on my calendar for today, i have “remember when i lived in rochester LOL”

haha i think that’s appropriate! as much as i rag on rochester as a whole, i’m glad i made that move.

it was a lot of work. between having to sell a house, buy a house, sell a house, buy a house and one rental, the housing situation wasn’t great. plus there were 6 months of commuting from st. cloud to austin on the weekends and then austin to roch every workday at the beginning, then from st. charles up to st. cloud for four months on the way back. the thing i had to keep telling myself was that this was temporary and it would be done eventually, and at the end it would be worth it.

now southeastern minnesota is a perfectly lovely place. it’s got great bluff country, and the rivers are great. winona is a fantastic little college town. rochester, despite its weird hoity toity worker vs. mayo class system, is a nice looking town (much prettier than metro st. cloud looks).

some things i liked about rochester: it had a trader joe’s. and a costco (altho we are CLOSE here in st. cloud. the building is being erected). sushi tokyo is delicious. i like that it’s in a valley, and there’s a lot of historical buildings. i like JENEE and she’s in rochester. i liked my job! it was a great school.

some things like liked about living in st. charles: i like that lanesboro was close. i liked that i could go to winona instead of rochester to get my groceries and do my shopping. i liked that right past lewiston, you drove into the bluffs down to the river. i liked that whitewater was 9 miles from my house. the running situation was pretty darn good! the good sport was yummy, and i ate way too much a&w. i peaked at kitchen owning. i will never get better than that kitchen at my house in st charles. oh, and that deck we built was pretty darn good!

but dang it i do like lakes and trees and the hills of central mn. i think it’s the way the trees crowd in the more north part of minnesota. i like driving 5 miles to st. john’s and getting on the water. i really like running in the woods. i like the yellow of autumn (well except this fall. good grief. what a bad fall we had). i like not having to drive 15 miles to get from target to a walmart to a barnes and noble (st cloud’s retail is pretty centralized; rochester’s is not).

i guess yeah, i lived in rochester for four years. i kind of wonder about it – a weird blip. but if i hadn’t taken that job, i wouldn’t be where i am today, and i wouldn’t have met jenee. and i’m pretty happy about that.