A New Home

So this is our new home. We've been living here for about a week and we like it a lot. It's in a really great neighborhood. We're within walking distance to almost anything we want to do, not including Mandi's work, and our neighbors are super nice too. There is a modified garage attached to our house where a guy named Steve and his son Josh live. Steve's a really nice guy and he runs a pest control company. Next door to us in a house much larger than ours is a girl named Nadia who seems to be about our age. She is a professor at the local community college and is working on her doctorate. She owns that house and has a roommate that lives with her who's name I can't remember because it's kinda wierd. She's a really nice girl though and she's got a great sleeve tattoo. Nadia also has a converted garage and there's a guy named Shawn living there. So far everyone is super friendly.


As you can see in the pictures, we've got a really big front porch. The local homeless also notice these things and the first night we were in the house we woke up to people stomping around on the front porch. Apparently they were using it as a place to sleep while it was still for rent. This is not something you want to find out at 1am in a strange town. We've since learned to leave our porch light on overnight. They don't seem to be interested in sleeping on our porch anymore. However, we do have one recurring guest on our porch. Her name is Masala and she is a very sweet tabby who used to live in our house. She now splits her time between our place and Nadia's. We've become fast friends.

This picture is of our living room. I was going to wait untill we had our stuff here to do this post but Luke assures me that before and after posts are a better idea. So there you have it. Empty living room.

To the right is our dining room. I especially like the built in cabinet. The window looks out onto Nadia's house.





To the left is our kitchen. That door leads into the utility room where our thrift store washer and drier are. The thrift store and flea market are my new favorite things. I'll tell you about the flea market in a bit.


To the right is the master bedroom. Notice our luxurious sleeping arrangements. My neck is not pleased with me for this. Luckily, our stuff should be arriving Thursday or so and in another week our new KING SIZE BED will be arriving. Very excited. Also poor.





I made Shiloh a box. She is pleased.


This is our dinner at Toshi's Ramen. Best japanese noodles I've ever had, which isn't saying much, but I'm assured that they are some of the best.





This is the first Vietamese place I've been to in years as Ward can attest. It was awesome. We have been to many other restaurants since arriving here but for some reason I only ended up with pictures of the two Asian places. There have been brew pubs, steak joints (Kobe NY strip!), bakeries, breakfast cafes, coffee houses, and pizza parlors. Ah, the pizza. There is a pizza shop across the street from my house. Pizza by the slice, local beer on tap, wine tasting last Friday, beer tasting this Friday, very seriously thinking about trying to get a job there. Otherwise I might go broke. It makes me so happy.

While we were driving up the 101 we stopped at a town just outside the Redwood Forrest. The seafood restaurant we ate at that night had a number of these carvings on the wall. They are done out of old growth redwood and we decided to buy one. It's pretty sweet.

So I've mentioned to some of you that the fairgrounds are only a few blocks from our house. It seems that there are events there almost every weekend and this past weekend it was the flea market/RV show. We went to the flea market and it was a blast. I bought an old Saltine Cracker tin, a glazed cast iron pot and pan set, Mandi got a pretty ceramic bowl and a pair of old bronze lamps. We spent $30. It happens every couple of weeks apparently. I'm thinking flea market vendor could be another job prospect for me.

So that's it for today. Now that I've got our internet going and Mandi's off to work I'm going to try to do these posts more often. Maybe shorter ones too. Anyway stay tuned! There's lots more Oregon Trails to come!