So it goes...

We are heading north soon to visit our daughter and her boyfriend in Minneapolis. They are moving into a new apartment near the Vikings stadium and we will be helping them move some of the larger items with our van. I miss her dearly, so it should be a chance to reconnect and see her new digs. She sent a few pictures of her place and it looks spectacular. It made me think of my first apartment and that incredible feeling of pride and excitement with having my own place - even if I was sharing it with a roommate. That first apartment is a feeling of "having arrived." School is finished, you have a decent job - or at least decent enough to afford a place to live - and your obligations are few. I can remember that first Christmas in my first dumpy apartment. My roommate was gone and I had the place to myself. I shut off the lights and just sat there in the dark with the single string of twinkling lights thinking, "It ain't much, but man, it's all mine." Aft...

My book The Portland House: A 70's Memoir is just a tad more than three months from being released. While that house was instrumental in forming our family, I have lived in about eight other places since then and I thought it would be fun to recount some of these places -as they were as unique from each other and, collectively were as much a part of my life as Portland. The first place was my first "real" apartment at 7610 Bass Lake Road in Crystal, Minnesota. After I got my first job out of college at a mapping firm in Crystal, a guy I worked with talked me into moving in with him in 1985. I forget what rent was, maybe $375/mo. for each of us. I didn't know Dan too well, but he seemed decent enough, so I took the plunge and moved out of Portland to be closer to work. Well, the place interviewed much better than it performed. (Like a bad pet.) The worst part was during the winter months. We had one thermostat for the whole 2 BR place, so if I shut my bedroom doo...