Two year anniversary

I can't believe it's been 2 years since I started this job. They have flown by.  Sometimes it feels like I've been here forever, but I really just think that it's that I'm comfortable here. I love my job. I adore my coworkers. I'm really starting to become a Dubuquer. I'll never be an official Dubuquer. You have to have grandparents buried in the graveyards here for that. (So my imaginary grandchildren still have a shot.) No, you know you've become a Dubuquer when you start describing where things are by what used to be there. I heard it every once in a while in Madison, but EVERYONE does it here. Including myself. I did it a few weeks ago during break, and I got the knowing look from everyone before I could catch myself!


In honor of being here for 2 years, I thought I'd look back and comment on some of my original observations about the city that I posted in my blog. *I moved to Dubuque just a week before I started my job, so close enough. ;) The original comment in black, current comments in purple.

• Everyone in Dbq has been really friendly so far. I mean it's not like I expected them to be mean or something, but the lady at city hall, the banker, and even the cashier at Target were really nice. People really are super friendly here. And now I frequently know my cashiers or managers at the grocery store because they're my students. I can only remember one encounter with someone not so friendly. Good old Midwestern values.
• I'm super not-observant when I'm tired. My landlord had left a ladder in my bedroom when I got here Friday. I moved all my crap in and then decided to make an errand and grocery run. I spend a bulk of the rest of the night in my bedroom accomplishing stuff. It was only when my dad asked a few hours later that I even noticed the ladder was gone. Yup. I'm that good when tired. HA! Still true. Only with washing machines. I failed to note that my landlord moved my old one out before I got a new one. I knew he was doing it, but failed to note it was gone.
• Ceiling fans needs much longer chains for the light component. I don't mind standing on a chair to adjust the speed of the fan, but it's kind of a pain to have to stand on a chair to turn off the light and leave the fan on for the night. (Walmart solved that problem today.) It's also not so much fun having to stand on a tall stool height chair to change the batteries in your smoke detector at 6am when it starts beeping!
• Kitchens should come equipped with cabinets large enough to store pots and pans. Mine does not, and that's a problem I'm not sure how to solve yet. Deciding to bake bread which means having 5 lb bags of multiple kinds of flour and cornmeal has not alleviated this problem. However a small shelf in the hallway helped fix this just a week ago.
• Walmart's are scary. Now I remember why I avoided them for 2 years. They're huge and a girl could get lost in there alone. Also, unlike Target's, the layout of Walmarts seem to be random and not at all intuitive. I have only set foot in that Walmart once since then in 2 years. It was about 10pm on a Sunday night with my boss to pick up more food for our student study break because we ran out. It was scary weird and we vowed not to do that again.
• DBQ is not very pedestrian friendly. Ok, well not the part near me. I haven't yet found a route to walk to work (15 mins by foot...maybe) that doesn't involve a 5-way stop sign or 2 awkward intersections that involve 3 directions of traffic and no stop signs or crosswalks. Thankfully Madison has made me a much bolder pedestrian than DBQ is used to. My neighborhood isn't, but the downtown is uber-walkable and I've had fun taking advantage of that.  BTW the 2 awkward intersections won that battle and is my walking route of choice.
• It's hard to decorate your walls alone, especially when you're not very good with eyeballing what is level. Rearranging rooms is also rather difficult to do alone. Not that it has stopped me.
• I'm not a fan of sitting in my bathtub during severe weather, but if push comes to shove, I can make it quite comfortable. Still the go to place during bad weather. Unless I get enough head's up that I can get all the way across town to my great aunt and uncle's house. Then I camp out in their basement.

I hope you've had a fun time walking down memory lane with me today. Here's to another two years in Dubuque!