Built-in Bookcase 4 teh Win!

We've signed the papers and now it's official. Over the next month, we'll slowly migrate to the new place.

There may be too much furniture in our current apartment to actually fit into Bookcase Apartments. Chris and I calculated where things will go, but it'll be pretty much a tight squeeze for furnishings, especially in the bedrooms. Tomorrow, I'll head over with a couple of boxes of stuff and a tape measure and calculate where things will need to go. Here's a handful of photos for the curious.

I feel much better already. :)

Two Parking Stalls vs. Built-in Bookcase

We narrowed the field to two apartments because, you know what? I need the security of knowing where I'm going to be in a month. And I need to give thirty days' written notice, which is kind of hard to do when some of the places I've seen were not available until August.

Saturday afternoon, Chris and I looked at a place that had lots of potential. Two parking stalls included in the rent! Central air! Cross-ventilation! A dishwasher! The price was right and the two assigned parking stalls were definitely putting this place at the top of the list.

I went to see another place on a whim today because it was advertised for just under $1,100. Cute place, only one assigned parking stall, no air and no dishwasher. But a cool built-in bookcase in the living room and nice kitchen.

Back at the office, two out of two guys agreed: take the place with the dishwasher! So after work, I hopped into the car and went to drop off an application at Two Parking Stalls apartments.

On Saturday, the manager had mentioned that there's a Cuban restaurant next door that has a live band on weekends. However, she forgot to mention the recovery clinic operating in the front of the very apartment building in which I was ready to live. Trying to keep an open mind, I drove around the block, watching who the neighborhood was inhabited by at sunset. I noticed the parole office on the block behind the apartment. Hmm... Unnerved, I called Two Parking Stalls apartments and asked the manager what was with all the people hanging out in front of the building. "Oh, I must have forgotten to mention," she says. "Monday nights are busy because of AA. The other nights they don't have so many people." Er, yeah!

I drove right over to the manager of Built-in Bookcase apartments and turned in my application there. We should know tomorrow sometime if we're accepted. Poor Chris will need to circle the block to find a place to park his car, but at least he won't have to dodge groups of recovering people to do so.

Take Your Pet to Work Day

Melody went to the office with me yesterday in anticipating of this annual event. Kind of.

SteveD likes cats, but since he lives with a roommate, he doesn't have any living with him now. So, first Mittens (too scared to come out of his carrying box voluntarily) and now Melody have come to the office to visit him.

She took to the experience a little better than did Mittens. After low-crawling a bit (and a dash down the hallway), Melody settled in, coming out from her comfortable hiding spot to be admired by my co-workers. She's a lot more affectionate than she used to be, thankfully, and submitted to a lot of coaxing and cuddling by the guys around the office. By the end of the day she seemed pretty comfortable and could probably get used to spending time there during the day.

The downside is that we have to keep our office door shut since she really wants to take off running. On the bright side, with the door shut we don't get as much hallway noise as we usually do.

That allowed me to worry my way through my day, saving the townsfolk. I've been working on livening up the place, putting in a few new npcs every day and then wandering around the town to see how things are going. Can't have any of my little dudes walking off the edge, now can I?

Except it seemed that there were always fewer folks than I had added. Turns out that my wandering guards would come across the townsfolk and not recognizing them, do their guardly best to protect their homes by offing the unknown citizens. Kind of funny, in a morbid way. It's fixed now :D

Are we there yet?

Behold! I have discovered the title function in blogger! :)

A busy weekend. Yesterday, Jodie and I spent a good portion of the frighteningly early morning at Candyce's garage sale. This was as foreseen. The unforseen bit was Candyce tripping over the sewer cover in her front lawn after game night Friday and torquing both ankles, knees and breaking one of her toes. :/ After everyone else had left after the sale, I hung out with Candyce because 1) she wasn't supposed to be bopping around unattended with her gimpness and 2) Kevin was out of town, househunting.

We had a pretty quiet evening, gossping and giggling. It was a lot of fun, if only there wasn't that little tinge of sadness that we were only getting to do this because she and Kevin are leaving. I finally got home 10:15 and was dead asleep by 10:30. This morning I woke up early to begin my own version of househunting with Chris.

I wrote down several different apartments for us to consider, so off we went, touring the Hillcrest area. We found a place that we both liked and that's in a nice area. Unfortunately, it's available right now and after having a long discussion with the girls in my rental office, I absolutely cannot get out of my lease here before it's over.

This really, really bothers me. My lease is up in about six weeks and I have no idea where we'll be living. When I moved down here, I had no idea, either, but I had the wiggle-room of my home furnishings already being boxed and in a truck. Now I have to find a place and then get them into a truck to be moved. Six weeks doesn't seem like enough time to me. The apartment owner today said she'd noticed that people do a lot of panic renting around here, rushing into units and crying out in desperation that they need a place. She seemed to like me and Chris, but I sincerely doubt she'd hold a unit open for six weeks till we can move in.

Chris and I did like the looks of another place that won't be available until August 5th. We're referring to it as "the prison" because when we pulled up along a side street to look for this address, I mentioned that the units we were next to looked like a prison. Turns out it's the place we wanted to see, and it's much more pleasant from the front than the side. This place has the advantage of being five hundred dollars less than what I pay now. Five freaking hundred dollars less. So, Stalag 13 impression or not, it's going to the top of our list.

Apparently, I need to broaden the geographical range in which I am looking because...

You Belong in Rome

You're a big city girl with a small town heart Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand And gorgeous Italian men - could life get any better?

