October 05, 2007

Random Crab Facts, Part Two: Places

Regular readers are already aware that Crabby is away on vacation, and is doing half-assed posts about nothing in particular until she gets back. Thank goodness for guest posts! Normally Crabby at least pretends to write a health blog, and she promises someday soon she will be pretending to do that again.

But today it's more random Crab Facts! This works well for vacation time, because it doesn't require Crabby to do any research other than rummage around her own musty dusty brain. She can do that while sipping chardonnay and sampling dark chocolate and enjoying an unusually balmy fall evening on the patio outside a lovely hotel room.

So why should you care to know more about Crabby and the boring details of her real life?

Because... well, because... damn. She can't really think of a reason.

But anyway, Crabby gets asked every now and then where she lives. She used to avoid answering that question, but now she's kind of thinking what the hell. None of you is going to hunt down "Crabby McSlacker" and threaten her with bodily harm just because of some stupid thing she wrote on her blog. You have much better things to do. So Crabby will go ahead and answer that question.

Crabs tend to be fond of coasts. Right now Crabby lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a nifty walkable neighborhood called Rockridge on the border between Oakland and Berkeley.

She has lived other places in the Bay Area, like San Francisco and San Anselmo. She also lived in San Diego, in Madison, New Jersey, and in New York City (in the West Village. That was really fun). She has visited Provincetown, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. for long enough to feel almost like she lived there. She is a very lucky crab to have gotten to experience all these great places.

Sometimes the Crab and Lobster ponder the possibility of relocating again. This is a favorite past-time whenever they travel. Wouldn't it be fun to live here someday? How about there? Isn't this a cute street? What a nice park! The beach is how many blocks away? Look at all those restaurants!

Canada comes up quite a bit. Vancouver, particularly; a vibrant beautiful city. But then there is the whole citizenship thing. Plus, it rains there a lot.

Right now the Crab and Lobster are in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a favorite vacation spot. They are perhaps even as you read this looking longingly at some of the condos there, whistling nonchalantly as though they didn't even notice all the Price Reduced signs. There a quite a few of those signs these days... again, not that they've noticed.

It would be a huge leap... the logistics are daunting... the two coast are so far apart! Part time on one coast with family, part time on the other coast? How would that work? A crazy idea. Completely insane. Right?

It's not like Provincetown is the only beautiful, artsy, beachy, historic, amazing, incredible, seductive town in the world.

(But the Crab and Lobster can't recall one they've ever liked better).

Does anyone else do this when they travel? Do you imagine your life in new places? Do you move around much? Or does your current home feel like it will always be "home" to you?

26 comments:

  1. Right now I live in Rockford, MI aka Nirvana. My husband I and have lived in our house for 7 years. It is the longest we have lived any where...ever...for both of us! We are going crazy! Our record used to be about 2 1/2 years. The housing market is so bad in Michigan that we probably couldn't get much more than we paid for our house. It is depressing.

    I have an unnatural desire to move to North Carolina. The reason it is unnatural is because I have never even been there! For some reason, I have it stuck in my head that is where I want to be next. Vacation relocation planning is always fun, but then I realize I would have to work there just like at home! Kind of ruins the fantasy!

    Have fun dreaming!

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  2. My 18-yr-old dd visited San Francisco over the summer to see a friend. She *loved* it. I think that this is one of her dream places to live.

    Montreal, where we are, is a nice place. The houses are WAY cheaper than Vancouver and it really is a great place to live. We have several universities, French and English, we're just over an hour from the border to the States, 6 or 7 hours from NYC, 6 hours from Boston, you can't get much better than that. :-)

    My DH and I toyed with the idea of moving when we got married, but I'm a real stick in the mud. I know he'd love to move to vancouver, I wouldn't.

    Maybe I'll feel differently if the three off spring move out of the province, but for right now, I'm ok here.

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  3. I love my house, my yard, the quiet and yes, isolation of my home way up here in northern Alberta, but if I could move the entire place somewhere with no snow and an ocean view, I'd be ecstatic. Of course, I wouldn't want any snakes or those big honkin' bugs, either! I can barely handle the tiny little slugs we have up here, let alone those huge buggers that can spit big gobs of slime at you (that I've heard exist on the west coast)
    In another life, I'd like to live in England - you know, the cottage with the climbing roses, thatched roof, Miss Marple next door...

