We needed a space we could call our home base.

So there we were in the summer of 2009: Penn State alumi of two months, living in our college town and having just gotten engaged. We had so many questions like, "where will we go?, what will we do?, who will we become?". Fortunately planning a wedding these days is a full time position and we didn't have time to worry about all that existential stuff. We would write this a few months later on our obligitory wedding website:

"Our Future Plans: 
Ben is working for High Performance Technologies Inc. and his current client is the FDA in Rockville, MD. Annalynne is working as an HR assistant at The Health Care Management Group in Rockville MD. After the wedding they plan on moving to an apartment in DC itself and trying out the city slicker lifestyle for a while."

As it turns out, we never quite made it into DC proper - instead we landed in cushy Rockville, Maryland in an apartment  complex  complete with crown molding, walk-in closets, a pool, gym, neighbors that don't say hi and a bathroom that has suspiciously smelled like pee since day one, despite our best bleaching attacks. 

We have managed some pretty good adventures though. Just prior to our engagement we took a trip to Hungary via London to visit our friend Jenny, a hilarous, hipster-ish multi-lingual who was there teaching english. She escorted us through that sketchy, eastern european (though rapidly modernizing) throwback with a flair and vigor that Frommer's would be jealous of.

Since then we visited China where Annalynne's brother Chas was teaching english. We're still trying to figure out how to put that one in a sentence or two soundbite summary. 

So now we've decided to abandon the "city" for what some fondly call "fredneck" (Frederick, Maryland) though just twenty or so miles north of DC, it suits our personalities more than where we live now, not to mention... it's summer and Ben's neck is indeed red. We want to stop paying astronomical rent and take advantage of an admittedly buyer's market to create a home base for what adventures may come! 

So we bought a house - or more cautiously stated, are in the process of buying a house, in historic downtown Frederick. Our house of course is anything but.