How to Read a Town

felt macarons from Little Fluff Stuff

How to read a town, how to research a city, how to figure out where to live-- it all depends on what language you're speaking.  For me, I speak walk-able, bike-able, old architecture, crafting community.  And affordable, but I'll maybe have to learn a new dialect.  Looking at a new town when you've never been to it is hard.  I have no idea what people did before the internet (guess I should ask my mom).  I'm going to share some of the tips I've figured out about judging a town's compatibility.

1. Meetup.com-  Meet-up is a good place to start.  Smaller areas probably won't have a lot of entries, but a large city should yield up a group for just about anything (Southbay Goth Meet-up, LARPers, Raw food and board games night).  Pick your keywords and see what you find.  Now, I'm not sure how wide-spread meetup is, and it may be used more by some age groups than others.  Or maybe you don't even care about age groups.  Check it out.

Knitted cowl from Nisey Knits

2. Since this is at least 40% a craft blog, I chose to do some scouting through Etsy.com. Using their Shop Local search, I found sellers from the area we're looking at.  Then, I sent a handful of friendly notes asking about the availability of craft supplies and whether there was much of a crafting community.  I got answers back almost immediately about stores to go to and offers of help once I get there.  That was probably the most positive thing that's happened so far.  I'd like to thank Little Fluff Stuff (pictured above), maukDesigns, Nisey Knits, and La Plume Ethere for helping me feel at home before it's even my home. I even got an invitation to knit with someone!

3.  Google Street View: I can never use this feature without thinking HOLY SHIT IT'S THE FUTURE.  I've used this to check out my childhood home (they cut down my damn tree!) and find bike-able roads.  Now, I can snail my way through entire neighborhoods.  Looking at things from above always make them look weird and clinical, but street view is nice. The absence of deciduous trees in California makes me sad, but using this I could see that there are plenty of leaves out there.  Through a freak occurrence, J wasn't able to rent a car for his trip, but he could use the street view maps to check out the sidewalks.


View Larger Map

4.  City-data.com- Discussions from their forum often come to the top of my searches when thinking about moving/trailing.  It's a large enough website that you can almost always find someone moving from/to where you're going.  The design leaves much to be desired, but it is chock-full of facts. You won't laugh (you might cry, looking at housing prices) but you'll get some of the big answers.  This doesn't particularly give you the feel of a place, but gives more precise information about demographics/employment/industry than any Wikipedia article.

5.  WalkScore.com lets you know how much your city respects pedestrians and cyclists, which isn't important to everyone but it is to me.  And since it's hooked into Google Maps, you also get a list of cool places, by category, near the address.  For me, if all that pops up under coffee is Starbucks, I've hit a dud.

I hope this helps someone.  When J applied for jobs in Portland, I had more of an idea of what to expect. I'd been there and its reputation preceded it.  This part of California, though, boggled my mind.  And when you're feeling boggled, it's easy to focus on the bad stuff.

Mammatus

from a local twitter search

We've had crazy-pants rain for the past week, dangerous too.  I didn't take this picture, but it's exactly what the clouds looked like when I got out of my ASL class last night.  They looked like movie clouds.  A local search on twitter for "clouds" taught me these were mammatus ("breast") clouds.  They're super cute and look like boobs but are indicative of really bad weather, often tornadoes.

T-minus 2 days until J's dissertation defense.  He got sick this morning, and I'm sure it was nerves (vegetarians just don't get food poisoning).

Here's a terrible thought: our relationship has been really good, and I've been way calmer than usual since he began the downhill to graduation.  In other words, as he's gotten more stressed, I've had a reduction in mine.  I think it may have something to do with me feeling like I actually have more control in my life than him for once.  Even if it's not real control, the comparison makes it look like it.  That makes me feel bad, but since I'm feelin' so stable and great, I'll use it to make sure he's doing good, too.  I swear it is not schadenfreude.

Thursday and Friday I get to spend all day in a workshop for supervisors/managers.  I'm excited, because I like my job and would like it more if I was better at it.  I think my boss doesn't value this kind of training much, but I figure some is better than none.  I also get to leave an hour early on Friday. Score!

Future Landlords

I am way more interested in photographing snowflakes.

Did I say our old landlord had already sold our  house? Not so fast.  The paperwork was finally turned in, but filled out incorrectly so it's February 5th and we don't know who to send our rent check to.   Zoinks!  We stopped by our neighbors' house (future landlords, nice people) and got to talk about what a nut the old landlord is, and I got to hold a baby for a while.  I was surprised at how little I minded being plastered with baby spit, or having my nostril yanked.  I think the only reason babies like me is my glasses (also covered in baby spit).

While we were talking to her, the husband was over at our house shoveling the walk from our door to our driveway.  We'd just gotten back from the coffeeshop and had to immediately jump and help (he had brought over an extra shovel).  We hadn't shoveled anything for a few reasons: one, we don't own a snow shovel because this NEVER happens; two, because it keeps snowing and I am not Sisyphus; four, we were getting around fine on the snow, which isn't slippery; and four, if you shovel your own sidewalk, it seems dickish not to keep going and do a whole block.  So, we couldn't tell if he just really likes doing yardwork so much that he crept into our yard, or he was passive-aggressively saying that if we're his tennants, we'd better get on that.  I was leaning towards the first explanation, but it gave J a Manly-Man Responsibility Complex.  He was worried about having our landlords right across the street, "and this is why," he said, referring to the marathon snow-rearranging.

I mean, we don't own a snow shovel, and I really doubt they will require us to go and purchase one when it may not snow like this for another decade.  There's more snow in the forecast, and I'm hoping it will cover up the icy sidewalks that were previously covered in nice, non-slippery snow.

It's kind of cute that J thinks he needs to "man-up" on yardwork when he thinks the landlord is judging him.  So silly.