First Impressions

Okay, so 21 days into this shindy I've formulated a few opinions and impressions. I've also made some realizations and then some realizations about said realizations.

First thing's first - folks, we live in a tiny city. Either that or I've been in Orlando far too long. I don't mean that to have any negative connotations, in fact I mean the exact opposite. Despite living in Orlando for the vast majority of my life I've never felt that it was a connected community until these past 21 days. I realize (about this realization) that I'm way biased for a few reasons, and this feeling of community might not extend to everyone. I've been hanging out downtown for almost 7 solid years now, and working here for almost 6 so I've not only gotten to know the area quite well, I've collected a few friends along the way (not to date myself but those time periods are actually a decent chunk of my life). So now I'm living here and feeling like I'm finally home....what an amazing feeling! Running into random friends in random places, seeing the same strangers in the same places - it's all just awesome to me and I'm super stoked about it.

So, what else?...the experience so far is just plain enamoring - that much I expected. What I did not anticipate was how it has been so different than what I had originally conceived while still fulfilling all my expectations. That doesn't make much sense, but it works out somehow in the grand scheme of things. What is this 'grand scheme of things,' you ask? Well..I'd like to try and tell it from my perspective - that is what this is all about, after all - so I think I've just laid out the format for my next few posts.

Now I'm feeling a little more caught up with this thing and I think I've gotten the intro(s) out of the way. Over the next couple installments I'm gonna touch on my first impressions of the main aspects of Life in DtO. The day to day, the night to night, the nice little surprises and the obligatory downsides.

Also, a little plug - a friend of mine has a blog of her own about one of my favorite things on earth that I thought would go real well as a simultaneous read with my own. Her cFoodiEtc.com is all about food and the places around Downtown and more that serve it, along with just enough randomness to quench my ever-present thirst for spontaneous thought. Drop by and show her some love, revel in the glory of the incredible power of the Blackberry Storm's camera flash (pretty sure all the food pics are taken with her phone!), and read on an empty stomach 'cause, undoubtedly, you'll want to hop over to some of those joints for a bite to eat! Okay, that was actually a pretty big plug...oh well.

'Til next time...