Why In God's Name Are You Leaving Boston?

Our new-old front yard.

I hate moving. Since the age of 18, I've moved 17 times. I've owned two homes and had a driver's license in five states. The Wife and I don't have a clothes dresser because they are too much of a hassle to move.

There will be an 18th move. On Tuesday, I was offered and accepted a full-time job as a copy editor at the Portland Press Herald (on the condition I pass a drug test -- do they test for caffeine?). I worked there part-time for two years while TW was in graduate school. So what's changed in the last year? Only pretty much everything.

If you've only ever visited Boston as a tourist, this move makes no sense. Boston's a great town. We love Boston. We also don't love living here. This is a confluence of three factors:

LOGISTICS

Our landlords have us in an iron-clad lease. If you sign up for a year, you owe a year of rent. Our lease runs out at the end of June and the landlords want a full-year lease. So we want to go. We considered several options: We could move to New Hampshire to be closer to my work; we could move to Portland, where we have friends galore; we could move to Pittsburgh, where I interviewed to be a copy editor; we could move to Reno, where I could write about skiing and be near friends.

Either way you cut it, we were leaving Boston. Our rent is around $2,000 a month. Our condo is nice. It has granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, two parking spots and is near a bunch of parks and the subway. It's also about $2,000 for 550 square feet of space. Living in Boston is one big logistical question: What kind of place are you willing to live in for the cache of living in Boston?

We are ready to buy a home. To get a 1,000-square-foot home in the Boston area, on the subway line, would cost around $400,000. If you've been to Boston, you've probably loved the Old North End, Beacon Hill or Newbury Street. Take a look at real estate in those areas. We can't afford to live there and we don't love our current neighborhood (though we have amazing friends here).

CAREER

My paper in New Hampshire had layoffs in both October and February. But this goes beyond job security. It's about working at a paper and with people who are doing great work, writing important stories. Above all, that is what I was looking for. I interviewed at a Pittsburgh paper that is growing its circulation and doing great work. A friend in Reno, Prego, is doing amazing work and winning all kinds of awards. Prego has offered me a hundred jobs and I've had to turn her down because the timing has never been quite right.

Which brings us to Portland. The paper was falling apart while I was there. I was laid off from my part-time gig. As we were getting ready to leave Portland, a new owner took over. There's a new top editor. He's hired 10 writers in the last year. The paper is writing important stories. It is exactly the kind of environment I want to be in. As we were leaving a year ago, I had pangs of wanting to stick around the Press Herald. But we had that iron-clad lease in Boston that would have left us owing about $20,000 in rent. Staying wasn't an option.

HOME

A year later, going back is an option and it makes sense. We have some of our best friends there. The Bearded Beer Nut is there. Nacho Man and Molly Lu Who live downtown. TW's best friends, the Quadrangular or whatever it is they call themselves, all live within an hour or so from Portland.

More important, Portland feels like home. It offers big-city amenities with small-town New England touches. I like skiing, hiking and golfing. Do you know what's tough to do in Boston? Skiing, hiking and golfing.

Portland offers an extensive wooded trail system in the city. The mountains are close by. And still, it has Kamasouptra and bacon-dusted French fries at Nosh. You can walk to the airport and fly nonstop to 15 cities, including New York. It's a fantastic blend of big city and rural New England.

It just feels right. That's what it boils down to for us. TW was so excited last night she couldn't sleep. The decision between Portland, Pittsburgh, New Hampshire and Reno wasn't initially an easy one but it became obvious. Really, this blog is just trying to explain a gut instinct.

I feel the need to explain because it doesn't make sense to lots of people. Already, people are asking why on Earth I would leave Boston. If you like eating and drinking, it's fantastic. But you can't spend your life eating and drinking The Freedom Trail. I take that back. You can and some people in this town do that. It's just not for us. And that's why we're moving. Here's hoping No. 18 sticks.

Painting a Picture

Though this is supposed to make paintball look cool, it's worth noting
it looks like this guy has been hit.

There are random memories floating around in all our heads, tied to friends we no longer see nor hear from. It only takes a small reminder for them to come flooding back.

Nutmeg's Dad sent a short email asking for my thoughts on playing paintball, thanks to a Groupon being offered in Boston. I had many thoughts, all pertaining to a random day in February of my senior year in high school.

I vaguely remember who was there that day. Emerson, Paul, Mark, Chuck ... and a bunch of other people, presumably. I'm not even positive those guys were there. It's been a while.

