Moving House
09 October 2003
There have been a lot of changes since my last e-mail which have delayed this one a little. At the end of July things seemed reasonably settled with us entering our last six or nine months in the US. In the last week of July we surprised Jay with a birthday dinner featuring his professed favourite dessert: cheap chocolate cake. We bought the cake at Costco where they had nothing smaller than three square feet.
The following week we went to a party in Guerneville, two hours drive North of San Francisco. It was at a large private property close to the Russian River; a very pretty setting. The weather was perfect and people took advantage of the pool.
They also had a bouncy castle which I got stuck in. Robert and Jay had just about given up waiting by the time I fought my way out.
I was surprised to receive an e-mail greeting from Martin Hoe, who had visited the Old Melburnians website and noticed that I was listed there as also living in San Francisco. It seems we had been living about 15 minutes walk from each other since I arrived in San Francisco two years ago.
Martin has been here since 1996 and has married a US citizen. I had last seen him at Melbourne University, probably in 1990, but we had not been in regular contact since school. We had dinner together and caught up on each other's news.
Robert and I were both frustrated by being apart every week as he had to go to Pasadena for work. He negotiated with IndyMac to work from San Francisco two days a week which meant that it was better for him to come up to San Francisco every Thursday night and return to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. This meant he was doing all the travelling and was only spending two nights each week in the apartment in LA, which seemed something of a waste for all the rent.
We asked around among friends in LA and received a number of offers of spare bedrooms for him for two nights each week. Thus we decided to move out of the apartment in LA and Robert is staying with our friends Bruce and Billy when in LA at the moment. We rented a moving van and packed it with the furniture on a Saturday morning before driving up the I-5 freeway. I had thought it would be a slow trip, but we found that a 24-foot U-Haul truck will go over 80mph (I won't say exactly how fast).
As we were figuring out how to arrange the furniture in the house at Clarendon Avenue in San Francisco, Richard told us that he had arranged to sell the house so we were to be completely homeless from early October unless we found a new place to live in a few weeks. The purchaser of the house is a dermatologist we know in San Francisco who was very eager to have his grand piano hoisted into the upstairs room as soon as possible.
Our friend Jay was also coming to the end of his lease, so we decided to look for a place together, thus increasing the rent we could afford and the range of options. Robert did most of the searching and all the negotiating (to get us a short lease since we will be leaving in the New Year) and two weeks later we were moving into a very nice loft very close to downtown San Francisco and a short walk from cinemas, the Museum of Modern Art and the tram which takes me to work.
Here's a short movie of the apartment.
Now that the uncertainty over where we will be living and the tide of boxes are receding it seems like a great place to be. We did wear out some very good friends, however, getting three sofas and two beds up seven flights of stairs. It's three floors up and there is no elevator.
A week ago we went to the Folsom Street Fair and ran into a few friends from Melbourne who were visiting: Antonio and Maurie. The year seems to have gone very quickly now that it's almost "the holiday season", the rapid-fire series of events: Hallowe'en, Thankgiving, Christmas and New Year which finishes the year.
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The following week we went to a party in Guerneville, two hours drive North of San Francisco. It was at a large private property close to the Russian River; a very pretty setting. The weather was perfect and people took advantage of the pool.
They also had a bouncy castle which I got stuck in. Robert and Jay had just about given up waiting by the time I fought my way out.
I was surprised to receive an e-mail greeting from Martin Hoe, who had visited the Old Melburnians website and noticed that I was listed there as also living in San Francisco. It seems we had been living about 15 minutes walk from each other since I arrived in San Francisco two years ago.
Martin has been here since 1996 and has married a US citizen. I had last seen him at Melbourne University, probably in 1990, but we had not been in regular contact since school. We had dinner together and caught up on each other's news.
Robert and I were both frustrated by being apart every week as he had to go to Pasadena for work. He negotiated with IndyMac to work from San Francisco two days a week which meant that it was better for him to come up to San Francisco every Thursday night and return to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. This meant he was doing all the travelling and was only spending two nights each week in the apartment in LA, which seemed something of a waste for all the rent.
We asked around among friends in LA and received a number of offers of spare bedrooms for him for two nights each week. Thus we decided to move out of the apartment in LA and Robert is staying with our friends Bruce and Billy when in LA at the moment. We rented a moving van and packed it with the furniture on a Saturday morning before driving up the I-5 freeway. I had thought it would be a slow trip, but we found that a 24-foot U-Haul truck will go over 80mph (I won't say exactly how fast).
As we were figuring out how to arrange the furniture in the house at Clarendon Avenue in San Francisco, Richard told us that he had arranged to sell the house so we were to be completely homeless from early October unless we found a new place to live in a few weeks. The purchaser of the house is a dermatologist we know in San Francisco who was very eager to have his grand piano hoisted into the upstairs room as soon as possible.
Our friend Jay was also coming to the end of his lease, so we decided to look for a place together, thus increasing the rent we could afford and the range of options. Robert did most of the searching and all the negotiating (to get us a short lease since we will be leaving in the New Year) and two weeks later we were moving into a very nice loft very close to downtown San Francisco and a short walk from cinemas, the Museum of Modern Art and the tram which takes me to work.
Here's a short movie of the apartment.
Now that the uncertainty over where we will be living and the tide of boxes are receding it seems like a great place to be. We did wear out some very good friends, however, getting three sofas and two beds up seven flights of stairs. It's three floors up and there is no elevator.
A week ago we went to the Folsom Street Fair and ran into a few friends from Melbourne who were visiting: Antonio and Maurie. The year seems to have gone very quickly now that it's almost "the holiday season", the rapid-fire series of events: Hallowe'en, Thankgiving, Christmas and New Year which finishes the year.
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