Home is where...?

I did a funny thing this weekend...  I rented a car and checked into a hotel in the city that I've come to call home.  After living in Atlanta for 6 and a half years, there's just something odd about staying in a hotel here.  I've been back to Atlanta several times since leaving, but have always stayed with friends and gotten friends to pick me up at the airport and it has generally just felt like coming home.  But it feels very different to actually be staying in a hotel!  But it also makes you think!  What was the first time you called the place you live now home?

Home has always been a very important concept to me.  I was born and raised in the same town.  I lived in Vernon for 18 years.  To me, that will always be home, no matter what.  Even though I haven't lived there full time for more than 10 years now.  But go ahead, ask me where I'm from!  The majority of the time, I will still answer New Jersey.  And for the longest time, where I'm from and where is home were one in the same.

Looking down the valley from the Appalachian Trail in Vernon, NJ, my home town

I also don't like change.  I went to college, and by the time I graduated four years later, I had come to call Notre Dame home.  But it took me the better part of 3 years to do so!  I really can't say exactly at what the moment I first thought this, but I can point to a distinct trip back to NJ during junior year where I was asked when I went back to ND, and I answered by saying I was going home the next day.  That caught me off guard, because it was completely unintentional!  Eventually I learned that calling some place new home doesn't mean abandoning your old home, that you can always call two places home!  And to this day, I still affectionately think of ND as home, because I learned so much in my time there (and not just the academic lessons I learned in class).  It's a special place to me, as are the friends I made in my time there, and that will never change.

The Dome and Basilica across St. Mary's Lake

Now, Notre Dame I knew I'd love, but Atlanta's a different story.  I moved to Atlanta for school, and that's it, but in under 2 years here, I had discovered that change can be good, and it didn't take long for me to consider this place home.  I think the first time I called Atlanta home was from a plane.  After getting my pilot's license around here, I got to know the skyline and airspace very well.  One time, flying back from NJ, I looked out the window and saw the midtown skyline below, and just got that familiar feeling of coming home.

What really surprised myself was when I went to Italy for a conference, and somebody asked me where I was from, and I responded, without really thinking about it, that I was from Atlanta...  It would take another year or two before I was willing to say that, but only after first saying that I'm originally from New Jersey.  "Originally from"...  I'm not sure if this is really true, but I feel like this is a very New Jersey concept (or at least the northeast, because so few people actually stay near the home town).  Everybody I know from back home has someplace they're from, and someplace they're originally from!  And most of my friends from other places don't seem to use that phrase nearly as much!

Probably my favorite picture of Atlanta, as seen below the wing of a Cessna 172

By the third time around, I now have a very different concept of what it means to accept somewhere as home.  It's someplace you enjoy, that you can think of as your own, and where you know you will always have people who you cherish (even if they're now they've found new homes of their own).  And that it doesn't mean giving up the other places you consider home.  Even after just under 6 months, it already feels like home.

And to answer that initial question, it was back in early April and I was driving the first time I called DC home, and I almost drove off the road because of it!  I was headed to the National Air & Space Museum one night to meet a friend and some of her coworkers, and just the fact that at 9 pm I was just running to the National Air & Space Museum on a whim (the whole thing was conceived just that afternoon) was pretty exciting.  I was coming from the gym, which I'd done a pretty good job of making a habit, so things were starting to feel familiar.  I was on the George Washington Parkway, which runs along the south side of the Potomac River in Virginia, and at one point the trees between the road and the river cleared and I was suddenly right across from downtown DC, looking at the National Mall, with the Washington Monument and Capitol Building all lit up and bright white.  It was a pretty cool sight!  And I realized that this was where I lived now, this was home!  And then I felt my front right tire scrape the curb, which promptly sent me into a panic...  Thankfully I did not drive off the road, because apparently that night had more in store for me to discover... :-)

The National Mall as seen from the south side of the Potomac (also the only picture in this post that's not my own) 

Feed on this!

Ok, so as it turns out, making things private means people who use feed readers can't add get a feed for this blog.  So, to remedy this situation, my blog is no longer by invitation only!  You should now be able to put the address in your RSS/feed reader, if you're so inclined, and it should pick it up.  I'd like to thank the guinea pigs/beta testers that humored me, but from here on out, for better or worse, this blog is open to the public...  (Not quite yet willing to announce it to Facebook, yet)  And keep an eye out, because I *might* have a big announcement coming in the next few days!  ;-)

That's so DC!

