condo watch 2005 (make that 2006)

The for sale sign on the condo next door has disappeared, but yesterday the gas bill for the unit blew into our yard and it was in the name of the real estate agents. So we surmised that the guy got desperate enough to sell it to the agency, which will presumably try to sell it at a later date (when the weather's nicer?).

what's with the weddings?

Recently I started editing the alumni newsletter for my college graduating class (2004). This means that a couple of times a year, I get a big envelope full of news and miscellaneous crap about my school and all sorts of forms that my fellow classmates have filled in with info about themselves and what they're doing now. It's kind of fun because I went to a small school (about 500 people in my class) and so even though I wasn't close friends with everyone, I have a general idea of who most people are. People have the kind of jobs I would expect (Assistant Junior Executive for Acquisitions and Finance; a.k.a someone's bitch) but the surprising part is how many are engaged/married.

I'm surprised for two reasons: 1) the age of first marriage is on the rise. Most of the people I graduated with are no older than 24, notably below the median age at first marriage for college grads of 27 for women and a year or two older for men (I don't know why I can't find census data for this, the figure of 27 for women comes from Harvard researchers). 2) while I was in school it seemed like very few people were in relationships that were remotely serious. The random hookup model seemed to be going strong, so it's kind of impressive that all these people managed to find someone to marry within about a year of graduating. I always though I'd be one of the youngest to tie the knot, but people are beating me to it right and left.

I don't really have any wider social commentary on this, but I bet they won't be sending me updates on their divorces for the newsletter.

relocation

So all posts previous to this one were located at bluegirlredstate.blogspot.com. I started blogging in the fall of 2004 as we were approaching the 2004 presidential election. I was thinking a lot about politics then, and fervently hoping that Bush wouldn't win. I originally intended to blog about more politically oriented stuff, but it appears that although I spend quite a bit of time thinking about politics, I'm not really that great at putting it down on paper. The original blog was named because it seemed strange to suddenly be living in a red state after growing up in a state that has been solidly blue in the presidential election for decades.

Since this isn't a political blog and about 6 other people stole the name, blah blah blah, now I'm going to be writing everything here.