We live in Maryland!
That's right, we moved to Maryland!
I'll back up. Josh first started applying to the Baltimore Police Department in August. Everything looked good, he found out he passed all of his tests and everything immediately after he finished taking them on the first trip in September. He had called the background investigator at least ten times over a couple of months, but she never called him back because she "didn't know" what he was calling for. She finally called him back after the academy started in November and told him he hadn't finished his testing, that he'd never gone to do his physical at the hospital. He had, in fact, done his physical; they just hadn't sent his results over (or the department lost them). So that got straightened out. His file got turned over to a different background investigator. He was nervous because everyone had been talking about a hiring freeze, and there had been been rumors that there wouldn't be any more academies starting after the one that had just started (the one he would have been in if everything had been done on time).
He got a call last Wednesday asking if he could come out there on Friday to do his final interview. He flew out on Thursday night and did his interview and paperwork on Friday. They told him that day that he was hired! They asked if he could be here by Wednesday to start everything. So we packed everything up. We did quick Christmases with our parents on Saturday evening, after working, and had a going away party at the B-A-R later that night. Our friends and coworkers at Big Fish got us a cake, balloons, and $100 Visa gift card, which was really nice and awesome of them. Sunday, we packed everything into the truck (with the help of our friends Eric and Dan) and saw the rest of our families. Some people gave us some money for gas and everything, and Josh's parents loaned us $1000. There's no way we would've been able to do this without everyone's help. We left at about 8:00pm Sunday and got here about 6:00am Monday.
Josh had met a guy during his final interviewing stage who had been a Baltimore cop for several years a while ago and was coming back and going through the academy again. He told Josh about the apartment complex he'd been living in and said there were several cops living there and that it was in a nice area and everything. And it just so happens that it's one of the only complexes in the area that allows large dogs. So we put a reserve on an apartment without even seeing it and moved in on Monday right after we got here and signed the paperwork.
It has been a whirlwind of a week, let me tell you. Everything happened so fast! But we're mostly moved in now. We just have some stuff to put away still.
The department said they'd start paying Josh to basically do bitchwork until the academy started. It was originally supposed to start on the 29th, but it's been pushed back to January 9th. For now, he's working in firearms, cleaning department-issue pistols and rifles with the guy who told him about the apartments, since they were the only two who have already been trained in that kind of stuff. They only hired 6 people early out of everyone going into the academy. I'm not sure if that means they like him, if it was random, or what. Either way, it's pretty sweet that he's getting his salary right now. He's working 7-3 for now. He got all of his uniform stuff today, which is really exciting. He got a ton of stuff! Six shirts, two pairs of pants, two duty belts, handcuffs, a regular hat, a winter hat, a briefcase, dress whites, a badge for his hat (he doesn't get the uniform one until after the academy), a riot helmet, a sweater, a coat, etc. It's really awesome to see all of these official uniform items with the Baltimore Police patches and everything on them. I haven't made him try stuff on for me yet, but trust me, it will happen. It's still almost kind of hard to believe that this is really happening! It's so exciting. Oh, but I have started calling him Officer Hubby, Officer Chapman, Officer Bubba, etc. I'm a huge nerd, I know.
Our apartment is small, but nice. It's just a one bedroom, but it's pretty big for a one bedroom. We have an okay-sized kitchen, a little dining area, a pretty big living room, a pretty small bathroom, and a big bedroom. Our room has a decent-sized closet, plus a walk-in. The regular one is just storage. There's also a good-sized linen closet with lots of shelves and a big coat closet, plus every apartment gets its own small storage area in the laundry room. We have more stuff than should be put into a one bedroom apartment. I mean, we have enough stuff to fill a three bedroom house. In the living room, we have a couch, a futon, an entertainment center, three end tables, a small bookshelf, a lamp, and a little table Josh made. In the dining area, we have our table and three chairs in one corner (it's an octagonal table), a big desk, our filing cabinet, and a reading chair. That room is pretty cramped. The bedroom has our bed, two "nightstands" (mini fridges), a love seat, a dresser, and Penda's crate, and there's still substantial room for the girls to play on the floor. We're half underground, so when you come in the front door of the building, you have to go down seven stairs to get to our door. But in the back, the ground outside slopes down, so we have a back door where we can take the girls out to go potty. It does suck having to take them out on leashes, though. They like to run off and do their own thing for a while before they go to the bathroom, so they're still getting used to it. They aren't getting as much exercise as I'd like right now, but we'll get in the hang of really walking them a lot a few times a day. We got spoiled having a backyard. There is also a fenced-in area for dogs somewhere on the property, but we haven't checked it out yet. The back of our apartment faces a semi-major road, and right across the street is a medium-sized shopping center. It has a Target, Michaels, Wal-Mart, Sports Authority, Panera, SuperFresh (grocery store), Einstein Bagels, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a few other things I can't remember. It's nice to have stuff so close by, especially with only having one car. That way, if Josh is at work and I need something from the store, I can just step out the back door and go across the street. And dude, we went into Wal-Mart today, and it has not only two floors, but cart escalators! I don't know if you've seen them before, but they're so cool! You just push your cart into it and it holds it steady and straight and takes it up with you. It also makes the carts go slightly slower than the people so that your cart doesn't get pushed out into the store before you can get to it. I know, that's a really dumb thing to get excited about, but it's pretty cool.
