Like, me, I'm sure you've spent many an anxious minute wondering to yourself, "Self? Where can I find pictures of dogs in bee costumes? Lots of them? Like, fetishistic quantities of bee-dog pr0n?"
Well, rest at ease, my apicaninophilic darlings. Here they are.
I heart the Internet too much. And Indy? When Halloween rolls around? So screwed.
Being a "high-balance customer" (as defined by our Citibank rep in explaining why she was giving us our check order for free) has been a gratifying feeling; we're savoring it while it lasts, though, because pretty soon that hefty pellet o' cash will be flying right back out of our account and into that of the people whose house we agreed to purchase on Tuesday.
Bill's done a great job of describing the house on his page already, so if you want to know the backstory, check it out... The place is pretty funky, needs some therapy, and contains a blinding array of brass fixtures as well as a powder-blue color scheme and frilly wallpaper, all of which most certainly must be purged. However, we dig it because, after looking at countless boring ranch homes with their bric-brac facades, generically boxy floorplans and locations deep in the heart of suburbia, this one seemed unique and interesting.
Also, we were hoping to find a place that had some shops and things within walking distance. Before I moved to San Diego, I'd always lived in neighborhoods near college campuses with lots of nearby shops and places to eat and hang out; I missed that accessibility during our stint in the driving-addicted bedroom communities of Southern California. Our new house is within reasonable walking distance of Murphy Ave, a short stretch of road in downtown Sunnyvale with several cute little Irish pubs, a bunch of decent-looking restaurants, a lively used bookstore and a couple of pool halls. Perfect. Every Wednesday evening in summer they block off the ends of the avenue and have a street fair. Apparently, downtown Sunnyvale in general is poised on the brink of a huge renovation effort - it's been in the works for years, but only now seems like it's going to kick into gear.
We didn't realize that getting a moderately-priced house in Sunnyvale was sort of a coup until Bill talked with some of his coworkers about it. Many of them ended up buying houses in outlying areas around San Jose like Campbell and Cambrian. Their commutes are 2-3x as long as the 15 minutes it takes Bill to get to work from here. Most of the houses we looked at out there would need just as much fixing up as our wacky little chalet does - and in the end, maybe we'd have a place with a nice kitchen and some refinished hardwood floors, but it'd still be cracker-boxy and mired in the 'burbs. Luckily, the owners of our place fixed up the kitchen a few years back and we like the cabinets just fine. We plan to swap out the flat-top electric range with a high-output gas cooktop, but otherwise, it's tip-top. Something about the house is tickling our tiki sensibilities, and we plan to trick it out accordingly. Ooga-chaka!
The important thing, though, is that I can totally picture us living in this place and thinking of it as home... Not just as the place where we keep our stuff and hang out in when we don't have anything better to do, but also a place that pleases and amuses us, inspires our imagination a little, is fun to show to guests, and has a layout that's useful and accomodating to the way we live. All that, and a relative bargain to boot (well, as much as any house that costs over three quarters of a million dollars (!) and still doesn't come with manservants or a yacht slip can be said to be a "bargain"... Welcome to Silicon Valley.)
Anyway, I feel like we scored a pretty decent place - and even better, unlike the prior house we bid on, with this one we won't have to sell plasma and find 100 ways to liven up Ramen dinners in order to make our house payments. So, whew.
