Clojurians Log v2

This is such a valuable thread. Thanks so much for sharing, Sean, including all of the detailed numbers and expenses. Fun fact: Other than Virginia (8), no state has produced more US presidents than Ohio (7). I won't speculate on if Ohio catches up any time soon. (Sorry for sneaking into the thread, I don't live in the Bay but still keep tabs on this room since I grew up in the area!)

For anyone who read this thread and is curious about winter in Ohio... 🙂 We have had multiple periods of weeks at a time below freezing. We had a foot of snow overnight a while back (that took three weeks to melt away!). We've had snow on and off since November (four months, with probably two more months to go). It's been the coldest, snowiest winter in N.E. Ohio for years -- but we're loving it! I have a battery-powered 20" snowblower and it's gotten plenty of use. Since we moved, we've had a hot tub and a swim spa installed, and a deck built around those, and then covered in our back porch. That all happened in the fall -- when the trees were beautiful yellows, oranges, and reds. But we've used the hot tub a lot, even with a foot of snow on the ground. We hosted our first ever Christmas dinner (we've never had the sort of space where we can do that) and, yes, we sat in the hot tub on Christmas Day too! I've started a monthly online-only Ohio meetup -- we don't have set topics yet, we just meet on Zoom and chat. Sometimes we even chat about Clojure.

We figured out last year that if I was to retire (aka lose my job and not find another one), we could not afford to do that in the Bay Area. Our property taxes were $7,200, eq ins $3k, and just the general cost of living made the numbers just not work (we still have nearly a decade left on the mortgage). Why Ohio? We have a friend here, who is a retired Youngstown State genetics professor who grew up on the West Coast and said we'd probably enjoy the area -- and a near-identical house to ours in the Bay Area was likely to only cost around $200-250k. We flew out in early February to house-hunt -- snow on the ground, only went above freezing two days that week! -- and couldn't believe how much real estate was available for $220k or less! Found a lovely 3 bed, 2 bath, 1,500 sq ft ranch-style house, on a quarter acre with a 2 car detached garage -- just like our Bay Area house really -- and we caught it just as the owners dropped the price (unlike the Bay Area, where property sells sometimes before it even goes on the market, out here in Ohio, houses stay on the market for months and often drop $10-20k before selling). That closed in March, and we had some work done on it before we moved the cats and my wife out -- 2,500 miles in a 12' cargo van with 8 cats: 4 days of driving, spread over 5 days. I got everything set up for the cats (big pens in the basement for 3 of the rescues we're working to socialize) and flew "home" to oversee the packing on the California house. Then I drove our car the same 2,500 miles on I-80 (3 days of driving, spread over 4 days -- including 6 hours in torrential rain and near-zero visibility through Eastern Nebraska and across Iowa! 😞 ). We had to have a bunch of work done on the California house to get it ready for market (painting inside and out, landscaping, refinishing all the hardwood floors, etc) and we actually had two offers on it before it officially went on the market! The purchase process in Ohio wasn't bad -- a little bit of back and forth with the sellers, and we let them stay a couple of weeks past closing so they could sort out their next purchase -- but the sale process in California has been exhausting, with so much back and forth with two of the three offers we ended up getting, and endless paperwork and addendums and changes to conditions. We finally got everything nailed down at the end of last week, including transferring the solar panel lease, while the escrow process grinds slowly onward. We'll be so glad to close and be able to turn the page and move on!

As for the weather here: both Jay & I grew up with snow and we both missed it for our 30 and 25 years (respectively) in the Bay Area. We also missed proper seasons which, let's be honest, the Bay Area really doesn't have. We lived in the wettest part of the Bay Area (I did not know that until we got to Ohio) -- about 20" rain a year -- and Austintown, Ohio got about 43" in the last year (with June '24 being the wettest month and November being the driest month -- pretty different from the Bay Area!). We're still getting used to the "warm rain" aspect of the weather -- it's been 80F+ and pouring with rain several days in the past month!

Congrats on the move! I hope you love the Midwest. 🙂

We're enjoying it so far! Everyone is very "nice" ("Midwest nice") and the food and drink scene here is great -- somewhat surprisingly, we have really good Mexican, Thai, Puerto Rican, Syrian, and Lebanese restaurants all nearby (although I haven't found a decent Indian place yet). Ohio craft beer is really good -- and we have Paladin Brewing less than 2 miles from our house 🙂 And of course the cost of everything is crazy cheap compared to the Bay Area (gas is about $3/gallon, for example).

Sean is trying to recruit us all to Ohio!

Colonize Ohio and turn it 🔵 😄