I like this picture, because I think it’s a rare example of my looking better than M. while traveling.

Despite my whining, we are settling in to the homestead. For the first weekend, we were able to have morning coffee and hang out (while waiting, Godot-like, for the plumber).

By reader demand, I heed the call to present M. in Pacifica, a huge future draw to this little burg, I am sure. Here, he drinks coffee in our garden, as I shall pretentiously refer to our backyard.

It’s like a garden, because shit is growing in it, no help from M. and me so far.

Meanwhile, apparently owning real estate is the deciding factor in my getting my craft freak on. I haven’t crafted nothing for a very, very, glacially long time. (Of course, thanks to global warming, a glacial age is a whole hell of a lot shorter now.)

I had a positively Martha Stewart lightening bolt that unfortunately won’t lead to vast wealth and syndication. It came about because of a long, boring story that’s kernel is: M.’s seamstress (yes, seamstress) messed up some T-shirts I wanted altered rendering wearable but unattractive tourist souvenirs unwearable without my losing a good 70-80 pounds.

Tangentially, I liking buying T-shirts when I travel, because they pack easy and usually you can find something amusing or unique, and with a little hunting you can be sure you’re supporting the local economy. But, jesus h. christ, do the typical style shirts detract from anything like an acceptable fit or look for many a woman built like me. What’s the opposite of a flattering outfit?

It’s kind of a butch, but not in a sexy dyke way, look with a whole lot all the WalMart on a Tuesday night, given up on life or looking good frumpiness. I end up sleeping in the shirts or working out (I never look good in the gym).

Here’s what I did. Throw pillows from around the world.

Technorati Tags: home, Millenials, suburbs

I wrote about our plumbing, the boring kind not the fun naughty bits of plumbing, and it heard my hubris. When the plumber left, the shower was working swell and I wrongfully assumed the clog had been released. Alas, it was not meant to be.

We Costco’d what felt like all day long. Actually, we hit the Northern Cali, suburban hell trifecta — Costco, an Asian supermarket and Target. The cliched perfect storm of my hatred for humanity. I’m thinking of advocating for a complete cell phone ban at all Costco stores nationwide, maybe in a five-mile radius. It’s the only solution for assholes wandering aimlessly and stopping every foot or so in their meanderings around Costco’s wide, but not wide enough, aisles whilst chatting pointlessly.

Fully groceried and toilet papered ready to hunker down in our beachside Shangri la with a big Sunday dinner, the plumbing skunked us. The kitchen sink immediately made it clear whatever clog the plumber freed in the shower was not enough to get the bathroom-kitchen sink continuum back in their separate grooves.

Fucking hell. Suburbs and sunny skies and lemon trees. But, hell. Fucking plumbing.

Technorati Tags: California, mortgage, moving, real_estate

Ah, suburbia. This morning, I awoke on edge and anticipating a new day of sunshine-y awesome pain and misery. Today was the day the plumber was due to snake our woes away.

The other day, the shower was draining slowly. Then, the next day, slower. Finally, I tried plunging and whatnot and got nowhere, apart from cramped up from awkward over tub hunching and plunging and generally working out my core in a very non-Pilates, unsatisfactory fashion. And, then, after I tried snaking it was clearly worser and worser still. As I hung out watching the bathtub waters not recede, M.’s suds and disposal action from the kitchen sink came to visit me in the bathroom.

We have what is called a “home warranty.” I ain’t never heard of such a thing back East, from where I hail. Nope, there, you buy an old house, because mostly everything is an old house, and it’s as it is. Old house and all. Ask Bob Villa.

But, here, you can get some sort of fancy insurance. The seller’s were kind enough to incorporate this fancy insurance into the agreement. For a co-pay, the plumber came to help us out of our misery. I’m not sure if it was a fair price, because I have no idea how much snaking costs in this ‘hood. But, it seemed easy enough.

Foolishly, I spent part of yesterday evening reading a thousand and one interwebs opinions on how much this kind of insurance sucks and how godawful fucked up bad the company we have is. They don’t fix anything, leave you worse off, but take your money easy enough. You never really can tell with internet shit. Afterall, the folks motivated to put electrodes to paper, as it were, generally have an ax to grind when they sit down and tap out their opinionated opus.

