Movin On Up to the East Side

My blog is getting out late this week but for good reason. I have spent every evening this week moving from my apartment to a new, much nicer place. I have a hard time staying in one place which is why I went to two different colleges and moved to a different state each of my first four years out of college. Now that I have been at Duke for an eternity (four straight years) I needed some kind of a change. I did not change jobs or move to a different state but I did graduate from my one bedroom apartment to a beautiful townhouse.

My townhouse is almost everything I have always wanted. It has two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom and large closet. There is an upstairs loft as well with big glass windows on each side looking outdoors. Downstairs there is a large living room/dining room with hardwood floors and a fireplace. The kitchen is spacious and has a bar overlooking the living/dining room. One of my lifetime dreams was to own a refrigerator with an icemaker in the door and now that dream has come true. To many of you it might be sad that one of my dreams consisted of this but I always said small dreams are attainable, big dreams are just that ... dreams. My place also has a garage and outside the back door is a walking/running path that leads around the townhouse community and around a lake just down the road. The only two things that would make this place better is a downstairs with a pool table and it being in the mountains.

In the words of the Jeffersons ...

Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

I have never taken anything I have had for granite and have worked my way up to where I am today. I think back to some of my early places through college and after. My first two years at Colorado State I had a studio apartment with a Murphy bed. For those who don't know what that is, it is a bed that comes out of the wall. My first year after college I lived in a 3rd floor place in New Hampshire. It wasn't much to look at and I had zero furniture. I moved out there with only what I could fit in my truck. For the first several months I slept on a sleeping bag on a hardwood floor. Then people I worked with found out about it and donated several furniture items including a bed. My intern year at Duke I lived in the basement of a house where the son of our Athletic Director lived. I had my own kitchen and bedroom and advanced to a futon. My first full time job was at Alabama where I slept on an air mattress for four months in a nice one bedroom apartment until we received a month's paycheck as a bonus for making a bowl game. That bonus went to a new bed and couch which are two of the best purchases I ever made next to the washer and dryer I bought right away in Tuscaloosa. All of this has never been bad because through it all I remembered my dad's story about living in a bread truck in Oregon after he finished college. He didn't think that was so bad and for me I figured I always had it better than that because of what my parents instilled in me.

Now I am living large with my new place. I don't make a lot of money and will have to scrape by to afford this new lifestyle but to me the money is well spent because I know I will enjoy going home every day. Happiness is greater than money any day of the week.