Welcome to Albany!

I thought I would set up a blog to keep up with friends now that I live so far away, and now that I actually have time to do this. (and to be honest, now that so many of my friends do it and I love checking in on them this way). Maybe it will inspire me to do something exciting every week in order to have things to blog about… I just moved from Alaska, where I've been living for the past five years, to Albany, NY with my boyfriend Jason. We put over 6000 miles on his new tacoma on the way down, if you can believe it!

I guess technically we arrived here in November, though I ‘officially’ moved here in January (with some trips in between to Disneyland & Puerto Rico). We managed to find a cute apartment in the swanky “lark district” of town, and they were somehow cool renting to a hyperactive border collie! The building was built in 1852 so the place has all those quirks that old houses have. It does have a backyard and washer/dryer though so we are in love! We are also one block from Washington Park which Riley loves! Not to mention Jason and I can both walk to work (picures of our street and the emblem on our building). Albany has a population of 90,000 though it is condensed and very ‘east coast’. It is built up instead of out which I really like so it has a much bigger downtown area than anywhere else I’ve lived. It is also the capital of NY so there are an overabundance of lawyers, politicians, and state workers. Hence the ginormous Empire Plaza at the end of our street. This plaza takes up 5 city blocks and looks like something out of ‘70’s Star Wars! It is literally a vortex as there seems to be no way in or out and all freeways converge underground through a parking garage to get re-routed throughout Albany. As far as I can tell it is where they house all the State employees. It also contains the mysterious Egg ... Jason & I have actually gone to see a couple of shows here, acoustic Jeff Tweedy (excellent!) and Keller Williams. Not sure what the architect had in mind with this one and it is something of a joke around town. Thanks for taking time to check out the blog and of course you are all welcome for a visit anytime!

A few pictures of our apartment: