Good, so when you move to CT [as that is your best choice ;)] email me and I’ll show ya around! 
The island from Lost is not in it.
No more love for Philly other than this post?
I grew up in the suburbs, so I can speak more to that then living in the city itself. There are some extremely nice places to live within easy commuting distance to the city (lots of public transportation available), and you can choose between PA, southern New Jersey, and, if you really want to, Delaware.
The Pennsylvania areas are mostly wooded and somewhat hilly, with lots of small, old, towns alternating with medium-sized ones. You get all of the standard seasons, but south and south-west of the city you won’t get much snow at all. Most of my family live in or near Media or West Chester. South Jersey is flat and extremely rural, and is right across the bridge. Both areas are significantly cheaper to live in than northern New Jersey/New York/Conneticut.
You’re within easy day-trip distance to mountains (the Poconos), the shore, several major cities (including New York, Baltimore, and with a little planning Washington DC), and lots of tourist attractions like Lancaster and Atlantic City. (Oh, and Philadelphia itself has extremely nice museums.)
Interesting take, especially since Sacramento, CA is often said to have “Portland-envy.”
Just a comment about Portland and Seattle. Traffic in both places sucks giant donkey balls for a couple of reasons.
First off back in the day, the planners decided not to build adequate freeways, I guess hoping that people would not move to their corner of paradise.
People moved there anyway, and now traffic sucks.
In both cities, at one point I 5 (the main NS artery thru town is just 2 lanes! :rolleyes:
The second problem with the commute is geographical. In LA if a freeway gets blocked due to an accident, we can hop off and take a parallel surface street to get to where we are going. In Portland and Seattle that would require a boat. Between the lakes, rivers and what not, there are only so many bridges. If one of them gets clogged you are hosed.
PNW people don’t flame me, I love both of those cities, but you have to admit the traffic sucks.
I would love to live in Eugene if I could make a living there. It sits in a very pretty valley.
Baltimore doesn’t suck nearly as much as Jodi seems to think it does.
A socially liberal athiest couple would fit in quite well here. The crime rate and murder rate is almost exclusively confined within the known drug communities in West Baltimore. Our precinct reported zero murders in (IIRC) 2005 and 2006. We live in a close-in suburb because we have school-aged children and are not fans of the school system in the city of Baltimore, but if we didn’t have kids we’d live in the city in a heartbeat. I work in the City and Dave is all over the place for work (self-employed) and we like it just fine. There are all sorts of festivals going all summer long, and the weather isn’t cold in the winter time but the humidity in the summer kills me*. There is a thriving arts scene, farmer’s markets, and real communities here, a lot like in Chicago. Plus, the Chesapeake Bay!
*Take this with a grain of salt. I lived on the Prairies and in the Arctic my entire life -1 year before moving here, so I don’t like humidity; the cold here isn’t cold and won’t be cold to a Chicagoan either.
Now there is a glowing recommendation. I’m packing my bags.
No I agree–traffic sucks
That is why I commute via the ferry! I bypass it all. I have to catch the 6:10 ferry and am at work by 7:10 pretty much everyday–but I leave by 4:00 and get home by 6:00. Driving I could leave my house at 6:10 and get in by 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 11—all depends on the traffic.
Even in the city it sucks. I was in my old neighborhood in Seattle this last weekend and was amazed at the number of cars and the backups at the intersections. Makes sense though, all the empty parking lots in the area are now sporting new townhouses which all have cars which all clog the streets, etc.
I like Seattle, I like Portland and Eugene too. If I had my druthers I would probably pick Portland. I think it is a bit more progressive in terms of mass transit then Seattle tends to be. We still think the Monorail from the 1960 Worlds Fair is a viable mass transit concept for us!
But any of these cities are worth moving too–especially if you like the outdoors.
Well, I admit I haven’t been there for a while, and I also admit I was being rather flip in my original response. I am sort of tickled by the defense of Baltimore: Our murder rate is going down!, though.
I kid! I know parts of Balmer are perfectly lovely and I know many people from Balmer really love it.
I hereby retract my description, with my apologies.
