Ann vs. Jason

We are very grateful that most of the packing and moving was done for us by the moving company, but unpacking has been a ton of work with no end in sight. The byproduct of all this unpacking has been piles of cardboard boxes and paper packing material. The movers individually wrapped almost everything. They even wrapped the paper towels in paper, just to be safe.

I put a “free boxes” ad on Craigslist and got 5 responses before morning. If you’re ever looking for boxes, or looking to get rid of boxes, I highly recommend the free stuff section on Craigslist.

The lady who came by to pick up the boxes was nice enough and very thankful for the packing materials. She and her mother were both moving out of a house in Sunnyvale. We talked a bit about the area.

At one point, she said, “you’re in Mountain View, so just be careful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well it’s not the best area.”

I was dumbfounded. I might not be a local here, but the condo next door to us (identical to ours) is selling for $525,000. That’s a 1000 sq ft, two-bedroom condo in a building from the 1970s, so no Granite countertops or walk-in closets. The median home price is $800,000. There are virtually no empty storefronts or office buildings. All the crime statistics are below the national average.

“Uh, we’re coming here from Cleveland,” I said. “How is this a bad area? Are there murders?”

“Just don’t leave your door unlocked,” she replied.

She later told me that there weren’t many places in California that she would be willing to live in. Maybe Gilroy, a city to the south with two-hour-each-way commutes. I asked where she was moving.

“Back to Montana. They say that on average, your nearest neighbor is five miles away.”

So there you have it. Mountain View, California is a rough town to be in, if you ignore the high property values, full employment, and low crime statistics. And you only compare it to rural Montana.

…

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life out in the country, of course. But we, as a country, are starting to pay the price for our obsession with moving ever outward, from suburb to suburb to exurb. Our cars are dumping carbon into the air, and our sedentary lifestyles contribute to heart disease and diabetes.

Often what drives people away from walkable cities and small towns is fear. It’s good to be afraid, and take appropriate measures, when there is a real threat. But when people are afraid to live in places like Mountain View or Shaker Heights, I think we should worry about our collective irrationality. Neither of those towns are perfect (we had a break-in at our house in Shaker), but you are never, ever going to be 100 % safe from harm. Even if you’re five miles from the nearest neighbor.

Ann had to work a 12-hour shift on my birthday, so we went on a little excursion on the 17th instead.  We drove up to the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve for a quick hike.  Then Ann took me out to dinner at Garden Fresh Vegetarian Restaurant.  They’ve got good food and are within walking distance of our place so I’m sure we’ll be back there in the future.

Things we learned:

• Baskin Robins makes ice cream cakes with the low-fat frozen yogurt, but that might not be enough for me to trick myself into thinking I can have any.
• Ann learned what a coyote howl sounds like.  I learned that Ann does not like coyotes.
• Foothill College has a really interesting campus.  It also has just a single, long, looping one-way road that you have to drive all the way around to get out.

Here are some pictures from the hike:

- Jason

Jason and I spent the majority of last Saturday looking at houses, apartments, townhomes, and condos on Saturday. Two properties were okay, but neither of them had all the amenities and/or great location that we wanted. We set up an appointment to look at one other condo on Sunday (in which Jason went solo because I had to work). This condo was in our original top 3 list of places that we wanted. Jason looked at the place and started the process on renting our condo after a whole bunch of texting back and forth between him and I (in between patient care).

We’re pretty excited about it. It’ s in Mountain View within biking distance of Google and walking distance to Castro Street (kind of like Coventry in Cleveland Heights, but 4 times bigger) and El Camino (major road with lots of restaurants, shopping, etc).

We have our own little patio that looks over the pool and a heavily wooded area (lots of redwood trees).

Our living room is huge. It also is one big room with the dining room. We also have an open kitchen. I haven’t had an open kitchen since I was living in Columbus. I really missed that.

