Living Room Puzzle

Ken and I decided to buy an armchair as a little (or big) Christmas present for the both of us over the weekend. We've been wanting a comfy "reading" chair for awhile, so we decided to take advantage of the low American dollar and the low American IKEA prices while we were in Michigan for the Thanksgiving holiday. It should be noted that a few weeks ago some friends of ours bought an armchair both Ken and I absolutely fell in love with and decided, then and there, that that was the armchair for us (this was where the whole idea of getting an armchair began...). Of course, as soon as we spotted our new favorite armchair in IKEA during our little Michigan-shopping-spree, we hardly thought twice about buying it. I say hardly because we did have a fraction of a second-thought: It occurred to us as we were tearing apart the box in the IKEA parking lot to take the parts of the armchair out so we could actually fit the thing into our rental car that perhaps--if it's too big for the car--it might be too big for our itty-bitty apartment. But....

This is our new armchair in all of its comfy, squishy glory:

And, in case you were wondering, these are the measurements of our new comfy, squishy armchair:

41 and 3/4 inches wide, 43 and 1/4 inches deep. 

And, just so you know, this is the size of our living room: 

9 feet, 8 inches in width. (The length of it doesn't really matter in this situation....)

What. Were. We. Thinking. 

Honestly, this wouldn't be such a huge problem if it weren't for all of the other furniture already located in our teeny tiny living room.

Yes, maybe I have a slight IKEA addiction that needs curbing, but that's beside the point at the moment.... Because it looks like a furniture store just vomited in my living room. All of the shifting and rearranging we've tried thus far hasn't helped the situation much and the feng shui in our whole apartment is all messed up. *Stress!* 

I would consider taking this monstrosity of an armchair back to where we found it... but I'm all snuggled up in it right now feeling quite satisfied, in spite of the mayhem in front of me. It might not fit into any of the corners in our apartment, but it sure is cozy.

A full fridge and a new TV!

I overdid it. 

When we had people over for Friday night's birthday gathering, I thought it would be fun to make some snacks to go along with the pizza and cupcakes. After some consideration, I finally decided on guacamole and hummus served with veggies and chips. It should be noted, however, that I've never been a good judge of how much food to make for how many people, so we ended up with a lot of guacamole and hummus. We only had seven people over for the party, but I made enough to feed about a hundred. Of course, quite a bit of it was consumed at the party, but we still have enough guacamole/hummus/cupcake leftovers to feed an army.

In addition to Friday's haps, Ken's brothers, Craig and Dan, came over last night for dinner. We decided to order Indian food and, in our seemingly desperate hunger, ordered way, way, way too much. We had only made a tiny dent when all of us decided we were too stuffed to even look at the copious amounts of curries and samosas spread out in front of us. Naturally, it all ended up in the fridge. 

When I opened the fridge this morning to fetch some cream for my coffee, this is what I was met with:

These are all leftovers from this weekend alone. (Except the Omega 3 tablets.... Those have been in there for awhile, completely untouched.) I'm pretty sure most of this stuff has an expiry date that will be arriving long before we can even consider consuming any of it. Sweet Moses. What to do? 

To go along with our overflowing fridge, we now have an overflowing living room (in a totally good way). Ken's family generously gave him a new TV for his birthday, and its 32" fits our living room beautifully. 

(I'm pretty sure this is the model we ended up with.)

I haven't had a TV in nearly two years, so this is definitely noteworthy news. I'm excited to start watching movies on a proper screen, instead of our little 13" computer screens (even though they did their jobs well). 

And that's all. Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!

It's raining and I can't even have a cup of coffee.

I'm currently sitting at home on a cloudy, drizzly day in Toronto, while Ken is off meeting with an accountant to figure out his 2007/2008/2009 tax situation (oh, the things we forget to think about while living abroad...).  I'm going a little stir crazy sitting here all alone, as I've been holed-up in this apartment for nearly 48-hours with a stomach bug of some sort. My diet currently consists of soda crackers and ginger ale, which is only adding to my misery, but I can't eat or drink anything else without it flying out one end or the other. (Too graphic? Let's move on....)

In two-week-old news, I've been approved for permanent residency in Canada! Hurray! I thought it would take ages and ages for me to become "legal," but Immigration Canada has pleasantly surprised me with their promptness (I'll be thanking them with my tax dollars all too soon). Now I'm just waiting for my passport to be returned to me from the Canadian Consulate General in Seattle (of all places), then I'll be able to legally find a job! Booooo!

