alive and well and housed!

I will now honor your extreme patience and finally begin giving some updates on what life has looked like the past week. 

((just so you know, my silence hasn't been totally due to negligence: we don't have internet at our place & won't for another week (agh) so today I came into the office with Davy and Finn just so I could write a little something here))

But I digress.

Mr. Finneran and I drove into the city last Monday around 8 am - his lovely aunt Sharon lent us her car enabling us to leave big-daddy-Penske in Santa Cruz while we apartment hunted. We saw 5 apartments on Monday (and got very sore in the process - SF hills are no joke) - of those 5, we only loved 1 but it was quite far from work/downtown. We both were cautious to live further out because we'd prefer to soak up SF while we live here rather than spending free time inside our apartment and were suspicious that might happen with lovely apartment from day 1. We get nervous a little. Will we find something? We pray & people pray for us. Day 2 we wake up, make an eager call at 8:30am about a newly listed apartment on Craigslist - the fellow asks if we can come at 9:15.  yes. yes we can. 

Long story short: see apartment, love apartment, cancel other showings, apply, get accepted (phew) and sign the following day (Wednesday). Wednesday evening we drove back to Santa Cruz to pick up big-daddy-Penske and headed into the city Thursday morning to move in. With the help of 2 slightly sketchy craigslist movers, Davy, & his sweet girlfriend Fe, we managed to move everything in less than 2 hours, to the 5th floor mind you.

We love our new place and are thankful to have found it. Apparently, getting an apartment that quickly here is unheard of as there is a housing shortage. Needless to say, we feel taken care of.

Now to satisfy your undoubted thirst for photos.

Here's where we are:

zoomed-in view. 

zoomed out.

Our neighborhood is called "Lower Nob Hill" and is very close to Union Square, excellent restaurants, shopping, and the Museum of Modern Art. It is a truly wonderful location, especially for visitors.   hint.    hint.  

The day we moved in was actually this handsome gent's birthday. We had a seriously superb Catalan dinner with Davy & Fe at a restaurant called B44. Pictured below is the less impressive dinner from the following day - we had neglected to do much grocery shopping. Woops.

Our first Friday in our place: grocery-less & furniture-less, we settled for pasta on the bed.

So far we've made 2 trips to Ikea & actually scored the exact Ikea sofa we wanted for $200 cheaper off Craigslist. Well done us. Here's our place as of yesterday. Little by little it's coming along quite nicely. I love the old wooden floors and gigantic windows that allow for plenty of natural light. There are even a few trees outside our bedroom window. 

Our building was built in 1907 after the infamous 1906 earthquake, the anniversary of which is actually tomorrow. The building has been reinforced with steel beams to make it more stable - in some future photos you might notice metal plates bolted into the corners of rooms. Those are edges of the beams. Although our building is over a century old (pretty sure the elevator is too...no offense elevator) our unit was renovated last month - new cabinets, appliances, faucets, light fixtures, and tile in the kitchen and bathroom. 

Us in front of our building this very morning. Ahh, the wonder of technology.
(best said in the French-esque narrator's voice from Spongebob)

Simply said, we made out like bandits. We love you new home.

more to come soon.