The First Month
The Web site for Great Boston Experiment was officially launched on Nov. 1, exactly two months after Sarah and I left Southwest Florida for Boston. While we hope to address some of these details more in-depth later on, here’s a summary of the significant events of that first month:
- The day after we arrived at our new home, we drove down to the Boston Public Garden, bought our favorite lunches from our favorite deli, sat on the grass with our daughter and enjoyed the world as it went by us. This was why we moved.
- The place we choose to get our first Massachusetts home — Marlborough, Mass. — is a lot farther away from Boston Proper than we would like.
- As a freelance reporter for the Boston Globe, it took a significant amount of time from when I first started reporting until we actually got a paycheck. After my first article ran, it was all worth it.
- We lived almost entirely on credit in September. All our cash was used for tolls. At one point, we charged $0.69.
- Sarah got a job working for The Gap in Marlborough. Less than an hour after she initially went in for an application, she was hired.
- Maggie, our daughter, had her first doctor’s appointment with her new physician in Massachusetts. The visit went well enough, and we’ll continue seeing this doctor for now.
- Sarah went to her first OB/GYN appointment in Massachusetts, and the doctor we picked — random by name — was a complete disaster, especially compared to the Florida doctor that we loved who delivered Maggie. We immediately switched doctors, and the new one is better, but we still miss Dr. Fleishman in Fort Myers.
- I quickly learned the journalism standards at the Boston Globe are much, much higher than the Naples Daily News. Although it is a rough adjustment period, I love the fact that I am challenged here.
- We finally got phone and Internet set up at the house, so I didn’t have to trek to and from the library to write stories and check e-mails.
- Maggie and I grew closer as I spent more time at home. Sarah, on the other hand, missed us greatly when she left — she was a stay-at-home mom in Florida — to the point where it was physically painful for her to leave.
- I got a call from The Ohio State University that I might be getting a fellowship with them starting in January, and we would need to move to Columbus in December.
