Seven Years Down in NC

Cow Sculpture currently on display in Raleigh

It's really hard to believe but Tuesday September 18th marked my seven year anniversary of moving to North Carolina.  Time really does fly.

I was fortunate to move to Raleigh with one of my best friends, Steve.  It's hard to imagine moving to a new town alone.  My sister moved to DC last year by herself.  I was very impressed. 

When Steve and I moved it was a fresh start for us.  He was getting out of Erie, PA and a job that wasn't paying him jack or using his talents.  I leaving a job in residence life at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh where I had to do room searches and deal with students who, how should I put it, well they were a little weird and some borderline crazy.  I reached my breaking point the night I had to deal with a student's suicide.  I'm still not sure if she accidentally fell out that ninth floor window or if she jumped.  It happened right outside my office window and I heard the sound of her hitting the ground.  It still haunts me. 

The big reason I moved though was because I wanted to start over somewhere fresh, to blaze my own path.  I didn't want to live in one place my entire life, not that there is anything wrong with that.  Steve and I decided to move to Raleigh because he had visited and like the city and it seemed to be listed on every Top Places list put out by Forbes, CNN or whoever.  The selling point for me was the weather.  I know it sounds strange but not having to deal with the gray winters of the Northeast is still one of my favorite things about living here.

When we moved neither of us had a job lined up.  We signed the lease on our apartment a few weeks before we moved without ever seeing it.  Though Steve did know one person in Raleigh who lived in the same apartment complex so we had a good idea of what it was like.  The moving trip down was a bit crazy.  Our moving van almost got run off the highway and we got lost on the Thunderdome that is I-40 near Greensboro.  But once we were set up the adventure began. 

We were two broke guys, working temp jobs and watching VHS tapes of the Simpsons we recorded before we moved.  Cable was a luxury we could not afford.  In fact in the year and a half we lived in that apartment we never had cable, at least to our knowledge.  Turns out a week before we moved out the cable guy knocked on our door to stop service.  We told him he had the wrong place and after he left we found a cord and plugged it in.  Turns out we had it free the entire time and never realized.  Since then I've always checked the cable when moving somewhere new.  It's never worked.  Oh life.

The past seven years really have flown past.  Obviously a lot has changed in our lives since we moved.  We no longer live together but Steve and I remain close and sometimes reminisce about our days at Brookmont.  We may have been poor but we had some good times and I wouldn't trade those days for anything.