Reunited roommates

I'm so glad to have everyone home. Yesterday, after spending a month visiting family, my roommate Maddy returned home to Nova Scotia. During her absence the house has felt a bit out of whack, awaiting the reemergence of her bombastic shouts. 

We started out as 5 strangers thrown together by fate to rent a house, and have become a family. A great place to find all sorts of wonderful people visiting, supporting and encouraging each other through life, and chatting about a variety of topics.  

You know it is a good day when laughter and music increases in the house 10 fold. 

My living arrangement sounds terrible to some people but works for me.  I love the noise, shared ideas, and all the new and exciting distractions that come with this many roommates. And yet there is still time to find a quiet moment alone with your thoughts.  Somehow our schedules just work out to give us enough time apart that we don't get sick of each other. 

We all have a common goal of making every dollar count so we join forces when buying food and house supplies. The house doesn't need much restocking because we will buy most things in bulk to last. Often we set aside money at the beginning of a month and then see how long we can go without collecting again. Longest run so far was 8 months, February-September.  By pooling money everything is equal.  We have a similar approach to food. We discuss some possible meal ideas and pool money every week-2weeks to pick up supplies. We not only save by sharing expenses, we also ensure we have no waste of spoiled food.  When buying fresh fruits and vegetables we can buy a variety and quantity that would go bad if left to one person. Humans tend to get tired of the same thing (or thrive on routine so who knows) so by getting a wide range we ensure that everyone is getting an assortment of nutrients and manageable proportions. A lot of us have tight work schedules, so when we have a bunch of left overs we make up ready to grab lunches for the morning rush (whenever our "morning" happens to be).

4 hours and counting till I leave

Emily, as the comments box required me to sign in to respond to your question, I thought it would be good to make a post dedicated to letting you know... as that was taken care of in the subject line I can move on with my life.

For the past few days I've been madly rushing around trying to get everything done and see people before my journey takes me to the other end of the world. I feel like I'm dying or have some terminal disease. It doesn't help that my brain keeps giving me lovely nightmares that have made sleep sporadic at best and nonexistent at worst.

My days have been full and I think I'm making the attempt to exhaust myself so I'll sleep through the night. Yesterday I mowed my neighbour's lawn for the last time, went for supper with some people I became friends with in Italy, went to another friend's birthday and then went to watch the stars with another friend on the hood of his car with a blanket. I fell asleep a few times watching the twinkling lights. I'm really interested to see the extreme differences between the constellations I'll be able to see. I'll see the Southern Cross for the first time.

With all this capering about I've also had to give up my car, and I'm back to driving the old Astro van that I had back in high school. I hadn't realized how much I had missed it. I know exactly what to do with the massive weight and how to make tight turns even if it's thought to have no turning radius at all. I can drive a brick and I love it. It basically has been summing up my thoughts these past few days before I go. I've just been enjoying my time, driving around town and going through the routines of day to day life with a comfortable nostalgia. Every place and action has at least 5 memories to go with it. Even going to get a sandwich late at night and just knowing where and when I'm going to have a place to sleep... Soon I'm going to be lost and in entirely unfamiliar places... I'm terrified and equally jubilant!

As a side note, I spent tonight with my good friend Christine and thanks to her question I now know that it would in fact be a shorter trip from the earth to the Space Station than it would be from Canada to New Zealand... Not that that says much as they are only ever really ~350 km from the earth at any given time. I don't know why I expected it to be further than that, and even that is pretty impressive seeing as they're straight up. So now I know, and you know and I can get to sleep. Packing done, batteries charged, tickets... tickets... I should go find those tickets. Night!