Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A Good Plan B


To say that I've been busy lately would be an understatement. I know I'm not busy the way you're busy, but I'm plenty busy. That is of course my reason (not excuse) for not posting this week until today.

It looks like we'll be moving. We've been living in the same place for nearly 6 yrs and have grown very accustomed to a cozy life. The kids fall out of bed a couple of minutes before class and roll into school without breaking a sweat. Sweet. Fukui-san can come home several times a day just to get on mine and Angie's nerves. Fantastic. Angie can throw a stone from our veranda and hit her university professor on the head. Nice.

We've gotten used to a very comfortable style of living, not extravagant mind you, and not with a lot of physical things, but with convenience. A DVD club right in front of our house, supermarket, mall, restaurants, bars, hoodlums, loud rowdy crowds, blaring music of all kinds (mostly bad), banks, wow - we really have everything at the tips of our long-overdue-for-a-manicure fingers.

If I were to write down all the things I like about where we live the list could go on and on, so I won't. But the truth is that we have been blessed with 6 yrs of perfect location living, but that phase of our lives ends now and we begin a new one.

The reason we're moving is simple, money. We can save a significant amount of money off our rent, plus gain one extra room simply by moving to another condominium 10 minutes away. We will still have many things nearby so that should make the transition period easier. For example, there is a mall. It's not a nice mall by any standard, but it's a mall nontheless and perhaps I can find a salon there and finally get that manicure I've been needing. There's a supermarket. Not a nice supermarket no matter how you wish to describe it, but a supermarket it is. There are no bars and hang out areas nearby (not such a bad thing considering the noise), but I did see some guys sitting by the side of the road sipping bears after their long work day, so, I guess if we really want we could always join them.

In the end, the place we're getting is good, clean, safe, considerably cheaper, and will do very nicely. I've got a good feeling about this decision to move, change, go somewhere else and make it work there. This is not a step backward, I really believe this is a solid step in the right direction for a better life for our (we wish it were) little family.

As James Yorke once said, "The most successful people are those who are good at plan B".



That was Tracy Chapman singing Bob Dylan's The Times They are a-Changin'. Which version do you like better?

1 comment:

angie said...

Yes, I'm sad that I'll now have to slog through a half-mile of deserted streets coming back from class every night, but saving money is the heavy weight on the scale EVERY time... and I agree this is a step forward for us and we will be better off all around for it :)