April 7, 2005
So, my brother John asked me where do I find the time. I mean to give you all my secrets on how to survive an inn. For starters, I went to bed at midnight and got up at 7:00. (Naps during the day help.) While I was up here blogging, Kim was down on the second floor knitting. So, we each do a little something with our spare, ha, ha, ha, free,
What really saves me time? There is way too much to write about, Kim, our cross country trip with Spot, buying the inn, creating new workshops, art quilt, Spot, rural New York.
For instance, rural New York. Greenville is a small town but I don’t think it’s that much different from Los Altos, CA. Los Altos thought like a small town and the city council was as much a pain in the butt to us as people tell me that the town board here is. Now mind you, I haven’t had any problems and don’t have any first hand knowledge so I don’t want to pass along rumors. Having said that, I’ll stick to what I know and that’s mostly Los Altos.
In Los Altos, we tried to build a nice two story house. As we tried to build our dream house, we were sent anonymous threats. The picture of us in the story isn’t a very good one. Now, we live in a historic three story house. Anyway, Los Altos, though city like, always thought of itself as rural because it didn’t have sidewalks. Can you beat that? We’re talking Silicon Valley here where houses are in the millions of dollars for a quarter acre. To sum up, our welcome to Greenville, New York was much more heartfelt then our life in Los Altos and we even got a great article in the Greenville Press.
Anyway, Greenville doesn’t feel like a small town. Sure it’s in the woods, as my vet told me, but… This is worth repeating. My vet is a great guy, Dr. Knee. He’s good with Spot and likes him. Spot likes Dr. Knee though he hates going to the vet’s. Anyway, on my first visit to the vet’s, Dr. Knee asked where I lived and when I told him Greenville, he said, “Oh, out in the trees.”
When I remarked that there were a lot of trees between Greenville and New Baltimore, he said, “Yeah, but we have the Thruway.” New Baltimore and Coxsackie (pronounced CookSackie) is an exit (21B) off the New York Thruway where as Greenville is 20 mins away from the Thruway. So, we’re out in the trees. 🙂 Coxsackie is a whole story unto itself. Another post, perhaps.
Anyway, the people here are fun, nice people who live “out in the trees” but close enough to Albany (30 mins) to make it a day trip and yet far enough away to preserve a country life. After all, we own a country inn. So, Kim and I have the best of both worlds. We’re only 2 hours from New York and every Wednesday I drive to Madison New Jersey to practice martial arts. That’s only 2 hours away on the Thruway. In LA, 2 hours would be a trip to the corner store. In Silicon Valley, I used to take forty-five minutes to walk to work. The longest commute I ever had was one and half hours to Documentum because of road construction. Right, road construction to make it quicker to commute to work.
Now, I live where I work. Sort of like consulting. 😉
Remember, there is a huge art community here both of locals, naturalized locals, as the Texans say, and recently moved from New York (City) locals. Greenville is very sophisticated while being countrified. Just the way we like it. Kim couldn’t wait to move from California. Why? You might ask. That’s another post. She should tell you her own story.
So, life is good and I live in the trees here at the Arms. Come visit but remember, we’ll charge you. 🙂
BTW, when I say “New York” I mean New York City or The City. The City is no only SF. It’s now NYC. 😉