I wanted to give you a short update on our time here in the Bay area. We arrived here, got into our apartment, and had some friends and new friends stop by to help us unload our Penske truck - which we did in 45 minutes. Pretty unbelievable. Which was great, but then meant that our place was filled with boxes. I think the first day or two Sarah and I were both completely overwhelmed, both with a new place, new people, new surroundings, our apartment (it was a little bigger in our minds than it actually was when we first got here)…too many new things for both of us.
One image that at least captures how I was feeling involves Sadie. She did amazing the whole drive out here - had no problems in the car - and was just great. However, when we were unloading the truck, we had to put her in the bathroom so she wouldn’t be in the way. So she saw an empty apartment, then was locked in the bathroom for an hour - when she came out, the place was filled with boxes. She also met 3 new people right then as well; so after she came out, saw the people and all the boxes of our stuff, she just puked.
Now, neither Sarah or I have puked since getting here, but…I think Sadie’s act was at least in some ways what I was feeling emotionally. Since then, things have been better; we’ve met some of our neighbors who are really friendly, gotten a little better feel for the area and are starting to get more settled into our apartment. We’ve made a few trips to IKEA and yesterday, we put together a Bjursta dining room table, some Stefan chairs and two Expedit bookcases. Today we have three Billy bookcases to put together and a lot of other random stuff.
Slowly, our place is coming together and starting to feel like a home for us. We still have a lot of work to do, but it’s coming along. Tomorrow we start at the Macrina Community, and then we have the rest of the week to get the place together before I head off to San Jose for the PC(USA) General Assembly. We will put up some more photos of how things are coming, but for now, you can see the progress we’ve made here on Flickr.
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We could take some of your boxes off your hands, if they haven’t found the dumpster or recycling bin.
Oh, and welcome to the East Bay! Check out Arizmendi’s Pizza in your neck of the woods. Sooooooooooooo good.
Welcome! One trick to keep in mind is that sometimes it’s quicker to Marin by using the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Get yourself a Fastrak transponder, too.
hey buddy… hope you settle in well. Jules and i have also just found an apartment (in the inner north of canberra)… will put up a post sometime.
Found some good advice for you when you cross over to SF: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/23/91-san-francisco/
Excited to see how the West Coast pans out for you.
Amen to Sadie’s puking. The first few weeks here I did a lot of emotional puking. I think at this point, I’ve just put all of that away in favor of going on with the details of life, but there’s still something bubbling below the surface, ready to come out if anything were to fall apart on the outside. Meanwhile, Niles has not puked, but he sure isn’t getting the exercise he used to when he and Sadie were neighbors. We’re looking forward to a fence. For now, we are excited to have bought our first major appliance - a stove. So, we would be excited about a cooking blog as well. :) PEACE.
Looks like you’re settling in nicely.