We went to an indoor paintball center on the southeast side of the Twin Cities. It was February in Minnesota. We play games indoors there.

None of us had any idea what we were doing. We paid to rent paintball guns. We were about to start a kill-em-all game when a bunch of people in camouflage pants showed up. Tip: Never play your first game of paintball against people wearing camouflage pants.

I got taken out early with a shot that hit my leg roughly 6 inches below my crotch. That rattled me.

Of course, we got destroyed playing the Camo Club. It wasn't even close. I can't stand losing; moreover, I can't stand almost getting shot in the crotch with a pellet moving over 100 mph while losing. 

It's safe to say I'm adventurous. I enjoy skiing and going fast in boats and cars. Paintball? No, thank you. I have enough memories.

I Dream of Genetics

Despite my inability to skate, I think it might be fun to skate the Charles.
This photo has nothing to do with the blog.

Someone once told me they thought I would be a perfect fit to live in Florida because of my laid-back attitude and Florida is full of Jimmy Buffett clones. It was a stunning misjudgment of both my parents' home state and myself.

Anyone could be excused for thinking I wear Hawaiian shirts around town while humming "Don't Worry, Be Happy." I project that kind of attitude.

It's a front. I time everything in order to achieve maximum efficiency. I've clocked how long it takes to get home from the stoplight on Chelsea Street; it's about two minutes if you go left, three if you go right.

It's a 10-minute walk to Terminal A of Logan Airport, but I can jog it in six minutes. It takes five minutes to climb the stairs, run across the skyway to Terminal E, descend two flights of stairs and emerge out on the sidewalk in front of baggage claim.

If you're in line at Starbucks, the wait will be half as long if it's all men in front of you because they are more likely to order drip coffee than women. That's not something I can quantify for you but check it out the next time you're in line.

If you're in line at a grocery store, aim for the line with the fewest people in it because the act of paying is the most time-consuming part. That I can quantify.

You can thank my Dad for all this information. He didn't tell me any of that information, but it's his engineering nature that made me this way. Dad's an electronics engineer who worked at 3M. Give him a few palm fronds and some duct tape and he'll build you a rudimentary computer.

From time to time, I roll my eyes at him. That's what family does. Unlike friends, we have the courtesy to do it in broad view of the person causing the eye roll. More than my parents, I roll my eyes at myself because I have trouble stopping. In Salt Lake, I counted how many steps it took to walk a city block (about 300). While running, I pass the time on long straightaways by counting how many breaths I take in five minutes.

The Wife knows all this. That's why it was downright funny last night when she asked how long it took us to walk back home from the airport. I didn't know because I hadn't been timing. She was surprised. It was understandable, because we were coming home from a long weekend at my parents' house in Florida and she'd just had a fresh dose of Dad. It was late. I was tired. I didn't time the walk.

The trip to Florida did make me wish I lived closer to family, but every trip to Florida does that. This is not to say I wish I lived in Florida; I wish my family lived in New England.

Wither the Weather

The foreground is the Charles River, likely taken from around the MIT
boat house in neighboring Cambridge.

The Wife is a dyed-in-the-wool Minnesota, with lineage dating back several generations on some of the northernmost farm land in the country. In summer, she is miserable and talks about how much she prefers the misery of winter. Even today she would speak of her preference for winter, though I awoke to her text message, sent at 7 a.m., that reads, "Um, OK, that's pretty cold. Stay in today!"

About half the country is having a freakout. I'm having trouble not judging about half the country, and my judgment knows no bounds.

In New York, the Today Show is staying inside today. It's too cold to go outside, they'll tell you. It's 19 degrees. Minnesotans are rolling their eyes. That's a guarantee. Minnesotans watch people in New York talk about how cold it is and they roll their eyes. That's because the low in my hometown, Lakeland, is predicted to be -13 today with a windchill around -30.

That, of course, is nothing. On a Sunday afternoon during my senior year of high school, me and four friends went to the high school to play basketball during open gym. In my little Plymouth Sundance, we whipped some donuts in the parking lot, then played basketball for a couple of hours. While we were inside, the temperature dropped from around 0 to about -20. The wind also picked up.

When we came back to the car, we ran. We were all wearing basketball clothes. Sweaty basketball clothes. We jumped into the car. The engine started. It went into reverse. Nothing happened.

It took about 30 seconds to figure out what was wrong. The car was working just fine; the tires had frozen to the parking lot.

