Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never been to Ireland, but the past two times I’ve visited northern California in the early spring I’ve been amazed by how much it looked like (my completely uninformed) vision of what the coast of Ireland must look like, with rocky cliffs and magnificent greens. Then, when I posted this picture on Instagram, an Irish follower thought I might even be in Ireland! (Now I really want to visit!) Here’s a rainbow from last year’s drive up the Pacific Coast Highway:
Meg and I almost died laughing when we saw this one:
My buddy Tim just posted about the cartoon genius that is Bruce Eric Kaplan.
I don’t know if I’ve made this clear in other posts, but Meg and I are absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt moving to Austin, Texas around the beginning of August. Meg will be attending the University of Texas to get her Master of Science in Sustainable Design, and I will be working full-time (yikes!) somewhere to support us.
What we are excited about:
What we are NOT excited about:
As our move approaches, I’ve been thinking more an more about quality of life — how easy we have it here in Cleveland, and how we might make it even better in Texas. For us, anxiety is usually only the product of Unknown Factors, and our Unknown Factors are big ones: Where To Live and Where to Work.
There was a New Yorker article on commuting a week or so ago (it coincidentally had a cool illustration of Glenn Ganges in traffic by Kevin Huizenga) that had a very practical way of looking at the Where To Live, Where To Work question:
Putnam likes to imagine that there is a triangle, its points comprising where you sleep, where you work, and where you shop. In a canonical English village, or in a university town, the sides of that triangle are very short: a five-minute walk from one point to the next. In many American cities, you can spend an hour or two travelling each side. “You live in Pasadena, work in North Hollywood, shop in the Valley,” Putnam said. “Where is your community?” The smaller the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there is social interaction to be had. In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul.
Our triangle here in Cleveland is pretty small: we can’t walk to work, but we can and do walk to the grocery store, to the Chipotle, to the book store. I’m hoping we can find a similar situation in Austin.
As for the job search, I have this Bruce Eric Kaplan cartoon posted to the fridge:
If you are an employer — or if you know of an employer — in Austin who is looking for a writer/designer with plenty o’ computer, web design, and customer service experience…please contact me!
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