I Moved to New York

May 1, 2011.  That is the date that I moved to New York City.  This is the date that I made a decision that my life would be changed irrevocably.  Until that day, I never lived more than 20 miles away from the house I grew up in South Saint Paul, Minnesota. 

I moved from that house, to the dormitory at Brady Hall at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul.  I got married on June 23, 1984 and we lived in two apartments on Randolph Avenue in Saint Paul before moving to Cottage Grove in 1987.  We moved to a different house in 1997.  We raised three children in Cottage Grove.  Two of them are out of college and one is still in college.  You'll probably get to know them fairly well as I write this blog.  I decided to leave that life behind.  I don't know if it was the right decision, perhaps I'll never know.  Perhaps just writing for everyone to see will help me understand if it really was the "right" decision or not.  Anyhow...

May 1, 2011.  I moved to New York City.  I have an apartment on the Upper West Side.  I spent a long time looking for the "right" apartment, I found this one almost completely by accident.  But when I walked into it, I knew it was perfect.  I decided not to move much from Minnesota and decided to start over in my new apartment.  I got a new furniture (couch, ottoman, desk, bookshelves, bed, mattress, dresser, mirror, nightstand, TV, stand, etc.), I was able to move some kitchen things from Minnesota (thank you!) and was able to borrow some things from a friend to round the place out.  I even adopted a couple of kittens rescued from a feral colony in early June.

Yep, I'm all set.  I got my drivers license in New York with my new address.  I'm going through the painful process of changing all of my 'stuff' to my new address.  I opened a bank account at Chase.  I learned how to get to work and where some of the stores are I need for things like groceries and toilet paper and cat food.  I found some very cool places to eat.  I even joined the Y.

So I'm there, right?

Riding the #8 Train is the name of my blog.  Because I think it's going to tell the story of my life.  Folks, I've looked at the subway map here in New York.  THERE IS NO #8 TRAIN!  Yet that's the one that I'm on.  I hope this blog provides a chronicle of my life in New York, how I'm adjusting (or not adjusting as the case may be), my struggles, my joys, my successes, and my failures.  It probably will be personal in some posts (you'll learn something about me, that's for sure), hopefully it will be humorous most of the time, but I'm sure sometimes it will be sad.

It's time for me to get to bed.  There will be lots more as we ride the #8 train together!