Anyway, we live in a city called Towson. It has a little over 50,000 people and is the county seat of Baltimore County (Baltimore City is not in a county). It's an unincorporated community, AKA a census-designated place. Actually, all the cities surrounding Baltimore are CDPs. Weird, huh? It's a pretty middle-class place; not a Troy, but it's above a Taylor or Hazel Park. I'd say Towson is pretty comparable to a Royal Oak without the stupidly-expensive lofts. I guess people around here like sending their kids to private schools; Towson has three public high schools (including one arts and technology magnet), but five private high schools. I dunno, maybe that's not very much, I guess I haven't ever looked at the public-to-private school ratios anywhere else. Notable past and present residents of Towson: Spiro Agnew, Carmelo Anthony (NBA), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Phelps, Johnny Unitas (NFL)... oh, and the character Elaine from Seinfeld was supposed to be from Towson. I know, that's really important information for you, right? It's probably about a 15-20 minute drive to downtown, give or take depending on traffic. And man, the traffic here is just as bad as in Detroit. The freeways are set up pretty nicely, though. There's one that goes right into downtown, but there's also one that goes around the city so that if you're just trying to get across it and not actually into downtown, you can do so without dealing with all of the downtown traffic. I'd say we're about 10 minutes or less from four different freeways, which makes getting around pretty easy. We're about three minutes from the Towson Town Center, which is the second-largest indoor mall in Maryland. It has pretty much the same kind of stores as you'd find at Somerset. I haven't had time to go yet, but I might hop on the bus and check it out tomorrow while Josh is at work. There's actually a nice public transportation system set up here, too. There's a ton of buses (there's even a bus stop literally right out my back door), the Metro Subway, the Light Rail (that's probably the biggest PT system in the area - above and under ground trains), MARC train (that's more of the traveling, longer-distance train, not really an everyday, get-to-work thing), etc. And everything connects to everything else. From the bus stop behind my apartment, I can get to most of the other bus routes, the Metro, and the Light Rail without having to do any extra walking, so I can get pretty much anywhere in the metro-Baltimore area without a car. I'm really excited to have real, working, reliable public transportation near me. Anyway, it seems like a really cool area.
You know what's weird? A lot of people here seem to have like... a hint of a southern accent. I don't get it. This is Maryland! I just didn't expect that. The weather here is pretty nice, too; I looked up the averages for the different seasons compared to Detroit, and everything's a little warmer. It's about 5 degrees hotter in the warmer months and about 8 or 9 degrees warmer in the cooler months. I'm happy about that except that they don't usually have snow on Christmas. We haven't had any since we got here and most likely won't have any by Thursday. Well, gotta make sacrifices I guess. Oh, it rains a little more here too. It's rained every day since we got here, but it's not always like that. I think it said Detroit gets about 32 inches a year and Baltimore gets 40. That's cool, I don't mind rain as long as it's not ALL the time.
