Things that are different here

• Edy's is called Dreyer's. But it's still just as yummy. OMG that Tagalong ice cream? I can NOT buy that again.
• There's no Kroger, but there is King Sooper's, and they appear to be owned by the same company. Also, there's no Trader Joe's. And no Ikea. I KNOW. But you can't expect to drastically reduce your cost of living without giving up ANYTHING. And in general there's actually a ton of great shopping here, more than in DC.
  
• People are so friendly. At the grocery store? The MANAGER helped me find cottage cheese, then personally bagged our stuff and offered to carry it out to the car for us. The thought of anyone at a grocery store in DC offering to carry our stuff to the car is hilarious.
• Prime time starts at 7 instead of 8, but they switch the order of the shows. On the East Coast on Monday nights, 24 is on at 8 and House is on at 9. Here, 24 is still on at 8, but House is on at 7. So we're watching House in real time with the rest of you, but we're two hours behind on 24. And on American Idol. This means I have to stay away from Twitter on results nights.
• Houses are affordable! As in, we can buy one sometime in the near future without bankrupting ourselves! Not a huge mansion, but a nice house. Certainly nicer than the shack 40 miles out of town that we would have been lucky to afford in DC. OK, that's an exaggeration, but still.
• The weather. I know that the weather here is unpredictable, but I'm loving what we've had for our first week. It's been sunny and in the 60s pretty much every day. One night it snowed, and that was pretty. And then the next day it was sunny and in the 60s again, and we didn't even have to scrape off our car because the snow all melted.
• There's no traffic to speak of. I mean, the highway gets crowded at rush hour, but in DC you could get on the Beltway at midnight and still not be sure if you'd be bumper to bumper. It was so bad that the GPS's estimate of when we'd arrive at a place was usually off by about 50%, and that's with a live traffic feed, because it just didn't understand the slow crawl and long lines of red lights that make up DC driving. Here the GPS's estimates are pretty much entirely accurate.
• The mountains are always there, always visible, and always beautiful. And you can orient yourself based on where they are.
• There appear to be no mailboxes on the street, anywhere. I drove around looking for one for like fifteen minutes, and finally gave up and drove the three miles to the post office so that our car payment wouldn't be late. Is this normal? In DC there was one on a street corner at least every couple blocks. Where the hell are they all around here? Have I gone blind?
  
• Dogs! Everywhere! I saw two people in Home Depot with their dogs. Tons of people walk dogs on the street all the time. It's amazing. And makes me extra sad that we weren't able to get an interview with the two dogs we're interested in adopting for a week and a half. How will we wait that long? I'm not sure it can be done.