Well the next thing ya know, ol Jed's a millionaire... or rather, Tonya's third and fourth year of medical school are scheduled for 4 hospitals in Queens/Brooklyn (with an odd 6-week stint in South Miami). And then Casey makes it feasible by interviewing for and landing a job at Bloomberg, L.P. Fortunately, Casey has family with connections in NYC (no, not those kinds of connections) and Tonya has friends from NYC, so we at least had somewhere to stay the first night.

Our friend Karis is from New York, so we stayed with her family when we arrived. Her dad recommended a realtor in Port Washington, we found a good apartment at a good price, and ended up staying here. Port Washington is a small town in Nassau county on Long Island (LI) - close enough to Manhattan for Casey to work but far enough away to get out of the City. Casey has about an hour to hour-and-a-half commute every morning, which from what we hear, is not too bad. The beach is about 3 blocks south of our front door, and since we live in a peninsula, it's not that far away in any other direction either. Tonya is still getting used to seeing seagulls in the grocery store parking lot.

We're adjusting to a different culture up here as well. It seems as though there's a hidden charge for just about anything. People yell about most anything, though we've learned that they're not really shouting at you, it's just the way they do it. They also honk their horns at anything, and usually nothing that we can figure out - unless we're violating some obscure New Yorkian driving law all the time. All in all though, it's not that bad; as Fodor's guide to NYC says, "Once they find out you're harmless, Most New Yorkers will bend over backwards to help." We might add, "For a charge."