2002-05-23 - 9:12 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Theme from "Hill Street Blues"

I keep forgetting to mention that there is or was a hilarious billboard on I-676. Well, I think it's supposed to make me stop eating meat, but I laughed instead. It's a play on those "It's What's For Dinner" ads:

BEEF
It's what's rotting in your colon.

Ewwwwwww.

So, water. They tell me I'm supposed to drink a lot of it.

When I was a kid, I never drank anything. I'd have a half-cup of milk at lunch and a similar amount at dinner, or soda if I was lucky. The occasional glass of water when I'd been running around outside and got thirsty, but that was about it. I think I only had to pee about twice a day. The number of times I've EVER finished a typical 12-ounce soda can probably be counted on one hand. Normally I drink four ounces, max.

Somehow, though, I got into the drinking-water kick (right around the time I discovered broccoli is GOOD! and so are BEANS!), and now I drink about five 8-oz. glasses a day. I've never been able to get past that except during/after exercise. As it turns out, that is actually about the right amount for my body weight (the eight-glasses rule is for the "average" person), so I guess I'm doing well.

Most of the time, though, I don't feel like drinking it. I have to count my glasses and make sure I'm drinking enough. I'm always yelling at Poindexter for drinking out of my water glass, because then I don't know how much I've drunk myself.

This reminds me of a pet peeve. I hate it when a waiter in a restaurant constantly refills my water glass. I want him to wait until it's almost done -- maybe a quarter of the glass left -- before he comes over and dumps more in. I can't stand it when he refills it when I've drunk less than half the glass. Makes me NUTS. If he refills it more than twice during a meal, I get apoplectic.

How to handle this? Often the water-filler doesn't speak English. Do I ask my waitperson to ask the water-filler to leave me alone? Or just hoard my water glass very close to my body so the water-filler can't get at it? Tough call.

Well, it's a good thing "Obsessing over City vs. Suburbs" has a decent number of responses in the poll, because the obsessing certainly doesn't show any signs of abating. I'm feeling like a broken record, but can't seem to stop.

I think the reason this is so excruciatingly difficult, the reason I flip-flop so much, is that both places have their pros and cons. I wouldn't be 100% happy in either place, so I'm trying to hash out which place I'd be happiER. I think I could be nearly 100% happy if I could plop "downtown San Jose" somewhere within 30 miles of my parents and drop the housing prices at least in half, but I haven't figured out to do that yet. So the flip-flopping continues.

F'rinstance. This weekend we saw an open house sign in an area we like, so we went to it. Happened upon a realtor, told her about the walkability issue, and she told us to go about a mile northeast to a place with shops that was "cute cute CUTE".

And it was. It's a little village. Bunch of shops close together, including a movie theater, market, coffee shop, nursery. We were in a hurry to get to Lee's birthday party at that point, so we didn't get out and explore, but it looks extremely promising. A peek down the side streets also looked promising. It was less than a mile to a commuter train station, and it's closer to my parents than the western suburbs. A couple miles east is a major arterial road with all the box stores we could possibly need.

The more I think about it, the more excited I get. Walkability, cuteness, trees, close to everything I need to shop for.

Then I start thinking ... but where's the Middle Eastern food? Where's the ethnic diversity? Where are the artistic urban weirdos? Where are the girls prancing around in their fabulous outfits? Where are the houses from the 1800s?

Sigh.

Last night, here in Philly, we went out to get Thai food at a place about six blocks away. I had a hard time picking one particular Thai restaurant to walk to! Up in the little village I can pick from: tavern-style American, pizza, Chinese. That's about it.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about that so much. Since Poindexter works in the city and the train is right there, I can meet him once or twice a week and we can eat ANYTHING. Or he can pick it up on his way home from work and we can do takeout, which we often prefer to sitting in a noisy restaurant.

And the city is so damn NOISY. All those cars, traveling fast on one-way streets.

At this point, there are three things that I'm having a hard time letting go of: The variety of cuisines within a ten-minute walk, the wonderful people-watching, and the houses.

It really kills me is when we happen by those small, quiet, alley-like residential streets, where every house looks different from all the others, and they're so PRETTY, and it's so COZY and OLD and COOL. One of these streets was even created to look like an English village, and it really did -- stepping into that flagstone alleyway was like stepping into another world. I could have cried. Lookit:

When I go walking in these neighborhoods, I'm just a mess. Look at THAT house! And THAT one! And THAT one! And WOW, look at THAT one! I so love all those old homes with beautiful details and variety that you just don't see in the suburbs. Even if I lived in the smallest, ugliest one in the neighborhood, it would be so nice to be able to look at these on my walk every day.

So at lunch today I was all excited about the suburban village, now I'm all excited wondering if we can afford a house like this one. The answer's probably no.

I'm still not getting anywhere near resolving this issue.

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