Get out of town! — slackermama . com

Downtown Reno Skyline I never in a million years thought I’d live in Reno. I grew up in San Jose, California. Admittedly, a very different sort of place. But I knew I didn’t want to stay in San Jose the rest of my life. I’m just not a California sort of person. There were too many people, too many interstate highways, too much money for a friggin’ gallon of gas. And, this is where I start to look a little sheepish, it’s in the stars. Seriously. I’m a Sagittarius and its in the stars that I have a little bit of wanderlust. For the most part, I’m a pretty mellow, home-body sort. And I love love LOVE to have routine. Routine is my life, it’s how I keep myself grounded. So its very interesting that I also love change. Change and routine; two traits you don’t generally tend to see together. But I never claimed to be normal. So I like to change it up every once in a while, do something completely different and find my new routine. And that was largely what made me come to Reno in the first place (well, that and college).

Now, I’ve been in Reno for over 12 years. I’m feeling a good bit of wanderlust. Kile and I have always agreed that we probably wouldn’t stay in Reno. That, eventually, we’d find another city to move to and try that out. We would not be finishing up our lives in Reno. But, bless us, we’re also horribly lazy people and it takes quite a bit of motivation to coordinate a move across the country. So it probably won’t happen until we REALLY NEED TO GET THE HECK OUT OF HERE. One place we’re considering? Nashville, Tennessee.

Nashville, TN Skyline Why Nashville? Why not?? I’ve only been there once in my life, and Kile has never been there. And I was there so long ago (1992), I probably don’t even qualify as having been there at all. But I do remember it was beautiful. And hot (it was July). And it was very, very green (and that was to my San Jose eyes, I can’t imagine how green it would be to my Reno eyes). There was some seriously awesome food there (we had breakfast at a country diner with delicious ham and eggs and seriously yummy red beans and rice at a Cajun joint). And we heard some awesome music at the Bluebird Cafe. We also toured the Opryland Hotel and had drinks at the Cascades bar inside the giant atrium. I, in a word, was charmed.

It’s fairly centrally located within the country, and would be easy(er) to travel to places like Michigan and the East Coast to visit my family. And it’s probably the one place east of here that we could remain confident that Kile’s family would come and visit. They would WANT to come visit. And it’s beautiful. Did I mention that already? So we’re kicking the notion around, though how seriously I don’t know. It’s hard to tell with Kile. Whereas I’m all, “Let’s do it!” There’s that wanderlust again. Of course, he’d have to find the perfect job out there. Some job that would pay moving expenses. That’s a big one. That paid roughly the same salary as he makes now, if not more. There’s a lot of caveats there, that I’m not even sure could be fulfilled. But, God, it’d be great wouldn’t it? To blow the collective stink of Nevada off our bodies and head east… dang. That’d be awesome.

Anyone familiar with that area out there? Are they any Krispy Kremes in Nashville? How about Target or Walmart? What’s the mall scene like? What kind of chain-style restaurants can I count on? You know, the important stuff.

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