All’s I can report is I spoke to Fidelity Home Warranty on Saturday morning, and they gave me a plumber’s name and phone number and said he’d call on Monday to set something up. I got my snake, commenced to snaking, so all the back up and effluvia and called back in hours to let them know it was far worse than previously reported. Within in hour, as the sun was setting, they called back, apologized for not being able to get someone out on a Saturday night and said the same plumber who’s name they gave for Monday would be calling shortly. Sure enough, he called, and told me he’d be here at 11 a.m.

It was 11:20 a.m. when he showed up. I guess that’s my beef. Other than that, he took his powerful, electric professional style snake, told me not to peel potatoes in the disposal (I hadn’t. We haven’t actually cooked here.) and was on his way well before 12 noon.

These pipes are clean.

My awaking with a sense of dread was for not. But, if next Sunday, the same jack off who was mowing or trimming at 8 a.m. today fires up his engines again, I’m going hunting for the most dangerous game with my weed whacker.

Technorati Tags: California, home_buying, real_estate

Long weekend in the City of Sin. Or really the city of extreme levels of consumerism and carefully constructed reality-ish places. We were there for the entertainment (Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” tour and Cirque de Soleil’s “O”). So, really, what happened in Vegas, could leave Vegas and be shared with a group of nuns and Amish.

Here’s the photo album of some of the things we saw and did.

Nothing great, but I think I captured some of the glamor and all that it shiny. I kind of love/hate the mashups that are New York-New York and Paris. Architectural distillation of big cities down to city blocks with cartoon and somewhat actual results. It took me a second look to realize that the old brownstones along the “waterfront” of NY harbor were not reclaimed old LV buildings but faux, authentic brownstones, East Coast style.

On to bed to sleep off the excitement and head back to work.

Oh, and this from Madonna. She was singing behind a screen, and I took this otherwise poor quality but kind of interesting pic on my iPhone:

Technorati Tags: architecture, Madonna, Vegas, Las Vegas, travel

What a week. What a motherfucking week.

On Sunday, we slept for the first time in what I now have several reasons to think of and will continue to refer to Mayberry, RFD. We’ve time warped into a 1950s sitcom village. It just ain’t right. But, anyway, we slept here.

And we woke up here. Apparently, we’re now living here.

And, on Tuesday, we watched some serious history being made. I pretty much had given up on ever voting for a winner after eight years of hating my country for it’s almost majority choices. In 2000, I sat up all night and into the next 17 days, thinking who are the fuckers who voted for this man and knowing and believing that not as many folks, in fact, had. In 2004, I was distraught, disheartened and incredulous that anyone could see the prior four years and the quickly devolving war and go for more.

This election, though, holy shit, I really do feel “hope.” That’s a change.

There is nothing else I can really add that hasn’t been said better by others. So, onto the mundane.

If you want to see the destruction and reconstruction of moving day on Sunday, it’s here. Unbelievably, we got it done. I even eventually got caught up at the paying job after taking a couple of days off and stressing out. It took me until late today, but I’m actually feeling mildly less jangled. God, I fucking hate moving.

We’re ass deep in boxes and will have to stay that way, because we have to fly out to a trip to Vegas we started booking (and paying for) well before the house-buying notion became an idea, let alone a reality. We’ll also need plenty of time to be able to remember where the light switches are, figure out the doors and locks, and generally navigate around not as visitors but as owners.

We’re just not yet suburban homeowners to our cores. For example, there was the Halloween raccoon incident — When we foolishly left out candy for possible trick or treaters, and I showed up the next day to find a porch full of tooth-mark-studded Milk Duds. Experienced suburbanites know about the critters.

Tonight, we got a little lost wandering the streets of identical tract houses. We knew we had gone too far when we hit the creek and saw a pasture with horses.

On Tuesday, it was my leaving the garage door wide open all damn day, because I forgot to press the little clicker button as I drove away. From up the street as I was coming home, I smacked myself on the forehead realizing about nine hours too late the error of my ways. Within seconds of pulling into the driveway, our new neighbor just the other side of the garage I had neglected came rushing up to introduce herself and let me know that her husband had been home a chunk of the day and kept an eye out.

I’m living in a neighborhood where our two, not inexpensive bikes, in plain view, unlocked, in a wide-open garage, stayed there all the damn day and into the dark of night unmolested. Who are these people?

Topping that off on the way to work the next day, I stopped for fossil fuels to fire up my vehicle and make the new commute. As I pumped my gas and thought about nothing but the smell of the large, iced coffee on my passenger seat, up popped John. I call him “John,” because that was the name on the patch on his clean uniform shirt. John proceeded to wash all my windows, my windshield and my mirrors. He then wished me a good morning. I returned the sentiment and drove away.

