Lansdale

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise from summer 2013 was my relationship with my neighborhood, which strengthened. Sherry and I bought our home in 2002, thinking it was a nice starter home. We saw ourselves there for a few years before moving on. If we do move on, it's hard to see us doing it anytime soon and it's hard to see us moving from our neighborhood. This summer only deepened my affection for this little corner of Montgomery County.

Improvements to the house make this an easier conclusion to draw. This was the summer of central air conditioning, and though it was tough to see craftsmen saw holes in our walls and ceilings, it made the house remarkably more comfortable.

Looking down through the hole which now is the uptake of our air conditioning. 

The pool continued to be a great feature of our neighborhood, and as one who grew up in the woods, I'm still kind of astonished at the idea of having a pool within walking distance.

Sam on the final day of swim lessons.

The style of the homes, also, still appeals to me in our particular neighborhood. 

But I'll remember summer of 2013 most for it being the summer of beers outside and in town. Several of the fellows around here, whose kids my kids play with, turn out to have a lot in common with me, and we enjoyed spending time this summer walking to one another's homes to enjoy beer and talk. Certainly that thwarted some diet goals this summer, but that's where the running came into play. 

I never thought I'd be saying this at age 37: I have a running partner. But I am learning how to make runs in the area enjoyable, and that's helping me appreciate some nearby places, such as the Green Ribbon Trail.

A bittersweet moment: I bid farewell to my favorite chair. Before giving it away, I placed it on my porch and enjoyed a beer. 

And now there's news that Chick Fil A is moving in nearby. Oh, and Wegmans too.

I'm coming to chuckle more and more at the quirks of Lansdale: the way in which you can live here for 11 years and still feel like a newcomer, the fact that we have a Mardi Gras parade on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, that no Wawas exist in the borough, but surround it in every township, that we have great neighborhoods and churches, but a dormant downtown core, that we're old but have lost some of the finest pieces of architecture (it's amazing the way this town has demolished great buildings only to have them replaced by hum drum . . . the original Trinity for a non-descript bank branch, the original high school for a shuttered McDonald's, a victorian hotel for a tire superstore). 

And that is all for now.