A continuation of a series on our (hopefully) temporary apartment living experience. This episode is around the increasing number of people who are living in their vehicles. Not quite the overt homeless living rough, these are people with enough resources for a camper, or a van large enough to sleep in. Walking the neighborhood with our dogs, we see cars that are being lived in. A couple of...
The saga continues, but some good news is in the air. About 6 weeks ago, we got the call that we had an offer for our house in Chandler. I didn’t get immediately excited, as we had been through this before without result. The offer was less than I hoped for, and they wanted a couple of unreasonable requests, so I was thinking “not this shit again“. But I played nice. We...
Continuing on in the vein of apartment living adjustments, this episode will be about the laundry situation. As the units do not have hookups for washers and dryers, we have four laundry rooms spread across the campus. Open from 9:00AM until 10:00PM, they are convenient oases for those needing to do laundry. Of course, there are wrinkles. First – machine hogs The doors unlock at precisely...
Settling into apartment life is interesting to say the least. There are benefits and detriments of course in the life. This episode I will be just have some random observations. The people We are lucky that all our neighbors are pretty friendly. We wave and say “Hi” and they all say “Hi” back. This is easy for us, as we generally try to befriend our neighbors wherever we...
My wife and I have embarked on a new journey. As we wait for our house to sell in Arizona, with the fear of destroying our down payment for a house in temporary housing, we have punted and signed a lease on an apartment. Fortunately, we found a place that was happy to have us with our greyhounds. Yay.
This series of posts will chronicle our time here, and the fun that it will surely entail.
I know recently I ragged on the Comcast service in our temporary house for slow internet and the shitty DVR they provide. So, I feel that I must mention my awesome experience today. We signed our lease on an apartment. We are going to live there for a year, and thus I need cable and internet. The only option was Comcast Cable or AT&T UVerse service. No choice really. A week ago, I tried to...
There are many reasons to hate the process of selling. The last time I had to relocate, we moved up front, and left an empty house. Get it cleaned, and let the agents have free reign. This time, we have to sell before we move. This is much harder to accomplish. #1 Select a realtor There are literally thousands of realtors in any major metropolitan area. We are fortunate that we had to choose one...
More on the saga so far. This week we spent three days crawling around neighborhoods looking for places that fit the criteria: They are livable – as in, we can walk our dogs in the evening without fear for our lives. We can afford it – We do have an upper limit to what is affordable, after all. I don’t have early Facebook equity. The commute doesn’t completely suck –...
Moving from Phoenix to San Jose is going to be an eye opener. We currently have almost 2,400 sqft of house, not counting the garage. We will be lucky to have half that here (for 2.5x the price). I am already thinking about what will have to go. A lot of what I have packed in my garage is going to get nuked. It has mostly sat in a box, so I am not going to miss it. My CD’s might get sold...
This week I am in San Jose/South Bay to “preview” prior to deciding to relocate. Since I spent the first 38 years of my life here, I don’t need much pre-viewing, so we are hitting likely locations to live. So far, I have pretty much dismissed the far south bay. Morgan Hill and Gilroy, while they are near and served by Caltrain, are just too damn far. I last lived at the north...