<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\nJanuary 1st 2001 to March 5th 2013. That’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one place. I will say that I am curiously just as able-bodied at 41 as I was at 29, although I find that the after-action muscle pains are much more crippling. I spent yesterday dragging my carcass around the house and wondering if I’d seriously damaged my knees. “Lift with your legs, not your back” people tell you. That’s all well and good, but once my legs are spent, what do I lift with then, huh? Tell me that, Mr. Smugface chair-sitter, with your healthy back and your intact knees. I don’t see YOU dragging YOUR worldly possessions up a flight of stairs in the snow. <\/p>\n
Yesterday morning was The Trial of No Internet while we waited for the cable company to show up and turn the valve that controlled the internet pump. He had to run new wire from the telephone pole, because the existing line was only good for television but was too old to contain the precious internet juice. That means this house has never been graced by the blessed electrical impulses of broadband internet, which is a radical thought. <\/p>\n
I spent the dark hours of savage non-internet anarchy writing a massive 8k word account of our experience in the previous house. It’s strangely personal and not the kind of thing I’d normally post here. Doing so would dispel the highly beneficial misconception that I’m a smart person. But whatever. I wrote it mostly for my own benefit, as a means of putting the events in order and understanding how we got to where we are now. I might post it. I might chicken out. We’ll see.<\/p>\n
We’re living in town now. I always tell people I’m “from Pittsburgh”, but we actually live in one of the many satellite cities around it. It’s an unremarkable little town, but my family lives here so my heart is here. <\/p>\n
I took a picture out of the kitchen window to add to this post. One of the major streets runs nearby and there’s a fire hall visible. Second-guessing myself, I typed the name of the place into Google and clicked on street-level view. Boom. Picture of the window I had been looking out of. <\/p>\n
Does this sort of thing matter? I suspect it doesn’t. We have this attitude that we should keep our locations secret online, but my parents spent a lifetime listing everyone in a public telephone book and thought nothing of it. The internet just makes that phone book bigger and accessible from further away. It’s kind of strange that we’re worried about being found by people thousands of miles away, but we’re comfortable being found by people six blocks away. The latter is more likely to have both motive and opportunity to hassle you. <\/p>\n