July is for new adventures.

A quick, picture-heavy update before I go to dinner. We're going for Ethiopian food tonight. Should be fun!

So one adventure I will be embarking upon in July is the San Francisco Marathon!! That's right, I finally took a deep breath and signed up today! I put in a good 20-miler this morning (12 miles with my new running partner and 8 miles with the dogs; it's good to break it up a little like that), and it went off without a hitch and I feel weirdly good right now. Not ravenously hungry, not particularly tired, and only a little stiff. So I think I'm ready! This will be me in one month:



Aaaahh! Races are so exciting! And a 5:30 start time in downtown San Francisco, plus running across the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn will undoubtedly be awesome.


Adventure #2 (which will actually transpire before Adventure #1) is, of course, that we're moving. I walked by the new house and snapped a few quick shots the other day. As I said before, it's nothing particularly lovely to look at from the outside, so part of me wants to not even post these shots, but I realize that curious minds want to know. :)

That last one is from a little down the street so you can see the neighborhood a little bit. We're both so excited to get moved in! Can't wait to be there, get settled, and show y'all what the inside looks like.

The only other thing I would add is that I've been working on a very cool art project that I'm extremely pleased with and proud of. Remember I told you about the Galapagos Islands in black ink on our new kitchen floor? Well, I've been contemplating decorating our little dining room table for some time now, and I was thinking of putting flowers all over it to go with the flora/fauna theme of the floor. But then I thought, y'know, as much as I love biology, I'm a linguist, and I should do something that reflects what I do while still complementing the aesthetics of the floor. So this is what I came up with:


Basically, I covered the table and chairs with the words "one language is never enough" in several dozen different languages. It was particularly fun because I haven't done an art project in a long time, and because I was able to come up with something original that actually turned out how I envisioned it! I'm particularly pleased with the the non-Roman scripts, e.g. the Chinese and Japanese you see in the last picture below. They were challenging because I free-handed it all; I printed off little strips of paper with the words I wanted, carefully copied them onto the table in pencil, then went over them and jazzed them up a bit with black permanent marker.




I actually have 2 or 3 more to finish, but the vast majority of it is finished.

Okay, I think I'm done for now. Love to all!

House!

We have a house!! I wish I had pictures to share with you, but I don't yet, so you will have to settle for a verbal description (edit: and a roughly sketched floorplan) right now.

So I posted a "housing wanted" ad on Craigslist a while back, and I haven't been getting much feedback as a result. This is undoubtedly because I specifically said that we have two large dogs and would like a house with a yard for them, if possible. That's enough to scare most landlords away, I assure you.

Yesterday, we helped my friend John move into his new place in Oakland, and it is really, really great. I know we were both feeling pretty jealous - it's this awesome, great apartment that's bigger than our house now and has fantastic windows, a widow's walk, and a sun room, up on the third floor. It wasn't that much fun actually doing the moving, but that's what friends are for, and we were happy to help, it was just a lot of stairs for one day.

Anyway, we got home all sweaty and tired, and I checked my email and had a really nice email from a lady saying she's a dog lover with a house for rent in South Berkeley that sounds like it might work for us. I called her up, she happened to be there, and I rode my bike over to have a look at it.

Now, it's not that fantastic looking from the outside. That's not to say it's in any way ugly, it's just wholly unremarkable. But as soon as I walked in the front door, I was immediately impressed. It is so airy, bright, and cheerful, and even though there's no furniture in it, very homey. Just inside the front door is a little living room/sitting area, and to the right is a little dining nook. The whole front part of the house has vaulted wood ceilings with these great skylights. Then to the north of the dining area (the upper right quadrant of the front part, if you will) is the kitchen. I love the kitchen. It's somewhat set off from the front part of the house, in that there's a wall between it and the living room area, but it opens to the hallway on one side, and on the side that leads to the dining room, there's a little bar with these cool wine racks on top. Hang on, I'm going to draw a diagram of the floor plan, because this is getting confusing.