Aside from becoming legal and being disgustingly sick, I haven't been up to a whole lot lately. Ken has been working temp jobs here and there and I've become a master at couch potato-ness.  We did venture out to the zoo last week, which was a whole lot of fun. Zoo-Visiting-Tip: We've found that if you go to the zoo toward the end of the day and stay until closing time, you get to see the animals at their most active. They apparently know when it's time to go back inside and be fed, as most of them start pacing and getting agitated around the time the zoo closes its doors.

The rule doesn't apply to this particular giraffe, however. I'm pretty sure he stole that crate of hay, as the zookeepers walking by seemed perplexed as to how it had gotten in there. (I'm assuming this was a habit for him, though, as he appeared to be significantly chunkier than the other giraffes.)

In other, more recent news, we painted our apartment! We were getting sick of waking up every morning to blindingly-white walls, so we decided to give our place a little boost of color. Unfortunately, the "bark mulch" shade of paint we chose in the store turned out to be a purply, pinky, browny combination that neither of us is too fond of. We spent nearly ten hours on Saturday painting like mad, only to wake up the next morning to an atrocious color that had dried in streaks. We were quite dismayed when we realized a second coat would be needed, but we were hopeful that it would make the color a little less pukey.

Five additional hours later, we had streak-free walls, but the color had only improved slightly.

(Ken's face here adequately expresses the despair we felt when we realized all our labor had yielded icky results.) But what's done is done. I may not have much to do these days, but choosing a new paint color and spending another 15+ hours re-painting is simply out of the question. I don't mind saying that both Ken and I have our moments of creative-genius, so I'm sure we'll find a creative way to make our apartment presentable enough to start inviting people over again one of these days.... I just hope the creative-genius in one of us strikes sooner than later, as I'm pretty sure the color of our walls is contributing to my current nausea.

And that's all for now, folks. It's time for me to force down some more crackers and Canada Dry. Yum!

Toronto!

Korea is history and Toronto is the present and future, ladies and gents. After weeks of scouring the city for a place to live, we finally landed an apartment in this building, in this unit, in the very heart of Toronto (or downtown, if you want to take the un-romantic approach). We moved into our new home last Monday, but not before going on a major shopping-spree at IKEA! We bought this couch:

This bed:

And these chairs with this table:

They look far more impressive and far less drab in real life, but pictures of the apartment will come later. I'm feeling far too lazy to take any at the moment, plus I didn't actually log into my blog with the intention of showing off my apartment or posting pictures of my IKEA purchases... but there you have them!

First, let me just say that Toronto is a new city for me entirely. Before making her my home, I had really only spent a few weeks here during the summer of 2008 while visiting Ken between our stints in Korea. I don't know anything about Toronto, to be perfectly honest. So, during my days of unemployment (which will last awhile longer, as I still can't work legally in good ol' Canada) I've been meandering around the city, trying to learn her ways. Ken has been my tour guide (an excellent one at that, since he is a genuine Torontonian), and I've been slowly getting to know the city and slowly warming up to her. 

Today was one of my touristy days. I wanted to see St. Lawrence Market (someone on the internet said it was one of the greatest markets in the world... he/she has the propensity to exaggerate), so we meandered in that direction after finally getting our lazy bums out of our pajamas at around noon. After looking at a map of Toronto, I assumed the market would only be about a 20-minute walk from our apartment and I was--Wrong! I think it was more like 45 minutes, but I didn't actually time it. It just definitely felt like 45 minutes. 

When we finally got there, we were disappointed to find the food section of the market was closed for the day. Boooo! So we moseyed on over to the antiques section of the market instead and it appeared to be open and booming with business. It was kind of fun to wander through the mounds of junk and/or treasures stacked all over the place (I think I was feeling a bit pessimistic this afternoon, however, as there seemed to be more junk). When we went back outside, we found a fun little table stacked with old toys that I recognized from the days of my childhood... and, once again, this was an antique market. *sigh*  

After about an hour or so at St. Lawrence, we decided to walk another 15 minutes to the distillery district. I think it used to be an old whiskey distillery, but it has been transformed into trendy/shopping central.

Not that you can tell from my fabulous photography skills, but there are lots of cute, little, expensive-as-all-get-out shops and restaurants within these old brick walls (where I'm assuming whiskey once flowed). It was a fun place to poke around, while abiding by the "just look, don't touch" rule. Of course, I fell in love with a hundreds-possibly-thousands-of-dollars painting and a little $70 tree (I sometimes have expensive taste without even meaning to). The painting was easily passed up due to the dwindling numbers in my bank account, but the tree....

