just south of Herndon off of Sunrise Valley Drive.
The apartment searching seemed like it took forever, mainly because the first four places we talked to had zero availability close to the time frame we needed it. It was interesting to look back at how our emotions affected the whole decision process. The first place we found that actually had an apartment available, seemed so great at the time because we were getting so desperate (even though it wasn't all that nice). Then, by the time we got to the last place at the end of the day, we were getting so tired that we didn't even give it a chance. At that point we sat down at a Starbucks, laid everything out and decided on Woodland Park Apartments.
Even though its only been a year, life will certainly be different than the last time we lived in Virginia. Many friends have moved on (or soon will move on) to other parts of the country. But, we've had a lot of good practice meeting new ones this past year. We are certainly a lot further away from "the action" in Arlington, but I'm not sure that we necessarily want to be that close to "the action" anyway. I'm not sure I even know what I mean by "the action," but apparently it deserves quotation marks, which means it must be cool. Looking at this map of coolness index (I was having too much fun with Google Earth), we are now sitting right smack of the middle of the not so cool zone.
I guess now we'll treat going out to Arlington/ Alexandria just like going from Arlington to DC before (Jumping two coolness zones in one night is a big step). We'll have to depend on our remaining friends in Arlington to keep this married couple in the burbs hip. Despite the loss of coolness, we did get a place that is a lot cheaper, a lot nicer, and a lot closer to work; so I think we're pretty happy with our choice.
