towards my little outings pretty well- "Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway."  I know no matter where I end up (which quite frankly sometimes I have no idea where the hell I am) I can always tell my GPS to take me home and everything will be fine.  It's all about the journey not the destination, right?

So far my adventures have found me traveling to Starbucks (where I currently am because we still don't have internet at home), the post office, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, the hardware store and a grocery store.  Who would have thought doing such basic things would make me so proud of myself!  I even managed to find my way to and from the grocery store without my GPS (granted I ended up at a different grocery store than I originally intended but hey-at least I came home with some food!).  I've also attended my first ever AFP meeting and have joined their mentorship program.  All in all I think it's been a productive first week for my little solo adventures.

Matt and I have been able to do a few outings together too which is always fun.  We found a decent restaurant last Friday.  It's actually a brewery but just not quite like the ones back in Madison so until I get more used to it I'm choosing to just call it a restaurant.  Although, I will give them credit-their Friday fish fry was not awful :)  Then on Tuesday, Matt came home and surprised me with tickets to the Ingrid Michaelson concert which was last night right here in Royal Oak.  Definitely a much appreciated distraction from trying to find a job, dealing with the continual construction workers at our house, and attempting to get some semblance of organization in the house.  I'm pretty excited about the venue the concert was at.  It was somewhat reminiscent of the Madison favorites The Barrymore and Majestic combined.  All in all a great outing.

While things are still not quite how I would prefer/hope/like them to be-I'm at least getting better at handling things.  I hope I can keep this trend going in the next couple of weeks-we'll see how much things test my patience!

Blindly Wandering

Yet again I've gone a crazy amount of time with no post.  Since my last post (almost a year ago now-yikes!) a LOT has changed.  Since my life course has changed I thought it was about time to revisit this whole blog idea.  This blog originally started as a New Year's resolution (clearly one that didn't pan out all that well).  Now I am going to use it as more of a conversation space.  Granted, this conversation may be extremely one sided as I talk myself through things but hopefully it will eventually be a two sided conversation.  I get these Real Simple "Daily Thought" quote things.  I'll occasionally be putting these in my posts (you'll find one below if you keep reading).  There really are some great ones that show up in my inbox so I feel its only fair to share them :)  It also will *hopefully* help focus my ramblings a bit.

So to fill people in on what this big change in my life is....I've moved.  It doesn't sound like that huge of a thing but it's turning out to be.  A few weeks ago Matt got a fantastic job offer in Michigan.  We'd been talking about moving for a few months but the right opportunity hadn't presented itself-at least not until this offer came along.  Now Michigan was never where I really wanted or thought I'd end up moving to but, things change.  I can honestly say I've never made such a huge decision on a quicker timeline.  Matt got the offer and we had to have a decision within the next four days.  We chatted about it for a night or two and then decided to just go for it.  From the time we made the decision we had 3 weeks to get everything set.  It has been a crazy whirlwind of a month.  Matt and I both gave our notice at work, subleased our Madison apartment, found a rental house in Michigan, packed up our lives, said goodbye to our friends and my family, and headed east towards Detroit.  That about brings you up to speed.

Quote of the day- "The thing that's important to know is that you never know.  You're always sort of feeling your way."  I feel like I have been living this quote the last few weeks.  I'm a planner by nature and I've never done something this big with this little planning.  I feel as though I've been blindly feeling my way through all of the options and decisions I've been forced to navigate through.

We're now in our rental house in Royal Oak, Michigan.  Things have not gone as planned since we've been here.  There were a lot of things that needed to be fixed in the house and they are taking much longer to complete than they were supposed to.  So we still have a general contractor going in and out of our place each day.  The saving grace there is that he's a very nice guy and after talking a bit it turns out he is pretty connected and has offered to introduce me to some people here in town.  I'll take any help I can get.  It was a very hard for me to give up the network I had built in Madison and I'm hoping to be able to build a similar network here.  The downside is that it is incredibly difficult to feel settled and "at home" in a house that is being worked on and that you can't use all of the rooms in.  I just keep telling myself that eventually everything will be fixed.  I'd just love it if eventually came sooner rather than later.

For now I'm trying to be more okay with taking baby steps each day/week/month.  There are a lot of things I will have to get used to here (I'm sure future posts will illustrate some of the differences and the challenges I'm having with them).  I'm going to try and see some of these challenges as opportunities, although I think sometimes this will be easier said than done.  I'm also going to try and focus on the small accomplishments and milestones along this so far bumpy road to happiness here in Royal Oak.  For now I am desperately missing my family, Madison and my second family there and I'm just trying to learn how to miss what I knew and grow to love what's in front of me now.  I'm hoping this gets a little easier each day.

How does this happen??

I'm never really sure how it gets to this point-until last weekend it had been almost two months since I'd picked up my camera.  I never understand how this happens!  Photography is a huge part of my life and I like to think of it as an integral part of my identity and yet this happens once or twice a year-I go a pathetically long time without taking photos.  I really don't like it.

I could easily come up with reasons (read as "excuses") for my lack of photography time and yet none of them seem valid enough.  I'm busy, I'm exhausted, I'm stressed, I've got errands to run....the reasons just keep on coming and even as I write them I find them to be pathetic.  All of the reasons that I don't take photos are the same reasons that I need to take photos.  I'm busy and stressed and exhausted and going to focus on a beautiful flower or an amazing landscape would surely help with the exhaustion and stress.  And yet, I just can't do it sometimes.  Perhaps its one of those "absence makes the heart grow fonder" situations; at least that is what I'm telling myself.

So last weekend I went to one of my favorite Madison spots-the Arboretum.  I love the Arb and there is no shortage of great photo ops.  Below are a couple of the photos I took.  Not necessarily my best-but I don't think they're too bad for the first time out in quite a while.  I am certainly hoping to get back to my desired routine of a photo trip/task each week.  We'll see how it goes!

 

Vacation!

Well I suppose it is finally time to post some photos from my vacation!  It is hard to choose which ones-between our two camera's Matt and I took about 700 pictures.  So I have decided to just post some of them periodically on here.  Since I'm incredibly hungry right now (I really should be cooking dinner rather than writing on here!) I've decided to post some photos from our last day in Munich.  These were taken at the large and wonderful Viktualienmarkt. Enjoy!

Too Long

It is amazing how quickly time goes-especially when you are supposed to be consistently doing something once a week!  I'm slightly surprised at how hard it is to find time to write a post and take pictures every week; as always, life seems to get in the way.

In the past two weeks (honestly, I can't believe its been two weeks!) I haven't had time to go and take pictures.  Work has been crazy busy and I've been traveling every weekend visiting family before my much needed vacation.  In last weekends travels to Michigan I went to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Science Center.  We took some nice touristy photos and those are what you see below.  As a side note, the DIA is wonderful!  You could easily spend an entire day there-and we plan to the next time we are in Detroit!

It turns out our fun new camera has a "museum" setting!  How cool is that???  It works amazingly well.  There is no flash so there's no chance of damage to any artifacts....but the pictures still turn out pretty well!

This is a close up of the door in the picture above.  It is a really amazing carved wooden door from West Africa.

The Science Center had a really cool human sized kaleidoscope like area that you could go in...it's really cool but hard to take pictures in!  Hence, the multiple attempts.

Now I am just going to be honest-there is probably not going to be another post from me in a while as I leave for vacation next week.  But, I will take lots of photos on vacation and make sure to post them here once I get back!