Home Sweet Home (Plus Tax)

---

I feel it’s necessary to write a short blog explaining that we’re no longer living in Heidelberg, Germany and are now residing in Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. Well… now that that’s all cleared up, I guess I can start writing blogs about our adventures in and around Maryland. Let's start now:

We moved to Maryland in the middle of June and we instantly had to readjust. Not only have we been living in Europe for awhile, but we’ve also never lived in the Northeast, so things were weird all around. Many things were different. I can’t tell you how many times I was surprised, while sitting at a stoplight, when the light went from red to green without first turning yellow. And I had to keep reminding a certain somebody that it was okay to turn right on red in this country. It was unnerving to be in public and hear everyone (well, almost everyone) speaking English all the time, everywhere we went. And we spent FAR too much money at all the restaurants we’d desperately missed. Plus we went to see a ton of movies at the Muvico in the wonderful outlet mall up the road. It was exciting to attend a real movie theater again that actually showed all the new movies out there, and in English, too. It was exciting to shop in a real mall. And to pay for things in American dollars, even though many, many unexpected moving expenses meant we had less of those to spend.

We’ve been into DC a few times now, and DC will show itself in my blogs here and there. The traffic is crazy, the parking is impossible, but there’s a lot of great stuff to see. We ventured downtown to witness the fireworks over the capital on the Fourth of July. It was a swelteringly hot day, highlighted by thick crowds and an underwhelming pyrotechnic display over the Washington Monument, and the day was probably only saved because our new friends had some good wine at the BBQ and we ended the night with pitchers of beer in the basement of a pub on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It has been nice to do some fishing, and I know my husband has really enjoyed that. I’ve included some photos from two different fishing events that we’ve participated in during the first few months in our new home town. One at the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and one at Lake Anna in Virginia, two very different days but both with (mostly) beautiful weather in gorgeous locations, although the larger fish continue to elude me. Luckily it’s not about the fish.

As nice as it sometimes seems, I can’t say Maryland is somewhere I’d choose to live for an extended time. It’s pretty, but it’s not worth the expensive. One woman I met had a theory that people only live in this area because they haven’t figured out that it’s cheaper everywhere else. For the time being, we plan to take advantage of the location for the purpose of sight-seeing. Might as well get something positive out of this experience, which has been nothing but an overwhelming, unending headache.

---

Photos

Our New Home
Our townhome. HUGE improvement over the last place.

Fourth of July
In front of the White House, while in DC to see the fireworks. Oh, and that IS his smile.

Fourth of July
Awwww.... :)
In front of the Capitol Building, after the fireworks.

Chesapeake Bay
Took this Maryland fishing trip August 9th. (The panorama photo across the top of this page was also taken here).

Bass Pro Fishing on Lake Anna
This Bass Pro Fishing event on Lake Anna in Virginia was on September 27th. The leaves were starting to change, which was exciting to this Floridian.

Comments

[danny]

life is good :)
the fishing sounds like a blast.... im sure seth enjoyed that. thanx for the flash back of the 4th at DC, i was there with seth back in '99.... man how time flies. btw, i didnt see any pictures of the fish :-) later