Next (Housing) Stop: Burlingame
Krista and I toured apartments and homes in Burlingame over the last couple of days, and finally found a particularly attractive apartment only a few minutes from Burlingame Ave (and Quickly, my new favorite spot, which serves tea/slush/tea+milk (as well as fresh yogurt with toppings) for cheap. I had originally ordered the unsweetened green tea with large tapioca pearls, which was about $1, but last time ordered the lychee slush + small tapioca pearls for $2.50 and found it to be much better. It might be a starbucks substitute. And with so many varieties, it will be quite a while until I've tried everything.
Because we've moved offices to San Francisco, I've graduated, and our lease ends at the end of August, Krista and I made the decision to move in between our two places of work. The logical answer is Burlingame, which has a lot of the same features of Palo Alto (cool downtown with restaurants, shops; nice Peninsula weather; and easy access to outdoors), but is much closer to the city. In particular, the 2 BR, 1 BA apartment we're looking at is a 5 minute walk to the Caltrain, and a 5 minute drive to the Millbrae BART station. I think that the best plan will be for me to walk to the Caltrain station to take it in the mornings, then to BART back to Millbrae and have Krista pick me up at night. Doing this will save me between 60-75 minutes every day from my current 120-150 minute commute. And probably some money on the Caltrain portion of the commute as well.
It will help. I found last week that I was getting worn out by the commute, in that I had no downtime whatsoever; every moment was spent working, commuting, hanging out with Krista, or at events with friends. It also created a strong divide between the city (work only) and Palo Alto (Krista only). I think Burlingame will help bridge that gap for us, and we're also going to try to do a couple events per week in the city in order to get Krista up to that part of my life more effectively (as we did on Saturday, going to dinner with friends from 750 and friends from our sister company upstairs). It's going to be a fun new chapter for us.
That's all for now. The weekend was relaxing but full of accomplishment with regards to our housing plan for next year. Our place won't be as big, unique, or outdoors as our current house on Seale Ave, but it will be a great home for us for the next year or two. And, we'll be saving some money relative to our current rent too! I've realized just how great it is to have such a low expense footprint between the two of us. We have lots of flexibility in how we live our lives, and for that I'm very grateful.
Back on the blogging track!
