I’m on my way to New Orleans for the last (planned) time. After this, I’ll be moving to MN, and my scheduled trips to NOLA will come to an end.
I’m preparing to soak it up as much as I can over the next week. I’ll try not to gain too much weight in the process!
We have found a house, and will be moving to Saint Paul, MN in about a month.
I’m hovering between excitement and panic.
We are trying to find a place to live in St.Paul, while living in New Orleans and Baltimore. This Friday we will actually be going to St.Paul to look at places, but we need to have a good list of places to look at when we arrive. To that end, we’ve been using some online services, combined with a realtor.
The advent and recent expansion of Google StreetView has changed this process dramatically. Whereas before we were limited to seeing street layout and satellite images in Google Maps with Housing Maps (a mashup with CraigsList), it is now possible to take an address from an ad and go for a virtual stroll through the neighborhood.
It’s a lot easer to get a feel for a neighborhood by looking at storefronts, cars, intersections, parks, and yes, even people out and about, than it is to do so by map or satellite. Some people are up in arms about StreetView, and not without good reason, but the benefits are pretty tantalizing. People are antsy about being caught on camera, but I’ve only seen 10 or so people using the service. Most of the time residential streets are empty during the day — everyone’s at work and school. The people that I have seen are generally just walking down the street or riding bicycles. However, I did see some people with police cars parked out front of their house, apparently discussing something with officers and several family members. I couldn’t tell if it was a burglary report, a domestic violence complaint, or murder investigation, but those people probably didn’t want the whole world watching.
Have you used StreetView?
I have just returned from my second-to-last visit to New Orleans to see Amanda. Soon, we’ll be living in the same place and those trips will no longer be necessary. Despite all of the hassles of flying, despite missing Amanda, the one benefit of living apart has been an excuse to go see New Orleans regularly even after I’d moved away.
In two months, I’ll visit for one last week, and then the trips will largely stop.
We hope to move back there when Amanda is done with residency, if we can swing it. There will probably be some visits for holidays, as my family’s home is still just outside the city. Nonetheless, it’s slowly dawning on me that my monthly, re-charging dose of New Orleans is coming to an end.
At this point, the legacy of Katrina in my life is diminishing. Assuming that all continues to go well, I’ll be graduating from Johns Hopkins rather than Tulane. All sorts of other things both in my head and in my life have changed as a result of the flood. However, I will once again be living with my wife, we’ll go on with our post-school and post-New-Orleans lives. I’ll finally start to get some closure on something that can never really be fixed or undone.
Amanda got her 1st choice for Residency Programs. We are going to United in St. Paul, Minnesota.
ADDENDUM: Here’s a video of Amanda getting her envelope and opening it.