I wanted to start this blog

Shortly after we moved here, my mom asked me what Reno was like. I told her it was like Charlottesville with casinos. It's not really, but it has some things in common. The university is a big part of Reno, like it is in Charlottesville. Reno is kind of like a central city for a lot of smaller outlying areas. There are mountains in both areas. However, in Charlottesville, maybe because I wasn't a native, I always knew I could jump in a car and be anywhere else fairly quickly. The next big place from Reno is Sacramento, and that just feels so far away, somehow. I mean farther than it felt to go to DC., not in distance, so much as attitude as well as altitude. Maybe because I already knew DC before I would travel there, but I only go to Sacramento as a way to get away from Reno. Reno is like an island, especially in the winter--you need to go over the mountains to get somewhere, and then the weather is usually different.

I got the idea to start this blog when I was sitting in Trinity Episcopal Church, listening to the Reno Baroque Ensemble concert. I have many blogs, and pretty much all of my blogs are the same thing. I write about my feelings, like I'm journaling. My blogs are nothing anyone would want to read. I can't get out of this kind of habit, and it's already creeping in here, I realize. What I want mainly to do on this blog, however, is write about my life in Reno. Just my life. Because every time I go somewhere or do something here, I feel like there is supposed to be some underlying assumptions or understand I should have. There is a Reno scene, there are Reno celebrities in different niches. But I'm a transplant, and a lot of my social life takes place online, with people in other parts of the country; I grew up on the East coast and my family is nowhere near. Yet, I feel like there is something I'm supposed to know about Reno when living in Reno, I just don't know what it is.

Unlike in Virginia, where I never really felt like there was any kind of cohesive thing that defined my hometown. People moved in, people moved out, you were who you were. And I think that is partly true of Reno now, with all the people who have moved here from out of state. So I think what I want to do is explain how things feel from where I'm sitting.