The Pools

I’ll admit it, I’ve probably been a bit unfair about the state of apartment living.  Despite the Elephants (who per my previous post, have moved out), the thumping bass, the white carpet / white tile, the loud water heater, the very loud HVAC system, the people (actually the people are pretty nice for the most [...]

The Elephants Have Moved Out

Migrating Elephants - Kent Jordan
Regular readers will recall our nemesis upstairs, the Elephant Trainers.  Good news, Wednesday night I mentioned to Holly that it has been unusually quiet in terms of the crying babies and thrashing circus animals.  When I took the dog for a walk the next day, I noticed that the Elephants had [...]

Topless White Castles and Other Ideas that Come Up After Three Patron Shots

There hasn’t been a whole lot to report on in the past week or so.  The house is gone and the forms are poured.  I don’t know how many more pictures of a dwindling house my readers can take.  Frankly, there is very little left and Craig and crew haven’t started development on any of [...]

No More White Tile

The rocket scientists that designed our apartment had the amazing foresight to put white tile in the entry way.  Unless you are hyper-anal-retentive about having people take off their shoes outside, you are going to be cleaning shoe marks and puppy paws up at least once per day.
My advice, don’t put white tile in an [...]

Yuck, Snails!!!

When we started this project, I was really hoping that we would have cracked open the walls and found a bag of cash, gold doubloons or an original copy of the US Constitution.  I think that everyone half hopes that this happens when they work on an old house.
What I didn’t expect was that we [...]

On Apartment Living

There probably aren’t too many 2nd floor dwelling elephant trainers residing in the San Jose area, but some how, we managed to get stuck underneath one of them.  Even more unfortunate, lessons usually don’t begin until 9 or 10 at night.
They are very loud.
Photo by Kozyndan.

Fish Don’t Fry in the Kitchen…

…Beans don’t burn on the grill.
Well, it’s not quite a piece of the pie and it certainly isn’t in the sky, but we are offically residents of the Archstone Willow Glen apartment complex. We were very plesantly surprised. The place is clean, it feels secure and, most of all, it seems very quiet. [...]

Where Are You Going To Live?

When you tell people that you are going to knock down 90% of your house and move out for 7 months, you’d expect them to say something like ‘Wow, that sounds really exciting!’ or ‘Boy, that is going to suck.’  Invariably, the first question that anyone asks is ‘Where are you going to live?’ Like [...]