Hike to Panoramic Hill

Sittin' in a Laundromat

Yep, that's what we're doing right now. Sitting in a laundromat for the first time, waiting for our clothes to get done. It's awful. I hate it here. Not only is doing laundry one of my least favorite chores, but now I get to drive a mile to do it and sit on an uncomfortable bench with all the other people doing their laundry and just wait. At least there's wifi.
So we're all out of boxes in our apartment. Our living room and bedroom are still pretty much a mess which is stressing me out a lot because there's really nowhere to relax. We sold our couch though! Hip hip hurray! The girl hasn't picked it up yet, but she already paid us $350 for it and will pick it up Saturday.
We went to look at a couch we saw posted on Craigslist yesterday. It's an IKEA couch that's 2 years old. It's in pretty good condition, comfortable and comes apart easily so we offered the girl $200 which she readily accepted. The plan was for us to pick it up on Thursday with a rented truck. However, she contacted us tonight and said she's going out of town tomorrow and will "let us know when she gets back." I'm not getting my hopes up. It seems a bit sketchy to me, but we didn't give her any money yet, so oh well.
We did have a successful IKEA trip of our own this weekend. Two actually. We went on Saturday to scout for some stuff we might want. Made our decision on Sunday and went back to get a real bed frame and some other bedroom stuff like sheets. BECAUSE we ordered a queen mattress to go with it all. Again, hip hip hurray! We're pretty excited to get a bigger bed that hopefully doesn't sink in the middle.
Anyway, I'm going to go check on our loads but thought I'd give a little update while I have nothing else to do.

We Moved!

We are all moved in! We met the movers Sunday morning and got all of our stuff (which surprisingly all survived really well except for one drinking glass casualty). However, when we got here on Sunday, we realized how dirty the apartment was. I don't think the people before us cleaned at all in the 3 years they lived here and certainly didn't clean for us to move in. That means that we had to leave all our stuff in boxes until we could clean enough to unpack. Everything is covered in a thick layer of scum - the walls, the molding, the baseboards, the blinds. Every square inch of this place needs to be scrubbed. So it's slow going, but I spent two full days on the kitchen/dining area and bathroom, and they're all unpacked now.

Yesterday I got a lot of the living room organized, but it's still not clean yet. We're also in transition of deciding what we want to keep and what goes so there's piles all over. The couch wouldn't fit in the door of the apartment so it's sitting in our shed. We posted it on Craigslist so hopefully we can get rid of it soon.

The bedroom is still a disaster so I didn't post any pictures of that yet. However, I did fit all our clothes into closets which took a lot of creativity. Vic's clothes are in our bedroom closet and mine are in the hall closet. The closets are small but really deep so I had to strategize where to put which clothes. Anyway, here are some pics to satisfy for the time being. I'll post more when we're really settled in and probably after a few trips to IKEA.

Good Things

We've had a string of pretty good days here.
Victor went out after work on Thursday with the rest of the Mobiata team to celebrate the release of one of their apps they've been working on for a long time. He had a lot of fun and finally figured out that whenever they go out as a team, the bill gets expensed to Expedia. This accounts for all the extravagant dinners and drink outings. He said the bill at this place was over $700, but I guess Expedia covers it. Crazy.
Friday after Vic got off we spent the evening at a bookstore/coffee house/wine bar (reminded me of you, Abbey, but I'm pretty sure yours is probably way cooler) that's just a couple blocks from our temporary housing. We got hot chocolate and ice cream, and I wrote while Victor worked.
Saturday we went shopping at Union Square. This is the area that's in the downtown where all the big chain stores are. We went to the giant, multi-level stores like Forever21, H&M, Gap and, my favorite, Anthropologie. We didn't get anything, but it was fun to look around, and it was my first time actually being in a real Anthro store and that was awesome. Like Pinterest exploded. And Victor actually enjoyed it too because there were a lot of fun coffee table books to look at.
Later that day, we attempted to go to some street festival on Haight Street that we looked up on this website that is pretty self-explanatory - just a website where they list fun and cheap things to do in San Francisco. However, when we got there, it didn't exist. But we still enjoyed walking around the area. Haight Street is very interesting. It's one of the only places in the city that has retained its hippie, artist, burnout, counter-culture that San Francisco was known for before the techie boom.
Sunday morning, we went to Reality church which is the real church that our friend recommended to us and not the place we attempted last week. Reality church meets in a middle school in the Mission District (we're getting really good at the MUNI trains, by the way). It's pretty large. I'm not good at estimating, but I would guess at least 500 people were there. Probably more. We liked the worship, and the sermon was ok. The craziest thing was that when we got up to take communion in this huge auditorium with so many people with all the lights off, we spotted one of Victor's coworkers. So weird! Justin is also a graphic designer for Mobiata, so Victor sees him every day. He found us when the service was over and asked us if we wanted to go out to lunch with him and his girlfriend and some of their friends, and, of course, we said yes.
Justin said he used to go to Epic church for the first couple years that he lived in San Francisco (he's from Bloomington, Indiana), which is the first church we went to a few weeks ago. He started going to Reality because that's where his girlfriend went (and she's from Champaign!). We had a good time talking with him. He's very nice and was giving us all sorts of advice and information about the city and neighborhoods. We all grabbed lunch and took it to Dolores Park, which is one of the more, if not the most, famous parks in the city. For whatever reason, it's the place to be. I think probably because it tends to be warmer in the Mission so people like to go there and get sun. But it's always packed.

