Since I arrived home from living in Australia since January 2007, I've had to re-establish myself here.
New bank account. New (to me) car. New cell phone. Arranging for car and health insurance, living arrangements, warm clothes, a new hometown and more all had my head spinning in the first few weeks.
I liken myself to Rip Van Winkle, a fictitious character in the book by the same name written by Washington Irving in 1819.
The Dutchman falls asleep under a tree with his trusty dog by his side in the Catskill mountain range of New York.
He awakens to find shocking changes.
His musket is rotting and rusty. His beard is a foot long. His dog has disappeared.
Van Winkle wanders to the village and doesn't recognize anybody. He discovers that his wife is dead, and that his friends have died in a war, or moved away.
Unaware that the American Revolution has taken place, he gets in trouble by proclaiming himself a loyal subject of King George III and is surprised that the old, mad king's portraits have been replaced in establishments by those of George Washington.
Like him, I'm trying to wrap my head around so many basic changes to the way I used to live and where I lived.
I wanted to have a look at my old home town, where I was a journalist/news manager for the local newspaper, which has since changed hands. Driving down a road, I anticipated a familiar intersection that had a stop light.
On my right heading into town, a well-known family-owned restaurant was boarded up. All the other buildings that made up that corner were gone. The gas station was gone. The bar was gone. The real estate offices were gone. It looked like a howling wasteland with nothing left but broken concrete, gravel and litter.
Rather than being victims of the economic downturn, the owners of those buildings had sold out in order to widen the two-lane highway leading into the city. All was bulldozed, except for the lone restaurant owner's holdout, who ended up with nothing except a useless falling-down building.
It was surreal.
Other changes were not as dire, but still surprising.
I wanted to have a look at my old home town, where I was a journalist/news manager for the local newspaper, which has since changed hands. Driving down a road, I anticipated a familiar intersection that had a stop light.
On my right heading into town, a well-known family-owned restaurant was boarded up. All the other buildings that made up that corner were gone. The gas station was gone. The bar was gone. The real estate offices were gone. It looked like a howling wasteland with nothing left but broken concrete, gravel and litter.
Rather than being victims of the economic downturn, the owners of those buildings had sold out in order to widen the two-lane highway leading into the city. All was bulldozed, except for the lone restaurant owner's holdout, who ended up with nothing except a useless falling-down building.
It was surreal.
Other changes were not as dire, but still surprising.
Television is no longer free. One can't just plug it in and adjust the antennae. In order to watch live television, one has to have satellite, cable, or Internet access to a variety of, well, I don't even know what they're called. Services?
Video rental places have all but gone out of business with the arrival of Red Box and Netflix. One is a drop-off station outside of most stores, the other is available via Internet for television at home.
Banking has changed. Swipe your card at the teller station to deposit, withdraw, whatever you want to do. Cash a check? Take a picture with your phone, send it to the bank, destroy the check.
Banks also encourage saving accounts, and they didn't as much before I left. Mine is set up so that my purchases are rounded to the nearest dollar with the spare change going into savings. Likewise, $25 per month is automatically taken from checking and dumped into savings. I can move anything around at will via Internet. Or my phone.
Using cash is rewarded at nearly every service station with a 10-cent discount per gallon of fuel.
Hardly anyone has a landline telephone anymore. Long distance? No such thing. Almost. Get a basic cell phone plan and you can call anyone anywhere in the United States for free. It does cost to call anyone who has a landline, though.
There are discount and service cards for nearly everything. My wallet is full: Costco, Burgerville, Safeway, Fred Meyer, Haggen, Sally Beauty Club, The Good Book, and various coffee shops. For good measure, I renewed my library card too.
The way Americans diet is newer too. There is more awareness of food intolerance, such as gluten. We are crazy about Greek yogurt, Quinoa, agave, and fructose. A huge craze right now is Paleo. What the heck is that?
Home coffee makers now have pods for personalized tastes. Australia has that too, but in typical American fashion, we've taken it a step higher. There are three size settings; one, of course, fills the travel mug.
My friends Lisa and Cheri grinned as I regaled them with my observations about how much has changed in seven years. They understood and remarked how people just go with the flow and don't really pay attention to new ways of doing things. It is what it is.
I'm getting the hang of it.
At least I know who the current American president is.
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