Anyway. Baltimore itself is really awesome too. I mean, the nice parts. There's an area downtown called the Inner Harbor which has a lot of cool restaurants, bars, shops, galleries, museums, etc. There's a huge ass aquarium down there (National Aquarium in Baltimore, not to be confused with the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C.) that I'm dying to go to; it's been named the best aquarium in the country by lots of magazines and things. I also might be able to get a job there - my cousin Julie's best friend lives near here and knows some higher-up there (a good friend or cousin or something) who might be able to hook me up. It might just be in the gift shop or cleaning or something, but whatever, that'd be awesome. Anyway, Inner Harbor. There's just tons of stuff down there; Fort McHenry, Maryland Science Center, historical buildings, Camden Yards, even an amphitheater. It's a really cool place to just walk around a people-watch. Baltimore is just a cool city. Plus, DC is maybe 45 minutes away, less by train. I really liked it the one night we stopped by on our first visit out here. The buildings were really cool and the monuments were great to see. I'm really excited to get to go to all of the Smithsonian museums (which are all free, in case you didn't know), especially the African Art Museum, American Art Museum, and National Museum of Natural History. Um, not to mention the National Zoo! An awesome, free zoo. Amazing. It's really nice to know that as long as I have enough money for a train ride, I have pretty much an entire day's worth of stuff to do.
It was really hard to say goodbye to everybody, though. My entire mom's side of the family except my brother are all in metro Detroit, and I'll miss them a lot. I mean, yeah, I get sick of my family's meddling and other stuff just like everyone else does with their own families, but I love them all to death and I'm sad that I can't go see them whenever I want, and that I'll miss the family birthday celebrations, holidays, etc. I'm especially sad about my little cousins, Casey and James, who are 10 and 8, respectively. I love those kids so much and I want to see them grow up into teenagers and adults. Everyone else I can talk to on the phone and it'll be okay, but it's different with the kids. You can't really talk to kids on the phone like you can with adults. And I feel incredibly guilty about leaving my mom by herself. I mean, I know she's an adult and everything, but still. Ian left, and now I'm gone, and it's just her and Tober in that four-bedroom house. She has Russ, but he still technically lives in Florida and travels for work about 75% of the time. She has her sisters and the rest of the family, too, but it's not the same. She lost it when we left Sunday night. She just needs to get through the next two years of work so she can retire, move in with Russ in Florida (and he can get a no-travel job) and do some substitute teaching or something part-time. That's the point at which I'll stop worrying about her. And man, I was really starting to get close to Josh's mom, too, which really sucks. We really started to bond a lot. His dad was finally being really awesome with me, too, and his sister Jacqui and I were starting to be really cool with each other. I'm sad that we're going to miss our little niece Lilley growing up too (she's the kid of Josh's brother and sister-in-law, just born November 20th). But, ya know, I guess everything will be okay. We'll visit as much as possible, and I really hope everyone can come to visit us. Saying bye to friends was pretty hard too. To be quite honest, the number of friends I have has really dwindled in the past few years. At this point, I really only have a handful of friends I'll really stay in close contact with. I'm okay with that, though. I'll keep up with the people who really mean a lot to me, and I'll make new friends out here as a part of this whole new-start, new-life thing. I'm really excited to be one of the cop wives, too. I'm not sure if you know or not, but man, cops have their own little world. It's like pretty much everyone in the precinct and their significant others are their own family together, and cop wives kind of have, like, their own subculture, haha. I guess you have to - having a husband who is a cop, especially in a bigger, more dangerous city, is something where you really need friends who understand what it's like. It's a lot of worries, problems, and other issues that you only find in this one situation. I know it's the same kind of thing with firefighters and military people, etc. But I'm really looking forward to being a part of something like that, really happy to start to have a camaraderie with these people.
Speaking of visiting (well, several sentences ago), come visit us. Like I said, we have a couch, a futon, and a loveseat, plus lots of floor space. We would LOVE to have visitors! We did get lucky to know some people out here (Josh's uncles and their daughter, and his college buddy who got hired in the last round before Josh), but we want to see everyone and show off our new place and our new life! I know we'll be home sometimes, but to be quite honest, most of our time will probably be taken up by family stuff. And when we do have time to come home, it'll most likely be kind of around holidays, so YOU will probably be busy too. PLUS, we won't have any real vacation time until 2010 when you think about it, because pretty much all of Josh's vacation days for 2009 will be taken up for our wedding & honeymoon. So basically, come out to Maryland. We'll put you up, feed you, and entertain you. There's lots to do - the mall here, restaurants and bars and sports games downtown, all the museums and monuments and the zoo and stuff in DC... you get the idea. Just tell us when. =)
Well, that was WAY longer than I expected it to be, but I'm just very happy. I'm so glad Josh is finally about to do what he's been wanting so bad for so long, and I'm just ecstatic to be really on our own, doing our own thing, and doing it together. Serious kudos to you if you actually read all of this! I really need to go to bed now... my sleep schedule has been all out of whack since we got here. Goodnight!
