Hooray for Pie!: Setting up shop

Here's a photo we took from the road and forgot to post earlier.
In case you can't make out the words, it says, "ANIMALS NOT POTTY TRAINED. BACK OFF!"

OK, so shortly after arriving in SD, all our stuff arrived courtesy of Larry. Since we didn't have a place to live, let alone to put all the stuff, we rented a public storage space and shoved it all in there. It worked out fairly well. With Larry's help, we had everything in the locker in about 2 1/2 hours. Then we continued looking for a place to live!

Rent is much different here. You could get a pretty sweet place in Delaware for $1000/month. Here, that very same rent will get you a luxurious studio apartment (read: one room does it all!) in Crackton. So we had to adjust to what you can get for the money. After two solid days of searching, we found an apartment in Pacific Beach that was right on the bay. It was an ordinary apartment, but we felt that the view would make it worth it. We were "okay" with it, but not gung-ho. We made it back to Shannon's feeling a little downtrodden, but happy that we at least had a prospect. Pie Girl had scheduled an appointment with a landlord that she spoke with before we even left Delaware and it was for that night. We figured we might as well go, even though we figured we would most likely end up renting the place in Pacific Beach. This other property was in the Golden Hill neighborhood.

This Golden Hill property was the first place we felt really good about - the previous tenants were getting ready to move out, and the landlords were really nice and friendly. They felt more like people we would be friends with than landlords. We filled out an application and crossed our fingers. We even did a little dance outside the house after we left. Afterwards we headed out to Ocean Beach with Shannon to meet up with her friend, Sean, to get a lobster taco - they are huge out here. And by huge I mean everybody loves them, not that they are necessarily large in size.

Well, lobster tacos are so popular that we had to wait in line for a really long time at the restaurant we had gone to. Word on the street was that this place was the best, but we just couldn't get a table. At eight months pregnant, Shannon was having a wicked lobster taco jones, so we decided to go to this little restaurant out on the Ocean Beach Pier (just a short walk from where we were) since they were also supposed to have a pretty "bitchin" lobster taco. But they were just closing when we got there! We noticed they had "mango pancakes" and made plans to come back for breakfast some day. Some day soon.

We gave up on lobstah and went to a Greek place instead. While we were there, the landlords called Beth to say that they really liked us - they had a good feeling and they wanted us to have the place! I guess it all magically worked out in the end. God be Praised!

Stop groveling! I hate it when people grovel...

Meanwhile, our friends Chris and Shellie were planning on coming down from San Jose to help us move in, and they had timed it just right. The old tenants moved out, we rented a truck and moved our stuff out of public storage and into our new place. And we had help doing it! To celebrate, we had breakfast at, you guessed it: the Ocean Beach Pier! Mmmm...mango pancakes...