Live and learn

Well, I have officiall survived my second week at work, and a productive one at that! What better way to celebrate than by posting a blog entry and enjoying a cold, refreshing, Sam Adams seasonal summer ale? I can think of nothing.

So a few things have been brought to my attention since I moved here:

1. UK Wildcats basketball is dwarfed by the Boston Red Sox craze


2. The Red Sox bug has bitten me hard as I recently bartered one of my kidneys for three tickets to the last Mets game of the series in June


3. The roads here are the worst I have ever seen. If necessary the pothole at the end of my driveway could house a low-income family


4. The major coffee distributor in the world is Dunkin' Donuts. The number of franchises in the area is ridiculous. They sell 30 cups of coffee every second. I read that somewhere.


5. Everyone has an accent here. This is the first time I've really felt like I stand out from everyone; as if they will instantly realize I'm an alien by the way I speak. No one has, though, so it's probably me just being paranoid.


6. Most people with whom I work commute about an hour each way


7. My roommate, Matt, and his friend, "G-Lo," (I don't get it) know more about bourbon than I, the Kentuckian, do


8. Bourbon and the Red Sox make for an interesting evening


9. Everyone and their dog shops in New Hampshire to avoid paying sales tax, but no one wants to live there because the property tax is outrageous


10. I live 2 miles from the New Hampshire border.


11. There is a Mexican restaurant on said border named "On the Border"


12. I have never eaten there


13. There is also a Trader Joe's nearby wherein I met a woman from New Mexico. She said the secret to getting to know New Englanders is to just open up to them. "They're naturally introverts," she told me, "but once you get to know them they're quite wonderful."


14. I have yet to test this, but my roommate Matt seems to fit her description to a tee.

Massachewts, 14 hours later.

My alarm rang just a little after 3:45am. Without hesitation, almost instinctually, my fist slammed its damaged snooze button, already cracked from months of abuse. You see, Saturday was the first day of an adventure. I was driving to Massachusetts to start a summer internship with a company near Boston; a place I've never even visited before.

I'm not naturally an adventurous person. Usually it takes a lot of support from my family and friends to get me to move somewhere on my own. Case in point: Bethel College--not my first choice of schools, as made evident by my decision less than one year later to transfer to the University of Kentucky. I had a hard time adjusting to midwestern life, just as I had an even harder time adjusting to graduate school at Virginia Tech. The first year at Tech I maybe went out three weekends. It wasn't even until the third year that I had people I could consider friends.

So when I accepted a summer engineering co-op position for a company just outside of Boston I was naturally both excited and apprehensive. However, since my first year at Tech I've developed more than any other time in my life. But can I attribute that self-growth to maturity, or just the fact that I'd been in the area for several years and had, by that time, established myself? There's only one way to be sure: transplant to the northeast where I know next to no one and see. Boston is a precarious thrill that could just as easily lift as break my spirits.

So after 14 hours of driving, I arrived in my new home for a brief eternity: three months. I've survived my first week here without a mental breakdown, but am still a bit ambivalent. Today I'm taking it easy in Lowell "Massachewts," typing my first real blog post at Brew'd Awakenings, enjoying the gorgeous New England Memorial Day weather, enthusiastic about my (temporary) new life, and ready to make the most of it.

p.s. Canada doesn't really haunt me. It's the title of a They Might Be Giants song which was actually written for an audio copy of Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot. I actually think Canada is a delightful place; a land of magic, faeries, and Lebatt Blue.