Cool discoveries...

So for those of you who don't know, I moved to Syracuse, NY about 6 months ago.

For those who are now asking "Why?" and scratching their heads - well, it was time for something different. I'd lived in Arizona for 15 years and the heat was getting to me. Will I someday move back? Maybe. But when and if I do, it will be because I choose to live there. Before this experience, I didn't really know if I chose to live in Arizona, or if it was just "where I happened to be." I wanted to experience something outside of my normal experience, something new and exciting. That's definitely what I've gotten.

There's good and bad in all things and places, and I am so grateful to have had an opportunity to expand my experiences. We bought a HUGE gorgeous house here in Manlius, which is a suburb of Syracuse. The schools are fantastic. The house we got probably would have cost about twice as much in Arizona, but because of the vastly higher taxes here, the payment is probably equal.

I've learned a lot about myself through this. For one, though I love the image of being out in the woods, away from civilization, with only my four-wheel drive and my internet connection to provide for me... the fact is... I'm a city boy at heart. Syracuse is a small town, with a limited selection of various services. Having the nearest Target even as far as 10 minutes away seems like an eternity compared to Gilbert where everything was so close. Home Depot is easily 20 mins away as well. And the nearest decent shopping mall, 30 minutes. About the only computer store in Syracuse is CompUSA, which sucks rocks compared to Fry's Electronics.

On the other hand, within bicycling distance from my house is Pratt's Falls, and within 10-20 minutes at least 2-3 Ski resorts.

We toyed with buying a house a bit further out (another 10 minutes away from the city) and I'm very glad we decided not to. Manlius is just at the limit of what we can handle without feeling overly isolated.

Syracuse is the snowiest metropolis in the US, and I can say with sincerity (it now being the end of December) that it earns that title honestly. We've only had a few snowfalls so far, but they simply piled up on each other to give us a BUNCH of snow. I have made it a point to try my hardest to learn to love the snow. I have taken up snowboarding and have invested in lots of cold weather gear (more on all this later). It's amazing what a difference having the right clothes makes when it's -8 degrees C out (that's 17F for those of you still using that antiquated system).

That brings me to another thing I have changed - I have been trying to make the mental conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Besides being easier to spell, the Celsius system just makes more "sense". It fits really well with life in general. 0C is freezing of water. -10 is really REALLY cold... +10 is chilly, but tolerable. +20 is balmy. +30 is getting a bit warm, and +40 is downright hot. 37 is the temperature of the human body. It just makes sense. I thought that since I was already going to have to change my whole perspective on climate that I should take the opportunity to change everything about how I think about temperature.

Anyway, more on all this later... One thing about moving to a new place is that you have all these things that you miss about the old place. The best way to deal with that is to go out of your way to pick something new to experience every week. We've been doing just that, and I have some awesome stories to share. Picking apples from local groves... buying corn from roadside stands.... Dinosaur BBQ... tons of good stuff. So I'm going to try to make a point to write these stories up and get some pics uploaded. My friend Jay has also been going through a move of his own and has put me to shame with his writing up of his experiences. I have to pay him back with some of my own now.

So, Happy New Year and all that...