I'll back up. Josh first started applying to the Baltimore Police Department in August. Everything looked good, he found out he passed all of his tests and everything immediately after he finished taking them on the first trip in September. He had called the background investigator at least ten times over a couple of months, but she never called him back because she "didn't know" what he was calling for. She finally called him back after the academy started in November and told him he hadn't finished his testing, that he'd never gone to do his physical at the hospital. He had, in fact, done his physical; they just hadn't sent his results over (or the department lost them). So that got straightened out. His file got turned over to a different background investigator. He was nervous because everyone had been talking about a hiring freeze, and there had been been rumors that there wouldn't be any more academies starting after the one that had just started (the one he would have been in if everything had been done on time).
He got a call last Wednesday asking if he could come out there on Friday to do his final interview. He flew out on Thursday night and did his interview and paperwork on Friday. They told him that day that he was hired! They asked if he could be here by Wednesday to start everything. So we packed everything up. We did quick Christmases with our parents on Saturday evening, after working, and had a going away party at the B-A-R later that night. Our friends and coworkers at Big Fish got us a cake, balloons, and $100 Visa gift card, which was really nice and awesome of them. Sunday, we packed everything into the truck (with the help of our friends Eric and Dan) and saw the rest of our families. Some people gave us some money for gas and everything, and Josh's parents loaned us $1000. There's no way we would've been able to do this without everyone's help. We left at about 8:00pm Sunday and got here about 6:00am Monday.
Josh had met a guy during his final interviewing stage who had been a Baltimore cop for several years a while ago and was coming back and going through the academy again. He told Josh about the apartment complex he'd been living in and said there were several cops living there and that it was in a nice area and everything. And it just so happens that it's one of the only complexes in the area that allows large dogs. So we put a reserve on an apartment without even seeing it and moved in on Monday right after we got here and signed the paperwork.
It has been a whirlwind of a week, let me tell you. Everything happened so fast! But we're mostly moved in now. We just have some stuff to put away still.
The department said they'd start paying Josh to basically do bitchwork until the academy started. It was originally supposed to start on the 29th, but it's been pushed back to January 9th. For now, he's working in firearms, cleaning department-issue pistols and rifles with the guy who told him about the apartments, since they were the only two who have already been trained in that kind of stuff. They only hired 6 people early out of everyone going into the academy. I'm not sure if that means they like him, if it was random, or what. Either way, it's pretty sweet that he's getting his salary right now. He's working 7-3 for now. He got all of his uniform stuff today, which is really exciting. He got a ton of stuff! Six shirts, two pairs of pants, two duty belts, handcuffs, a regular hat, a winter hat, a briefcase, dress whites, a badge for his hat (he doesn't get the uniform one until after the academy), a riot helmet, a sweater, a coat, etc. It's really awesome to see all of these official uniform items with the Baltimore Police patches and everything on them. I haven't made him try stuff on for me yet, but trust me, it will happen. It's still almost kind of hard to believe that this is really happening! It's so exciting. Oh, but I have started calling him Officer Hubby, Officer Chapman, Officer Bubba, etc. I'm a huge nerd, I know.
Our apartment is small, but nice. It's just a one bedroom, but it's pretty big for a one bedroom. We have an okay-sized kitchen, a little dining area, a pretty big living room, a pretty small bathroom, and a big bedroom. Our room has a decent-sized closet, plus a walk-in. The regular one is just storage. There's also a good-sized linen closet with lots of shelves and a big coat closet, plus every apartment gets its own small storage area in the laundry room. We have more stuff than should be put into a one bedroom apartment. I mean, we have enough stuff to fill a three bedroom house. In the living room, we have a couch, a futon, an entertainment center, three end tables, a small bookshelf, a lamp, and a little table Josh made. In the dining area, we have our table and three chairs in one corner (it's an octagonal table), a big desk, our filing cabinet, and a reading chair. That room is pretty cramped. The bedroom has our bed, two "nightstands" (mini fridges), a love seat, a dresser, and Penda's crate, and there's still substantial room for the girls to play on the floor. We're half underground, so when you come in the front door of the building, you have to go down seven stairs to get to our door. But in the back, the ground outside slopes down, so we have a back door where we can take the girls out to go potty. It does suck having to take them out on leashes, though. They like to run off and do their own thing for a while before they go to the bathroom, so they're still getting used to it. They aren't getting as much exercise as I'd like right now, but we'll get in the hang of really walking them a lot a few times a day. We got spoiled having a backyard. There is also a fenced-in area for dogs somewhere on the property, but we haven't checked it out yet. The back of our apartment faces a semi-major road, and right across the street is a medium-sized shopping center. It has a Target, Michaels, Wal-Mart, Sports Authority, Panera, SuperFresh (grocery store), Einstein Bagels, Bed Bath & Beyond, and a few other things I can't remember. It's nice to have stuff so close by, especially with only having one car. That way, if Josh is at work and I need something from the store, I can just step out the back door and go across the street. And dude, we went into Wal-Mart today, and it has not only two floors, but cart escalators! I don't know if you've seen them before, but they're so cool! You just push your cart into it and it holds it steady and straight and takes it up with you. It also makes the carts go slightly slower than the people so that your cart doesn't get pushed out into the store before you can get to it. I know, that's a really dumb thing to get excited about, but it's pretty cool.
