Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A Nation of Movers

Nobody moves as often as Americans. Perhaps its genetic. Most of us descended from people willing (or maybe not so willing) to make that big leap and cross the over the ocean while others stayed put. According to a recent WSJ article, we move once every 5 years. By contrast, Italians live in their parents' home until they marry (late) and then move just down the street. With the job market such as it is, moving will become even a bigger part of our culture.

The higher our education level, the more likely we are to move out of state. Minimum wage jobs rarely pay relocation (even professional jobs are cutting back on this). 45% of people with college degrees leave the state they were born in vs 17% with no college. Of Josh's friends, the number probably is closer to 80%. Both Steve and I were born in NY (different parts) and moved to MI before we were 30. My brother's path: NY-MI-KS-NY-NC-MI-CA-MA-NJ-CA. Maybe with a PhD, one moves more.

One of my amusements is searching for potential homes for the movers. I love looking at houses. When my friend was a real estate agent, I would go to her open houses just to look. Shanna's family had several potential places that they might have moved to over the last 6 months. I amused myself  exploring potential houses on the internet. Now that she is here and I know the area, I can even have more fun. Not too far from here, I found a very cute, affordable house that I thought everyone would love. Alas, Steve and I drove by it yesterday and it was sold.

I decided to do my double workout yesterday on the day we had record highs. And to make things even more uncomfortable, we had high humidity. The afternoon was spent in my lower level chilling with my phone and junk TV.

Back in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, Josh battled hypothermia. He and his buddies took a 5 day canoe trip in the wilderness. Unfortunately, a lot of it was during torrential rains and thunderstorms. Especially scary was lightning hitting the open water they were in the middle of. The canoes were these expensive high carbon fiber ones so it wasn't as dangerous as being in an aluminum one. They had to catch their own protein, an especially large pike fed them for 2 meals. They didn't see any large mammals but saw plenty of bald eagles and loons. I picked him up at the airport last night. He was not amused to find out we were unsuccessful in having his car fixed. I can't fix everything of my children's but some how I am the one left with a car whose window won't shut.

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