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  4. I've lived in Rocky Mountain House for 19 years now and love to look at mountains each day. It's convenient to Edmonton, Calgary, and Banff and Jasper National Parks. However, I'd move if the opportunity came along. I hate the physical act of packing and cleaning and whatnot, but I'm all for the adventure of it.
    Reporting took me to several Alberta towns as well as Fort St. John, a small city in northeastern BC. so I used to be used to moving.
    As for living where I've travelled, well, I'd live in Australia in a heartbeat, I'd also live in Saskatchewan, and I have this urge to move to Argentina. The attraction is wide open spaces and lack of people.

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  5. I love Massachusetts. I spent a couple of weeks in Cape Cod when I was a teen, and several months (over time) in a very small town in north central MA. (almost in New Hampshire) just a few years ago. The New England countryside is amazing.

    As cities go, Boston is wonderful - partly because it reminds me a lot of my native Montreal. Marijke, you've got me homesick now!

    I moved to Mississauga, Ontario (just west of Toronto) 23 years ago, but it took until I had school-aged kids for it to really feel like home.

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  6. Dan and I regularly contemplate moving, but the places we love tend to be places where there are no jobs that would allow us to keep body and soul together. Rural Vermont, anyone? Monhegan Island? How about New Mexico, where the work I do here for $50K pays half that amount and the rents are the same?

    Grrrr....

    I'm so jealous you're on the Cape! Provincetown is a fun time. My heart is on the Mid-Cape, though. My grandparents lived in Dennis and I spent many happy summers there.

    Dennis is where the Cape Cod Playhouse is, so if you get over that way to see a show, be sure to stop in at Captain Frosty's for ice cream or fish and chips! The famous actors and actresses who have performed at the playhouse over the decades have autographed plates at Captain Frosty's. Crabby McSlacker will be in good company. Maybe you can even sign a plate! :-)

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  7. OHH! I'll be in SF in two weeks for my 1/2 marathong and...the parents are coming with me and the finance. Yikes, what a vacation.

    Any place I should make sure they see? We're staying in Union Square cause it's close to the start line.

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  8. i absolutely fell in love with vancouver when i was there last year. it was definitely the scenery and the lifestyle that did me in, but being too far away from my family would kill me.

    now after visiting NYC, i could also see myself there, as it's a lot like TO but on a MUCH bigger scale, but I could NEVER afford it!!

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  9. That absolutely happens to me...every time I travel. It's part of the escape, I guess - an imagined life somewhere else. The place where it has most happened to me was Berlin, and I barely speak the language! But it happens when I go home to DC, or to visit friends in Austin...

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  10. Oh, but for the lack of millions and millions of dollars! My dream place to live...a very large estate, somewhere you can only get to by helicopter. Actually I would have to have two, one on a mountain for summer & Christmas and one in a desert for winter. I could be a hermit then and people would think I was eccentric not crazy!

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  11. Due to my families constant moving(I went to 6 different schools by middle school :-(, and my extensive medical training, I've lived in a lot of places! When I moved to Florida, however, I had a feeling of being "home". I had never felt this anywhere else I had lived and it was very special for me :-)
    Dr.J

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  12. I tend to picture travel as a leisurely thing focused on "the experience" rather than "the destination," with a home base location I'll eventually go back to. Unfortunately, now that I'm a Real Adult with Very Little Time to go gallivanting around the world, I've had to shift my perceptions of how to travel. Now I need a destination and a plan for every day, otherwise I'll feel like I wasted my time!

    I consider packing up and returning to Japan once a year, when the applications for JET are due. Occasionally I dream of returning to Ireland for a few weeks of drinking, philosophy, and history. And now thanks to a friend of mine I'm tempted to try my hand at Melbourne, Australia, just because she says it's awesome. But I could never go to any of these places permanently, because my home and family are in Chicago and I can't imagine anyone I know wanting to leave it for good.

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  13. I have lived in the D.C. area all my life, right now I am in Alexandria on the Potomac River. I love D.C. and all it has to offer, but I eventually would love to live in a small beach town somewhere. Though after D.C., any small town would probably be a tremendous culture shock!

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  14. I live next to New York City (on the Hudson River in NJ) and work there and I love it. Don't like NJ that much, but then I don't see much of it.

    BUT, after my honeymoon in 1999 we wanted to move to Florence, Italy. Considering everything that's gone on here since, I devoutly wish we had.