Every city has it's own little charms and quirks that make up its character, it's personality, really.  And you have to live there to understand that.  New York is the City that Never Sleeps, it's the Capital of the World, it has everything and everybody.  To most of the world, it's personality is probably considered stuck up and rude, a little too eager to give you the finger, but to those of us that grew up in the NY/NJ/CT area, we know better.  It's busy, but excited, because there's always something new and fun to do and see.  Atlanta's the Gateway to the South, where everybody's friendly and takes their time.  But ask anybody that's from Atlanta or North Georgia, and they'll tell you it's a city form the North that's been transplanted!  Sure, things are laid back (sometimes a little too much...), but it's still a bustling city, and a very young one at that (Most of the buildings you see today in Atlanta have been built in the past 20 years).  Chicago's the Windy City, with a gangster past and famously loyal sports fans.  But spend some time there and you'll see that Chicago's got a friendly disposition and loves its culture.  LA has the glam, the traffic, and the rude people, but I have to admit, living there, I encountered some of the friendliest drivers on the road!  In bumper to bumper traffic on the 110 (yeah, that's right, it's *the* 110...  It only took me about a month there to pick that one up without even realizing it), try putting your signal on like you want to change lanes.  More often than not (or at least more often than in NJ or Atlanta), a space magically opened up and somebody waved me over!

To most people, including myself until recently, DC was the Capital City, and just that.  I never really thought of DC has being anything other than the federal government.  But over the past 5 months (yeah, I've been here almost half a year already, wow!), I've gotten to know DC a little better.   Here are a few of the amusing things I've discovered:

First, it really is true that the federal government drives this town.  It's definitely the most patriotic city in the country (even in New York or Chicago, I've never seen so many of the city's flag flying on houses), and you see people with little American flag lapel pins all over.  And you never know when you might just run into a senator or representative at a restaurant or bar.  Also, during the government shutdown last fall, the place was like a ghost town!

All's quiet the night the shutdown began

DC has a very high opinion of itself!  Of course, what city doesn't?  But DC is proud of many things, not all of which I get...  And I have heard on many occasions someone say something along the lines of "That's so DC!".  And near the top of this list?  Brunch!  Yes, seriously, brunch is a fancy meal around here...  I laughed the first time I was told this, but am learning it is true.  Jeans and a t-shirt just don't cut it...

Of course, the Cherry Blossoms are tops on this list, too.  For the entire month of April, pretty much, the bright pink trees were in the first five minutes of the local news every night!  Based on a suggestion, I went down one morning during the week to take some pictures at sunrise, and they were pretty spectacular (see below).  That weekend, I was downtown on a bike ride and was amazed!  The place was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder with people who had come from far and wide (including many from as far away as Japan!) just to see the trees.

Sunrise over the Tidal Basin and the Cherry Blossoms

By and large, though, every city I've lived in saw itself as the center of it's region.  New York dominates the Northeast, Chicago's clearly the center of the midwest, everybody will tell you in LA that they own the west coast, and Atlanta's got the South pretty well wrapped up.  But DC?  It can't seem to decide whether it's in the North or the South.  So it's just stuck here in between, making up it's own region, referred to by some as the Capital Region, The District, or, perhaps more amusingly in a city that loves its acronyms, the DMV.  Maybe it's because of it's unique position as not a state, and the fact that it doesn't really have any say in the federal government, which just happens to be the body that regulates the city!  But DC seems to have just declared itself its own region, and taken the bits of the North and pieces of the South that it likes!

For example, economically, DC's very much connected to the Northeast.  It's the only place in the country with a high speed train, making it pretty easy to get to New York and beyond.  There are hourly shuttle flights between DC & multiple New York and Boston airports.  Oh, and they're big hockey fans around here!  The Capitols (affectionately called the Caps) are a pretty big deal.  And they know what to do with snow!!!  And it generally, after living in Atlanta, feels very much like I'm back in the Northeast.  During the week that is...

But on the weekends, that busy feeling is replaced by a very southern feeling (assuming your not in the middle of a crowd of tourists).  Everything slows down!  I went to dinner one Sunday night only to find a New Orleans style brass band playing on the sidewalk outside the Capitols' last game of the season.  And lately, I think DC wants to be in Kentucky during Derby season, and they did a pretty good job of showing off their loafers, bright green pants, bright blue shirts, and orange bow ties like you might see on a late April weekend in Lexington!  And DC is, refreshingly, fiercely proud of its historic buildings in a way that you see in very few places, but reminds me a bit of New Orleans!

