The Pad In Peoria

With the help of Mom, Dad, and Ben all of my stuff was in my new apartment a week ago. (Thanks again guys!) I've spent the last two days getting everything organized and put away, and I think I'm just about done. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, then had the startling realization that actually some of my stuff is still at Mom and Dad's. Why do I have so much "stuff"? Looking at all of my stuff reminded me of part of an old George Carlin routine I caught on tv a few weeks ago: Why do we need an apartment/house? To hold all of our stuff. And what happens when we get too much stuff? We need a bigger house to hold all of our stuff. What do we do when we travel out of town? We have to decide what our favorite stuff is, because we can't take all of our stuff with us.

Life would certainly be simpler if we all had less stuff.

I have to admit though, after a year of basically living with only my stuff that I could fit in my car, it's nice to have all of my stuff again. I haven't used my own kitchen knives again yet, but that's one of the small things I'm looking forward to; the knives in furnished apartments aren't of the best quality.

I even had the pleasure of doing my laundry in my own washer and dryer today (as in they are mine - they didn't come with the apartment).

Well, here are a few pics of my new pad. Pardon the mess. As I mentioned a moment ago, a few things need to be put away yet.

Enter the front door and in front of you and to your right is the living/dining room area:

And to the left is the kitchen:

The other side of the kitchen:

Attached to the kitchen is the laundry/utility room. Please note MY washer and dryer:

And Dad, I managed to finally get that dryer duct routed and clamped down. Wasn't really that bad once I pulled the washer out and cut the duct down to a more appropriate length:

Okay, back to the living room (feel free to admire my high-tech entertainment system):

My balcony:

Every king must have his throne:

And my bedroom/office:

From another angle:

And another angle (note that there are neither skeletons nor Tom Cruise in the closet):

Since I wanted to box up all of my CDs and put them away somewhere, I decided to rip them all so I'd have them on my computer. I spent a good deal of time doing that last night and this morning. The result? I now have over 11 GB of music on my computer. According to iTunes, that's 8.5 days of music without any repeats. Too bad I have to go to work next week...