What City Do You Belong In?

I've lived in San Diego now for two whole years! :)

That means I have lots of accumulated stuff! :(

Chris brought some boxes from work, I still have some from moving down here and so we've been packing things up little by little. Still no particular apartment, but we may as well get ready for the inevitable.

Living here for two years means I've been away from the little game for two years, too. While reading their boards tonight (which is so much easier to keep caught up on than it is in my current job!), I noticed that after all this time, someone else is finally using the little icon that I used to use. While I'm surprised that it took this long for someone else to start using it, I found myself even more surprised that my first reaction was, "Oh...someone's using my owl." It hasn't been mine for a long, long time. I use a different icon for my player account. But that's how it felt to see it, so there you go.

Attachment to stuff and things is the bane of my life. If I could only approach my life much more buddhisticly.

And through the miracle of MySpace, Heather found me again. She and I did a lot of paralegally things together while I was still up in Seattle and would meet up for lunch every so often when we were both working at our separate law firms.

After I moved down to San Diego, I didn't keep up with any of the paralegal folks I knew because my life went in such a different direction. But Heather isn't like your average paralegal. She had such an amazing variety of life experiences, including (if memory serves) being a trucker and a hairstylist (though not at the same time).

How did she find me? Not through browsing or searching. She found me in the HCC alumni group. I don't know if that proves my theory that MySpace isn't very user-friendly, though. :) I'm just glad she found me!

I fiddled slightly with the layout of my blogger template, making it a bit wider than it used to be. I also removed the link to the extra comments section. Apparently, that company is going under and will no longer maintain the comments anyway. Thank goodness blogger added some in before then!

I have a MySpace page, like almost everyone else in the world. There isn't much on it since it's not my primary residence (as it were), but I have links to a couple of friends that I actually know, one that I met through MySpace, and one that I used to be in the National Guard with (who was surprised as hell to hear from me after all this time).

The interface is not as friendly as it could be in some cases. For example, I couldn't find anyone I know by trying to locate them using the search feature. Apparently, you need to browse to search. Whatever. The only reason I found Heidi is that I'd kept her email in my Yahoo file and MySpace offered to look up everyone in my address book...and it found her. On one hand, that means it's got a good search feature. On the other hand, only it can figure out how it works :)

Since I revised my page there to color it and put up a cute little banner of owlchicks, I've received several requests to be folks' friends. These are folks I don't know. I look at their profiles and think, "What on earth makes you think I'd like to be your friend?" Especially the Heavy Metal Dude who wants to be my pal because, d00d...I don't know anything about that kind of music or any music related thereto. Broos can vouch for that since I had no idea that Dark Side of the Moon was that popular (other than to folks who listen to it while watching Wizard of Oz).

There've been some stories about unscrupulous predators predatating on poor innocents via MySpace. That's not a new phenomenon. Predators seek their prey wherever they think they can get away with it. MySpace has the misfortune of being a very visible resource on the scene just now. And maybe some sweet young thangs believe that they can post whatever they like on the internet. They think they're safe because it's not like some guy without any teeth is staring at them while they're typing, making them uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, here I am legitimately trying to see if folks I know have MySpace pages and I can't find them. I have no idea where Ruth went and she never used anything but her Army email address (which of course is no longer valid since she's retired). I saw a picture of her brother George in the paper the other day, but I don't know if George would know how to get in touch with her because they were never very close. All I know is she was going to move to Florida about the same time that I got my job in San Diego. She went one way and I went the other.

So...RUTH BROWN! Where did you go now? :(

Local PBS is running the series Battlefield Britain. For those of us who like our history reenacted with modern CGI battlers, this is great! Apparently there are only eight episodes in the series, of which two have already run. The Battle of Hastings is currently including a run in with the local police standing in for soldiers circa 1066! Hee!

It doesn't hurt history that one of the presenters, Dan Snow, is really cute, too! :)

Candyce is having a garage sale in a couple of weeks, which is very timely for my move. I've put together a couple of boxes of my crystal and some other odds and ends to sell. While I loved these Princess House crystal objects for seventeen years (I started selling and collecting this stuff when Phil was six months old), most of it has been packed away in boxes.

As I unwrapped them to see what I could possibly bear to part with, it turns out I can part with quite a lot of it. I don't entertain much and I certainly don't need all these variations on candleholders any more. I guess I've outgrown them, which is somewhat a shame. They're very pretty but they're just things to me now and not something I'll miss terribly. Hopefully they'll sell and I can mourn their loss while counting my cash!

I spent a good chunk of yesterday driving around to get acquainted with some neighborhood streets. This is part of the prep-to-move. Since I don't get out much, looking at apartment ads sometimes leaves me wondering where the hell these places are.

One place I found is in Pacific Beach and rents for about three hundred less than I'm paying now. I could walk to the beach (albeit, it's a long walk) and to some local shops. Another place I looked at is close to work but not really anything else that interests me, other than it is only $1,100.

I don't have to move until the end of July. The PB apartments have openings in early July, whereas the inexpensive inland one is available now. My apartment folks tell me that I'd be breaking my lease to leave now, unless I so happen to move to one of their other properties. Sort of stinks, as once I get going I'd rather finish the process. Instead, I need to take the advice of my good conscience and just wait.

Rather than drive around today, I am instead lounging around. I went to the pool for a couple of hours, napped a bit and checked if any new apartments have been posted online. I am considering what things I can take to Candyce's garage sale next weekend. But otherwise, I am trying not to panic any more than is absolutely necessary.