Anyway, we live in a city called Towson. It has a little over 50,000 people and is the county seat of Baltimore County (Baltimore City is not in a county). It's an unincorporated community, AKA a census-designated place. Actually, all the cities surrounding Baltimore are CDPs. Weird, huh? It's a pretty middle-class place; not a Troy, but it's above a Taylor or Hazel Park. I'd say Towson is pretty comparable to a Royal Oak without the stupidly-expensive lofts. I guess people around here like sending their kids to private schools; Towson has three public high schools (including one arts and technology magnet), but five private high schools. I dunno, maybe that's not very much, I guess I haven't ever looked at the public-to-private school ratios anywhere else. Notable past and present residents of Towson: Spiro Agnew, Carmelo Anthony (NBA), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Phelps, Johnny Unitas (NFL)... oh, and the character Elaine from Seinfeld was supposed to be from Towson. I know, that's really important information for you, right? It's probably about a 15-20 minute drive to downtown, give or take depending on traffic. And man, the traffic here is just as bad as in Detroit. The freeways are set up pretty nicely, though. There's one that goes right into downtown, but there's also one that goes around the city so that if you're just trying to get across it and not actually into downtown, you can do so without dealing with all of the downtown traffic. I'd say we're about 10 minutes or less from four different freeways, which makes getting around pretty easy. We're about three minutes from the Towson Town Center, which is the second-largest indoor mall in Maryland. It has pretty much the same kind of stores as you'd find at Somerset. I haven't had time to go yet, but I might hop on the bus and check it out tomorrow while Josh is at work. There's actually a nice public transportation system set up here, too. There's a ton of buses (there's even a bus stop literally right out my back door), the Metro Subway, the Light Rail (that's probably the biggest PT system in the area - above and under ground trains), MARC train (that's more of the traveling, longer-distance train, not really an everyday, get-to-work thing), etc. And everything connects to everything else. From the bus stop behind my apartment, I can get to most of the other bus routes, the Metro, and the Light Rail without having to do any extra walking, so I can get pretty much anywhere in the metro-Baltimore area without a car. I'm really excited to have real, working, reliable public transportation near me. Anyway, it seems like a really cool area.
You know what's weird? A lot of people here seem to have like... a hint of a southern accent. I don't get it. This is Maryland! I just didn't expect that. The weather here is pretty nice, too; I looked up the averages for the different seasons compared to Detroit, and everything's a little warmer. It's about 5 degrees hotter in the warmer months and about 8 or 9 degrees warmer in the cooler months. I'm happy about that except that they don't usually have snow on Christmas. We haven't had any since we got here and most likely won't have any by Thursday. Well, gotta make sacrifices I guess. Oh, it rains a little more here too. It's rained every day since we got here, but it's not always like that. I think it said Detroit gets about 32 inches a year and Baltimore gets 40. That's cool, I don't mind rain as long as it's not ALL the time.
