And that got me to thinking of all the places we've called home as husband and wife, let me count the ways:
1. Drew's dorm room, SDSM&T. For more than two weeks in the summer we were crammed into that tiny space with all our stuff. Not enough stuff to make a two-bedroom, our future abode, look lived in, but too much for anything like comfort in a dorm room. But worst of all, for me, was having to trek down two floors to the girls' wing every time I needed to use the restroom or take a shower.
2. Spruce Street, Rapid City. When our off-campus apt finally became available, we had all of one night in our first place together before heading off to do field work in Greeley, Colorado for a month for our summer internship. But upon our return, we had the rest of the summer and one final semester there. I had also lived there in our third year with another girl Kati. We had this memorable retro 70s-ish yellow-top kitchen table that the landlady let us use.
3. The Greeley Best Western. Our summer internship with the Institute of Atmospheric Science (SDSM&T) included collecting field data on hailstorms using a T-28 (above). Interestingly, Drew's dad flew (or rode in?) this same plane – not for hailstorm research – when he was in Rapid City. He once told a wild story of having to land the plane on a local highway after experiencing some technical difficulties. We could never quite believe him until we met a retired professor in the dept who remembered Drew's dad and was on that same flight! But by that summer, the second seat on the T-28 was completely occupied by scientific equipment; and only a couple years ago, the school decided to donate the plane to a museum in Omaha, only to find out later that the museum had secretly sold the plane for scrap parts.4. Arrowhead Lane, UWyo. Of the three semesters I spent in grad school, two of those were spent at the Univ of Wyoming, living in quaint little campus townhouses. I remember they had all the heat and hot water you could desire because the school operated its own power plant.
5. Bo-Ai Road, Hsinchu, Taiwan. I'm not sure when the idea to study in Taiwan at Nat. Chiao-Tung University formed in my mind, but I'm sure my aunt May and her husband had something to do with it. With no official exhange program in place, blazing an educational trail as it were has its ups and downs. But it was well worth the trouble, if just for the experience and the people that we met.
We lived in another little hovel of a dorm room because it seems married students in college (in Taiwan) are virtually unheard of, but this time we had our own private bathroom. Dining out can be highly affordable so we often ate either at the school or at one of our favorite restaurants near our side of campus; and on the weekends, we could be found at one of my aunts' houses, or getting stuffed by my grandma in Taipei. That Christmas was spent drinking glögg and singing carols with NCTU's exchange students (above).6. Sundance Lane, UWyo. Back to the campus townhouses, and my final semester of grad school writing a non-thesis.
7. The Cloisters, Washington, D.C. These were touted as being "luxury apts in the city", but about the only thing going for it was its proximity to Drew's school. You could never get a maintenance person to come unless it was a water problem; there were squirrels living in our ceiling – we were on the top floor; the neighborhood was generally unsafe feeling, esp at dusk (i.e. we heard of half a dozen muggings within a mile of our place at about that time), and there were even a rash of carjackings on our street and at the college across the street in the months leading up to our (hasty) departure. In general, I believe big cities like that should be left for visiting, not living in.
8. Landmark Court, Anchorage. This was a great place when the previous owner had possession: she took care of everything. It rather deteriorated after she sold it to the current owner, who wanted to do things himself, which meant it either didn't get done, or it was done on the cheap and not very well.9. Lees Summit, MO. I have some good days with this rental, some bad – who could ever love a bi-level? – so I haven't quite decided how this place is going to go down in our personal history. Turns out our ants are trained to mealtimes, disappear in the interval between.
