I've been in Massachusetts about a month now. I've been at my new job for a week and a half and settled in enough to know that I made the right choice moving back to the area. The following is a list of observations about my new life here and some additional thoughts on my new surroundings. In some areas I will be purposefully vague just in case. :)
When I first moved here it rained every single day. At some point in the afternoon the sky would open up and there'd be a deluge that would last an hour or so. Fortunately this has stopped and the weather has since been wonderful, borderlining at times on fall weather. Our highs have been in the low 80s (though more frequently in the 70s) and overnight lows have been in the 50s. This week has been the first week of early morning running that I've thought that it's time to get out my long sleeve tops. I hated the extended summer season in SoCal so I've been really enjoying the weather here. So far, so good . . .
My new City has a million hills! Not just gentle little rollers, but steep mo-fos! My commute from my apartment to work is only 7 minutes (I love my commute!). In the morning I practically trot down the two super-steep hills that get me to campus. My afternoon commute is a real calf-buster. I am a little worried about winter. Will I have to attach crampons to my shoes just to get home?? It took a while but I finally figured out a flat-ish run and a hilly run. Finding a good riding route has been challenging, namely due to the excessive amount of potholes in my city!
The potholes here are intense and scary. My car doesn't absorb bumps as well as other cars so I always feels like I'm bouncing around. I always thought the roads in my parents' town were bad but my city has it worse. I think it's a combination of years of no budget to take care of the roads, the annual freeze and thaw of the ground and the winter snow plowing. As a result I cannot think of one street that I've been on that doesn't have ginormous potholes. I find it really scary to ride my bike on the potholes. I worry about getting flats and hitting them the wrong way and going flying like I did when I broke my elbow. One of the main roads into town is a total mess. They're trying to widen the road so there's constant construction and new potholes appearing daily. There's also a random section that literally looks like it was smoothed over with a rake. The local paper reported that the mayor was fed up with the pothole situation so she was going to select priority repaving areas at her discretion. Lucky for me the mayor lives on the next street over so I am hoping that my neighborhood will be done first!
Driving around here has been a huge challenge. I got my first driver's license in Massachusetts but I barely drove when I lived here before. I essentially cut my driver's teeth on the massive freeways in the midwest. As a result every time I get in my car I get lost. I can walk a city once and know it for life but once I'm in my car I lose the ability to figure out how a city is laid out. For the past 10 years I've lived in cities that have been laid out on a grid. No city in Massachusetts is laid out on a grid and the street signage is few and far between. As a result my logical way of navigation is totally useless and I get lost constantly. I am actually thinking of getting a GPS unit for my car. In general I find that people drive too slowly on the freeways. Then again, I am used to LA traffic where if you're not going 90 you're not keeping up. My co-workers think it's hilarious that I refer to every numbered road as a "freeway" (what else do you call them???) and I put a "the" in front of the numbers (as in "the 95", "the 2", etc - it sounds naked without the "the"!). I feel very lucky that my commute is only 7 minutes so I can walk. I suspect it's going to take me a long while to get used to driving around here.
Communication styles here are very different. In LA everyone is 24/7 on cell phones, texting and blackberry-ing. I can't really live without my phone. In LA if you go to a store, a movie, a park, wherever, everyone has a phone glued to their ear or has their head bent over their phones. Not so much here. It's actually kind of refreshing to not be shopping at the grocery store and have to listen to a million people's phone conversations. On my first day at work my co-workers were shocked that I wasn't on Facebook - apparently it's the place to be in New England if you're in your 30s. I joined up and discovered half of my high school class and many of my college friends on Facebook. I told my co-workers that my friends and I phone, text and email and they said here it's all about the Facebook and we communicate with one another throughout the day on it despite sitting next to one another. If you're on Facebook you can find me by searching under my full first name and last name. Hope to see some of you there!
I've been at my new job for 8 days and so far, so good. (Censored)
Before I left California I was really worried if I was making the right decision to move back to Massachusetts. I had a number of real concerns and was so overwhelmed by the move that I just couldn't see through the angst to the other side. I know I've only been here a month but everything feels so right in so many ways that I cannot imagine doing any one of my back up plans that I was going to do if I didn't get a job in Massachusetts. Dare I say that I am happy??? We'll see . . . . :)
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