Two weeks from today we will be driving down south for the closing of our house (Which is 2 weeks from tomorrow!!!). Our mortgage has gotten it's final approval, so all we have to do now is wire an obscene amount of money over to our attorney for the downpayment and closing costs. After the closing we'll be coming back up north, spend about a week packing up whatever is left, cleaning our apartment, and loading up some pod things, and then we'll drive down one last time with all our pets.
We still have a pretty big list of things to do moving-wise, but many are things we can't even do yet (apparently you can't cancel your cable service in advance you have to wait till 2 weeks before you move cause comcast is a bunch of bastards). Mostly I've been sorting through things and putting lots of stuff out on the curb, and packing up the non-essentials. I finished packing the books yesterday- and we have about 20 boxes in total (but at least half of those go to my office). We also took apart my old bed frame and put that outside yesterday (it was gone within an hour). Today I started on the kitchen stuff that we don't use frequently.
Anyways, without further ado, 10 things I will miss about living here:
1. The music scene
The city I live in has a great music scene, and I've taken full advantage. Since moving here 6 years ago I've been to over 90 shows, the vast majority of which were small local bands in small local venues. For a few years when I was single I went to a show nearly every weekend.
2. My festival friends
This is related to the first- by participating in this music scene I've met a great many people, and I count many among my good friends. At a Phish show I went to the other week I ran into at least 20-30 people that I know. Down south there will still be music festivals, but I know that in the northeast if I went to any music festival that involves jam band music, I am guaranteed to run into someone I know- and usually someone I know and LIKE and who I have hung out with before. And at every festival I go up here, I have a built-in group of people I can camp with and have a great time with. Not so in the south. They have festivals there, yes, but I don't have a group of festival friends built up there. I can and likely will build up a new one, but that will take a few years- I've been hanging with my current group for 7 years, and I know them pretty well, and I'll miss them.
3. The sunflowers on my block
there are 3 places near my house that grow sunflowers, and I like walking to visit the sunflowers with barkley. It's a little thing, I know, and I can grow my own sunflowers, but these are just particular sunflowers that I have visited regularly for the last few years, and I'll miss them. Fortunately the heat wave we've been having brought on a few early blooms this year so I got to see them again before I leave
4. My officemate
Some people might see it as a good thing to move into an office by themselves, but I always work better when my office mate is around- having someone who can look over my shoulder makes me less likely to mess around on my computer when I should be working. Plus my officemate is super cool and is great to bounce ideas off of. And he's German, and his wife still lives in Germany so he goes to visit her quite often, and always brings me back German chocolate.
5. Food Trucks
My school's campus has an amazing assortment of food trucks where you can get incredible food for really cheap- including the standard egg sandwiches, but also chinese, vegetarian, crepes, indian food, korean food, japanese food, greek food, mexican food, and there is even a cupcake truck that only sells cupcakes. My favorite is the greek special from the vegetarian truck- feta cheese, olive and balsamic salad with a piece of spanakopita and 3 stuffed grape leaves. I also really like this egg truck where I get a egg white and cheese sandwich on whole wheat nearly every morning- and they already know my order when I get there.
6. Sidewalks
My neighborhoods has lots of sidewalks, my new neighborhood has none at all! But the streets are very quiet, so it prolly won't be so bad.
7. The crazy garden of the lady down the block.
My neighborhood is made up of old Victorian rowhouses, each of which has a small garden plot out front that's about 8 feet by 8 feet. One of my neighbors has filled her plot up with an incredible collection of flowers, that bloom during every season. Last year she started expanding the garden to those little strips of grass they have between the sidewalk and the street - she started planting more flowers up and down the street in front of some of the houses that have renters and/or are empty.
this isn't that garden, this is my neighbor's veggie garden.
8. being close to my friends
Actually, most of my close friends don't live in the same city as me anymore. But I'm only 2 hours from home, so I have lots of friends/my brother who come visit on a semi-regularly basis. It'll be a lot harder to visit when I'm 10 hours away instead of 2 hours away. :(
9.My local coffee shop
Best bagels in town! I lived less than a block from this place when I first moved here, and when I moved I purposefully moved within walking distance. They are the only place I've found that has GOOD bagels, and they usually run out of them by around 10am. When I first moved here it was a very small convenience store with great coffee and bagels, a few years ago it got bought by someone else, and now they have fancy pastries and fancier coffee instead of the convenience part. But it's still great. I usually walk barkley there, and they have a little hitching post with a bowl of water next to it for tying up your dog while you go inside.
10. being a student
yeah, i suppose it had to come to an end at some point. Counting Kindergarden and Pre-k, I've been a student for 24 years. It has it's drawbacks, but it also is pretty awesome- discounts on movies, being able to take off pretty much whenever, not working full time hours...yeah I'll miss it. Profs still have a pretty flexible schedule (other than classes and meetings) but as they say..you can work any 70 hours of the week.
Good luck, AE! I'm not a prof, I'm a postdoc, but I identify with what you are saying. I was really sad last June when I moved out of GradSchoolTown, where I had lots of routines, and, more importantly, a number of communities of friends. The fact that many of my friends were moving away too helped only a little. I realized I would really miss being a student and living so near my grad school friends. The good news is that, a year later, I feel good about where I am living now. I'm still in touch with my old friends and am starting to make new ones. I also realized that I couldn't be a student forever, and it was easier to make the transition to adulthood in a different place. I have my husband, of course, and you have B and Barkley.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the move AE! I've been reading your blog for a couple of months now but never left a comment. I am about to start a post-doc in another city next month so I will be relocating as well. I totally know how you feel and I'm a bit depressed about leaving the place where I'm currently leaving. But the good part is the new research topic I'll be working on (very exciting!!!) and I'll be closer to my parents. And my bf is able to move with me!
ReplyDeleteyeah, it's not even my friends I will miss at this point, cause most of my friends moved out of the area a year or two ago for various reasons (probably cause most of them were students of one kind or another and most graduated and moved on).
ReplyDeleteBut I will miss my routines, and all the little things I like about living here, which is mostly what this list is about I guess. And this is the first place I lived with my husband, and this is like the first phase of our life together, and now we're moving on to a new phase of our life and even though the first phase kinda sucked cause we were so poor, it's kinda bittersweet that it's over if that makes sense...
And at the same time it's exciting, since I finally get to settle down somewhere for a while, cause the city I'm moving to is a pretty cool city and cause I finally get to be a professor which is totally my dream..which is ALSO somewhat terrifying cause holy crap, I can't believe I'm an actual professor! And now I'm on the tenure track so the pressure is totally on!
Yeah this whole transition is somewhat insane. I'm also going from a student earning barely above poverty level wages and living in a slum apartment in a crappy urban neighborhood to being an adult with a full time well paying job and who owns a pretty sweet (IMO) house in a nice middle class sububanish block...it's like as extreme a transition as when my parents cut me off and I moved out of their upper middle class house to live in my first crappy apartment in a terrible neighborhood...just in reverse.