…to…Eureka Valley? Signed a lease for a new apartment last night. It’s smaller, but MUCH nicer than the current apartment, and for everyone who’s asked, yes, Virginia, there will be a housewarming party. And you’re all invited! Except you. No, to the left. Yeah, you. Sorry.

To prep for the move, there has been an explosion of cleaning in the house, and I briefly (okay, it wasn’t very brief) panicked when I found a HUGE spider in my file box that I thought might be a black widow. I managed to catch it in one of Sha Sha Chu’s patented Magical Spider Catchers (i.e. a plastic salsa container), and after some googling, found out it was a triangulate cobweb spider, or ‘false widow’. After snapping a few pics of it, we released it into the backyard, probably to have it return tomorrow and lay thousands of eggs in my eyeballs.

The apartment is a disaster, but I now officially have a new zip code. Yay!

We’re moving into our new apartment tomorrow, so I’ll be spending the rest of tonight packing up all of my earthly belongings. I’ll be unplugging my computer tonight won’t have an internet connection this weekend (gasp!) but I’ll still have my cell phone, so give me a call if you need to get in touch with me. When I go back to work on Monday I’ll be able to check e-mail again.

Mariel and I had spent the past couple weeks trying to find an apartment in the area. We had been looking on Rent.com, and we’d found some pretty nice places, but then our friend Paul told us that he had a vacancy next door to him. It was in Redwood City (north of Stanford, for all you non-Bay Area folks,) and was a ginormous 1200 square feet, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom place. We went to see it and we really liked it, so we turned in our applications last week. Later that day, the realtor for the apartment, Joan, called us and told us that a woman had offered to not only move in immediately (we’re not moving until mid-August,) but also pay the first year’s rent up front. Of course we couldn’t do this, so we had to give up the place.

In the meantime, we found a nice apartment in Mountain View (south of Stanford) and decided to apply for that place. Of course, the day after we put down our security deposit, Joan calls us and tells us that it turns out that the woman who had offered to pay the first year’s rent had several bankruptcies, so that if we still wanted the place, it was ours. This put us in a brief dilemma, but we eventually stuck with the apartment in Mountain View, mostly because it was $150 dollars/month cheaper.

I’m satisfied with our decision, if not only for the fact that we are within walking distance of downtown Mountain View, home to many a cheap Asian restauarant. Mmm… Pho at 2 a.m…. Just call me fatty.