stereotypical single woman

When I tell people up north about grad school and North Carolina I always tell people I lived in Chapel Hill. Which really isn’t true. I lived in Carrboro, and I actually loved it there. It’s the slightly poorer (and by poorer I mean that an average three bedroom house house is only about 300 grand), more granola, consistently higher (and therefore more laid back), and radically left wing sister of Chapel Hill. It has an amazingly huge amount of culture and events for a city of less than 20,000. Most of the inhabitants are artists, hippies, and professors at UNC (sometimes all three are rolled into one person) so it’s definitely not your typical small town. I was proud to live there, but no one back home had ever heard of the place, so it was just easier to tell the Yankees I lived in Chapel Hill. They couldn’t have cared less about North Carolina geography and I didn’t want to take the time to explain it to them (unless they asked, then there was no shutting me up, I cannot reiterate strongly enough how much I loved that place.)

I would like to eventually retire there, but that’s (sort of) a long way off. So when I have time to kill, and I’m feeling really lonely and nostalgic, I look up houses I’d like to buy there. Read about the bands playing at Cat’s Cradle. Look at the menu at Elmo’s. See if there’s any new funky shops at Carr Mill Mall. And find fun videos on YouTube that I just have to share.

Honestly, how could you not want to live there???????