Things I have missed about Utah, and things I will miss about Pennsylvania

I don't know if I ever made this clear, but I have been living in the greater Philadelphia for the past 8 months. I took a job here after my postdoc in Salt Lake ended. The job was an incredible opportunity, and I am extremely grateful to my current boss for the chance, but the project hasn't been working well, and the funding is tenuous at best, so the boss told me to keep my options open and not stop looking for a job.

Once I got to Philadelphia, there were many things I missed about Utah. These are the top 5.

1) My house! I thought I wouldn't mind living in an apartment again, but quickly found that a 1 bedroom apartment with a den and no covered parking is far different than a 4 bedroom 2 bath house with an attached garage.

2) My yard. Especially because no fenced yard means that I have to WALK THE DOG! This is not a bad thing, necessarily. I can certainly use the exercise, and I don't mind the actual walking part, but Abby is OBSESSED with squirrels, and frequently tries to pull me off of my feet trying to catch them. Also, I have discovered that if you put a dog on a weekday schedule of walking at 7 AM so you can go to work at a reasonable time, that dog needs to go for her walk at 7 AM every day, meaning that there is no sleeping in on weekends. Third, for some reason, Abby is anti-leash pooping unless it is am absolute emergency, so I have to walk he to the dog park at least twice a day so she can run around and free poop.

3) The grocery store Harmon's, especially their registers where you do not have to unload your groceries onto a counter. You just drive your cart to the cashier, and they unload, scan and bag your purchases all at once. Also, they do not have a loyalty card. Do you know how many grocery store loyalty cards I have here in Philadelphia? 4! (Giant, Genuardi's, Acme, and Superfresh, bot to mention the ones for the two pet stores, petco and petsmart).

4) My neighbors. They are all totally awesome, and totally took care of our house in SLC over the past months. They plowed the immense amounts of snow SLC got over the winter, took care of husband when he was in town between business trips and showed him how awesome the Wii is, are taking care of our lawn and newly planted garden, and kept telling me that they missed me and wanted me to move back. Also, my friends. Even if I don't see them that often, I knew they were around and could always give them a call and do something. In Philadelphia, I lost that, and it was much lonelier, especially then my husband was traveling for work.

5)Being 10 minutes from Costco. It takes at least 30 minutes to get to the nearest Costco here.

(ok, not top 5)

6) disposable income. We did not manage to rent our house in Utah, so we are paying both rent and a mortgage, plus all utilities for both residences. We're breaking even, but not by much.

Because I was continuing my job search, I have been offered a position back in Salt Lake. I was hoping to move at the end of August, so that I wouldn't have another rushed move, and so I could finish up some stuff at work, but the new job wants me to start July 14. Which means another quick move (but thankfully I do not need to find someplace to live again).

I realize that I will miss some things about Pennsylvania.

1) Proximity to my parents. It has been nice to be able to pack up the car on a Friday afternoon and drive about 4.5 hours to their house. My cousin had a bay recently, and I have been able to see her grow up a bit. I was able to go to my aunt's and uncle's anniversary party and another cousin's baby shower this past weekend. I liked being able to do these things.

2) The grocery stores. I complained that they don't have the great cashier setup above, and that they have those stupid loyalty cards, but the stores here are great. There is awesome variety and mostly reasonable prices (everything is more expensive everywhere these days). I really liked Genuardi's (which is on the way home) when I got here, and have recently discovered the brand new Super Giant not to far from the apartment complex.

3) really good rye bread and Land-o-Lakes white american cheese. Two things that are almost impossible to get in Salt Lake.

4) The incredibly mild winter and beautiful spring we are having in Philadelphia this year. For the most part, the humidity has been perfect, and I like what it does for my skin and hair.

5) Finally, I will miss the people I have been working with here in Philadelphia. They are incredibly pleasant people, even if they are protein biochemists and we speak totally different languages.


Edited to add,

6) I totally forgot about Wawa! These little convenience stores are the bomb! (do people still say things are the bomb?). I love their fresh made to order sandwiches! I will really miss Wawa.

I am looking forward to getting back to the place that has been my home for most of the past 14 years, but I will look fondly on most of my experiences here in Pennsylvania.