RevGalBlogPals Friday Five

(Link in blogroll)
Location Location Location

...tell us about the five favorite places you have lived in your lifetime. What did you like? What kind of place was it? Anything special happen there?

1. Suburban Denver is where I grew up. Anyplace where you grow up tends to mark you in permanent ways. I love Denver, and I would move back to Colorado in a heartbeat...if Beast could find a job there. Which he can't. Because there's not a lot of non-geological chemical manufacturing going on there. Retirement, ahoy. I love(d) the mountains and being sort of 'enclosed' by the landscape.



2. It's probably because it's 20+ years ago, but I really loved college. I lived in the same dorm, on the same floor, all four years. Sure, there were some issues, but what I never appreciated until years later was that there was always someone around if I was lonely. And most of the girls (it was a single-sex dorm, referred to, jokingly, as The Nunnery by students) were fun and not bitchy. I really, really loved my single, unshared dorm room senior year. I was right next door to the roommate I'd had for two previous years, but could close my door and hide out whenever I needed to. Had a good view out the 5th floor window too. Jeez, I miss that room!



3. The second apartment I lived in after getting married was an upper flat in Milwaukee. Our neighbors were two older women. Aside from the TV volume--one of them was slightly deaf--they were wonderful neighbors. The flat itself was pretty weird: literally threadbare carpet in the living/dining room, hideous countertops and cupboards, a filthy furnace that spewed tiny particles of black dust throughout the house, a bathroom that hadn't been updated since 1949...but TWO bedrooms, a GIANT living room, hardwood floors, a balcony (ok, it was about 5 x5', but...), built in cupboards in the dining room...and 100 feet from the best Italian restaurant in the universe. We had off-street parking for our cars. It was 4 blocks from a hospital, and next to one of the main east/west streets in Milwaukee, so it wasn't quiet, and we lived there in unA/C'd bliss during the hottest summer in decades. Top floor, no insulation. Gaah. It was bliss.



4. Our first house in a northern suburb of Milwaukee was a perfect little house for us. Tiny bedrooms and a really bizarre kitchen arrangement, but otherwise it was lovely. We moved there from the upper flat and immediately picked out a dog from the animal shelter. Jeez, I loved that dog! So did Beast; Sparky still tears up if you mention her name. "She was my best friend, ever." We had a fenced yard, a two-car garage, a breezeway, perfect neighbors (except for the old Nazi behind us with her Dobies), hideous blue shag carpet in one of the bedrooms...and a ghost story. Beast loved the basement because it had a built-in workroom to die for. I loved that it was brick and had two bathrooms. It was about half an hour to my sister's house, so we saw each other often. That's the house Sparky came home from the hospital for the first time. Good memories all around. {It doesn't hurt that PsychoBoss exited my life while we were living in this house...}



5. This house, the one in which I live now. I. Love. This. Place. Not particularly thrilled with its location, either the geography of the state or the town/area, but the house itself is a haven. The only things I don't love are the countertops--we shoulda just gritted our teeth and gone for the Big Money Payout--and the amount of CRAP that is currently residing in the basement. There is always a project, even five years in: the bathrooms haven't been painted/decorated yet, and I'm not pleased with some of the landscaping (fricking little garbage shrubs in one garden, and the weed situation therein!) for instance. The kitchen is wonderful, having a master bath is fabulous (teenager in da house!), our immediate neighbors are great, the street is very quiet, our yard is HUGE, and we finally have some nice furniture scattered throughout the rooms. It's comfy. All this, and Beast & Sparky, too. ;-)