Congrats teachers on making it through another year!

Congrats to Joe!

We moved a ton when I was a kid (my dad isn't in the service - he's in hospital administration). Never lived anywhere more than 3 years and that was a rarity. It was never a problem until we moved between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Terrible.

As for home, I always considered Greenville, SC home, but LA is my home now. I've been here longer than anywhere else.

Congratulations, Lt. Col. Joe! That's fantastic news!

San Francisco is my home. Or, it's Home. I was shocked, when the dot-com boom forced me to move to the East Bay, that Berkeley could also be a small-h home. And every time I've visited LA in the past decade or so, I've gotten a strong "Yeah, maybe not my first choice but I could definitely live here and be content" vibe. Considering the serious hate-on I have for the East Bay suburb I (resentfully) spent my childhood in, it appears that I'm not in general a California girl, but specifically a California city girl.

The only other places I've ever been that gave me a big HOME HERE feeling were Boston and Rome.

And, of course, wherever Hec and Matilda and Emmett are is home, but I suspect that we're all so bound to this city and this area that if we suddenly found ourselves in, say, Iowa, we'd feel very much like a family in exile.

This is our last week of school. I can't wait for it to be over. No more getting up at 6am to drive to school! No more scrambling for lunch money! No more fighting with kids about homework! Also, I can make them work for me now. It isn't quite the same having teens underfoot. When I had to keep them occupied and entertained it was much more complex.

Considering how easily I slipped into the rhythm of New York, I'm surprised I didn't feel more of a HOME HERE vibe. I know I could be quite happy there (given enough money), though.

I think for me home ends up being wherever my friends are. I moved quite a bit for about 10 years during undergrad and grad school and places always started to feel like home once I got settled in with some friends.

Yes, I'm sure the SFistas are a big reason why I feel at home here in this new city, despite not feeling at home in my own home.

I remember in college, moving to a new dorm room every year, it pretty much felt like "home" once my bed had been set up, that being the central element of the room. These days I think my apartment feels like home once my big red couch and love seat are set up and the TV and laptop are going. :) If I have the internet, TV, and somewhere to sit to watch/read, we're good.

I've lived here my whole life and yet on occasion get "You're not from around here, are you?" I wonder if there's some Baltimore woman with desert as her desktop like I have the sugar factory.

You know, as wonderful as my friends there are, the LA area NEVER felt like home, even after five years and my beloved kitty. Maybe because i never had my own apartment there? It's hard to tell. San Diego always felt foreign also, and i lived there for 4 years. Maybe southern california in general....growing up on the east coast it always seemed so exotic and far away...then i moved there :) Portland felt like home within days, even though i have (so far) very few friends here :( But Richmond, where i was born and raised lived for the vast majority of 21 years has a unique place in my heart, and somewhere in the bottom of my stomach. It doesn't feel like home, but it has a unique place of dread. Some feelings you can never get over, and that is something like "home." Right now, i look forward to going home after work and forcing some corporal cuddling on my two sick kitties.