Post #17: Living the Urban Lifestyle

My wife Patty and I have lived a “suburban” lifestyle for our entire lives. This involves living in a single family house, driving to restaurants and grocery stores and not walking a lot except for planned exercise or hikes. Now that we are living in a downtown condo, our lives have changed dramatically as we now are living the “Urban” lifestyle. So now, we reside in a high-rise building (21 floors) and live in a small apartment. Food shopping (grocery) and drug stores (CVS, etc.), and of course restaurants are within walking distance and that's how we get to most places. Of course, you have to plan around the weather here in Chicago, bundling up when necessary. But, it's OK with us; it's just very different from what we are used to. We also have a 24 hour doorman who is nice and helpful for us in finding places around the neighborhood and negotiating tasks in the apartment building. Another thing that is interesting is that nearly every restaurant offers delivery services so if the weather is extremely bad, they can just bring it directly to your apartment (right upstairs if you tell the doorman that it's coming).

It helps in Chicago to have a reserved, indoor parking space as well that is attached to the apartment house. When we drive to the hospital each day, we really don't have to go outside at all and that's fine with us when the wind chill is below zero.

Finally, if you look out the window from our apartment, you can see probably 20,000 other windows where others are doing the same. I told Patty that when I do this, it reminds me of the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie staring Jimmy Stewart call “Rear Window”. So far, I haven't seen any potential crimes taking place and I haven't gotten a telescope as Stewart did in the movie. And that's a good thing.