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Step 1 in figuring out what to do with the rest of our lives: figure out where it's going to happen.*
This weekend Rob and I checked out Boise.
General impressions:
- pretty darn white
- pretty darn hot
- surprisingly un-oppressive about how overwhelmingly Christian it is
- surrounding area just as dead and brown in the summer as where we live now
- fun walkable downtown (if ya have feet)
- close to skiing (good if ya have feet)
- lots of kayaking
- good potential for finding a house we like
- not much aviation community (though there's lots for the population size)
- friendly people (except the guy at Piazza di Vino)
- full complement of the same big box stores you can find in larger cities in America
- significant variety of restaurants
- no Challenge square dancing potential ever
- no veterinary school
Several of these traits will be shared by just about every place we consider. Places with perfect climate and comfortable religious diversity don't come cheap; if the point is to ditch the rat race and move to a far less expensive location, we'll have to accept some changes. Given that, Boise's pretty nifty. It has a Pride parade.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lkeele, I found an EGYPTIAN restaurant! It's more cosmopolitan than a coast-dweller might guess a city of 185,000 to be.
I don't know if I can handle summer heat of 103F. weather.com claims the average July high to be 89; that is a sobering reminder that Albuquerque (92) and Austin (96) are probably also hotter than they look.
Could I be happy in Boise?
Probably.
Next stop: Albuquerque. Also on the list: Austin, Boulder, maybe Portland if we forget about cheap or sunny.
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* People of my generation and even a bit older change careers more often than they move from one state to another. Therefore, says Penelope Trunk, pick the location first and then pick the career. The location will last longer.
This weekend Rob and I checked out Boise.
General impressions:
- pretty darn white
- pretty darn hot
- surprisingly un-oppressive about how overwhelmingly Christian it is
- surrounding area just as dead and brown in the summer as where we live now
- fun walkable downtown (if ya have feet)
- close to skiing (good if ya have feet)
- lots of kayaking
- good potential for finding a house we like
- not much aviation community (though there's lots for the population size)
- friendly people (except the guy at Piazza di Vino)
- full complement of the same big box stores you can find in larger cities in America
- significant variety of restaurants
- no Challenge square dancing potential ever
- no veterinary school
Several of these traits will be shared by just about every place we consider. Places with perfect climate and comfortable religious diversity don't come cheap; if the point is to ditch the rat race and move to a far less expensive location, we'll have to accept some changes. Given that, Boise's pretty nifty. It has a Pride parade.
lkeele, I found an EGYPTIAN restaurant! It's more cosmopolitan than a coast-dweller might guess a city of 185,000 to be.I don't know if I can handle summer heat of 103F. weather.com claims the average July high to be 89; that is a sobering reminder that Albuquerque (92) and Austin (96) are probably also hotter than they look.
Could I be happy in Boise?
Probably.
Next stop: Albuquerque. Also on the list: Austin, Boulder, maybe Portland if we forget about cheap or sunny.
______________________
* People of my generation and even a bit older change careers more often than they move from one state to another. Therefore, says Penelope Trunk, pick the location first and then pick the career. The location will last longer.
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I ran into the same problem twice in the past when I was trying to pick a place to move to. (Neither move worked out -- actually for the same reason both times, I never realized that till just now.) The first time wasn't as hard, as we were planning to buy an FBO so we were looking at the southwest because it has the best flying weather. (We ended up choosing Albuquerque.)
But the second time I had the same problem of trying to balance climate, affordability, values, and a variety of other factors. The places with a wonderful climate were too expensive (California) or too conservative or whatever. The places we liked that were affordable and had enough liberals/intellectuals (a university and a UU church) were too hot or too cold (or in some cases both!)
It's fun looking, though, isn't it! At the time I used the Places Rated Almanac (http://www.placesrated.com/). I'm surprised they don't have a software or web-based program any more -- that was tremendously helpful. You could pick from a large number of factors, and then weight the factors as to importance.
No matter how I rejiggered things, one city kept coming up in the top 3: Johnson City, Tennessee. Sounds strange, I know, but we went down there and I loved it. Climate a little milder than Maryland but still a 4-season climate, nestled right next to enormous national parks, good schools (Meredith was in middle school at the time), a university and a UU church (ensuring people we could feel comfortable with), a pleasant small-town atmosphere but plenty of amenities, and ridiculously cheap housing prices.
I'm sorry it didn't work out. I think I would have been happy there. If I were doing it again now, of course, I'd have a different set of priorities, so who knows where I'd end up.
I hope you find the place that's right for you! How did you narrow it down to the ones you picked?
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And an airport.
And it's flat!
And hot in summer!
And cold in winter!
And 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours in the middle of 3 major cities.
We have cloggers, so we might have square dancing.
Nah, it's dull here, but chock full of computer geeks :)
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trying to balance climate, affordability, values, and a variety of other factors
Yep, that's what makes it tough, for sure! My parents actually have it worse. My mother hates the cold New England winters; she wants a place with lots of brilliant sunshine, arts/music/culture, New Age sensibilities, Buddhist meditation groups, etc. Meanwhile my dad wants a place where he can have a job -- he's a techie. That pretty much leaves San Jose, and did I mention they kinda need it to be affordable? I'm doing comparatively well because I'm willing to throw my twenty-year career into the wastebin.
