Moving Week
See? I told you I'd only be writing sporadically for a while.
The reason this week is that I spent most of my free time during the week either out with friends, or else working on moving into my new apartment.
I signed the lease and got the keys on Wednesday. The landlord, Ken, is giving me a pretty nice lease: A month-to-month lease for three months, in case there's something tragically wrong with the place and I decided I can't stay there, and at the end of that period if I want to stay, we'll sign for the rest of the year. So that's pretty nice.
One hiccup in the moving process is that the prior tenants were a little slow getting out of the place, and when I got the keys on Wednesday they still had some of their stuff there, and had not yet returned their keys. And it was unclear whether they'd finished cleaning. They never did come get the box and bulletin board they left behind, so I may end up inheriting it, but everything else got taken care of that day.
Of course, as soon as I'd signed the lease and forked over the money, I had a panic attack, worrying whether I'd gotten the right place, if it would be too small, or too far away from everything, or if there was something wrong with it that I hadn't noticed when I'd seen it.
Thursday morning the movers showed up to deliver my stuff which had been in storage for the past several weeks. I got to the place just after 8 am, by which time they'd already been there an hour; apparently traffic was no problem and they just were really early. (I'd been told they'd get there between 8 and 9.) They'd already carted half my stuff to the bottom of the stairs to my apartment. So we got set up and they started carrying stuff in, and I started checking stuff off. By 10:30 they'd brought everything I owned into the apartment, and distributed it to various rooms! Amazing! They then unpacked my kitchen stuff, and a bunch of living room and bedroom stuff, and they finally had me sign off around 11:45.
I quickly realized as they brought things in that the apartment would be plenty big enough. Indeed, it's just what I wanted: Big enough to hold all my stuff, and some space to expand beyond that. The dining area is huge, and can hold a large table and be ringed with bookcases. (A good thing, since the final tally is that my books filled over 40 1.5-cubic-foot boxes.)
I went to work after the movers had left, and came back after work to start doing some arranging. I put away all the kitchen stuff, and unpacked the microwave. I also moved some bookcases and furniture around, and started thinking about how to arrange the living room. And that's all I accomplished in over two hours! Sheesh! I put some time in on Friday, also, with a goal of cat-proofing the place, because...
...Saturday I packed up my belongings in my temp housing and carted them over to the apartment, putting them all away as quickly as possible. Then I met up with John around 5:30 pm and we brought the cats over to the apartment. Jefferson really, really did not like car travelling; I don't think he's yet over the plane trip yet.
Fortunately, both cats seem to have gotten over the move fairly quickly. Newton, of course, was out checking stuff out immediately. Jefferson hid behind the futon for a few hours, and then finally came out and sniffed around. At night, he was sleeping on top of the bed with me and Newton, rather than under the bed as he did the first week in the temp housing. They are both still a little spooked by the new place, but I think they recognize all the stuff, and they're noticing that they have a much more interesting view from the windows than they did at the temp housing - or even back in Wisconsin.
So, I'm finally there. Today I want to make a dent in unpacking my books, and setting up my office. But all-in-all things are going well. And now hopefully I'll be able to focus on work at Apple during the workdays, rather than being interrupted by phone calls (outgoing or incoming). Whew!
It's a second-floor place in a fourplex, near a large park which I hope to check out soon (maybe even this afternoon). It's a 2 bed/2 bath, with shaggy brown carpeting in the main rooms, and a huge dining area. I have windows facing north, south and west, and the cross-breezes are amazing. I also have two parking spaces assigned to me, although there's plenty of street parking, too.
It's in a residential neighborhood, probably half a mile from downtown Campbell. It's a little tricky to get places, since the expressway a block from my place doesn't connect to the main Interstate I use to head to work or farther up the peninsula. So it's been hard to find the best way to get places (especially since I'm sure I won't want to take the highways to get to and from work at rush hour).
The apartment's biggest flaw is probably that the walls are on the thin side. Also, the heating unit if in the middle of the apartment and is fairly noisy. We'll see how that works out. Other little problems are poorly-designed shelving in the kitchen (although there's a lot of it), and no medicine cabinets in the bathrooms. There are also a few minor repairs that need to be made (one of them involves just finding the right-sized screw to fix the screen door; I'm going to try to do that myself this afternoon).
So far, though, I like the place quite a bit. Now I can look into getting a nice dining/gaming table and a larger entertainment center (and television!), things I've put off doing for quite a while. I can also consider my next move as far as storing my books and games; I may custom-build some shelves to hold my games. Of course, the other trick is earthquake-proofing all this stuff. I seems that I need to nail the backs of the cases into the walls. (Plus, of course, I shouldn't put a large, glass-covered picture over my bed. A large mirror is probably another bad idea.)
Wednesday I went to dinner with Mike, another Apple guy who is also a former Epic guy. He and his wife have a huge half of a duplex for which they're not paying much more than me, and it's far more centrally located. This didn't exactly help my feelings about my apartment on that lease-signing day, but it also seems that they lucked into a terrific deal by knowing the former tenants. Mike is a really fun guy (although his tastes in comics have run towards manga lately, and I am no-way no-how into Japanese comics or animation), and hopefully we'll see more of each other now that I'm here.
The other news this week is that John's girlfriend broke up with him on Thursday. I had figured it was likely that they'd break up, although I hadn't figured it would happen so soon (and I'd also guessed there was an outside chance that they might actually get married, somewhere down the road). So I spent a bunch of time both Friday and Saturday evenings with John, which seemed to help cheer him up. He also pronounced my apartment acceptable (if "out in the middle of nowhere"). And he made noises of possibly forming a Bridge partnership.
The weather has been pretty nice the second half of the week, and the weekend has featured temperatures around 60, and partly-cloudy skies with bright sunlight streaming through the blue spots. It's actually been quite lovely, and the sky was red at sunset last night, indicating perhaps a cloudless sunset over the ocean.
Work is going well. I got my first paycheck, and was able to spend a good chunk of time on Friday doing some coding and therefore learning WebObjects. I finally felt like I made progress at getting up to speed; that's why I'm glad this moving stuff is coming to an end.
So I think everything's coming together. Now I need to get my car registered, and also find dialup Internet access from home (apparently Campbell doesn't yet have cable TV modem access, but it's coming).
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