rhiannonstone: (Default)
It has been exactly 2 months since I moved.

People keep asking me if I've settled in, and after many weeks of "I'm getting there!" I finally feel like I can say yes. It was only about a month ago that my stuff arrived, some of it broken and much of what wasn't broken needing to be donated or dumped because it didn't actually fit. Several donate-and-dump runs, Ikea deliveries, and minor furniture-assembly injuries later, I no longer feel like I'm still in the middle of "moving in". Even though I still have one single box left to unpack, and a lot of organizational optimization to do to make the most of the small and awkward space, I feel at home.

Homes need a name, and (with some helpful inspiration from friends and strangers on Metafilter) this one eventually told me its name was The Burrow.

It was very nearly Bag End, but that was just too too, even for me.

**********

It didn't take me nearly that long to feel settled into the spaces outside my apartment. Walking around the city, getting to know my new neighborhood, feels like I never left. I already know my way around on transit and bike and foot. Every event I go to, I run into someone I know. A couple weeks ago I got my hair re-purpled at the same salon I went for nearly a decade before I moved to Denver. Byron and I had dinner at a restaurant on Valencia and realized we'd sat together at the exact same table twice before--at two different restaurants. The Chinese massage place I used to frequent is still there, and they remembered me even though it was 4 years since I'd last been there.

There's a lot that's changed, too, both for the better and for the worse. And that, too, feels familiar and just right, even when it's bittersweet or infuriating.

**********

The new job is taking a little longer to feel settled into. Which isn't unexpected, because it is a new job, and I'm having to learn a lot of new things while also trying to sort out the baggage I've brought with me from all the previous jobs I've had here and navigating an entirely new manager and team. It's still exciting and interesting and I'm in exactly the right place, but I'm feeling the Smart Kid Syndrome pretty hard.

Next week my team and I are going to Denver for some face-time with our partner teams, which is a thing that will happen roughly quarterly. It'll be weird to be back, but I'm looking forward to being able to share what I like about it with my team, and enjoy it as a visitor without all the complicated feels that came with living there when I'd left my heart somewhere else.
rhiannonstone: (Default)
Lots of people have been asking, so I figured I would write it out.

Things I will miss about Denver:
  • Breakfast burritos and green chile{s}
  • Urban bunnies
  • Fruition Farms cheeses
  • Being able to bike to work almost year-round (OK I can do this in SF, too, but it's a different kind of prep)
  • The free Mall Ride bus
  • 1Up
  • Cart-Driver, Señor Bear, Sarto's, Reunion Bread Co., El Five, Hop Alley, Acorn, Jones Family Spirit House
  • Hiking in the snow and not actually being cold
  • Brief and intense afternoon thunderstorms
  • Being able to hop on a bus and be in Boulder in under an hour
  • Cheaper-than-SF rent, and a housing policy that (for now, at least) still allows for new dwellings to be built
  • Public art everywhere (even when it's bad)
  • Mountains
  • Denver Airport conspiracy theories
  • Being only a 45-minute car ride away from being able to see the Milky Way unassisted
  • My Denver work family
  • Opportunities to spend more time with [personal profile] randomdreams and [personal profile] threemeninaboat
  • Shorter flights to the east coast
  • Having superpowers when I return to sea level
Things I will not miss about Denver (besides being too far away from my chosen family):
  • High facial moisturizer and body lotion budget
  • One of the highest transit fares in the country
  • Strong car culture --> Major gaps and lags in transit infrastructure, especially for getting out of Denver proper
  • Not being able to bike more than 25 miles in any direction without having to go up the side of a mountain
  • Recycling being so difficult that I sometimes throw away even the recyclables that actually get recycled
  • Most of the concerts I want to see being at a place that is beautiful but nigh-inaccessible for folks with mobility issues
  • Hail, and hail bruises
  • Extreme rapid weather changes
  • Having to go to the suburbs for good Chinese, Mexican, and Vietnamese food
  • Everyone wanting to go to Linger and Snooze all the time
  • Maintaining the polite fiction that TAG Restaurant Group restaurants are any good when people enthuse about them to me so I don't come off like a total California food snob
  • The Denver Airport
  • The Denver Airport Bathroom Smell
  • Dog food smell days
  • Cow poop smell days
  • Basically all the smells, especially all the apartment lobbies, hotels, bars, and street corners into which artificial scent is pumped
  • Also all the smokers of all kinds, smoking in public as if that is somehow not unspeakably rude
  • Everything being about weed
rhiannonstone: (california)
Bye Bye Fog see you later
Tell the egrets wait for me
Give my love to shoreline breezes
So long ocean view
We’ll be back beside the bay
Sure as tides and sunset

--Poem found at a shellmound

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