It's the end of a looooooong week here in Chapel Hill. Shel and I have been working late almost every night, and we've been taking care of a lot of housebuying-related chores as well. On top of it all, Shel was seriously ill earlier this week -- running a 103 fever for two days, among other things. She's still recovering from what doctors think was an allergic reaction.

I woke up this morning thinking about how long we've lived in our place here. Or Chapel Hill, for that matter. CH doesn't seem like home, even now -- every place we go feels tentative, or deferred, or something. Not sure I have the word; it's like a suspended sense of resolution associated with the locale. I guess because we've always known we'd be leaving this place, once we finished school. Of course, it's been two years since I went on leave from UNC, and we're still here, working.

It will be good for us to leave Chapel Hill behind. This place has seen so much misery in our lives: the first two terrible years of our marriage; a graduate student experience notable for how little interest was taken in us by our professors (year after %#@&ing year); the mounting student loans to prop up that grad school life; diagnosis of various ailments, including bi-polar syndrome, chronic depression, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a raging caffeine addiction; and of course the terror and despair of feeling my evangelical perspective implode.

But yes, Shel and I have really loved the home in which we live, all of the above laments notwithstanding. Thanks to a new digital camera, I've been taking some snaps of the place to help us remember it. We have made this little duplex a home over the past six years. Shel has thrived like an orchid in the profusion of light through the big windows all around, and being able to hear the birdies is nice. I would like to shoot that dog across the way, though -- the one that yips all night long.

So what will we miss about our home and Chapel Hill? I think the following list starts to get at it:

• The sound of rainshowers on the tin roof
• The roasty-toasty feel of a warm woodstove fire -- our sole source of winter heat!
• The feel of cool concrete beneath my feet on a spring morning.
• The screened-in porch, where many a pipe was lit with Frog Morton on the Town.
• Trips to Cookout and Goodberry's with CH and WH
• Pepper's Pizza

• Biscuits and gravy at Elmo's Diner
• The Stella Insalate at 411 West, and their fresh rolls
• Gail and the whole gang at Carrburritos -- the only place where they would correct my call-in order when I forgot something!
• Chipotle salsa, flour chips, and the carnitas burrito at Carrburritos
• Swearing at the lawnmower at the top of my lungs
• That old karate striking post in the yard
• Barbecue at Allen & Sons: eating in a sparsely decorated cinder-block bunker, served by a surly high-school girl who's rather be painting her toenails and having a smoke.
• The attic fan, and our cathedral (sort of) ceilings.

Hmmm...I know there's more; what about the rest of you? Are there things about Chapel Hill or where we live that you'll miss seeing when you come to visit?