One Year in Minnesota

It was one year ago today that Emma and I moved into our house in Minnesota. Mel had been in the Twin Cities since the week before Memorial Day last year, but it wasn't until July 3 that Emma and I made the move. Overall things have gone fairly well. We had to make some repairs to the house, such as replacing the filthy carpet in the basement and repairing some leaks in the plumbing. We have also made some other upgrades such as replacing the fuse box with a circuit breaker and replacing the bathtub and bathroom sink. There are still some other things we need to take care of, mainly reshingling the roof and taking care of some landscaping. We will get to those at some point in the future.

We do enjoy living in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. There are plenty of things to do nearby, such as going to the Minnesota Zoo, the Science Museum of Minnesota, or the Mall of America. We have also made it to a couple of Minnesota Twins games, and there are plenty of restaurants to choose from in the area. Mel also enjoys her job much more than her previous job, and I line working from home for the most part, although I do miss the face-to-face interaction with my colleagues.

Despite all the things we like about the Cities, we do miss Cedar Rapids. We have some very good friends there who, unfortunately, we don't get to see as often as we would like, and the people in our old neighborhood in Cedar Rapids were much friendlier than those who live in our neighborhood in Cottage Grove. Upon moving into our house in Cedar Rapids we were greeted by our new neighbors. Here we have barely spoken with any of them. The main conversation I have had with out neighbors was when they wanted to know if we called the police on their dogs. And by the way, it wasn't us. Hopefully we can have some more positive interactions with our neighbors, although I can guess that is we somehow became wealthy enough for Mel to not have to work, we would probably move back to Iowa.