Nah, the murder rate isn’t going down, although it should be. We’ve just emerged from 8 years under the leadership of the Teflon Leprechaun, and the crime situation worse now than when that do nothing moron started. Still, despite what the Daily Show might imply, most of the violence is restricted to some very poor, crime ridden neighborhoods. Avoid them and you’ll likely be fine.
The problem with California is that the nicest areas to live in tend to be prohibitively expensive (like the Bay Area and San Diego). A friend of mine used to live in Fresno and although it has access to some killer natural areas, like Yosemite and Sequoia Nat’l Parks, the city itself is marginally dull and composed heavily of generic sprawl (kinda like where I live, but Fresno is way bigger). Plus, the skies in the Central Valley always looked smoggy and nasty to me, unless the weather conditions were just right. I thought LA was one big train wreck, except maybe for Pasadena (again, big bucks to live in) and Long Beach.
My brother lives in Puerto Rico. I love it there, and pretty much everything from the variety of stores and goods to the infrastructure is basically like the States except that most of the signs are in Spanish. Most people speak decent English as well (it’s compulsory in the schools, IIRC), in case your Spanish isn’t quite up to snuff. The biggest hassle there is that getting proper medical attention can be a huge ordeal. There seem to be (and my bro confirms this) many more specialists than general practitioners, which isn’t real great if you don’t know what’s wrong with you.
Just got back from a trip to Williamsburg.
Flew into Richmond, and among my several rounds of golf I played with a couple from Richmond, a guy from Alexandria, and a retired guy and his son from Williamsburg. The first couple was biracial, and the guy from Alexandria a very liberal English ex-pat. Was able to get a bunch of info on the area. Very pretty area. I could imagine living there - at least for a couple of years. A tad warm and humid, tho…
The Richmond couple also spoke VERY highly of Charlotte NC, but I did not specify that as a preference.
OTOH - there has been absolutely zero movement concerning the job posting. No idea if I will hear anything one way or the other tomorrow or 2 years from now. So I’m not exactly collecting boxes quite yet.
Hmm. California, eh? Is that a state?
Well I guess I don’t have to worry about where I wanna move to. Just got an e-mail telling me I didn’t even make it past the first cut.
No problem that I have over 2 decades handling the exact same thing as in the job opening. Not just similar or analogous - THE SAME CRAP! (Literally, I review and defend the decisions, the position was to make the decisions). Hell, I’ve been given awards and bonuses for training people in the position I was applying for! But I don’t even merit a chance to interview for the damn position.
Oh well. I guess in some ways it is easier being bounced early, rather than being strung along for months/years. But what a fucked up system.
Another guy in my office made it to the next step. We’ve been buddies for 15 years, and reviewed each other’s applications. We both agreed that I had several things that presented better than him. And I can’t say my applic or his were clearly better written.
Objectively, on paper, there are very very few people who could appear more qualified for this job. I’m not saying it should have been hnaded to me on a silver platter, but I don’t even pass the first hurdle. What a pile of crap!
I guess it WAS just a crapshoot. Oh well, I bought my lottery ticket and didn’t win. No big deal.
Good thing I didn’t quit my day job!
I could bitch about this so much…but I’ll keep it to myself since I’m not comfy complaining about them on the internet. I am in the same boat you are-what pisses me off more is that they open jobs with a particular person in mind, then said person will back out, they close the job and then reopen it…and so on and so forth. My agency lost all their transactional attorneys in San Francisco but are still hemming and hawing about transfering me even though they have ONE untrained transactional lawyer there who is begging for help. I got 4 of their deals dumped on my desk today which means I’m going to start flying to SF to do their work…and live in L.A…
It mildly irritates me that my boyfriend hemmed and hawed about moving out to the West Coast and then piped up about moving to SF one freaking week after the SF job opening for transactional attys at that office closed-so now I’m obligated to ask for a transfer instead of putting in my bid.
At this point I think my only option will be to marry someone in NorCal and demand a hardship transfer…I’m only sort of kidding. Good thing there’s a lot of horny software dorks up there.
Sorry to hear about it anyway man…I know your wife isn’t big on the West Coast but my agency lost their chief counsel in Seattle to your agency so maybe you should put in a bid?? Best of luck.