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  15. BTW,(totally off the subject),

    Can somebody tell me why I can't post my photos to my profile? It keeps telling me they have to be in jpeg form, but they ARE. :-P

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  16. Maybe it's a guy thing, but every time I hear the name Rockridge, I can't help but think of that great flick Blazing Saddles.

    Anyway, I'm South Jersey born and bred (except for 12 long years in South Philly) and despite everything that's wrong with Jersey, can't imagine living anywhere else.

    My father was from North Carolina, so I'd be curious to check it out, but I haven't visited there yet.

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  17. Oh, I just recently vacated my apartment and I'm currently staying at my parents' house (but only for a few months - I can't possibly live by other people's rules, not even my own family's).

    Unfortunately, I haven't done a lot of traveling. I've never even gone on any the vacations my parents take, and they've been all over (even to Europe). The only times I ever left Maryland was for Basic Training in Georgia, other Army training schools (New Hampshire and New Jersey), and of course the Annual Trainings we had with my old National Guard unit (Virginia and New York). Obviously, most of that wasn't much fun, except for Mountain Warfare School (rock climbing is lots of fun!).

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  18. I definitely pictured you living in the San Francisco area. I woul dlove to at least travel there sometime because it seems like a nifty place to visit, and from what I hear, a great place to live.

    I'm such a big city girl at heart (love the walkability factor) and currently I'm stuck in the suburbs of a sdmall and dying city in MI. As Holly mentioned, Michigan has some MAJOR issues with a lot things right now... However, i can't really see myself living outside of MI because everyone I care for is here. I want to move to (or transfer to a school in) the Detroit area... that seems like the best place for me in this state.

    Whenever I'm in any big city (like D.C. for example) I always think it would great to live there. I went a trip this past summer through Pennslyvania (didn't have the time to visit Philly or Pittsburgh) and I spent a lot of timer seeing cute houses and cities and towns, dreaming about all of that. I regularly talk with two different people who once lived in Philly and I've sort of romanticized much of Pennsylvania because of it. ha ha.

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  19. I was born and raised in Michigan.
    I find now that I prefer biggish cities in the west and smallish cities in the east. What a vague generalization eh? (oh yeah. And I love Canadians.)

    But hey, I'm only 27! Lots to look forward to, I have no idea where we'll actually end up.

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  20. I love hearing about all these cool destinations and fantasies and plans everyone has! There are so many trade-offs about any place you might choose, that finding one that has "everything" is really rare.

    The Lobster and I have always fantasized about living two different places half-time if we could figure a way to swing it--we both are home-based in our professional endeavors. We find we love wherever we are even more if we've been somewhere else for a while.

    Who knows what will happen!

    Still missing the blog world, btw, and can't wait to get back. Had hoped to have a bit more chance to check in but really, really appreciate everyone stopping by!

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  21. We've lived in Palo Alto, Ithaca, and San Diego, and love playing the "let's move here!" game when we travel. Current dream spots include Nelson, New Zealand; Bologna, Italy; 'Avarua, Cook Islands, Victora, BC...

    P'town! What a beautiful place. It should be a good time of year, too. Enjoy your vacation!

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  22. It's funny... I've been living up in Portland for four years now, but when you said you were from the Bay Area my first thought was "oh, she's a local." I tend to get lost in Oakland, always have. If I tried to find Rockridge I would end up in Fruitvale instead.
    I've seen signs that read "no stopping, no standing" in other locations. Only in Oakland have I seen a sign that read "no stopping, no standing, no prowling." It's got some nice people, but the city has some definite signage issues.

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  23. No, no, no, don't do it, don't move! We just did it (in Michigan, where the housing market does, indeed, contain much suckage!) and all that packing and unpacking and moving and oh my god what a PITA! You forget about that part in the whole fantasizing about being somewhere else... moving is a WHOLE lotta work, people. Stay put. The grass isn't greener. Even if it is, it's not. :)

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  24. I always imagine myself living in the city I'm visiting. Maybe it's because I really don't like my city.

    Maryland crab cakes are the best. : )

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  25. My "home" now is becoming more like home. But, I think I may always have two homes, even if I can rarely get to one of them. My first niece is in the process of entering this world over 5,000 miles away (as I type). We'll see how I get through this hurdle!!

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  26. I've moved 19 times in 50 years. In my personal vocabulary, MOVE is a four letter word!

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