After that, we split from Justin and his friends, and Victor and I walked around the Mission for awhile. The Mission is one of the most expensive areas to live in the city right now. Apparently all the hipsters flooded that area, and the rent is out of control. It is pretty cool though. There's a lot of cool bookstores and art stores and so. many. coffee shops.

Awesome house in the Mission

Also, today we found out that the moving company came through for Sunday! They told us last week that they didn't think they could get us movers that soon. Deja vu. But they called Victor a few hours ago, and we have movers so we get to move in on Sunday as planned!

We're Not So Great at Weekends

Well I guess that's not entirely true. Though some parts of this weekend felt like total wastes, two out of the four days were ok. Fifty percent's not bad.
Friday, one of our good days, we found out we got the apartment. Then we spent the evening with some of Victor's coworkers. It was a fun night but just so different from what we're used to. I walked to Victor's office to meet him and his boss at 4:30. We took one of the MUNI trains to Reed's (the boss) neighborhood which is Cole Valley and basically lived out every person's dream of moving to a big city. We got off the train, and Reed wanted to "pick up some snacks," so he stopped in at the local wine and cheese place to pick out some very fancy cheeses. Then we walked about a block down to the local bread store and got some baguettes. On the way, Reed popped his head into the local pet store to ask if his cat food was in yet (he knows all these people by name). Then we trudged up the giant hill to his gorgeous apartment. Cole Valley is very "San Francisco" in terms of what people imagine. It has lots of large hills, and all the buildings are the tall, skinny, Victorian, Full House type houses. Reed and his fiance, Tara, live on the top floor of this house, and it's just plain beautiful. They have the whole floor so there's lots of light and big bay windows and hardwood floors and a view that overlooks the entire city.
One of Victor's other coworkers who also lives in Cole Valley came over, and we all had wine and cheese and bread and talked. Then at about 6:30, they decided to get dinner so we went to an Asian noodle restaurant where Reed ordered multiple appetizers and a bottle of sake for the table in addition to the giant meals we all ordered. After that another one of Victor's coworkers joined us, and we went to a bookstore that is my SOULMATE of bookstores. I could live there I think. Let's just say they had this book. Swoon.

Then we went to go get ice cream! These people can eat! Victor and I could not believe it. We were almost laughing the whole night. It's just so far from what we do, but that's just how they live. That night was not a special occasion. They just do that on a regular basis, hopping from place to place, eating, going into shops, talking, eating. We had a lot of fun. These people are very warm and welcoming and easy to be around.
Saturday, however, was kind of a lame day. I don't think we did anything. Not a thing. Oh wait, we did walk about 2 1/2 miles to get a cupcake at a shop that takes bitcoin. The walk was through an icky neighborhood, and the cupcakes weren't very good.
Sunday, we attempted to go to church again. We were planning on trying a different church that one of our friends from Champaign who lived out here for awhile recommended. It was about a mile and a half away, and we decided to walk. Basically what we learned from our walks on Saturday and Sunday is that from our temporary housing, you can basically go two places: along the Bay with the hoards of tourists or straight north to the Financial District where Victor works that's pretty much just office buildings. Do not go west. Do not go northwest. We walked northwest. As we were walking, we saw the scenery around us change quite a bit. A lot more homeless people. A lot more crazy people. Right when we were almost to the church, we saw a man chasing a woman by a bus stop, screaming obscenities at her and accusing her of taking his phone. This went on for about 10 minutes until the cops showed up. The building that the church was supposed to be in was gated off. We decided to look for an entrance around back, but discovered an alley filled with homeless people, and at this point, I said, "Nope, we're done. Turning around." So we walked back to our apartment, but I made Victor stop at the city Target on our way home because I just needed to do something familiar. How strange is it that Target makes me feel at home?
So that was our Sunday bust. But yesterday, we took a MUNI train to Golden Gate Park and saw the bison and walked around.

Very sad picture of the bison, but if you look at the brown lumps up by the far fence...well that's them.

One of the many ponds in Golden Gate Park

Then in the evening, we met our new landlord at our new apartment and signed our lease! Hurray, it's official! We'll be moving in on Sunday the 14th. We also got to meet one set of our new neighbors and the current tenants of our apartment. Everyone assured us that they love the building, love the landlord, love the location. The currant tenants were so sad to be moving out, but they want to have kids so they need more space. It was just so nice to be reassured about where we're living. I cannot wait to move in.
Here are a few more pictures of Victor's office.