The Things I'll Miss

I've been thinking about some of the implications of our traveling adventure in the last few days, and came up with some of the things that I will miss because of the traveling. I divided them into two groups.

The higher end:

• Our friends - While we don't hang out constantly with our friends, we generally get together with them fairly often. This just means that when we are back in town the meetings will be more concentrated. Email, cell phones, and Facebook will help to keep us in touch with these people, but it is not quite the same as face time.
  
• Our families - Both my wife and I are pretty close with our families. While we don't visit with them super often based on our current proximity to them, we have gotten used to seeing them fairly often as well.

The lower level:

• Our favorite local restaurants - While I am sure that we will find new restaurants that we will enjoy quite a bit, we will still miss some of our favorites we have found here. Blue Mango, our favorite Mongolian BBQ place, Pasta? among many others.
• Our slow-pitch softball team - We had established ourselves on a pretty good team, and with the traveling may find it hard to play for some time. Definitely a sport we will try to come back to at a later date.
• Our city-league volleyball team - Yes, we didn't win a game. Yes, we collapsed every time we were close to winning a game. But the quality of play was very high (for the most part), and it was always fun to go.
• Sonoma - We both went to undergrad in Sonoma County, and while we have not had time to go there in at least 6 months, the option to go was always available to us. Definitely a place we will visit when we are back in town (hopefully anyway)
• The ocean - I haven't actually been to see the ocean in a fairly long time, but I have always known it was never more than a couple hours away at most. While we will be living next to a gigantic lake (Lake Michigan) for this first assignment, I don't think it is going to be quite the same. I have always loved being able to just go to the ocean and watch the waves come in.