New Year, New Home

I have now been a San Diego resident for almost two years! Wow, the time has flown by! When I first moved here I was living in corporate housing for a couple months up in the burbs near my office. The place I was in was pretty nice and it crossed my mind to sign a lease there, but after several years in the burbs of San Jose and Phoenix, I was ready to return to city life.

A friend of mine from college that had lived in the San Diego for a while helped me scout out several new neighborhoods to try to find an apartment. In the end, I chose Hillcrest which he originally described as “being a lot like San Francisco”. When we first drove around I agreed! The streets and businesses and restaurants and vibe of the place did remind me of San Francisco, and it was right by Balboa Park where I could run and walk my dogs. One thing he forgot to mention up front though was that Hillcrest wasn’t just like San Francisco as a city, it was actually more like the Castro District of San Francisco. Haha - I think most of you know what I mean.

I loved the neighborhood and fell in love with the second apartment that I looked at. It was right by the park, had a pool, was cute and modern, and had stainless steel appliances and granite countertops! The only downside? My apartment was only 500 square feet! Yikes that was tight! I ended up getting a storage unit downtown and put everything that wouldn’t fit in my apartment into storage. (Sometime over the summer I had a little scare at my storage unit where they called me to tell me a pipe burst in the building and that the lower level had flooded. Oh no! My stuff! It turned out that the water had missed my unit (THANK GOODNESS!!), but the whole incident really made me think about the value of my “stuff” and what it meant. To read more about that check out my blog “Its Just Stuff Right?”)

My Super-Mod Kitchen & Dining Counter

Close-Up Living Room
(Too close to the TV to Wii!!)

Living Room - Other View

I was able to get used to having a small space and the dogs and I got used to living in “urban efficiency”. We loved being near the park and I ran and walked the dogs in the park almost every day. Towards the end of last year though as my lease came due I thought about trying to find a bigger place in the same neighborhood. I started looking in a few of the neighborhoods surrounding the park but was having trouble doing an effective job looking with my work and travel schedule.

Enter Jodie .......
the best pet sitter in the WHOLE WORLD!!

My wonderful petsitter Jodie from Go Fido Go (who makes having two dogs and traveling for work a possibility and not a nightmare) offered to help me look for a new place. Not only did she look for listings with me online, she drove by a few places during the day to see if they looked as good as they did in person as they did in the ad. Can you believe it? She has to be the nicest person in the whole world! Thank you Jodie!

After a couple weeks of searching and finding a couple places that seemed like they were “it” but that didn’t end up working out ..... I found THE place! I came to look at a place that I found in a craigslist ad which was just an average, boring, square apartment. When I got to the location there happened to be three vacancies on this same property with the first one not making my screening criteria on craigslist because it was a bit out of the price range that I had set during my search. The property manager took me to this “expensive” place first (for the hell of it) and then two others after that. Um, when I walked into the first place I think my jaw dropped to the floor. The place was HUGE! And it felt like being inside of a house!

Huge Open Living Room

Huge Bedroom w/Fireplace & Patio

It took me a few minutes to realize this apartment was so grand because it was actually part of a house converted into an apartment. We then looked at the two other apartments I'd originally identified, but neither compared to the first place I saw! I was torn for a bit about going for the nicer place because I was planning on moving into a place that was a little bit less per month ........ but then I thought about the fact that this huge apartment meant that I could take my stuff out of storage ...... so overall even though this huge apartment was outside of the price range I had originally set, when you backed out the price of storage it was just about what I was looking for. I'll take it!

Anyways, long story short, I took the big huge apartment that I fell in love with at first site! And I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad, this new place is still cheaper than my old 500 square foot apartment! They say it’s a renter’s market right now and I think its so true!

My Mansion!
(Well, my 1/4 of it!)

Loads of Boxes from Storage

It was hard to manage the move around the holidays and my work schedule, but finally two weeks ago I did it! The dogs and I moved into our new place. The second the dogs walked in they sniffed every inch of the place and then started running back and forth and all over the apartment playing! Aww .. melt my heart! I hadn’t seen them play in so long! Mostly because they didn’t’ have room to.

Living Room & Dining Room

Big Bedroom & Fireplace
(Perfect for storage of an exercise ball!)

Private Patio to Shared Yard

We’re all settled in now and I love my new apartment more and more each day. (I think my dogs do as well.)

Thanks so much Jodie for helping me find this awesome place! The dogs say thank you too!

Life Comes Full Circle in August

As I flipped from July to August on my wall calendar at work I stopped and thought (for the 100th time) about how quickly this past year has gone. Especially since the prior year seemed to drag on at a snail's pace. As I was looking at my calendar and what I had planned for this month I thought oh wow, its been a year this week since I sold my house! And then thought hmm, actually it has been five years this week since I bought it! And then I tracked back in my mind to Augusts in between and further back and realized a lot of significant events have happened in my life in August.