Typical historic row houses in DC

Lastly, DC is unlike any other city in the country, in that the height limit on buildings means it has no skyscrapers!  Contrary to urban legend, this actually is not to keep buildings from rising above the Capitol or Washington Monument, but stems from early fears that skyscrapers were inherently dangerous and would just topple over due to their great height.  When buildings like the Chrysler building and the Empire State Building shattered that notion in cities like New York and Chicago, DC stubbornly stuck to it's guns, and the height limit persists today, now for historic reasons more than anything else.

Then there is the inane "grid" of streets, designed two hundred years ago by a Frenchman who had a grand plan for the city.  And I have yet to decide which is better, the haphazard lack of city planning that is the streets of midtown and downtown Atlanta, or the thoroughly planned but completely confusing set of north-south, east-west, and diagonal streets!  I'm sure you know how to navigate a traffic circle or roundabout.  And a square isn't too bad, you can generally make sense of it.  But a triangle?!?  I have yet to figure those confusing intersections out, where there are usually no fewer than 6 directions you can go.  So I'm making a left, is it that left?  Or maybe just bear left, which keeps me on the same street.  So that would be straight?  But I can go straight, that's just a different street!  Maybe it's a sharp left, like really left...  Ugh...

L'Enfant's original plan for the streets of DC

Combine the height limit, the streets, and the many quaint little neighborhoods full of historic architecture and places such as Embassy Row, DC has a very worldly feeling, reminiscent of Old World European cities, which you don't get much in the US.  And I think this, more than anything, is my favorite aspect of my new home.  It's unique, and proud of it!  And I find it exciting to live somewhere so different than places I've lived before!

Shotgun Home Buying

As you probably already know, I'm a planner... And somewhat obsessive about trying to spend conservatively...  It took me a whole year to figure out what kinda of car to buy, and I researched the most financially sound way to do it till I was blue in the face.  This fact probably made the dealership salesman nervous, as I like to ask questions to see what his answer was, then tell him he was wrong and give him the actual answer!  Not because I was trying to be rude or show off, but I have an innate lack of trust in salesmen, so I like to make sure he knows what he's talking about before I believe he's got my best interests as a priority!  The process of buying a home, to me, is no different, just on a bigger scale!  Or so I thought...

In finding a place to rent, I spent two weekends up here.  One to look at the area and figure out the right neighborhoods, the other to look at specific places, then I signed a lease.  To me, that was fast!  One of the summers that I interned at Goddard, I did come up here to start work without a place to rent, which terrified me, but it was only a summer internship, so not as big of a deal.  I don't think I could handle a big move to somewhere without having a place to live yet, as one of my best friends recently did!

My plan was to have a good 6 months to settle in, get to know the area, and find a home.  When I bought in Atlanta, it was a 2-3 month long process where I looked at a dozen places, evaluated them, figured out the best, and picked one!  They were all still there weeks later, I had plenty of time.  I was going to do the same here...  Except DC's housing market is radically different.  Things sell so quickly around here, that you have to do what I've termed "Shotgun Home Buying"!

Basically, it goes like this:

1. Obsessively check the internet for new properties, spending hours pouring over sites like Trulia, Zillow, and Realtor.com
2. Set up email alerts that spam you every 10 minutes with updates so that your real email gets drowned by housing emails
3. After looking at the same 10 listings that have what you want and fit your price range repeatedly so that you know them by heart, discover a brand new listing that you think you might like
4. Email the listing to your realtor.  When he doesn't answer in two minutes, text it to him.  When he still hasn't answered five minutes later, call him.  Repeat until you get his attention
5. Go look at the listing as soon as humanly possible, no later than tomorrow morning
6. If you like it, don't think, just put in an offer ASAP, as the deadline for offers is probably the next morning.  If you like more than one, pick one and make an offer, forget the others, they'll be gone by the time you find out if your offer won
7. Sit tensely the next day at work and wait to hear back about how many other offers they received, figuring it was probably many, so start step 1 again
8. In the off chance that your offer was the accepted one, jump up and down with joy, because you just bought a house and you're done with this whole ridiculous process!  On the other hand, if you were beat out by 7 other offers, continue not doing the work you're supposed to be doing and getting paid for by starting over again at step 1

So yeah, that's pretty much been how it's gone for the past month since I started looking.  Most listings I like are on the market 5 days or less before they sell.  I submitted an offer on one home I like, figured I'd go just above list and make a statement to have a better chance of getting it, only to find out they got 7 offers, and the winning one was probably close to $50,000 above list price!  I'm pretty sure last week I spent at least half of every workday trying to buy a house rather than working...

