Lots of Goings-on

Well, there’s lots to report since we’ve last updated.

My sister, Lauren and her boyfriend, Jamie came out to San Diego for a week in early August to visit before they both went back to their respective colleges. They were helpful in getting our place into shape to go on the market (where it sits as we speak).

My parents came out about a week later to help me pack up the joint. Big thanks to them for putting in hours packing up our crap and getting it ready for the movers. It was literally a five day job for multiple people. It’s astonishing how much stuff one can accumulate given a little bit of space to fill.

We’ve completed my relocation back to the Bay Area where I’ve been reunited with Sharon and Kaiya. The move fraught with much drama but in the end it got done.

Working the Move

During the moving process, we were using a Chinese moving company (exceptionally cheap). There were difficulties in communicating directions for them to find our place initially, because I don’t speak Mandarin. I relied upon assistance from my in-laws to communicate some of the more difficult to understand directives.

When we finally did get them to our place, the driver took a look around the house and sort of started shaking his head, that all of our stuff wouldn’t fit in the truck. Obviously, this concerned me as I was driving north shortly after the truck was packed (even if it didn’t have all of our stuff) and I wasn’t intending on coming back to San Diego.

Sure enough, the driver was right. About 15% of our stuff remained in the garage. What I didn’t know, was that they had picked up some other people’s stuff prior to getting mine, so the entire truck wasn’t dedicated to us (as it should have been if they’d properly calculated the inventory we sent them).

Some furious phone calls between the driver, his boss at the moving company and my mother-in-law then ensued. The result was a second truck would be sent down to us next week (without us there) that would pick up the remaining items and deliver them to us at no additional charge. A bit of a pain, but as compared to a “real” mover, we were still saving a bundle, so big thanks to my in-laws for the negotiations.

After the truck left, it was almost 10:30PM. It took two guys almost eight hours to pack the truck.I had hoped to be done loading and on the road by 5PM at the latest. I now had a 10 hour drive ahead of me and I had to beat the truck up to San Lorenzo (they were driving through the night, tag teaming in shifts), so “starting tomorrow” wasn’t an option. As an additional complicating factor, I also had Zazu with me.

So we started driving. At about 3AM, I called ‘no mas’ and pulled into a Best Western about two hours north of L.A.  for some sleep. I was back on the road at 6:30AM, somewhat refreshed. Zazu was also happy to have a break out of the car though she mostly slept in her bed, which I put next to me in the passenger seat.

Arriving Back in the Bay

Mind you, I hadn’t yet seen the house we’re renting. So I get to the house and as I was warned by Sharon, we sort of live in the ghetto. Our street is short, and has maybe 10 houses on it, all brand new (which is good). That said, we’re surrounded by two sets of train tracks and loads of what could only be referred to as lower end housing. We’re less than a quarter mile from the high school that Sharon went to.

The area itself isn’t awful. It’s basically just the East Bay. So big box retail. A few decent restaurants (Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asian cuisines mostly). Bart puts San Francisco about 25-30 minutes away so it’s pretty easy in that respect.

Renting for us is a short term solution. We’ve signed and pre-paid a six month lease, but we’re hoping that rising interest rates will force speculators out of the real estate market given that about 70% of mortgages in the last ten years in California were interest-only or ARM loans. This could mean that in 1 or 2% increase in interest rates, people’s payments may double and they’ll be forced to sell… driving up supply… driving down prices. We’d love to buy back in to the Bay Area and we’ll be watching the market closely. As it stands now, we’ve sold off all of our real estate (in the process of selling our final  San Diego home now).

But anyway, I digress. The home itself is nice enough. Granite counter-tops in the kitchen, new carpets, air conditioning. It’s basically a new home. It’s not terribly well constructed, and it’s very small (1,600 square feet) but it’s new and it’ll do. It’s four bedrooms and nicely divided with 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs. It’s sort of a split level design, which is unusual for California.

We spent Labor Day weekend unpacking and getting settled. When all was said and done, probably half of our stuff remains packed in the garage (again, this is short term, there’s no room and we’d only have to repack most of it in a year or so anyway). We’re sort of looking at this as a long term hotel stay where we get to be close to my in-laws and get to use our stuff.

At this point, four weeks later, we’re fairly settled. All utilities are on, DSL installed, DirecTV installed (which is another story for another day). We’re taking lots of pictures as requested by my mother and at some point I’ll get those uploaded.

In the mean time, we frequently see my in-laws (I’d wager 3-4X a week on average). King Yee stays with us 4 nights a week. I’m working away from home on Next Gen and a few other projects while also looking for a job. Sharon is settled into her role at Zone Labs so on we go.