on my run yesterday, i ran into matt and eliza. among other things we talked about, we talked about raking leaves and why it’s important. it’s important because if you don’t rake, the leaves will smother the grass and then bye-bye lawn and hello nasty looks from neighbors.

so when i got home from surfing today, i used my hour of spare daylight to rake the yard. raking is fun, picking up the leaves is a bummer. and while that yard-work meditative state was settling in, i remembered that i don’t like grass and that by raking leaves, i was effectively giving comfort to the enemy.

and why am i doing this? because when you live somewhere that has the jay-approved coupling of politeness and judgment, neighbor and landlord approval means something. or at least not hearing about it means something. though i am resigned to rake and mow for as long as i’m renting, when i have my own house, i’m going to tear out all the grass and plant a small farm of dark leafy greens.

this weekend, i went sailing with my friend paul. paul is a much better sailor than i am, so i was hoping to pick up some pointers. unfortunately, the only pointer that i picked up was that you shouldn’t leave a loose car key in your pocket while sailing, because it can wind up in the drink and force you to walk three miles back home to get a spare key and then drive back to the locked car during uw football traffic in a different car whose gas gauge is on the wrong side of ‘e’.

anyone who ever said that location can’t change a person. i moved north of lake union and became a white person. or maybe my inner white person is now external, though my skin has just turned its natural summer pan-ethnic deep olive (the indian intern at work just asked me if i was indian, too). but never mind that! i have turned white since moving. here’s the evidence:

- i spend a lot of time watering tomatoes
- i have taken up sailing boats on water
- i wear non-ironic dorky clothes while bbqing

i love the neighborhood. the other day, some neighbors offered me a really nice table saw for free if i would get it out of their basement. i haven’t picked it up yet, but am planning on doing it this weekend. this brings the count of free things we’ve gotten since we moved here to five — four scones and one table saw. actually, we got six things if you count the plate that the scones rode in on that we don’t plan on returning. that’ll teach them to give us anything.

the move went even better than i could have hoped, which is not something that gets said that often, i think. hiring movers was maybe the smartest thing i have ever done. and now we’re in the very small but very appropriately-sized cottage in a neighborhood i like much more than the old one.

to contrast the new neighborhood with the old:
new: our next door neighbor introduced herself and then came back the next morning with fresh-baked scones (mia says they were tasty).
old: the next door neighbors actually yelled at us on our moving-in day and then were dicks for the next 10 months until we left. i have never come so close to pooping onto the hood of someone’s car.

new: people here almost stumble over themselves for the chance to say hi.
old: i couldn’t get the next door neighbor on the other side to even make eye contact after four months of daily bus rides together.

oh, something else: i started sailing lessons tonight a few miles from the house down at my new favorite place in seattle: magnussen park. it’s huge and i had never been there before tonight and i suspect that this is where all the fun happens: motorcycle school, kayak rental, decrepit warehouses, wilderness classes, decommissioned navy brig, public sailing facilities, and noaa (the people who tell me about tides and ocean swells). and that’s only what i saw tonight. i think it’s going to be just fine.

we’re moving. again. it’s been almost ten months, so i guess that it’s time. with the situation here not being particularly good (whopping 17% rent increase, construction about to begin about 15′ from our bedroom, etc) and our friends vacating this pretty awesome 1920s sears cottage over near the university, it seemed like the right decision.

in the move, we’re losing a bunch of square footage of living space, but we’re gaining a full basement (i’m psyched to renew my love affair with a 10″ sliding compound miter saw), our own washer and dryer, a backyard, and no shared walls. oh, and it’s $350/month cheaper than our rent would be here, so we can continue to earn like tech workers but spend like grad students. if frugality was a crime, we’d be doing life. a life that looks a lot like our current lives, now that i think about it.

whenever my seemingly yearly move plans are mentioned to my parents, my mother sweetly (and i don’t think sarcastically) replies, “that’s why you’re in my address book in pencil!” so yeah. saturday. new neighborhood: ravenna.