It is a pretty little tree, isn't it? Not that it would have survived the week in my plant-killing hands. I pried myself away and left it where I found it before meandering back to my dull, plant-less, tree-less abode. Anyhoo, I thought the distillery was a great little area for a Sunday afternoon stroll and I definitely plan to make a habit of it.... I just have to leave my wallet at home to avoid further temptation.

Hopefully I can discipline myself to take more pictures of Toronto while I'm exploring, and blog a little more now that I'm all settled in (...and jobless and bored out of my skull). But for now, at this very moment, I'm going to explore my freezer for some ice cream. Yay! 

Sad Times...

I'm sick of moving. Because I hate it. I'm especially sick of moving from one continent to another, picking and choosing which of my possessions to keep and which to get rid of, loading up box after box only to realize I have too many boxes and therefore need to get rid of more things due to the unsightly costs of global shipping. The hardest things to part with? Our furniture. I love our furniture, but we have now sold each item on our furniture-to-sell-list. I've never been one to get too attached to any of my possessions, but this time around I'm finding it harder to part with some things. These things in particular:

Our couch. I love our couch. It's so comfortable, and the best part? We bought it brand new for an insanely cheap price (if only furniture in North America were so cheap...). As of February 24th, this cozy, lovely thing will no longer be ours:

An Unimportant Note: This was the picture taken for the classified ad; this isn't how our living room is actually set up. 

See the bookshelves and lamps there in the picture? Those are also some of my faves and those, too, are gone. *sigh*

Our table. I love our little table. As of February 27th, it too will no longer be ours. 

                                      

I know it's small, but it's the perfect size for dinner and games and whatever else we might use a table for (insert questionable joke...heehee). 

Our futon and our other table.  These two are long gone and now we have a useless, empty room in our apartment. 

                                 

OK, maybe the room isn't entirely empty now. We may have started to use the floor space for our dirty clothes in lieu of a laundry hamper....

Our food processor. I know these things are a dime a dozen in North America, but this baby was hard to find in Korea and I have cherished it every day since we discovered it. 

                               

(This is also a picture we used for the classifieds.... It isn't usually set up so nicely on the floor in display-fashion with all of its attachments.)

There are lots of things I'm going to miss and lots of things I'm going to have to buy all over again when we move to Toronto (Canadian government willing). We hardly have long-term plans for our stint in Canada, so who knows how long it will be before we do this all over again (I fear not long). But I suppose for a girl (or woman, depending) who doesn't care much for stability, I shouldn't be complaining, as I'm usually chomping at the bit to move on. It's just the process of moving on that I hate so much. However, I am looking forward to the new things awaiting us in the Great White North (sans the cold and snow), I just wish I could fast-forward through the transitional, starting-all-over-again part of it. 

March-June-?

A gorgeous apartment, a title to a new/old car, a crappy diet, three and a half months since my previous post, and I've finally decided to blog again (for the last time this year, no doubt). A lot has happened since March; happenings that I had every intention of writing about, but I somehow managed to become increasingly lazier as spring moved into summer (I blame the humidity... but I suppose it wasn't really humid until last week).

First: The new apartment. Simply put, it's positively amazing. I'm pretty sure I will never live in such a nice place again, as I'll never be able to afford a place like this in any other part of the world. Only in Korea could I get away with such a deal. Just to give you an idea of my new abode, here's a little peek:

I also purchased a car a couple of months ago to make the long commute between the above palace in Busan to my bothersome place of employment in Ulsan. I don't have any pictures of it (it's too dirty at the moment to take pictures for public viewing), but it's a little '96 Hyundaii Avante and it was cheap, which is the important thing. It gets me from point A to point B every day without any problems (yet... knock on wood), so I'm happy with it.

