I imagine most of you are aware, but for those who have limited interaction with the interwebs, welcome to my biennial entry when I tell you I’m moving!

I realized that it had been nearly a year and half since I last posted, but I’m fully blaming that on my husband.  I have two posts ready to go, however the accompanying pictures are tucked away on his cell phone.  Until I can wrest those from his hands, I’ll have to move on.  So when those do come up (because yes, I will still be posting them), my timeline will be more confusing than X-Men.  Fair warning.

So, we’re moving!  Or technically by this time, we’ve moved!  Our incremental journey east has landed us in Cary, NC, as I now work for UNC Chapel Hill (or just UNC as most of you westerners know it).  I just finished my third week there, and it is quite different from App.  The pace is much faster (not surprising), the funding is better (not surprising), but there are still some things they’re trying to figure out (somewhat surprising).

So I thought I would dedicate this entry to the amazing things I’ve (re)discovered about city living, and some of the things I’ll miss about the mountains.

Welcome to the city:

• Trash pickup!!  Oh my god, you put trash on your curb and it FREAKING DISAPPEARS!!!!  People at my new job look at me a little funny at how much I love trash pickup.
• Amazon Prime Free SAME DAY DELIVERY.  Yes, I said SAME DAY.  It is black magic at its core, and I’m sure I’ve sold my soul to an unsavory character, but I don’t care.  SAME DAY.
• Shopping.  When you’re in a shopping desert (Boone is a geographical oddity.  It’s two hours from everywhere – nod to OBWAT), you forget what it’s like to hop in the car and within ten miles find every store you could possibly need.  Our first weekend we bled money like a sieve.  But a happy sieve.
• Costco.  I know this counts as shopping, but it gets its own bullet.  How I love Costco.
• Normal building.  This might sound weird at first.  But you don’t realize how much a house can weigh on you if it’s not designed well.  Small closets, tiny bathrooms, strange heating and no or small garages all seem to be characteristics of a lot of mountain building.  Within a week of moving here, my resting heart rate dropped by 20 bpm.  I attribute that mainly to being in a house that feels livable.

Goodbye mountains:

• Snow.  Yes, I’ll miss the snow.  Not the cold, but it usually wasn’t too cold when it snowed.  The calm and the beauty of it.
• The summers.  Summer in the mountains is beautiful.  Of course, there’s only like 2 months of it.
• Fall.  I never believed it, but leaves do smell.  And it’s wonderful.  I’m sure I’ll have a little bit of that here, but I can’t tell you how much yet.
• Sitting on the deck with the fireflies. ‘Nuff said.
• (A majority of)The people.  There were truly some great people that we met and became friends with.
• My Explorer.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mazda, but some days I miss the red beast.

The good thing is that even though we’re in a city, it still feels very rural.  My drive to UNC is much like my drive to App (in fact, it may actually be more wooded).  So it’s a lovely drive to work (into incredibly overpriced parking), and a wonderful drive home.  To a house that feels so much better.  And a husband that, thanks to Aunt Kimie’s housewarming gift, has a Moscow Mule waiting.  And it just can’t get much better than that.