San Franciscoing

Lindsey, Jeff and I are thinking about moving to San Francisco. We might actually do it this time. The two really big reasons we haven't gone yet are:

• There weren't any reasonable apartments available.
• The commute to Mountain View is really long for Lindsey.

So Jeff and I checked out a place last night:

 

 

The place we were going to look at is one of the two units in that nice green and mauve house. I like how so many houses in San Francisco have a lot of style even if though the colors are a little funky. We had an appointment to check this place out but the guy never showed up to let us in. Man, that sucked. Don't worry though, the trip wasn't a total waste because afterwards we when bar hopping with Marc.

 

We'll have to arrange another appointment this weekend because the specs on this place are so much better than any thing else I've seen. From it's listing:

• Good location. Near stuff and freeways.
• "Mansion-like"
• 3 Bedrooms, 3 Baths
• Remodeled
• "Designer kitchen"
• 3 wood-burning fireplaces
• 2 car garage!!
• 2500 square feet!!

If those things are even vaguely true this place is awesome. 2500 square feet? What, are they counting attic space? Every other place we've seen is so small. We peeked in the window and the 2 car garage is tandem. That's annoying, but that's the city.

 

It's on a temporarily dead-end street so the traffic shouldn't be too bad. The street is closed because they are building the new 101 on-ramp on Octavian. I assume the construction will be going on for a year so it will be a dead end street for that long. One year is as long as I've committed to living in the city. The plan is to live in San Francisco for the year and then regroup to figure out what to do next. I think the commute or the bums might get to me. But hey, maybe it will be loads of fun.

 

Jeff and I are going to carpool together. The plan is for both of us to stay at Blizzard North for a least a year. I don't mind commuting nearly as much when there's somebody to talk to. Jeff and I commuted together from Sunnyvale for a while and that wasn't too bad.

 

Lindsey's commute was troubling me. But I made an excel spreadsheet to calculate her driving times. She goes to dance lessons all the time, so her driving schedule is pretty complicated. One of her instructors teaches in San Francisco so she actually drives up there a lot anyway. So with this spreadsheet I figured out an amazing thing. She'll actually drive about 2.5 hour less a week if we move. This is possible because Google has a shuttle from San Francisco. It has a stop at the Civic Center, Dolores at 280 and Monster Park. When did they change the name of the ballpark? Anyway, that place isn't quite walking distance from the Civic Center when you are carrying a laptop in heels. So I figure Lindsey will drive to Monster Park and take the Google shuttle from there. The shuttle is wired and is on the company LAN so Lindsey can work with her laptop. One day a week Lindsey will have to drive to Google so she can go to a dance lesson. If she can manage that schedule she'll be driving less, at work for more hours, and able to home sooner on the non-dance nights.

 

I think we might make it this time.