Who knew there was any gas station left in the country pumping service with a smile? I only wish his name had been Gomer.

I’m becoming pretty suspicious. If things keep up this way, I’m certain an alien abduction or streets of cannibals can’t be far behind. Somewhere there is an ugly dark Steven King heart.

Technorati Tags: Barack_Obama, California, campaign, Campaign 2008, elections, moving, suburbia, United_States

What a long day, a long weekend and a long week of prep. Closing the door on the old place, it was looking like it would need more than the Maid Brigade M. had already called. Although the remnants were merely paper and trash and detritus from living daily.

We’re here now. Hard by the Pacific Ocean. We’re in the suburban dream that I fled, a fast and decades long flight. The kind of neighborhood with kids playing football in the street and seriously hardcore Halloween decorations. Actually the hardness and coreness of the decorations gives me hope. You got to be a bit of a step from Stepford to climb on the roof and line up giant spiders crawling from the foundation, up the exterior walls to chimney.

The moving truck out front was the sad beacon that alerted the ‘hood to our new presence. John next door was carrying a pizza with toy boys trailing. As I drove up like maybe 10-15 minutes after M., he’d already heard that John was divorced and his ex lived a couple streets away with the boys and shared custody. Holy shit, it couldn’t have been 90 seconds of instant suburb intimacy.

Later that same day, Eileen the neighborhood watcher, who the prior owners had told us about introduced herself. She’s been here 54 years and knows the dope on all the houses. Our update was only two other couples had lived in this place, a young couple who left long enough ago for the next couple to live here 30 years. Followed by the non-dwelling flippers, who she let us know worked morning and night on the place.

It’s like I moved into a fake sitcom America. Only thing keeping this world from being Sarah Palin’s America is the distinctive left tilt — Obama signs and “No on Prop 8.” Thank fucking christ.

We have one room stacked high with boxes. I saw deep in the box that says “Dee’s clothes inc. underwear.” It worries me to have to dig deep for clean panties.

The HD cable is seemingly well-connected and the intertubes, hence this weblogging thang. The sofa, though, has apparently fallen prey to appendicitis. At least that ultimately was the story when we both tag-team called Macy’s and finally got an answer as to when/if the couch would be delivered. Salesperson James apparently didn’t get through placing our order into some delivery system before being stricken. Alas.

Hope James is alright.

It will be a long slog getting stuff out of boxes and into normal. It will likely be a longer slog to feel “home,” mortgage payment or no. But, home it is and will be.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, beach, mortgage, moving, real_estate

God, really, I cannot find any statement too hyberbolic for how much I freaking hate moving. I’d take the McCain POW tour over it, I think. Maybe that’s only because I really like pho ga and Vietnamese spring roles.

This morning’s fun was rushing up the Peninsula from our old apartment in order to greet the cable guy. Despite getting up at 7:30 a.m. or so (and tossing and turning in anticipation of getting up at 7:30 a.m. or so), I rolled in about 15 minutes after the guy with the truck and the coax cable got there. As of about 9 a.m. we had HD, high-speed internet and landline. At least I think we had two of them, I forgot to bring a phone and the HD television at about 49 inches huge is going in the big old moving truck with the professionals.

If all goes well, we’ll be in our new den whilst I gnaw at my cuticles and nails and we both watch the Super Bowl of event for news junkies. After we vote down here, our last vital act in the old neighborhood.

After lining a few shelves and vacuuming everywhere furniture will be showing up tomorrow, I came back to the apartment in the pouring, driving rain. Just the kind of storm to get the weather folks of Northern California jumping on threats and exaggeration laughable to the rest of the country. RAIN, THUNDER AND LIGHTENING, OH MY.

We walked around in the rain and grabbed some lunch. I was wearing new sandals that are supposedly custom-fitted to my feet, which took me far, far, far, far longer to receive than the promised two weeks when I decided to give them a shot during the SF Marathon (M. ran, I slept in our hotel room).

Maybe it was the dirty puddle I accidentally stepped in or maybe it was something in the custom orthotics. Either way, I looked down as M. laughed at me to some kind of mystery sudsing.

With dreams of the foot-based mystery I’m off to retire to worried, fitful, neurotic rest. The only good I can say that I am currently feeling — thank god the clocks are rolling back an hour.

Technorati Tags: California, moving, Pacifica, real_estate, Daylight Saving Time, suffering