holy crap

i moved.

wtf??

in my efforts to make this a surprise for catherine, i ended up surprising myself a bit. when we moved from NC to MD, we had months to plan. it's not like greenbelt felt like home right away, but it wasn't nearly as surreal as this. i wonder how long it will take to feel like i live here and not like i'm visiting.

to anyone who was kept in the dark, i apologize. we decided to do this about two months ago. after our trip to franklin, steve decided that chapel hill would be better for us than ithaca so we were figuring on moving next summer. but we'd only been back for about a day when he said, "you know, you've been looking for a new job for months. and it seems silly to look for a job and have it for less than a year and then look for another job...let's just move now." at first i thought he was kidding. and i was a bit nervous that he was just on a carolina-mountains-high and that it would wear off. but once we got permission from our landords to go month-by-month, it seemed like it might really happen. so i emailed mikl & told him to keep an eye out for jobs & just keep it between us. i really didn't intend for it to be a huge secret. i just didn't want to get anyone's hopes up except mine.

at some point, i mentioned to steve that it would be funny to wait until everything was in place and then call catherine and say, hi, how are you, oh by the way, i have a job & steve has a job and we have a house and we'll see you in two weeks. but steve pointed out that i'd be passing up a once in a lifetime opportunity for a killer prank. how often do you get a chance to move and not tell someone? so it became my mission to keep it a secret from catherine & joel.

it was completely worth it. the look on her face on saturday night when mikl & kathleen brought her over was priceless...the ruse was that they were on their way to dinner and that mikl had to stop & pick something up from someone he worked with. "oh and they have a puppy. you should come in and see the puppy." worked like a charm. the cool part was that joel couldn't come to dinner so we got to go to their house afterwards & freak him out. catherine said, "there are two new chapel hill residents that i want you to meet!" it was awesome. two surprises are better than one.

so that's that. i'm a carolina resident once again and it feels like coming home.