Who needs power tools?

I've been in my new apartment on the upper west side for 3.5 weeks. I JUST put up my curtains 2 days ago. When I didn't have my furniture yet, I would move around my makeshift bed back and forth in the morning to avoid the strong morning sun (which is actually a good problem to have in NYC!). After I got my furniture, I fashioned a temporary curtain with a bedspread by jamming the corners of the bedspread in the window cracks.

So I was determined to put up my new curtains, which were painstaking in themselves to purchase. First of all, the window is long and no standard rod will cover it. Also, it takes 3 curtain panels to cover. But the real problem was the rod, which I had to construct from 2 separate decorative rods. Keep in mind that I don't have any power tools or a screwdriver. All I have are a hammer and a pair of small pliers. And these are the tools that I used to install my rod and curtains. I devised a plan.

1. hammer in a nail to introduce a hole
2. screw in a medium length wood screw (w/ pointy end) to widen the hole
3. screw in actual bracket

Phew! This took me about an hour and a half to do. Oh but how satisfying. :) I put them up all by myself!!

NEWFOUND PROWESS

I have lived on my own before. I've done a lot of things by myself for my place. But ever since I started living with my male housemate, I've sorted just left some things for him to do. Like, for instance, hooking up cable, modems, changing light bulbs... Well he had been gone since last Friday, and on the first day, the light bulbs went out in the ceiling fixtures in the kitchen. Crap! It took me 2 days (as was also busy) to replace it because (1) had to figure out how to get to the light bulbs in the fixtures (2) had to go buy light bulbs (3) had to replace light bulbs. This is ordinarily a task I just let my housemate take care of. I dunno, silly, especially since I'm taller. I was pretty proud of myself for having done this task.

Another empowering event involved the tremendous snowfall we got over the past few day. Now, this might be just something a Californian had yet to experience, but it snowed about half a foot overnight. Normally, my neighborhood is really good about shoveling snow (even before I'm out the door), but I had to make first tracks yesterday morning! When I got home after a day of working, I had to take my car to go to the gym, so I got all dressed to do some dirty shoveling. I shoveled the steps to our house and shoveled around my car! Very satisfying. Got in my car, burned a little rubber, but got out of the snow!

Thank you, thank you.