A New Beginning

It's official. We're moving to Chicago.

They sent us the lease to our new place this week, and our apartment is already starting to fill with boxes.

Before Cary Anne and I got married, we were already planning on heading to Chicago. For me, Chicago's appeal lies in the fact that it's basically the Mecca for studying comedy in the United States, with training centers like Second City and Improv Olympic. Cary Anne is excited because she hopes to put her Theatre degree to good use, and because she'll be able to ride public transportation all the time. (That's right, a good public transportation is seriously one of her requirements for where we live. She's saving the Earth one Metro ride at a time.)

We currently live in Lexington, KY, in the apartment we moved into right after we got married last year. We thought saving up for Chicago would take us at least a year and a half, but over the past year we've been pretty frugal, so we've been able to raise enough funds in just twelve months. Though our financial situation is hardly stable since we're moving to Chi-town on faith, because neither one of us has secured a job there. (I can hear your "Really? You're doing that in this economy?" from here.)

Much like with our current place, I was put in charge finding us an apartment. Last week, I spent four days in the city getting lost, looking at places, catching up with a couple old friends (neither of which I'd seen in roughly 5 years), seeing lots of improv shows, and crashing at a local hostel. Luckily, I was able to find us a "spacious" (note the quotations) studio in the northern part of the city. Sadly, "spacious" for us means moving to an apartment about half the size of our place now. We've already started selling off some of our furniture on Craigslist. (Anybody need a sofa?) While I'm sad to see some of the stuff go, I'm reminded of the lyrics from one of my favorite Death Cab for Cutie songs: "Flames and smoke climbed out of every window / and disappeared with everything that you held dear / but you shed not a single tear for the things that you didn't need / 'cause you knew you were finally free."


Since we're now moving away from many of our close family and friends, we figured starting a blog would be a good way to keep everyone up to date with what's going on in our lives as well as record our family history. When our friend Chris heard we were moving to Chicago and starting a blog, he exclaimed "You can call it 'Chi-blog-o'!" So maybe our name isn't quite as catchy, but we hope you'll keep reading.