We sound a lot more organized than we really are. We haven't narrowed it down. We're just thinking up places, discarding the ones that are egregiously bad fits for us, and putting the rest on the list! Obviously we'll need to get a little more focused.
Are you happy where you are now?
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One of the things I've been thinking of being when I grow up is a veterinarian. I was surprised when I learned that not every city has a school offering a DVM program. It had never before occurred to me that I might not be able to do that whereever I wanted. (Not that even getting IN would be a cinch. I hear it's just as competitive as human-doctor programs are.)
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I've got a buddy in Portland that flies a Rans S-10 he built himself. If you're interested in what aviation is like in that area, I can point you at him.
I've got another friend (Cessna 210) who lives in Bend, sunnier than Portland, and a short flight away.
I like Austin. For Texas, it's damn near civilized.
Heh...not CA!
Here (www.uiuc.edu)'s our school and they have a huge vet school. My bro-in-law went there and it did take him several years to get in. It has a huge waitlist, but he is one of the best vets out there. And I say that because he saved my cat's life, not because he's my bro-in-law.
But we have SNOW! Not as often as when I was a kid, but we have it. At least one good dumping a year and several small ones.
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Portland I think I've got a fairly good handle on; I just wish it were in the range of "you can buy a house within 10 minutes of downtown on an acre of land for $300K". :) Oh, and yeah, sun. I do get affected by the amount of light around me. :(
Totally agree with you about Austin. It's the only thing in Texas on our list at the moment. It has a lot going for it... except the heat.
Re: Heh...not CA!
Did you know that Boise doesn't plow residential streets in the little subdivisions? They just DON'T PLOW. You slip-slide along until you get to a main street. I thought that was pretty hard core. Then I heard how much snow they get. Hahahahahahaha! :)
Re: Heh...not CA!
That's what I get for trying to make a link like a bonehead.
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However, do note that both Davis and The village both use Pennyfarthing bicycles as their town symbol.
Land is a lot cheaper just outside of Davis, in Winter, Woodland, Dixon etc.
Re: Heh...not CA!
And you could get an AWESOME house for $300K here. And lots of land too, especially if you buy in one of the outlying towns.
I like it here, but I'm weird and I have family here. I did move away and I came back. And I had some of the world's best sweetcorn today that had been picked 20 minutes before it was cooked. But I like that kind of thing.
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But you're right, now that I look at it - Austin is very humid.
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Here's my take on the +/- of Billings:
PLUSSES
Biggest city for 500+ miles = shopping & medical
Churchiness on the down-low
Pretty cheap to live here, probably cheapest in MT
Less than 2 hour drive to 10k mountains
Good aviation opportunities AFAIK
MINUSES
Closest big city is Denver, 8+ hrs in car
Indian poverty obvious with reservations nearby
City does a shit job of clearing streets in winter
Not much "character"
I like it here, and plan to stay. There's only a handful of places I'd consider leaving for: Missoula, Boise, Portland, and a few others, but the reasons are as much professional as personal.
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Is Lawrence KS on your list? Apparently one of the larger pagan communities in the midwest, plus it's "locally high-tech" - they had cable internet about the same time *Cambridge* did - ljworld.com is one of the newspapers, if you want to poke around a bit...
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Austin is Hot in the summer. Muggy hot. But the city itself is very off beat and I had a good vibe from it when I was looking into teaching jobs there. Austin has a large lake in the middle of it (Which is formed, I think, by the damming of the Colorado River, not the one that goes to Gulf of California, the Texas one) there is much recreating done in the lake. In addition, there is a lot of cultural stuff goes on in Austin. Much cheaper than SF and I think you could substitute a career there that didn't demand that you work 100 hours a week to afford living there.
UTexas is nearby but I think that the Vet school is in TX A&M College Station and from what I hear, College Station would make Boise look progressive.
Interesting article. I think she has a point about relationships being the key to happiness. My last job became unbearable when my sense of hope that I was going to find quality relationships where I was living went out the window. Since I had more control of work thing, and since work was interfering with my doing things that put around people that I wanted to be around, I did the career thing first. I looked at the kinds of careers that had me doing things that I enjoyed and put me in touch with people in a way that would facilitate buidling relationships in a work community. So, I quit my job, went back to school for a Masters in Education and am now off, in a week, to work as an Environmental Educator at a wildlife refuge, something that I have wanted to do for years. The work itself will bring me to small, off beat places and put me in touch with people love our natural and historic hertiage and is social enough that the social side of my introvert gets fed.
As I was plotting my money strategy, I found the book "Your Money or Your Life" to be helpful. It talks about the ins and outs of breaking out of the traditional American rat race.
Good luck on your search. It's a great adventure.
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Yeah, I worry about College Station. It's difficult to predict I would be happy there for four years.
I gotta decide whether I really want to be a veterinarian or not. Like soon. It's a heck of a constraint to put into the decision.
Environmental Educator at a wildlife refuge seems really nifty! I hope it does just what you want it to in terms of the level of social contact. It's hard for us introverts to find the right balance. Congratulations on finishing the Masters!
I too enjoyed the book "Your Money or Your Life" and have gotten a lot out of it. Without that, I might not have the courage to be thinking about all these options now.