But in the end, the gut wrenching roller coaster of non-planning will pay off.  Eventually, you find the right house, at a semi-reasonable price (Oh, add step 5.5 in there, seriously re-evaluate what you think a reasonable price for a home is, because you're wrong!).  Then you'll have found your dream home and only have minor panic attacks when you go to bed at night about whether or not you're going to like the home or are spending too much or picked the right neighborhood or can make the mortgage payments or have just made a huge mistake because you didn't have time to think about it...  Don't worry, it'll all work out in the end!

The State of the... Well, it's not a state...

For those of you who may want a brief synopsis of what's going on here, I'm moving out of the 50 states!  No, I'm not moving to Europe or anything like that, I'm doing what some might consider crazier: moving into DC!

To be honest, it still surprises me a bit, but I'm really excited about the prospect.  Growing up in North Jersey, way out in rural Sussex County, I never pictured myself as a city person.  I was not going to like moving to Atlanta for grad school!  It's a city, it's in the south, and it's nowhere near the ocean...  But after moving, I discovered that living in the city, you can actually walk to restaurants and bars and spend less than 45 minutes traveling to the store!  After 6 years there, I really grew to love Atlanta, and living in midtown, I definitely got spoiled by the proximity of everything.

But alas, all good things must come to an end, and thankfully grad school along with it, and I found myself leaving the city I'd amazingly come love and call home, leaving the friends who had become family, and heading somewhere else for a new job.  Specializing in space robotics pretty severely limited the list of cities I could live in.  The jobs I was looking at meant I basically was going to end up in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, or Washington, DC.  Ultimately, Goddard Space Flight Center won out, and I was headed to the DC area (Goddard is in Maryland just outside of DC).

Now, Atlanta is a very different city than DC!  Atlanta thinks it had bad traffic, DC actually has bad traffic.  Atlanta thinks it has a subway system, DC actually has a subway system.  And Atlanta's a very spread out city that requires driving everywhere, while DC has quite a few central, walkable areas.  Not to mention the fairly flat DC is much more bike friendly that hilly Atlanta.  But DC is a very different city than any other place in the country, too.  It doesn't have that skyscraper cluster to call downtown that every other US city has.  It has the National Mall and it's own kind of history that gives the city a very unique character.  So when it came to figuring out where to live in the area, it was not an easy question to answer.

When I moved to Atlanta, I took a bunch of weekends the end of senior year to visit and find the right home.  But I knew nothing about the city.  I essentially got lucky, in that I ultimately loved the neighborhood I was living in.  But Atlanta's small enough that a few weekends proved enough to figure out the right neighborhood for me.  There's no way I could have done that in DC.  Since Goddard is out in the suburbs in Maryland, I had already ruled out living close to work, as I'm not yet at that point in my life where living in the suburbs sounds attractive!  And since "close to work" was my main priority when choosing where to live in Atlanta, that experience was of little help.  So beyond the vague "I want to live somewhere convenient and walkable," I didn't know where I wanted to live, especially with so many different great neighborhoods in DC, and small edge cities like Silver Spring, Bethesda, and Alexandria.

So I found a place to rent in Silver Spring, mainly because it's the easiest to get to work, so that I could take some time after I got here to learn the area and find the right place.  After 4 months here, I finally figured out where I wanted to live, and it probably comes as no surprise, but I'm moving downtown!  So now it's just a matter of finding the right home for me, which is no easy task, given the list of things I want and how picky I tend to be!  Hopefully it'll make for some entertaining stories for you all to read! (Don't worry, there's no amount of time living in Atlanta that could convince me to use the "word" y'all!)  Enjoy!

The in thing to do...

Ok, so it seems that everybody's doing it, and though I've never been one to really keep a blog (I've done travel blogs before, but not life), it seems like a good way to keep up with people, so let's give it a try!  One of my best friends from Atlanta moved away shortly after I did, and has been chronicling it in a blog, and she's inspired me to try and do the same.  Now, DC is no UP, but it's got it's own fair share of stories.  And my parents are renovating an old house, which my mom has blogged about, and I'm buying a place here, which will probably need some remodeling, so why not?  I make no guarantees of literary genius, but I'll do my best to throw a few laughs in there!