We jumped out and used everything in the car -- a couple of ice scrapers and an army knife -- to chip away under the tires. Frozen, we jumped back in the car. The Dancin' Dancer made a cracking noise as it pulled out of the parking spot; it drove as if the tires were shaped like squares for a few miles before the tires warmed up and returned to a round shape.

Every Minnesotan has a horror story, but that doesn't stop them from complaining about the weather. This latest cold snap has everybody complaining, taking pictures of thermostats at their desks. Nobody likes cold weather. I'm no better. I have Raynaud's Syndrome, which means my fingers and toes go numb at the hint of a slight breeze. I hate the cold weather.

Which brings me to my theory about life: If we could afford it and bring family with, the vast majority of the American population would all live in San Diego. Shutterfly, a Minnesotan who moved there in her 20s when she wanted to live somewhere cold, thought Southern California wouldn't be good for her weather-wise. After a trip to Disney, she's with me on this. Everybody should live in Southern California.

And we all could. There's nothing *really* stopping most of us from dropping everything and moving to San Diego. I could work at Starbucks. TW could find work. We'd live in a small apartment for a while as we establish ourselves. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it could be done.

What stops us is what stops almost everybody: We actually like it where we are and it's not worth the hassle and years of paying dues all over again. Therefore, we're going to suck it up and get through these few days of a frigid cold snap with our heads held high.

Also, it helps that TW and I are going to Florida tomorrow night. Suckers.

55 Miles From Home

The problem with living in Boston and working in Manchester, N.H. is obvious. It is why I am walking around The Mall of New Hampshire, the only indoor, traditional mall in the state, for an hour and a half before my shift at work.

I am walking through Macy's right now, typing on an iPad. I had to go to Human Resources at 2 to deal with yet another issue regarding me challenging coworkers to fist fights. Don't do that.

The shift starts at 4:30 and I have time to kill. This doesn't happen to people with normal jobs. The boss doesn't tell you to come in at 5:30 a.m. before your 8 a.m shift.

I really don't mind. I would be playing infamous 2 on my PlayStation if I had stayed home or gone for a hike in the woods. This way, I get to walk around the mall for an hour and a half. I need the exercise.

It's just a little strange is all I walk around with the iPad, playing sudoku or typing out a blog as I walk. "I ain't missin you at all" is playing on the mall radio.

These are strange times. And now I am tired of typing as I walk on this damn contraption. Plus, I need to play more sudoku.

Man O Manti

So many jokes to be made.

For over a week, Manti Te'o has been begging me to talk about him. If you don't already know, Te'o is a football player for Notre Dame. He told a heartwrenching story about his girlfriend, who had leukemia, dying on the same day as his grandmother.

It was great, only it wasn't true. There was no girlfriend, at least not the girl part. Te'o was either elaborately tricked or was in on a fairly simple plan to tell the media a lie.

That's not illegal, nor should it be. Lying is a great part of history when dealing with the media. Presidents like Nixon and Clinton all did it. A great many more have gotten away with it.

It's too easy to say you're disappointed in the media (or the sports media, if you want to be more specific) for not catching on to this ruse. It was fairly simple to unravel and a few reporters came within a few steps of uncovering it all months ago. But they didn't and Deadpsin.com should win a Pulitzer for uncovering the story.

If anything, the Te'o story shines a light on new media. Yes, Deadspin is a website that subsists entirely on advertising and venture capital. Moreover, it's the media establishment like Sports Illustrated and The New York Times that are taking a star turn, only it is the shabby state of fact-checking at our Publications Of Record that is in the limelight.

As revenues have dropped at virtually every major publication across the country, there have been cuts. There are fewer copy editors and fewer fact-checkers. Where there was once a team of editors poring over stories and verifying editors, there are now 50 percent fewer employees writing headlines, running spell check and moving the story down the assembly line.

We've signed up for this. Every time a newspaper asks you to sign up for web content and we find a different way to get that content, we're signing up for it. The Times charges $15 for a four-week digital subscription and they should get the subscribers because, as much as anybody, The Times still has the staff and drive to be the best.

But they don't always get the money because we're mostly not willing to pay for stuff any more. That's just a fact. And as news organizations try to do more with less, they're really doing less with less. Sure, they're streaming it out to iPads and smartphones, but that's work for computers. It takes human power to locate a fact and check it. When you consider the number of facts presented in a typical 600-word story, it's a more daunting task than it sounds.

