So some things I have noticed in the first 24 hours here:
1.) Unlike in West Virginia, where my beard serves as camo, I stand out like a sore thumb. Everyone has a beard around me- in my parts if you don’t have a beard it’s kinda just assumed you are female or you can’t grow one because you need to wear a mask for work. I mean, as a fat guy with a beard and overalls in WV, no one even notices me. I could basically murder someone in cold blood in broad daylight and they would never catch me because the description would be “fat guy with a beard” and the cops would basically say “so half the population, basically?”
2.) People move slow around here. They do not move at a city pace at all. They move slower than in WV. It’s really jarring, as if they are on island time.
3.) All the stop lights are these big metal arms:
I’m assuming this is because the wind gets so bad the dangling kinds we have in WV and elsewhere would blow all over the place and be hard to read.
4.) Dust and dirt buildup in my nostrils. Haven’t experienced this since Kuwait and King Khalid Military City in Saudi Arabia.
5.) You literally have to work and put in an effort to get lost here. It’s a grid. If you can can to 50 and understand cardinal and ordinal directions (and yes, I am aware these are big if’s in today’s day and age so…), you can not get lost. I mean you can, but if you tell me you got lost in Phoenix or Tempe, I’m gonna judge you.
6.) Almost no two story residential homes.
7.) There seem to be a lot of Pittsburgh expats here. Seeing “YINZ” shirtz and Steelers logos a lot.
8.) One of my weird quirks as a person is that where ever I go, I always research where the tap water comes from and read the reports. I think plumbing and tap water in your house basically anywhere you want in the country is really a modern marvel that rivals all others. It’s literally one of the few things you need to survive, lack of clean drinking water has killed who knows how many trillions of animals and people, and here we have it in every home in the country for basically nothing.
AND SO MANY PEOPLE REFUSE TO DRINK IT! So I always read the reports and it’s nice to know where it comes from and how it is treated and the dissolved solids and what not, because I will be drinking a lot of it. I also have to say that the Tempe government resource to find this information is really one of the best I have come across.
9.) I am going to thrive in this amount of light every day.
10.) People do not use enough color. Because wood deteriorates so quickly, most of the fencing is brick, cinderblock, stone, etc, and very few people paint them. One of my first bigger projects here is going to be painting the fence to give it a splash of color and to use it as a picture frame when I paint the exterior of the house.
I’ll post more as they occur to me.
Things I Have Noticed In the First 24 HoursPost + Comments (97)