Ten Years Ago - August 1999

Ten years ago in August of 1999 I started my first "real job" out of college. Wow - its hard to believe that it's been ten years since I finished my undergrad! I actually graduated in April but didn't find a job until August. In those months in between I was a receptionist at Standford Home Care and Hospice. The people there were nice, I only worked Monday - Thursday which gave me Fridays to look for a job and interview, but something about having an engineering degree and no job to use it at yet was somewhat unsettling. So, needless to say, when I started my job in August I was extremely excited! I remember my boss at the time calling me when I was on the way to 24 Hour Fitness with my best friend Garley and him letting me know I got the job as we were walking across the parking lot. I wonder if Garley remembers?

Curious about what I did? Well its something that takes about two seconds to cause someone's eyes glaze over with boredom. I was an Applications Engineer at a software company who made off-line CMM programming software. This company was a division of an industrial robot manufacturing company. Sounds exciting right? :o) Actually it really was. I loved that job, what we did, the customers we worked with, and everything I learned while I was there.

Proud Engineer in a Cube

If you look closely you can see me working on a
3D drawing of a 6-axis robot. Nerdarific cool!

Something else that came about that first week when I started that job was that I met my now BFF Kris who worked in our Farmington Hills office in Michigan. He and a few other AE's (that's the cool way to refer to Application Engineers you know) were in our office for the week for training. It was a fun week getting acquainted in the job and getting to know new people, and it was fun because that week was the birthday of the same year "birthday twins" Kris and Tamara!

Happy Birthday to you guys next week by the way!

And Happy Friend Anniversary Kris, you've been a great friend to me all these years and have been with me through good times and bad. Luckily mostly good, and I thank you for always making me laugh. Well, except for when you're trying to make me laugh by practicing your stand-up on me and then I don't laugh and then you get offended and rush off the phone with me... sorry!

Me & Kris

Five Years Ago - August 2004

So fast forward five years and now we're up to August 2004. What happened in between 1999 and 2004? Well, I moved to Arizona to go to grad school, working as an IT Project Manager at a mold lab (so random, I know), left to go work at a start-up MMORPG game company (yes, even more random), and was about to do something I had never thought possible at that age having grown up in San Francisco... I bought a house!

Working Hard at the Video Game Company

Wondering what MMORPG stands for?
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game!

Me & My Parents at My MBA Graduation

So back to the house, wow that was a hug event for me! I closed on the house on August 16th. It was a really exciting time and I felt proud to have reached that next level of "adulthood". Growing up in San Francisco meant that the dream of becoming a young home owner never even crossed my mind. Houses were going for close to a million dollars in the bad neighborhoods, and I never could have afforded a house or even a condo in a decent neighborhood. In Arizona though things were very different, and buying a small house or condo was something very normal for people in their mid-20s.

My Little House in Cave Creek

Soon after buying the house I also got my second dog Kona the Pekepoo. Can't say my first dog Mika (who was 1 1/2 at the time) was too excited to get a younger sister, but after a couple YEARS she finally warmed up to her and now they're a close little ying-yang pair. A week after buying Kona I then started my first job in Marketing at a dental company in Phoenix. And so my life in the world of dentistry began! I hear from many people there is only entry into the dental industry, no exit. I'm still not sure if people say that with warmth or fear. Hmm.... undecided.

Kona My Pekepoo (Pekingese/Poodle)

One Year Ago - August 2008

So after working at the dental company in Phoenix for 3 1/2 years it was time to move on and I took a job at a larger dental company and moved out to San Diego where I currently live. A couple months after I moved out here and after many trips back to Phoenix to have my house painted, yard relandscaped, and miscellaneous things fixed, I finally listed the house in April.

Well, in April of last year the housing slump was already sliding belly first down the slip and slide mat, and my chances of getting out of my house and breaking even were slim. Many months of stress piled upon more stress, I was able to sell the house! I truly think it was an act of God that everything happened the way they did on the timeline that they did. While it felt like eons were passing as I paid the mortgage on an empty house while also paying to live the California lifestyle out here in San Diego, the whole listing and sale process actually went pretty quickly in comparison to what was happening on the market.

I closed on the house sale on August 1st almost exactly five years after I bought the house. Kind of crazy how that happened! That was one of the first things I thought of when I flipped to the August page of my calendar this week when I thought about what I was doing this time last year. And then I thought about what I was doing in August the year before, and the year before that. And then I thought, its time for another blog! To the computer! Haha. So here I've been.

Chills, Church, & Chili

Chills

I am currently training for the Marine Corps Marathon (10/29/09) with my favorite training/running partner David! This will be his first full marathon and I'm really excited that we will get to run it together! Last weekend we planned for an 8 mile run on Saturday. We ended up oversleeping a bit and decided to hit the beach soon after breakfast. We tossed around the choices of running later that afternoon or early the next morning. I always do my long runs on Saturdays and love getting them over with, so I talked David into doing our long run after lunch, after the beach. Oh what a mistake! Roasting in the sun for 2 1/2 hours left us totally dehydrated. Unfortunately neither of us realized this until halfway through our run.