And oh, the skylights! If I remember right, there are two skylights over the living room, one over the dining area, and a big one over the kitchen. It's so bright and sunny, I loved it. And, I love this part too, the owner is a biologist, and she has a design in the shape of the Galapagos Islands on the kitchen floor! It is so cool! (The Galapagos is where Charles Darwin did most of his research, and with Roger and me both being very science-minded folks, we both loved this.) She actually worked in the Galapagos for three years, and when she redid the floor, she thought it would be cool to incorporate that part of her life into her new house.

Okay, right, so, all the floors are hardwood. (Yay for no carpet.) Down the hallway is a full bathroom immediately on the left, then the two bedrooms right across from each other, and at the end of the hall is a huge awesome rec-room. It's like a big family room, and we are so so excited about it. There will be room to have one corner be an office area, then one part will be a sitting area (eventually we want to buy a cool projector so we can have people over for movie nights), and we'll even have plenty of space left over for the dog crates to be in one corner. Then there's a utility room with a brand new washer and dryer and storage space along the side, and another half bathroom with an awesome brand new shower stall. I think we'll keep the nice air mattress we have now, and use the rec room as a guest room when people come to visit.

So at the end of the rec room is a big, nice patio door that leads to the back yard. The house is on a very long, narrow lot, so there's a somewhat narrow but decent sized backyard for the dogs, and it extends all along the side of the house for a nifty little dog run area. The fence is very nice and we won't have to worry about it falling apart! And there's an apple tree and a nectarine tree back there too, plus a garage that we won't be able to use, but that's fine. The owner is using it for storage for her stuff, and she said she can make some room for us too, but we'll never be able to put a car in there or anything.

I wish I had pictures to show you. It is so, so great, and we are so excited about it. It will be ready for move-in by July 15th, and I'll be sure to take pictures then. Oh, it's also about a half mile northwest of Ashby BART station, so Roger will be able to walk to BART to go to work! And it's even closer to campus than our house now, so I can easily walk, bike, or take the bus to get to class, just like I do now.

Ahhhhh relief. It was just getting to the point where we were getting a little antsy, and now of course we're really glad we waited. I kept telling myself all along that we should wait until we really find the right place for us, and we did and now it paid off!

So. Our new address, starting in mid-July will be 1633 Ward St, Berkeley, CA 94703. (If you type it into Google Maps and hit "Street View", you can get a look at the front of the house, if you're so inclined.) Easy to get to by public transit, lots of room for entertaining, no excuses for not having visitors!

Hooray!

Heeeeere, house-y house-y house-y...

An update! Because I'm tired of scouring Craigslist for a place to live, but it's not quite time to walk the dogs yet.
Whaddya think? Maybe we'll just move to this here house in the Berkeley hills. Not a bad view, right? Let's check out the specs:

5 bed/4 bath
Rent: $14,800/month (not a typo)
Deposit: $28,000

Haha! Hahaha! Best part:

"Entertaining friends and clients in this unique and magnificent setting is a must. Are you a ROCK STAR, CEO or PRO ATHLETE? If so, this home is for you!"


Uhhhh yeah. We'll keeping looking for our 2 bedroom house with a postage stamp lawn that will still cost us a small fortune, thankyouverymuch.

In other news, um, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm just wiling away the days reading random books and articles (but nothing important and/or related to school), running my dogs, and doing the occasional housework. I did laundry this week, that was exciting. Baked brownies and ate almost the whole pan by myself. Pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and got a nice blister on the inside of my thumb.

