Missing Arizona

I used to drive people crazy when I lived in Arizona with my sometimes overwhelming love of Texas. By my sophomore year, Harout had even lovingly named me "Texas Jenni". Moving out of the Promised Land triggered some unknown gene in my system that caused me to preach Texas to every stranger I came across. It was uncontrollable. And true. I always knew that I was going to need to come home if I ever wanted to be whole again, and while I am so glad to be back in the great state of Texas and have the opportunity to recite the Texas pledge every morning, there are some things that I really miss about Arizona. 

I realized in the past couple of weeks, especially while I was at TMEA, that I really miss college. While my fond memories are made up entirely of ASU, and not of the New American University, I do miss the idea of just waking up in the morning and going to learn something. I guess I also miss waking up in the morning and deciding not to learn something. Or deciding to learn something, driving to campus, and then deciding that a bagel is better than learning. 

I miss having friends. Some of the best friends I've ever had came from my Arizona years, and it sucks to live so far away from them. I miss the altered state that pulling an all-nighter with a friend could cause (if you ever lived on campus without walking down to Hungry Howies at 2am or sported a side-ponytail while studying for music history, you never truly lived).  It was fun having couple friends that we could adventure with, co-workers to commiserate with, and old college friends to catch up with. We haven't quite found that special group of people here, so we miss you all the more!

I also miss being able to just sit out on our patio for dinner. I think having a patio the size of a luxurious prison cell is one of the best things that ever happened to us. We had so many nice candlelight dinners and early morning cups of hot chocolate out there when we got married that when we moved, it was really sad to lose that. Good times.

The moral of the story is that we miss Arizona, we miss our Arizona people, and we can't wait to come visit for Spring Break.