A Brief Note On Houses And Homes

Astute readers of this blog might notice that I have been mostly absent of late.  Here’s the skinny: my wife has a new job in North Carolina and we’ve been preparing to leave Austin.  Or, rather, I have.  The rest of my family has already moved.

But that leaves our house in Austin to consider. and I hope that Austinites do consider it.  Make me an offer, people.

We lived in Austin for almost 10 years.  Our children were born there, and the bulk of our friends live there.  Moving away is not easy.  There is a lot about Austin that I love: besides the amazing people that it collects, there’s the Alamo Drafthouse, the Carousel Lounge, the Continental Club, Chango’s, The Tacocorrido, Stubb’s, The Dog And Duck (aka the Mallard And Mutt, the Quack and Woof, and so on, a place that I feel such affection for that I’ve nicknamed it over and over), Nomad, Waterloo, End of an Ear, and many other places of business that are undeniably awesome.

There’s some things that I dislike, too.  I feel that the arts scene is incredibly insular, for one.  And the way that the environment tricks my body into thinking that fresh air is poison with only a few allergens--well, I just hate that.

But I’m sad to be leaving, even as I’m happy to be returning to North Carolina. I’m proud that I could be an Austinite for a decade, ambivalent though I felt about it at times.  Someday soon I’ll no longer have a house there, but I’ll always think of it as a place that I could call home.