Anyway. Baltimore itself is really awesome too. I mean, the nice parts. There's an area downtown called the Inner Harbor which has a lot of cool restaurants, bars, shops, galleries, museums, etc. There's a huge ass aquarium down there (National Aquarium in Baltimore, not to be confused with the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C.) that I'm dying to go to; it's been named the best aquarium in the country by lots of magazines and things. I also might be able to get a job there - my cousin Julie's best friend lives near here and knows some higher-up there (a good friend or cousin or something) who might be able to hook me up. It might just be in the gift shop or cleaning or something, but whatever, that'd be awesome. Anyway, Inner Harbor. There's just tons of stuff down there; Fort McHenry, Maryland Science Center, historical buildings, Camden Yards, even an amphitheater. It's a really cool place to just walk around a people-watch. Baltimore is just a cool city. Plus, DC is maybe 45 minutes away, less by train. I really liked it the one night we stopped by on our first visit out here. The buildings were really cool and the monuments were great to see. I'm really excited to get to go to all of the Smithsonian museums (which are all free, in case you didn't know), especially the African Art Museum, American Art Museum, and National Museum of Natural History. Um, not to mention the National Zoo! An awesome, free zoo. Amazing. It's really nice to know that as long as I have enough money for a train ride, I have pretty much an entire day's worth of stuff to do.
It was really hard to say goodbye to everybody, though. My entire mom's side of the family except my brother are all in metro Detroit, and I'll miss them a lot. I mean, yeah, I get sick of my family's meddling and other stuff just like everyone else does with their own families, but I love them all to death and I'm sad that I can't go see them whenever I want, and that I'll miss the family birthday celebrations, holidays, etc. I'm especially sad about my little cousins, Casey and James, who are 10 and 8, respectively. I love those kids so much and I want to see them grow up into teenagers and adults. Everyone else I can talk to on the phone and it'll be okay, but it's different with the kids. You can't really talk to kids on the phone like you can with adults. And I feel incredibly guilty about leaving my mom by herself. I mean, I know she's an adult and everything, but still. Ian left, and now I'm gone, and it's just her and Tober in that four-bedroom house. She has Russ, but he still technically lives in Florida and travels for work about 75% of the time. She has her sisters and the rest of the family, too, but it's not the same. She lost it when we left Sunday night. She just needs to get through the next two years of work so she can retire, move in with Russ in Florida (and he can get a no-travel job) and do some substitute teaching or something part-time. That's the point at which I'll stop worrying about her. And man, I was really starting to get close to Josh's mom, too, which really sucks. We really started to bond a lot. His dad was finally being really awesome with me, too, and his sister Jacqui and I were starting to be really cool with each other. I'm sad that we're going to miss our little niece Lilley growing up too (she's the kid of Josh's brother and sister-in-law, just born November 20th). But, ya know, I guess everything will be okay. We'll visit as much as possible, and I really hope everyone can come to visit us. Saying bye to friends was pretty hard too. To be quite honest, the number of friends I have has really dwindled in the past few years. At this point, I really only have a handful of friends I'll really stay in close contact with. I'm okay with that, though. I'll keep up with the people who really mean a lot to me, and I'll make new friends out here as a part of this whole new-start, new-life thing. I'm really excited to be one of the cop wives, too. I'm not sure if you know or not, but man, cops have their own little world. It's like pretty much everyone in the precinct and their significant others are their own family together, and cop wives kind of have, like, their own subculture, haha. I guess you have to - having a husband who is a cop, especially in a bigger, more dangerous city, is something where you really need friends who understand what it's like. It's a lot of worries, problems, and other issues that you only find in this one situation. I know it's the same kind of thing with firefighters and military people, etc. But I'm really looking forward to being a part of something like that, really happy to start to have a camaraderie with these people.
Speaking of visiting (well, several sentences ago), come visit us. Like I said, we have a couch, a futon, and a loveseat, plus lots of floor space. We would LOVE to have visitors! We did get lucky to know some people out here (Josh's uncles and their daughter, and his college buddy who got hired in the last round before Josh), but we want to see everyone and show off our new place and our new life! I know we'll be home sometimes, but to be quite honest, most of our time will probably be taken up by family stuff. And when we do have time to come home, it'll most likely be kind of around holidays, so YOU will probably be busy too. PLUS, we won't have any real vacation time until 2010 when you think about it, because pretty much all of Josh's vacation days for 2009 will be taken up for our wedding & honeymoon. So basically, come out to Maryland. We'll put you up, feed you, and entertain you. There's lots to do - the mall here, restaurants and bars and sports games downtown, all the museums and monuments and the zoo and stuff in DC... you get the idea. Just tell us when. =)
Well, that was WAY longer than I expected it to be, but I'm just very happy. I'm so glad Josh is finally about to do what he's been wanting so bad for so long, and I'm just ecstatic to be really on our own, doing our own thing, and doing it together. Serious kudos to you if you actually read all of this! I really need to go to bed now... my sleep schedule has been all out of whack since we got here. Goodnight!