Yard Sale!!

On Saturday, we had a yard sale. We organized a little store on our porch and front lawn and priced everything. One of the attendees said that we were "very organized". We had put up signs and posted on Craig's List, and we sold a few hundred dollars worth of stuff. We did have to get up rather early on the cold spring morning; we still made a few more hundred than we would have otherwise.

All I'll otherwise say is that very strange people come to yard sales -- and many of them are looking for collectibles (e.g. old records, war stuff).

Moving guilt

Here's all the trash after cleaning out our house (round 1).  We felt guilty throwing so much stuff away; a lot of this was the grime covered stuff from the attic and mixed papers/magazines that weren't recyclable.  We did leave a little surprise for the garbage guys -- we left them a six-pack!  Ilsa saw them find it and they were quite happy about it.

We've been packing. And oh, how we've been packing. Yesterday was the basement (yikes) and my office (double yikes). On the basement, the first task was to cart out all the dusty debris and rotting ruins that Ilsa's sister and boyfriend had cleaned out of the attic for us when the put in the insulation. There were many interesting and weird items in that set -- including old books, hats, chests, games, and lamps that had been covered in years of Pittsburgh dust -- probably from the 20s or 30s onward. And by covered, I mean blanketed. And by dust, I mean Pittsburgh industrial dust, super-fine, black, and generally nasty.

This first picture is of all the bags that were associated with that endeavor. The second is of our hands after moving it!


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After the basement, I focused on getting my office clean. When I moved to Pittsburgh 6 years ago, I didn't have much time to go through stuff, so I just moved everything (the fact that the move was paid for was also part of why I could do that). This time, I have vowed to go through everything. I could not believe some of the stuff I moved out there -- reams of unused paper, class notes from my "Personality" class from college, links of chain, used batteries -- it was horrible. I think I threw out something like 500 pounds of crap from my office! And -- I got to throw away my 90s tax returns and financial records! That was fun. I encourage you all to take the extra day or two when you next move to do the same and purge, purge, purge!

New Van

Here's a photo of our new van, nicknamed "the doggy limo", and designed to bring us and the hounds across the country in relative comfort.

Searching for a place (Feb 29th to March 5th)

Well, we're a bit busy prepping for the move, so some of these posts are happening after the fact.

We went out to California early in March and looked for a place. Ilsa spent the week beforehand scouring craigslist for any hint of a place that might work for us, and, after a fab party at the SuperDelegate and the HippyChick's place (yes, it was a costume party) we set to work attempting to wow the landlords with our doggie resume, people resume, and smiling faces. We visited about 20 places, including "two bedrooms" where one bedroom was a walk-in closet and places in "Noe Valley" that were mere steps off of Mission.

One place we saw on Sunday was out in Glen Park, owned by a man named "Steve". He was very nice, the place great, and it became our top choice. The next three days we waited eagerly for his call and visited other places. Our "backup" was rented to someone else due to a misunderstanding. We were at Circa (great restaurant, with a chef who's now on Top Chef) for what was to be our celebration dinner and we still hadn't heard anything. We ordered a drink -- and when our Martinis showed up -- the phone rang, and we had our place. The meal was much better knowing we search had ended!

A few pics are below. Note the great views and the cool staircase & library ladder. The place is just a few blocks from the center "village" of the Glen Park neighborhood and a few blocks from BART.