Saturday, May 15, 2010

Hyde Park vs. West Chester

With the upcoming move happening, I've been very sentimental about leaving Hyde Park. I LOVE Hyde Park. Let me say that again, I LOVE Hyde Park. I love the feeling, the vibe, the sounds, the accesibility, the people... I foresee tears in my future knowing that I'm leaving this fantastic area of town and moving 25 minutes north.

I know moving up to West Chester is the thing to do. I will be so much closer to work. Seriously, I did the math...I'll be saving myself 5 hours in the car a week! Brent will be so much closer to his office too. We needed to buy a house and this is the perfect house for us at this time.

I've been making a list of what I will miss about Hyde Park. Here is what I've come up with so far:
  1. Walking places. Right now, we are withing walking distance to the bank, the library, my hair stylist, our dentist, CVS, UDF, bars/restaurants and parks.
  2. Friends clsoe by. Most of our friends live in this area and our fear is that (maybe our friends' fear too) is that we'll be sucked into 'suburb world' and never been seen or heard from again. I think Brent and I are determined not to hide, but it will take a conscience effort to see friends.
  3. Restaurants. They're not chain restaurants, they're just good HP restaurants. Arthurs. Indigo. Teller’s. Echo. Awakenings. Ramundo's. Lucy Blue's. Zip's. And did I mention they're all within walking distance?
  4. City Life. We live on a relatively busy street now and we are constantly hearing cars, traffic, emergency vehicles with sirens drive by. I used to be so aware of the sirens, but now, I don't even hear them. Even though sometimes we don't open windows now because of the noise, I'll still miss the hustle and bustle.

However, on the flip side, I am looking forward to owning a house and finally getting rid of apartment life. I've been making a list of things I'm looking forward to getting a house (note that it's not a list of things I'm looking forward to living in West Chester...besides the new SHORT commute, that's about it).

  1. No more coin laundry. For years I was constantly on the look out for quarters. If I got change, I'd set aside quarters for laundry. I'd even pay cash in a certain amount so I'd get quarters in return change.
  2. While we're on the subject of laundry...I can't wait to have my own washer and dryer. I can do laundry whenever I want, however big or small. And I don't have to hurry back to it to accomodate other tenants who might want to do their laundry too.
  3. Garage. I've never had a garage and I can't wait to pull my car into one. Bye-bye window scraping. Bye-bye running in the rain to load my car up with gazillion bags I carry to and from work.
  4. I can now choose which bathroom I want to use. We have 2.5 bathrooms...I've never had an option before. We could also have two people showering in two different bathrooms at the same time!
  5. Backyard. Right now, we don't have a patio. I know, how did we survive 6.5 years in this apartment without a patio? We do have a 'grassy knoll' outside our window that I've crawled in and out of to lay out on. Brent often talks about inviting people over to enjoy a beer on the 'grassy knoll', but it's not much of scene to do that. You can't see anything except for the parking lot. You can't see the street and you'd have to climb out the window to get more beers. Doesn't sound appealing to me. So our new house has a walkout patio that we're really excited for. Hello outdoor furniture!
  6. I won't have to hear our neighbors. For a long time, we had an older QUIET woman living above us and we rarely heard her. I just thought there was good insulation. Then the current neighbor moved in. Nope, little insulation. We hear everything, and by everything, I mean everything.
  7. The woman upstairs also smokes (out on her patio), so we can smell the wafting smoke when we have our windows open. And yep, that's another reason we have to close our windows. The woman across the hall smokes, but in her apartment, so the hallway is often a smokey-smelling walk through. yuck.
  8. Spreading out. We'll finally be able to spread out our stuff and decorate the way I want.

This move really is a bittersweet event. I will miss Hyde Park and our life that was in Hyde Park, but we are looking forward to the luxuries a new house will bring.

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