Apartment Hunting

I moved to Raleigh into a partial lease from basically February through end of July in order to get settled, find a job, and find an area I wanted to live in. Well I have been looking for a place for the last few months and let me tell you it has been a STRUGGLE. My boss can attest to this, she has been helping me quite a bit. Considering we work closely with the industry, you think it wouldn't have been this hard, but alas it has.

The rental market here is crazy, there are 63 people that move to Raleigh every single day. That's insane. Raleigh is also struggling because they want to remain a small city, but at this point they are way past that. I mean Amazon and Apple are considering Raleigh for a headquarters, come on! I say all this because Raleigh has been fighting new housing development, making the rental market a fight for the limited resources. Places would get snatched up after being posted a day or two. I was constantly on the search, it was stressful.

Another factor in why it took so long was that in the past, I would rush the process and not get exactly what I wanted due to just being too eager to get a new place and/or desperately wanting to get out of whatever my current living situation was at the time. This led to me continuing the cycle of every year or even every 6 months sometimes of being in a living situation I couldn't tolerate and eager to move yet again. Well I was sick of that cycle, so this time, I really took my time and stuck to my standards and I think I got a really great place this time. Pics and post to come after I move in and get settled, don't worry. I also want to write an entire post about searching for housing very soon, so stay tuned for those posts coming.

My First Southern 4th of July

First things first, I had the whole day off, which hadn't happened in a long long time. Since I had the time off, I decided to be social and go kayaking in the first half of the day with some people that I met through a meetup.com group (more on this in recent post here).

We went to Lake Crabtree Park and usually their kayak rentals are $7-10, but their systems were down so the rentals were free! It was a Fourth of July miracle! They also rent paddleboards and little sailboats as well by the way.

As for the kayaking itself, it was fun. The lake was a little dark for my liking, rather brown to be honest. I'm used to clearer lakes back home in the Great Lakes State of Michigan. You also aren't allowed to swim in the lake, which made me a little apprehensive about the lake because I am definitely not used to that either. I heard you can swim in Jordan Lake, so I definitely want to check that out very soon!

Later on there was a cookout, normally I would say BBQ, but I have since learned that northerners get made fun of for saying BBQ for anything other than smoking meats and traditional BBQ lol, so now I say cookout or grilling for your traditional burgers and hot-dogs situation.

Food galore, apple pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert, cornhole and red solo cups made for a perfect Fourth!

Theme of My Weekend

Are you seeing the theme yet?

I have had a crazy last couple of weeks, so this weekend called for some serious R & R! I got to catch up on a lot of my shows. Anyone else watching the Staircase, Handmaid's Tale and/or Life Sentence??? I have so many thoughts and feelings about all of them! As you can see, my dog Fitz wanted lots of snuggles, attention and fetching since his attention meter was clearly dangerously low..

Being Social For Once

As I believe I have mentioned before, I am a bit of an introverted extrovert. For those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means that when I am out and being social, I am very social. It also means that people also drain me emotionally and physically, so I also need time to be alone and recharge. With my crazy busy life the last few weeks and the nature of my work being so people oriented, any chance I got for free time I was hibernating socially.

While I took a lot of "Me Time" this weekend, I did manage to talk myself into doing some social things since I am still trying to build up my friend groups here in Raleigh, especially my girl gang! It did take a lot of a personal mental pep talk to convince me to go out because as you saw above, my pup and bed were calling my name.

Saturday

Since I had the whole weekend free, so I felt a little obligated to try to at least do one social thing, so I did make plans for Sunday with my main girl Cayla, which you will read about that a little further down. Even though I made those plans, I felt it was time to branch out and make some more girlfriends because Cayla and I are in really busy points of our lives right now and our schedules don't always line up, plus it's never a bad thing to have more girl friends.

So I was chatting with a few girls on Bumble BFF, and one seemed rather awesome, so I took a chance and asked her to hang out that night and she agreed. We decided to grab drinks and dessert, but we also ended up trying some food as well at Lynnwood Grill & Brewing Concern in North West Raleigh. Check out this dessert!

It's a Krispy Kreme donut with ice cream on top. It was so good! I believe she got the brownie and ice cream. She cleared hers faster than me, so I'll have to assume it was good, we were connecting and chatting so much that I forgot to ask!

Overall, I am happy that I talked myself into going because I think I made a new lady friend and I geniunely had a good time trying a new place and meeting a new person.

Sunday

Cayla and I made Sunday plans when she was off work and we were thinking of doing a dinner and/or movie. I suggested movie, but when it came time to pick a theater, we decided to check out the new Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, which actually ended up killing two birds with one stone because they serve you food and drinks right to your seat!

We decided to check out the new Jurassic Park movie in the series, Jurassic World. It was pretty good and kept in line with the series! There was a twist that I am surprised hadn't been done earlier on in the series, but glad they finally did.

As for the theater, you have to reserve seats, which is pretty standard for theaters like this. Well the only two seats next to each other were in the front row, which I was pretty hesitant about. However, the ticket person assured me it wasn't as bad as a normal theater because the first row seating started 30 ft back. He was right, the seats weren't an issue at all.

The way the ordering works is those white cards on your table, you just fill them out with whatever you want and stand the card vertically up and the wait staff come around and collect them then bring you whatever it is you want right to your seat! You can see the menu sticking out a bit under the table. They also have little lights under the table too to help you read the menu during the movie, since the main lights are obviously out. Oh and the comfy leather seats recline quite a bit as I tried to show in the picture. The only thing is I wish I had a blanket for ultimate comfort! I get a little chilly in air conditioned places usually and I just like being snuggled under a blanket during movies in general haha.

It was a pretty great weekend overall and I feel recharged for the week. What about you?

How was your weekend?
What do you usually do on the weekend when you need to hibernate and recharge?
I challenge you to try to meet someone new this upcoming week and weekend and to let me know how it goes!