Big News!
Oh, right, besides the part where I really truly do want to keep updating my webpage, swear-to-god-really, and that’s all that will be said about that for now.
I’m leaving New York. I’m moving to Pittsburgh. I’m going back to school to get my environmental engineering masters.
There.
I gave notice a couple of weeks ago, and El Bosso took it very well.
I am leaving this job on the 31st, and it’s kind of bittersweet. Despite any annoyances I’ve had, the opportunity to work with this bunch of smart, interesting, diverse individuals was fantastic.
Everyone is saying very nice things about me. It’s all nice to hear. I’m still leaving, though.
Michelle is moving with me – we’re going to enjoy being away from New York City for a little bit. No matter how fantastic it is here, it’s still a hard place to live. There’s a lot of pressure, and you meet lots of people who ask you what you “do,� as if my job could even begin to encompass the craziness that is me. C’mon! And you end up working very hard just to make ends meet, and actually, I feel like living in NYC is like having a never-ending guilt trip. I know there are millions of things I should be doing. There are free concerts and movies and shows and the opera and museums and art galleries. There are volunteering opportunities and interesting people to meet. But when it comes down to it, I can’t do everything I want to go to go. I just can’t. I have to work for a living, firstly, and there’s not that much time left in the week after that. I can’t afford to go to cool bars and rock shows every night. And I don’t have that many nice clothes anyway. I find myself over committed and overextended. I want to go to tae kwon do and meet my coworkers for drinks after work and join a regular knitting group and make things (including finishing the xmas presents still left undone, horrors!) and go to museum exhibits and see movies and run in the mornings and meet up with my crafty friends for dancing and fun and visit the parks and trees and go to belly dancing. But I just can’t. It doesn’t work out for me.
All of that said, NYC is a wonderful beautiful exciting place to live. I would love to be a woman of leisure and be able to do everything I wanted to and to take full advantage of the city. That’s the best way to experience it, as a woman of leisure. The other good way is to be like a friend of mine, who says “I’m paying nasty rent to live here, hell if I’ll miss out on ANYTHING that’s free.� If I ever end up with a large endowment and an aversion to driving I would come back here and start doing good works with my free time. That, and try to join up with the kind of people who appreciate calling cards and thank you notes. You know.
Michelle and I went to Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago for Mariss+Kelly’s wedding and we were able to find an apartment then, in a really nice neighborhood with trees and many rooms and possible parking in the back and super cheap rent and it’s in a house, not an apartment building and… it’s just fantastic. We’re going to ditch our couches here and pull up the carpets there and paint the walls and probably the floors. We’re going to have a beautiful fun and quirky home. It’s close enough to school that I could ride my new bike there, and it’s also close enough that it’s right on a bus line for the nasty winter days. And it’s v. close to M+K’s house, which is super!
My last day at work is 7/31. I’m going to have to start packing. And then Michelle and I will get a truck and load it up on August 4th, and then start to drive. Yikes. It might be a long couple of days (we are resigned to take a break at a hotel halfway there if it gets too late/tired), but at least when we get to Pittsburgh we’ve got some friends who can help unload. We’ll probably rent a wet-dry vac, and I imagine I’ll need to take a stiff brush to the floor, but it’ll be totally worth it in the end! We will be able to fix up the joint and make it our own, and also, we’ll be able to spend some time doing that before we return to NYC for a walkthrough with the landlord and then a trip to the beach in MD before getting back for orientation in Pittsburgh.
I’m very excited. Looking forward to starting this new part of my life!
Now, regarding that updating thing. I don’t really have a computer at home. I hope to soon, the beau has mentioned helping me fix up the disaster scene that I have now. But outside of that, I don’t have an internet connection at home either. So while I still have big (little) plans for this webpage, I might have to wait for a while to put them into action.
Happy summer y’all!