David Marveling at My Hello Kitty Towel

Running in the late afternoon in the heat (~85F, not bad, but about 20 degrees higher than I'm used to running in the early morning) after sweating in the sun all afternoon was not a good choice. We both felt the effects and had strange heavy-headed headaches for the last half of the run. We powered through our 8 miles though (with some walking.. shh! don't judge) and agreed to try out a real ice bath when we got back to my place. We made a quick stop at the liquor store on the way home to pick up two bags of ice and some Gatorade and we were ready!

We dumped the ice in the tub and filled it with a few inches of cold water and were ready to soothe the soreness out of our muscles. We then added some Gatorade for electrolytes. No, I'm kidding, we drank the Gatorade. But back to the ice bath .... Um, have any of you sat in an ice bath before?? Well if so, hats off to you! Seriously! I stepped in and could barely stand the few moments my feet were in! I jumped back out and though crap! That hurt! I dipped my feet back in again and figured if I withstood the pain for a bit longer it would start to go away as my body adjusted. Um, nope! I had to step back out. My feet ached with pain and felt like there was an elephant stepping on each foot and crushing the life out of them.

Finally, I had an idea on how we could ice our shins but keep our poor sensitive feet out of the ice cold water. I found that if I kneeled in the water I could lift my feet back out behind me. The ice didn't hurt my shins like it hurt my feet, and the death bath, I mean ice bath was bearable that way. So we both kneeled in the ice, feet kicked back and up. Let me tell you, its pretty awkward to kneel in a tub of ice with your feet angled up and out of the water behind you, but hey - I do yoga. I can hold an awkward pose! About five minutes into the icing I had the bright idea that I could distract myself by reading more of the 2nd Twilight book. I started to engross myself back into the love that is Edward Cullen the vampire (sigh....) when David asked me to read aloud to him to distract him as well. So yes, two people kneeling in ice, with one reading Twilight out loud to the other. What a freakshow we were! Not sure I want to try an ice bath again anytime soon, but maybe if I do it will be less and less painful each time. One can hope!

Church

On Sunday David and I went to check out a church downtown San Diego. Yes, at the ripe age of 31 I've finally decided to try attending church on a regular basis. The first one I went to a couple weeks ago was really not up my alley. It was very doom and gloom and oddly political. The talk of the world ending due to moral decline and blaming part of our country's problems on "Obama not being friends with Israel" was way too much for me. I'm a Joel Osteen kind of girl. Learn to live a better life. Be positive. Do good. I like messages like that. Doom and gloom and fear? Not my bag.

Anyways, this church we went to last weekend wasn't political, but it felt wrong to me in its own way. Instead of the pastor there was a guest speaker, a lawyer. And he was angry! Very angry! Not being a church goer growing up, I really anticipated church to be a positive, growing place, not somewhere I should feel fearful and guilty as I did after the past two churches. This speaker gave an hour long presentation about how the media is attacking the Bible and faith by questioning the timeline and story that is told. The man presenting was very angry and gave example after example about how the media is trying to ruin faith. I wasn't quite sure what to think about his presentation, and wondered several times how they found him and if this church really aligned with his message and sentiment. I left this second church a bit disappointed again as I did last week. But oh well, the search will continue.

Chili

David was pretty excited that the Home Run Derby that was going on Monday night, and the All-Star game on Tuesday night. I'm not a big baseball fan myself but thought I'd try to get into the excitement by cooking a baseball themed dinner. Hot dogs were number one on the menu of course, and number two was chili! I love chili! Beans, meat, spices... you can't go wrong! I found a recipe online for a simple chili, substituted the ground beef with low-fat ground turkey, and also cooked some low-fat turkey dogs to go with them. Chili turkey dog home run derby night! I think it was quite a success! David did too, even with my low-fat substitutions! Hey, at least I didn't try to slip him a tofu dog! (That's what she said! Okay sorry, poor fit for that joke.. Sorry Michael Scott for not doing that justice.)

The Dogs Boiling

The Buns Grilling

The Chili Cooking

(Yes, that is a wok that my chili is cooking in. I need a Crock Pot! Christmas is only 5 months away! Don't forget to put it on your list for me!!)

The Finished Product

So one of the many great things about chili is that cooking a pot of chili for two people means you have plenty of leftovers. The All-Star game the following night became leftover chili night. It was just as good as the night before. I love chili!

Nothing else we did last week started with "ch" and fit with my title, so you won't get to hear about it. :o) Sorry! Well ...... fine, you dragged it out of me! We also went to the dog park! Actually if I use the French word for dog it fits my title - "chien!" It was a hot weekend and my poor little furballs were pretty tired, but they still had fun. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Mika Shoving Her Way into a Picture

My Girls Following Me Around in the Park

Mika & David Taking a Time-Out

Great weekend, lots of fun. Until next time!