If you haven’t noticed, much of my attention over the past few weeks has been dedicated to the ever-harrowing but still very exciting moving process. I’m leaving the comforts of suburbia for the convenience of Manhattan this weekend.

Things might slow down here a bit for a couple of days. Monday will feature some re-posted greatest hits, my self-applauding means of introducing new readers to old content and reminding old readers about various posts they may have enjoyed in the past. By Tuesday I should be back online weighing in on all that’s new and stupid.

This is the first of a four-part series that will roll out today and tomorrow. I hope. I haven’t written any of it yet, so I reserve the right to get too busy and bail.

Almost everything about moving — in this area and on my budget, at least — involves trade-offs. To find an apartment you can afford in a desirable location, you must concede some floor space. To live someplace closer to restaurants and nightlife, you must accept more street noise. Stuff like that. I assume you’ve moved at some time in your life, so I probably don’t need to explain it in great detail.

Anyway, on the whole this move should be a net positive. But there are at least three things I’ll miss about life in suburbia. In no particular order:

The backyard: I had no idea what I intended to do in my backyard when we moved to Hawthorne a couple years ago. I just knew that after five years of living in Brooklyn I was psyched to have one. I figured I’d play more lawn games and such, though that never really happened.

It turned out my backyard was awesome for two things: barbecuing and gardening. A bunch of my friends gave me a smoker as a wedding gift, and with it I endeavored countless cooking projects. I got really good at making ribs, if I do say so myself, and developed some pretty strong barbecue instincts. I smoked briskets, chickens, pork butts and turkeys. I even made bacon once. Plus we had a small charcoal grill next to the smoker, which helped produce all sorts of delicious burgers.

More often than not, I served those meats with something from our garden. The garden ran the length of our house and got direct sunlight for most of every summer day. Our vegetables grew like tomacco. Plus, gardens are invaluable for metaphors. Just about everything in life is kind of like a garden: You put in some effort and you reap more fruit, but there’s always a lot of randomness in play.

Driving: Everything in our neck of Westchester is pretty far apart, at least compared to what I grew used to living on Long Island, in D.C. and in Brooklyn. The Taco Bell is over four miles away; the nearest retail areas are almost ten miles.

We got a new car on June 7, 2010. By the time we move into the city for good, that car will have nearly 25,000 miles on it. And we don’t often take road trips.

But I like driving, especially on the type of (normally) lightly trafficked roads you can find in Westchester. Even the local roads feature fewer stop lights than their counterparts on Long Island, and many of the parkways are hilly, scenic and ripe with interesting roadkill. I like driving aimlessly, maybe with some token errand in mind, then trying to find an alternate route home. Westchester’s pretty great for that.

The moon: I know the moon also shines over Manhattan, so don’t tell me I’m in for a pleasant surprise when I get there. Until I moved to Hawthorne I had no idea there was anyplace within 100 miles of the city so free of light pollution. Our block has one streetlight and it’s not close to our house. On clear nights, we can see all the constellations vividly, not just some hazy suggestion of Orion.

And the moon shines so brightly it casts shadows, and pours this almost eerie blue glow into our kitchen. It’s awesome. The first clear full-moon night we lived there I woke up thinking there might be a UFO overhead. It’s hard to explain. Everything looks like a Gregory Crewdson photograph.

Whoa, my memories of the suburbs are on the whole way lamer than I expected them to be. I suspect the forthcoming complaints will be a little funnier. I hope. Jeez.