All the other states have restraining orders against me and CT has me under state arrest and rated as a high flight risk.

I grew up in Mass. Then after a tour in the Navy I went to Colorado, lived there until I got a call that my father had about a year to live, cancer. I moved the family back so that my father and my son could have time together. I moved to CT instead of Mass. because of work.

Once settled I had to let my son finish school plus my family and my wife's family are in CT and MA.

Now that the boy is off at college we are planning on leaving this taxed to death part of the world to find bluer waters.

My extended family is in this area and I always spent the summers here. I moved alot as a kid VA, CT, and upstate NY. I finished HS in upstate NY and joined the ARMY requesting to be stationed at FT Drum where I graduated HS. When I left the ARMY I realized there are few career opportunies in northern NY and the economy is struggling up there. I was dating my now wife then and I knew I was going to move here, she decided to come with me. She was seven years into a job there and moving here meant starting from scratch for both of us.
Southeastern CT is not an easy place to start out for a young couple. We have loves and hates for this place. We are unsure when we could ever afford to buy a house here and the tourism can be a pain in the *** but we both love all the other things this area has to offer. We have found opportunities that never would have existed in NY and are slowly gaining on things after 5 years. My job allows me the option to live anywhere and my pay wold not change as I work from home. We have talked about this and decided to stay even though we could live pretty comfortibly in NY now where my inlaws are (my wife gets homesick).
Bottom line is, as tough as living here can be, I cant think of another place I would want to live, and if you want something bad enough you make it happen. Just an aside, it is a lot more manageable without children and we don't have any. We consider ourselves lucky to live in a place with so much to offer in such a close proximity and such beautiful scenery (once you get away from heavy populated areas).

Dusty, pretty broad statements you make there, but your perceptions are valid, perhaps even correct to a point. CT: we're an hour or two from the mountains...and hour or two from the sea...an hour or two from New York City and an hour or two from Boston, the Cape and the Islands. This is perhaps more correctly described as New England. We are professional at bitching about things. Too damned cold and snowy in the winters and too damned hot in the summers. Too damned muddy in the spring and too damned many leaves to rake in the fall. The gas prices suck,...the taxes suck, the politicians are crooked and if we did get our butts off the couch to vote, we take pride in that very act as being license to bitch about anything connnected with a governing body trying to tell us what to do, how to do it, and what it will cost us. We are not really that grumpy, conceited, or egotistical...we just can act that way...but we are New Englanders and we love it here.

If I had some guts and knew I could actually find a job in upstate NY that paid more than minimum wage (what do they do there for work up there?) thats where you would find me. Ofcourse I would have to lose a couple teeth and give my truck a lift kit but you couldn't stop me from being on Lake Ontario every Saturday and Sunday.