Moving Again

It's been a very busy week. This time last week we were in our temporary apartment, with our trusty rented Toyota Corolla. As I write this, I'm sitting in the lounge of the house we're renting long-term, with my newly-leased car on the driveway. Read on, fellow traveller, for the details of how this and other excitement unfolded.

So first, the car. I decided to get the Toyota 86 - a little rear wheel drive sports coupe - so went to the dealership mid-afternoon on Monday to make the arrangements. I decided to lease the car as that gives us a bit more flexibility given that we don't know exactly how long we're staying in the US. The sales guy in the dealership had given me details of a car which was in stock at another dealer, with a spec that looked OK, and I decided I'd get that specific car.

I went back and we were talking about leasing, and I just assumed I'd probably end up taking delivery of the car this weekend. At some point I must have asked about it, because I remember him saying, "The car will be here in 2 hours". The dealership has its own insurance agent, and can pre-register cars too, so a couple of hours after walking in thinking I was just placing an order, I drove off with a car I owned.

By American standards, this car is tiny. In particular, it's low - very low (don't tell Helen, but it's got a special option of lowering springs and an extra performance anti-roll bar).

On Tuesday, Comcast came to the house to set up our Internet connection. Now cable companies over here are legendarily awful (they make Virgin Media look really good), and my interactions with those companies are the stuff of legend, so I let Helen deal with this one. She once again proved that she's better than me at just about everything; cable connection was really simple and is working nicely. The one slightly messed up bit was my fault: apparently we didn't order HD, so on the colossal 43" 4K TV I'd bought (something that was very cheap in this country; only $200), we had a small, fuzzy picture. A 10 minute phonecall to Comcast fixed that though.

Ikea delivered us a ton of furniture on Wednesday, including a day bed that converts into a double. We'll be sleeping on that until our stuff arrives, and it'll be reserved for guests after that. Unfortunately they missed their delivery slot by a couple of hours (should have been delivered 12-4pm, but actually got here at 5:50pm); on the upside, it meant I got my wish of our first meal at the house in Palo Alto being takeaway pizza on the verandah as the sun set!

I was really hoping there would be some highly amusing anecdote about the day bed being basically impossible to assemble and me losing my rag over it, but unfortunately it was relatively simple to do, if rather time-consuming. It's actually a fairly nice piece of furniture. Having assembled it, which we finished on Thursday evening, we needed to stuff everything into our tiny car and move it from the apartment in Sunnyvale to the house in Palo Alto (about a 20 minute drive). I almost managed to get everything we own into the car in one trip, and by Friday evening we were moved to Palo Alto. Another step on a very long journey, which isn't really complete until the rest of our stuff finally arrives from the UK in 2-3 weeks.

In Palo Alto, and unpacked for the last time.

One of the many very cool things in Palo Alto is the Stanford Movie Theatre. It's an old-style cinema which only shows old films, and it's got a Wurlitzer! Looks like we're off there tonight to see The Ladykillers.

So, the big question for this week is: will our furniture finally make it to the US and successfully be unloaded over the Bay in Oakland, and for how long will the US Customs service choose to detain it? How will Helen's choir audition go? Tune in next week...