Chad Things

Back in 2008 Shayna and I moved from SF to Chicago. I ended the longest stint living in one spot – 13 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. The second longest time living in one spot was 11 years in Atlanta where I grew up. So when I left SF it felt like I was leaving home. I was always thinking in the back of my mind I’d return one day. Well, here I am, 5 years later in Chicago, and I finally accepted Chicago as home. We’ve decided it’s time to put some roots down and buy a house.

I still love California. I think I will always consider it home. The Sierra Nevada mountains may be my favorite outdoor place in the world, whether I’m snowboarding in Lake Tahoe or Backpacking in Kings Canyon. I’m always in awe. Besides the mountains, there are tons of other amazing outdoor options – Camping along rivers at the foothills, driving along the windy coast, Pismo sand dunes, Sonoma and Napa wine country, etc. And as a techie, there’s no place better to work – its like LA for movies, NYC for finance, and Washington DC for politics. And of course the people I’ve met over the years are really what make it home. The biggest group of crazy, goofy, smart, hard working, creative, people I may ever know. I was lucky enough to make some great friends and had more good times than I can shake a stick at (can’t shake them old sayings). I miss you guys.

Chicago gets better every day. There’s so much to love about this city, as long as you look. Thanks to burningman, I immediately found lots of people in Chicago that liked to get goofy, get creative, and get down to good music. Then there’s the obvious stuff about Chicago like how beautiful the architecture is, how big a city it is (feels so much bigger than SF and LA, only NY seems bigger in the US), how many museums, parks, and festivals there are, and how great the summer is. The summer really is fantastic. Really. Sure the winters can seem long come march, april, and sometimes may. But that makes the summer that much more delicious. And the tech scene will never be better than SF, but its getting better all the time, its a huge city, and my current job shows me that there are still plenty of exciting and challenging tech opportunities in Chicago. It still doesn’t have mountains close by, that will always suck, but there are direct flights from O’Hare to the Rockies. Just got to make enuf green so I can fly to the mountains for the weekend, like the way we drove to Tahoe on the weekends.

More specifically, it’s house time. Shayna and I have been through alot over the years and decided it’s time. Time for more room so we can do more with our lives. Time to customize stuff to make our lives better. Time to have a place that we can control and is ours to mold for us. The only question is, which house will be lucky enough to have the Norwoods? The first question our friends ask is where are we looking. Right now we have few constraints – in the city of chicago, but basically anywhere from Bridgeport (just SW of downtown) heading north as far as Lincoln Square. But more likely it’ll be closer to Logan Square (our current residence, which we LOVE), Bucktown, Humboldt Park, or spots ’round there. More important to us than the location is the house itself. But we are still early in the process, and even though we’ve made a prioritized list of what we’re looking for, we expect it to change after we start going to see more houses.

Oh, and totally unrelated .. we are planning a 2 week trip to Patagonia, South America, in February 2014. Hurray! Stay tuned for more Norwood Adventures !!!