The Final Countdown.

Finally I can blog about my big move. I have announced it at work and I will be migrating to the United kingdom on October 3rd. It is a big move for me but I'm not really scared just very excited and SO ready to leave New York.

I have grown a love-hate relationship with New York and it is time for this Wisconsin girl to move on from NY to the UK. It is only a minor acronym change after all.

I won't go into extreme details but Eric asked me to be his new roomie in April and it didn't take long for me to say respond with a yes! Since then, I have been plotting my exit strategy from NYC. I am exactly two weeks from being a UK migrant and am sitting in a very bare apartment. I sold my chest of drawers yesterday and my couch last week. I only have a few more things to pack up and I am out of here.

Part of me keeps thinking I should want to do one last tourist thing or one last dinner or one last party. Honestly, I don't want to do any of that and if I could have left a week ago I would have. Maybe I'm not sentimental or maybe I am just really ready to move on. New York has been good and bad to me I think there are stages of being a New Yorker. From what I remember there are year markers. When you move to NY you stay 1, 3, 5 or 10 years and if you make it past 10 you are a lifer. In May this was my fifth year and I have been ready to move ever since.

I also was thinking of a list of places and things that only happen in NYC that I will remember and miss a lot and have come up with a very short list:
-Lonely Coney Island trips
-Runs in Central Park (though I have been sick of the scenery for some time now)
-Battery Park (I just like this area of the city)
-Great sushi after the gym
-Cheap Chinatown meals (Moonhouse/Shanghai Kitchen)

That's about it. I will not miss riding the subway or drinking expensive drinks, visiting fancy restaurants, paying way too much for dinner, seeing Times Square, having bed bugs (a few years ago), getting told to "get out of the f*#king way", lugging my laundry across the street, traveling hours to go 2 miles or getting "the look" if I missed a pedicure in the middle of summer.

Overall this place is just too pretentious for me now. I will miss several people however. I found that it was not the place that made me stay for five years but the people who I love so much. They made New York City my home. I will miss the following (in no particular order):

Teda Totts, Sarah Schlow, Bailey, Lily, Logan, Dave, Cathy, Aren, Lauren, Taylor, Jedd, Kai, Richa, Billy, Jeewon, Claire, Mark, Mike Ditomo, Mike Renaldi, Merv, Bridget, Terrance, Leah, Leigh, Kim, Nicole, Sarah J., Elizabeth Faye, Joni, Casey, Rob Cappoli, Abigail, Anne-Marie, Norma, Pamelia, Susan, Sharmane, Liz and Cedrick, Delia, Austin, Virginia, Victoria, John, Denise, Jackie, Sammy-o, The coffee guy on the corner of 49th and 7th, The waitress at Shanghai kitchen and more.

That's it for now, I want to go for a run in Central Park.