Move Update

Every other time we have moved, people have said, "We will miss you." but this time almost everyone has immediately said, "Can we come with you?" or "I would love to come!" Many of our friends are seriously thinking about moving to the Austin/San Antonio area in the next couple years.

For those of you who thought we were already on our way to TX: My family is staying one more week in CA. We were planning to leave yesterday, but it worked out to be easier (and cheaper) to stay here longer. Why? It looked like the closing date for the house would get pushed off a week, when Dad called U-haul about a moving truck and found out that he could save $1000 by waiting a week before renting the truck (so many people are moving out of CA that they had a shortage of trucks). Not only that, but Dad's business trips also needed to be changed to different days, which fit in perfectly with us waiting one week before moving.

One of our friends told Mom about a map online showing migration within the US, county by county, in 2008 (the patterns have not changed much since then). Here is the exact link. I combined the maps of several San Jose-San Francisco counties to make one map and several Austin-San Antonio counties to make another. The red lines represent outward migration, and the black lines represent inward migration. It seems odd to apply the term migration to humans, but it describes the way we move perfectly. Go to the link and click on any major city and you will see that large amounts of people move in/out depending on whether they are liberal/conservative, concentrating in certain areas.

OUT

IN

I can't wait until we are done with the leaving and packing, and are on our way to TX.

Lauren Ashley