There is a combination washer and dryer in one of the storage closets. I’m not too sure, yet, about how to use it because it has no button for “just washing” or “just drying” which would make more sense logically in my mind. We’ll see…

We can’t complain too much because we got all of the amenities that we wanted in a great area. I’m still having to treat Jason with dramamine in order to prevent him from vomiting every time we think of the price of rent here. It’s still within our price range (for California), though.

We plan on moving this Friday and Saturday (the 15th and 16th). Our address will be:

725 Mariposa Ave., #104
Mountain View, CA 94041

-Ann

Yesterday Laura, the HR rep, invited us to have lunch at Google in order to literally get a taste of Google along with two other people that will be on Jason’s team. There are 17 restaurants on campus to choose from, so it was a little overwhelming to choose. Everything is free. All you need is your company ID badge to swipe in order to get into the restaurants. They serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time where a snack cart comes around there, also. I know the whole reason to have all meals there available for employees is to basically have them be more productive and possibly stay later, but it keeps the employees happy. I think everyone is aware of the alternative motive. I just don’t think that they mind all that much. There’s an exercise gym there, too, in order to work off the damage you’ve done to yourself throughout the day.

There is a choice of all kinds of (our favorite) foods such as Indian, Mediterranean, and Chinese. There’s also a good variety of American fare. The food was wonderful. I really don’t have to worry about Jason on days that I work because I know that he will definitely not go hungry at this place. I just have to get him to get over his embarrassment of smuggling food home. They do have doggy bags…

The campus really did look like a college campus. In order to get from point A to point B, we were able to take a ride in an electric car (a glorified golf cart). It only went 18 mph, but it was still pretty fun. I did have the privilege of driving the electric car back to our original destination. That really made my day. I’m a little jealous of Jason. He is going to have the coolest work place ever.

-Ann

My cousin Kurt took us out for dinner tonight at a great Japanese place called Shabuway on Castro Street. They serve shabu shabu, which includes meats and veggies cooked fondue style. We’ll have to head back there some time, maybe when someone comes out here to visit us.

It was nice catching up with Kurt – he’s been here in the bay area for a while and works on the business development side for tech companies. Most recently he’s been working for a mobile company. They partner with all the carriers, including AT&T. I’ve never worked on that side of the company, though, all of my projects have been for voice or the fiber network.

As always, you can click on the picture to see a larger version. Ann pointed out to me that the photos don’t come through over email, so just click on the link to see the picture or click on the headline at the top of this email to see the whole thing together on the web.

-Jason

Last week we took a quick trip up to San Bruno Mountain State Park near San Francisco. We really just wanted to get out of the house a bit, do a little walking, and see some sites.

This wasn’t really our first excursion. We drove out to Sacramento last Wednesday (our first full day in California) so Ann could get her nursing license for the state but were thwarted in our attempts to do any siteseeing. We tried driving up Mount Diablo but the cold, rainy weather and fog at the top of the mountain cut that trip short.

Although it was still pretty chilly, San Bruno Mountain was a great idea because it’s not too far away, it’s very accessible (you can drive right to the top), and it has great views of San Francisco in every direction. Below are a bunch of photos from the trip, you can click on each one to see a larger version at Flickr. You can also go directly to the whole photo set.

Here’s Ann with San Francisco in the distance:

Can you tell it was windy?

Ann’s waiting at the car while I walk up the last few yards to the summit. That’s South San Francisco and the bay in the background.

Here’s the view of the San Francisco skyline from the top of the mountain:

Ann was not enthusiastic about encountering a mountain lion:

The flora round the Bay Area is really interesting. Here on the mountain you see trees and confiers like you would expect at a higher altitude…

But the turn around and things are looking a bit more tropical:

Even in January there were flowers growing on the hillsides.

This was near a small camping area. I emailed the park service to see if we can get reservations to camp there some time. The next few pictures, with probably the best views, were just a short walk from the camp.

You can probably guess why I’d like to camp there. Even though it’s surrounded by the city and suburbs, watching a sunset and seeing the city lit up at night would be great.

-Jason