New Years

The holiday season for us has been something of a lonely one. We just moved back to California from Utah, and it seems like just as we were getting here, many of the folks we were so excited to be reunited with took off for the holidays to visit their own families in far off places (ok, mostly just to Utah). In any case, it's made for a very quiet time around our apartment, and as New Year's Eve has come up and we realize that we still have no plans, I realized something today that I didn't think I'd ever feel: I miss living in the USU Trailer Court.

I must clarify--I don't miss actually living in a maroon, university-owned, 55 year old trailer (which, as evidenced by the picture, has since been destroyed). I don't miss our 3-foot wide hallway. I don't miss our 2-inch thick walls in January. I don't miss having to tell people I live in a trailer park when they ask for my address.

That said, I miss the neighborhood. When we lived in the trailer court, if we didn't have plans some evening and desired company beyond ourselves, we could simply go for a walk around the neighborhood. There was a kind of "drop on by" attitude that was central to living in the trailer court. The sense of community was at times overwhelming (the trailer court was like 90% LDS and made up our entire ward, so at times it was difficult to distinguish between a "ward activity" and a "neighborhood activity"), but in general it was a great place to live.

As Beatta and I were thinking about what to do this evening, I tried to think of years past and what we did then; more often than not the reality is that we started off with some great plan but ultimately just went over to John and Heidi James' trailer to play board games.