long time no see

It has been a while since my last post, and in that time we drove across the country (for 3 days), spent the night at our new place on an air mattress that refused to stay inflated, received and unloaded our pod/cube thing, walked at the marina, and have been to target a million times.  I did manage to keep up with posting a few things here and there on Facebook, so if you were checking in there over the past week you've probably seen most of the important stuff.  Here is a recap of the past week just in case you missed it :)

The drive:  It was really long but totally tolerable.  We made it in 3 days staying overnight in Albuquerque, NM, and then in Barstow, CA.  Our old car totally rocked it...not a single problem.  We even got better gas mileage than we expected considering how completely loaded our car was.  Frannie was a trooper and snoozed pretty much the entire way.  She barely made a peep.  We tried to start the drive as early as possible each day, but free hotel breakfast didn't start until 6am.  

This was the view for much of the early part of the trip.  Lots of Fallout jokes.  

Yay...we were very excited to see this sign.  

It was getting hot hot hot...it made me doubt the fabled cool weather of the bay area.  Even just 45 minutes south of Oakland it was still 95 degrees.  

Eventually the drive started to look like this...European countryside?  

The arrival:  We got to our place around 4pm on Thursday afternoon.  Ilya had a cot.  He has been living in our place at least 1 month prior to my arrival with just a cot.  Poor guy.  He immediately unloaded the car and then we went on a little tour of our new hood.  I was busy talking on the phone with out landlord during most of the tour because when we tried to get into my studio space, there was someone else's lock on the door.  Needless to say, we broke in and found that someone had been using the space.  Everything is cleared up and her stuff is cleaned out...I was annoyed.  

Part of the tour of our new hood :)  very exciting.  

At the marina, I forgot to take pictures while the sun was up.  It was kind of hazy and losing light...neat nonetheless.  

I'd like to say that I spent the first night comfortably on the air mattress, but sadly, that wasn't the case.  The air mattress had a hole, and I spent the night mostly on the wood floor.  Ouch.  The next day, Friday, our pod/cube thing arrived!  Ilya had it unloaded by 3 pm and the truck came to pick it up later that afternoon! Since then we've been shuffling and unpacking boxes.  We plan on having most things unboxed by this evening.  I've installed some shelving in the bedroom and am building a desk desk today.  We found a cool dresser at this awesome resale/salvage place and are picking it up today (it is solid wood and super heavy so we had to enlist a pal).  Once it is here I can get to sanding and refinishing!  The place is kind of a scattered mess, but I will post pictures ASAP!