Location, Location, Location

Jody tagged me for this location meme in which you write seven things about where you live. Go read hers. Especially #4. Okay—you back? Can I say I love where I live? And that even though your location is not supposed to make a huge difference in your happiness, being mildly dissatisfied in Charlottesville is a million times better than being mildly dissatisfied where I used to live? Here is Charlottesville for you:

1. I don’t know if it’s true anymore, but at one point in the last ten years or so, we had the most restaurants per capita in the U.S. We have three tapas restaurants alone (one Spanish, one Asian, and one, um, plain old). Weirdly, though, we don’t have a really good pizza and pasta place.

2. What else do we have? Apparently, and fairly recently, gangs. A few months ago, the front page of the paper announced that we have a franchise of either the Crips or the Bloods (I can’t remember which.) “Why is the Daily Progress teaching us how to throw gang signs?” I asked Brandon when I noticed the signs and the graffiti tags on the front page. We don't know why, but we know how.

3. Good luck finding your way around! When I was walking Caleb to school one day, someone stopped and asked for directions. “Well,” I said, “turn right at the stop light. The road will change names. First it will be Rugby, then Preston, then Market Street. If it changes into Avon, you’ve gone too far.” This was a matter of blocks.

4. If you move away from here, chances are excellent you’ll be back.

5. People don’t walk fast enough for my liking.

6. A lot of famous people live or have lived here, including William Faulkner, Sissy Spacek, John Grisham, and Jessica Lange. Jessica Lange took her pets to the same vet that I do. One of my roommates used to work there and reported that, in real life, my mom is prettier than Jessica Lange.

7. Before the property was sold, there were a bunch of cabins on the tippy top of a nearby mountain. Every year, the people who lived there would hold Kite Day. I got to go one time. It was both dizzying and breathtaking, seeing the sky all around.

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