With stories, we've become content with a crapshoot as far as editors' work reading and editing the stories. Sometimes they have the time to do a great job and sometimes they don't. The onus is on reporters to make sure their work is checked before they send a story to the desk because God knows what's going to happen to it after it's out of their hands.

The irony here is that it's my job to do this work. I don't believe in writing about work, but I have to point out that I'm not talking specifically about my current job at a newspaper. This is not a new problem. It's also not about the people I've worked with; rather, it's about the staffing levels that newspapers can afford.

I got lucky once and caught a story like Te'o's before it was a story. A guy in Salt Lake was trying to get my paper to write a story about him. He was teaching some fitness classes, playing semi-pro football and he made an offhand reference to how he used to play linebacker at Vanderbilt and was an All-SEC player. Twice. I looked him up. No reference to him as an All-SEC player. Vanderbilt puts its media guide online and I checked the section that lists players. He never played for Vanderbilt and we never wrote a story about him. Another newspaper in our area did write a story about the guy. They mentioned his football days. To my knowledge, they never printed a retraction and the story is still available online.

The media would love to say they have learned their lesson and move on from this as quickly as possible. People aren't supposed to be discussing copy editing and fact-checking; it's not the sexy part of what we do.

I'm haunted by the thought that Manti Te'o isn't the first person to throw one mostly past the media and he probably won't be the last. But it's risky business because, ironically, though the Internet has made it difficult for media organizations, it has also leveled the playing field. I've read Deadspin on a daily basis for about five years, but it's a niche' sports website, with stories drawing about 10,000 to 20,000 page views. All it took for them to bring down Te'o was some Google searches and some database searches. There was no Deep Throat. All they needed was a computer and an Internet connection. Anybody could have figured this story out. Deadspin did. They should win a Pulitzer. It's a brave new world.

My Friends Are Incredible ~ Blog 49

Oh, we are a witty bunch. The guy on the left is not doing what
it looks like he's doing.

It's easy to take your friends for granted because you generally aren't doing groundbreaking things with them. Sure, you enjoy spending time together and call each other for advice. But how often do you take a step back and admire who they are?

Take The Bearded Beernut, for example. He's my partner in shenanigans and a hell of a writer. We've spent more time playing a board game called Pegs and Jokers (or Pegs and Aces) than we've spent doing anything else in the past two years. It would be easy for me to think that all The Beernut ever does is drink beer, watch baseball and play games.

He's also applying to Ph.D programs; He wants to be an English professor.

You'd never know that from what we do. Monday night, we went bowling, played cards, ate bacon fries poutine (!) and played video games.

I drove away from Portland yesterday thinking about not just The Beernut but how lucky I feel to know all my friends. To a one, I'm convinced they are all better people than I am. Well, maybe not Molly Lu. She's down on my level. I'm pretty sure she just raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and said to herself, "Yeah, that's about right."

These people are incredible. I'm friends with TV anchors and doctors. One of my besties, Rossmosis, quit his job as an NBA beat reporter to go to law school. He lives in Seattle, does ridiculous workout routines with his wife and will soon own half of the state of Washington. Our relationship involves sending beer through the mail and attending baseball games.

JimBob was my best friend in Utah. We went skiing/snowboarding a couple of times a week. He was a photo tech at The Salt Lake Tribune when I started as a copy editor. He's now a freelance photographer for Reuters and covers Burning Man every year.

I think of my friends often. There's a square a couple of blocks from our house named John Davis square; I worked with a guy in Salt Lake who took care of Dukakis, my first chocolate lab, whenever I had to leave town. He's also the best headline writer I have ever known.

SMurphy is a stay-at-home mom whom I have met in the flesh twice, in late December of 2002 and at our wedding in 2005. Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, we talk almost every day. She makes me laugh almost every day.

If you haven't been mentioned yet, rest easily knowing I could say something glowing about you, too. The only people that read this blog are friends and family members, so don't get jealous. We're all family here.

My friends are an extension of my family because I find everybody so fascinating. When I say, "I have a lot of friends who are doctors, lawyers and dentists," what I mean to say is, "Lowly ME, who is a big, dumb animal, has friends who are doing big things with their lives." I am impressed by all of you, with no exceptions.

If you're reading this, you can go ahead and give yourself a slap on the back. If we aren't physically close to each other, know that I'd like to see you soon. My friends are awesome.