I've been cooking up a storm over the past couple of months, which I suppose is another noteworthy tidbit of news. It's as though my domestic-side has lain dormant for the majority of my 28 years, and now I'm making up for lost time. It should be mentioned, however, that my recent cooking adventures (and they are indeed dangerous adventures) have been the result of a diet change that would have left me with very few food options if I hadn't made use of my oven and frying pan. As mentioned in previous posts, I had been suffering from sinus infections and tonsillitis galore for eight months straight with seemingly no hope for recovery. After talking about all of my symptoms with a nutritionist-friend of mine awhile back, she came to the conclusion that I could quite possibly have Candida. She put me on the Candida diet for a month to see what would happen. I'm happy to report that, even though this diet has been a big pain-in-the-butt, I haven't been sick in six weeks (a huge accomplishment!) and I'm feeling the best I've felt in months. But, as I said before, the diet is indeed a huge pain, and I've been forced to become more creative in the kitchen as of late. Much to my surprise, I'm not the terrible cook I always believed myself to be, although I would be lying if I said I haven't had any huge flops (like making an avocado soup using avocados that weren't ripe... but I choked it down anyway!). This website has definitely been a huge help in my recent ventures.

In other news, rainy season is upon us here in Korea. There has been a perpetual rain/mist cloud hanging low in the sky for the past month or so with only a few breaks here and there long enough for the sun to come out and steam things up a bit. I have a feeling it's going to be an exceptionally humid summer and my hair, for one, is not up for such a challenge. Lucky me.... I've been looking like a brunette version of Einstein over the past few muggy days (without the brains).

Well.... I've never known how to conclude a blog post gracefully, especially when it's all over the map as this one seems to be. I could promise to write here more often, as I tend to dishonestly do from time to time, but I'm not even going to bother this time. So without further ado, this is where it stops. Good night.

Procrastination, Part 237

I'm scheduled to move into my new apartment in Busan this coming Saturday. Of course, in Korea that could mean this Saturday, the following Saturday, or--heck--why not next month? Even though I won't believe my move-in date to be true until I'm actually in the building and holding the key to my new abode in my hands, I suppose I should start packing. I have posters to tear off the wall, clothes to stuff in my bag (note: "bag" is not plural because my wardrobe has been eaten by my washing machine and I have thus been left with little clothing to pack), books and lamps to load into boxes, and food... oh Lord, the food. How does a girl transport the contents of her entire refrigerator from one destination to another? Beyond packing, I have to figure out how to get my driver's license, buy a car, get insurance for said car (and probably tack on health insurance for good measure), and hire a moving truck to take the rest of my junk to the light at the end of my tunnel (Busan). And yes, I must have all of the above done by Saturday (presumably), so, naturally, I'm procrastinating and writing a blog post instead.

One of the hobbies I've acquired during the past couple weeks of procrastinating (I've known about my pending move for far longer than I would care to admit) is cooking. As in, me cooking food. For those of you who know me well, you are probably shocked to read such a statement coming from my fingers. I have openly loathed even the mere thought of cooking for as long as I can remember. When I moved to Nashville after college and could no longer depend on cafeteria food to sustain me, I resorted to buying Lean Cuisine meals. Even then, poking holes in the saran-wrap covered dinners and throwing them in the microwave for the necessary 5 minutes was almost too much "cooking" for me to handle. Anyway, I recently picked up a copy of a popular book (according to Oprah, anyway) called "French Women Don't Get Fat" (I thought it was a shallow, trashy novel I could soak my brain in after work, but was surprised to find it was a cooking/nutrition self-help book) and it inspired me to start cooking my own food. I've been raking through the internet over the past few weeks, trying to find healthy recipes that will actually work in Korea (ingredients that aren't native to Korea are hard to find) and I've found a few that have been working out quite nicely. My favorite recipe by far is a hummus recipe I found, and I was fortunate enough to find tahini when I was in Seoul a few weeks ago. It's so good, in fact, that I decided to post it here, just in case anyone else would care to try it.

Hummus Recipe

Chickpeas: 1 & 3/4 cups, cooked

Sour cream or plain yogurt: 1/2 cup

Water: 1/4 cup

Garlic: 2 or 3 cloves, crushed with salt

Tahini: 1/4 cup

Lemon juice: 1/3 cup

Crushed red pepper: 1 teaspoon (optional)

Directions:

1. Puree ingredients in a blender or food processor

2. Add additional tahini and/or lemon juice if necessary until it suits your taste. The texture should be a little thinner than mashed potatoes.

I also made some tasty chicken chili the other day, but I haven't worked out all the kinks yet, so I shan't be posting it here. Not to mention, I don't own any measuring equipment, so the "how much" in the recipe is a bit of a conundrum.

By the by, if anyone happens to have any recipes that won't befuddle a new cook, feel free to pass them along. I'm feeling quite experimental these days (I have time to kill when I have something to procrastinate over).

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've procrastinated long enough. I'm going to bed.