Go together well

I started packing up our apartment today. The year has gone by so quickly! While I can't say that I'll miss the mice (hopefully we won't have any "pets" aside from Tessie living in our next place), we have made some great memories here.   {Top, L-R: the unpacking process, our "Christmas lamp," a just-settled-in picture Bottom, L-R: looking down the row from our front porch, Chris made his first beer here!, Chris eating crabs with our friend Brian} Hopefully our move will go a little more smoothly this year than it did last year. We were not organized or prepared at all  last year...when moving day came, we had a full apartment and a Subaru Forester   (the link is a Subaru commercial I love) that was not about to fit everything that we thought it would fit.  Our awesome friend Marie picked us up for a frantic trip to the U-haul place, and we loaded our huge truck in a frenzy (I had tears streaming down my face and "everything's gonna ...

Favorite things about Bawlmer, Merlin   When we first drove into town last June, our GPS wanted to show us the scenic route, so it took us on a winding road through a lovely forest full of bicyclists and joggers before leading us into one of Baltimore's grittier neighborhoods. (Prior to moving here, my knowledge of the city was drawn from a vague memory of a visit to the National Aquarium when I was six...and from what people told me about some HBO series .) After we  drove through several blocks of boarded up houses and apparent drug deals, the GPS told me that I was less than a mile away from my soon-to-be home--and I began to wonder whether I should have enrolled in public health school in a different city .  Once we got settled in, my perspectives of Baltimore began to change...and I have actually found the city to be quite charming after all. There are certainly more sirens and police helicopters than I had seen previously, and the juxtapositions between ext...