The thing is, it doesn't even feel like summer. Yes, I'm languishing away, getting to that point in my boredom where even though I know there are things I could be doing, if I would try a bit harder to think of them, my motivation is flagging and I've gotten into a little rut of nothingness. And everyone knows that's what summer's all about. But summer just isn't summer without 90 degree heat and air that's thick and swampy with humidity. This Bay Area "summer" is just like Bay Area spring, and not really much different than Bay Area winter, to tell you the truth. Sure, it's only cloudy in the mornings now, and it blows out and clears up around 1:00 every afternoon, but it still only gets up to 65 during the day, and it's still cool enough to sleep with a blanket at night. I'm not complaining, per se - I do realize that would be rather ridiculous - but it's weird. I'm not used to wearing long pants and sometimes a sweater in June.

It's actually warmer today, though, and I think it's supposed to be in the 70's for the next few days. We might go into the city tomorrow and get croissants and coffee at some French bakery. Roger said someone from work brought in pastries from this place called La Boulange and the croissants were awesome - real French style, nice and golden brown and crispy on the outside and everything. So maybe we'll have a date!!


Well, I don't have much else to say. I will most definitely update as soon as we find a new place to live, though, and that should hopefully be sometime relatively soon. There are two houses I have my fingers crossed for right now, but I haven't heard back from either landlord, so that's probably not the best sign...

It's okay. Life is good and we will find something soon, and then I'll let you know all about it!

Summer Update (or lack thereof...?)

How weird. First, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I updated. Next, I just got a very strange phone call. I'll come back to that in a second.

So summer's going well so far! My semester finished off great, I got everything in on time and my professors were generally very happy with my final projects. Since then, I've just been hanging out, reading, walking and running with my dogs, and looking for a house! Yes, that's right, I officially told our landlords we wouldn't be renewing our lease, so we're aiming to be moved out by the end of July. That gives us some time to find a place we really like, so I'm trying to just take it slow and really find a good place for us, where we can stay put happily for the next few years. I found a *very* promising place that I really like from its description and pictures, and I'm going up to have a look at it in person tonight, so I'm very excited. I'll take my camera, and if it works out, I'll post the pictures. :) It's right by El Cerrito Plaza BART, which is excellent on many levels. First, it's a really great neighborhood - very pretty, but much more homey and relaxed than where we are now. El Cerrito Plaza has tons of shops and is a great transportation hub, but this house is about 2-3 blocks away, which means it's still really convenient but far enough away that it's quiet and feels very residential. Anyway, I don't have my heart set on it or anything, but I think it'd be a good place for us, and I hope it seems as good in person as it does online. We shall soon find out.

Right, the weird phone call. So I decided to join a volleyball team! It's just a Berkeley Parks and Rec District recreational team, but I went to scrimmage with them on Sunday and it was a blast and it made all of my volleyball muscles sore, and I love that. I haven't had sore volleyball muscles in years! It's such a great full body soreness, all of these muscles I don't ever use in everyday life; all of my jumping and hitting and crouching and impact-absorbing muscles. Woo-hoo! Our first real game was supposed to be tonight, but the guy who organizes the team just called to tell me it's been pushed back to next week, which is why I can go to the El Cerrito open house tonight instead.

I'm not sure if I should tell you all why it was canceled, but I guess I might as well. There's been a spate of gang violence in south Berkeley over the past month or so. First there was that shooting not too far from our house (like half a mile, don't get too nervous!) that resulted in a crazy police chase and multiple people dying in a car wreck. (If you hadn't heard about that yet, there you go.) That was apparently retaliation for something that had happened in Oakland a while back. Then just last week, there was a drive-by shooting thing a mile or so southeast of here, which may or may not be related, but in any case, two little girls who were sleeping in their beds got killed when the bullets came through their wall. So so sad. So the city has called a town hall meeting tonight, and they're holding it in the gym where my volleyball team was supposed to play. I suppose gang violence is probably more important than my new volleyball team, however excited I am about it.

Well on that note... I should get going! Ugh, what a terrible note to end on, but I need to put on some nice clothes for the open house and print out a credit report, just in case I need to snap the place up on the spot. I may have pictures of our new place soon - stay tuned!