Monday, June 04, 2007

Brief Update

I just finished unpacking yesterday. The House of Awesomeness is, well...awesome. It is quite cold in the mornings, being on the first floor built on top of a concrete slab. And it's a relatively old house, and I now know why double pane windows are important--especially if you have bay windows. And old houses have interesting quirks like separate taps. Renovated old houses, not originally made to be separate units have oddities like the tiniest shower in the world. But I do love the new HoA. It's three times as big as The Shoebox. Heck, my new bedroom is almost as big as the shoebox. The Roomie is lovely, and it's nice to think that almost a year ago we met on my very first day in Liberal College City. She was at the elevator. Yes, you may make Sliding Doors remarks now.



Living with someone involves huge compromise. Moving is quite an undertaking. This is my first experiment in truly living with someone and integrating households. In college I lived at home with my parents, and in law school I had a separate room in a large university owned house. This is a large space that makes me feel at home and free to roam about, and there is even a (tiny) bit of garden. Living an urban life warps you into feeling happy about a 3' x 5' spot of grass that you can dig up to plant something. This is definitely not a dorm, and she is more than a roomate to me. I've had housemates in the past, but I can't say I actually spent time with them or shared much living space. And so this is a big leap for me, back into a past I never had, and a preview of a future I will likely have soon.



I wonder what it will be like when I get my first house and start a family--I imagine that will be another adventure. And now I realize what these adventures in adulthood are: initial big ordeals and anxiety-inducing first leaps that settle into something lovely, calm, and comfortingly sedentary. I quite like that, realizing that rough starts have lovely, long middles. And hopefully, not too bitter ends. That is the hope. But it's hard to see the end from this point of view at the tip of the journey.



There are always hiccups. Our pipes leak. There is a much larger surface area to clean. There is always something to take a wrench to. There is the matter of coordinating eating times if we wish to dine together, and a likely eventual realization that we will probably not be doing much of that. But we will have dinner parties. And movie nights. We will figure things out, this living together thing.



A little, mundane, trivial update. Pics to follow later when my Crate and Barrel order arrives (along with my Early American desk that I got off of Craigslist from a lovely old couple). Right now I'm preparing to leave town again for a conference, but will blog shortly on a series of great posts by Frank Pasquale on Concurring Opinions.