Fifteen years ago...

November 7th, 1995 I visited Seattle for the first time. I arrived in a 1988 Subaru Justy with my good friend Brian from New Hampshire after a 10-day road trip across the country (we took the "Northern route" through New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, etc.). I didn't intend to move to Seattle, but stay I did, and the rest, as they say, "is history."

Now Seattle seems really far away as we're settling into a new routine in the Boston area (maybe we've already mentioned this?). Last weekend, we went to Vermont for a couple days and had a wonderful time doing "Vermonty" things, like a trip to the farmer's market, walks in the woods, and leisurely breakfasts. (Not to imply that Vermonters live the life of leisure; only visitors to Vermont live this leisurely life. Living in Vermont involves many chores, which luckily we were able to avoid this time.)

We stayed at a converted "Bed & Breakfast" that used to be a two-room school house. The owners rent it out per night and stock the refrigerator with breakfast foods that you cook up yourself. The adorable little house reminded us a bit of our apartment as it had lots of windows and skylights. Notice the tall windows that are original from the school house days; if you sit down inside you can't look out the windows, which I guess is the point if you're trying to keep the attention of school children:

We visited the Brattleboro Farmer's Market on the last Saturday of the year before it moves indoors for the winter. I was surprised  by the number of prepared food vendors at the farmer's market, including exotic food, like this Malian food vendor (there also were two Thai places and a Vietnamese vendor):

But mostly, as we keep mentioning, we're living a pretty relaxed life in Boston, enjoying semi-city-life in Roslindale. I say semi-city because although Roslindale is technically part of Boston, it feels more like its own small town than the city of Boston, actually a lot like our old Seattle neighborhood of Ballard. The Fall weather has been very nice, it's definitely getting colder, but it's been dry for the most part, which is a welcome difference from autumn in Seattle. The November I arrived in Seattle, it literally rained every single day for my first month; I suppose that indicates I was destined to stay there. If I could tolerate a solid month of rain, the weather wasn't really going to bother me that much. On the other hand, the following summer it was sunny for, again literally, every day in July, August and September (with no humidity!) which became the cycle of living in Seattle - recharge during the sunny summer for the gray, rainy winter. In any event, we've already had a bit of frost in Boston, which I noticed the other day on my bike commute to work (it might be faint, but it was definitely there):

Again, pretty cool that this is right in Boston (and that it's part of my daily commute). I feel lucky to live in such a nice place.