A fountain in the Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas, Texas.
She loves the mansions.
Some serious landscaping in front of a home in Highland Park, Dallas, Texas.
A brick Highland Park Mansion with a beautiful entryway.
A mansion in Highland Park. Mediterranean style.
It’s Saturday and I’m walking my dog around the front of my apartment complex. I notice police lights and see a thin blond woman getting arrested by two bored-looking Dallas PD officers.
It’s only 11:30 a.m.
A group of residents appears outside.
Everyone seems to have a unique horror story about her prior scenes and blowups.
Me: “What kind of ratchet-ass building did I move into that someone is getting hauled off by the cops before noon?!”
Neighbor: “Oh, it’s really just her. This isn’t the first time she’s been arrested either.”
Charming.
This is fabulous.
There are about two dozen gay bars and restaurants within 3 blocks of my apartment building.
This means that I don’t have to drive at all to go out.
Nothing beats always having drag show sidekicks.
Gunter and I have finally settled in.
My new apartment in Dallas, cowhide rugs included.
I moved to Oak Lawn, which is the local gayborhood (and best gay neighborhood in the country!)
Oak Lawn is very similar to Boystown, Wilton Manors, or San Francisco’s Castro District.
In the heart of Oak Lawn is a street with more than a dozen gay bars and restaurants. At the end of “The Strip” are the iLume buildings, which are the gay dorms: two massive new developments mostly populated by gay men and single women.
I wake up at 3 a.m. and start loading my car.
My furniture is already gone, and now I just have to cram as much crap stuff as possible into my car.
I quickly realize that I can’t bring everything:
Although I already donated several carloads, I still filled an entire dumpster during this move.
I felt burdened by my possessions – the total sum of a hundred innocent trips to the store. I could have saved so much time and money if I had committed to living with less earlier. That lesson made this ordeal worth it.
By 8:30 a.m., Gunter was the only thing left in my apartment.
Gunter in my empty apartment at Lowertown Lofts in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota
I took one last look at Mears Park and then drove away from St. Paul forever.
After signing my 26-page lease a two weeks ago, I called my new apartment building to figure out what else I needed to do.
Leasing Agent: “Great! You’re all set up. Now you just need to show us that you have $100,000 in personal liability insurance and pick a power company.”
Me: “Pick a power company?”
Leasing Agent: “Yep. In Texas you get to choose your energy company. Go to PowerToChoose.org and pick a power company of your choosing.”
Of course I think this is absurd – how can more than one energy company even deliver power to a building? In Minnesota, there’s only one power company per building (usually Xcel).
Edit: So according to this site, there’s a power provider and a utility company that delivers the power. In Minnesota, these are the same company, whereas in Texas the utility is still responsible for delivering the energy, but isn’t the sole source of that energy. I find this fascinating.
So I log onto PowerToChoose.org to find that I have 270 different plans to choose from! The plans have varying fees, contract term rates, and pricing tiers.
This is overwhelming.
I’m on the bus to work when I check my Gmail. I see a message from the apartment building in Dallas. It says that my application has been approved, and that I have 3 days to sign my lease.
After almost spilling my coffee on the bus, I frantically navigate the decisively non-mobile-friendly leasing website on my phone. I e-sign the documents, and then email the leasing agent.
I spend the morning in a crappy mood because I’m convinced that I botched my rental application. I surely lost my deposit and have to start my apartment search all over again.
I decided on Dallas – everything is cleared with work, and now I’m trying to figure out where to live.
This week my boss cleared me to work remotely from anywhere that I wanted. (Previously, permission was only for California.)
After much hand-wringing, research, and getting advice from all of my friends, I finally created a spreadsheet because this is how I make life decisions.
A massive snow storm pelted the metro area, which made me extremely grateful for the timing of my work trip to Texas.
I have never given Dallas much thought, so I was surprised by how massive and beautiful the city is.
We spent most of our time in Downtown Dallas and Uptown Dallas, which is where my client’s office is located.
Ironically, this description would work quite well for Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood as well. I also visited Oak Lawn, the metroplex’s gayborhood. I managed to find busy bars and a drag show despite it being a Tuesday.
There’s the excitement of a new city and actually working with my clients in person. There’s also the crush of emails and awkwardness of managing conference calls via cellphone.
The rest of the work week flew by, which is typical for me. I’ve been in my new job for about four months now, and (I think) I’ve gained a baseline level of competence.
Each promotion I receive seems to involve less formal training and more “figuring shit out,” which I think law school prepared me well for.
My prior positions involved a lot of remote working, whereas now I’m in the office from 6 or 7 a.m. to around 4 or 5 p.m. The volume and variety of work means that I’m never bored, and even a 10 or 11 hour day feels way too short.
The speed of which my weeks go by presents interesting challenges however – it’s easy to fly through an entire week without working out or going to the grocery store.
My challenge this week is figuring out what processes and routines I need to put in place so I don’t become thoroughly decrepit in 4 more months.
Perhaps keeping my waistline in check is as important as maintaining my inbox.