Moved!

By the middle of August, we were desperately looking for a new place to park our motorcycles and our bed. The neighborhood in Mountain View was nice (as nice as the South Bay can be), but the immediate complex we lived in (a duplex behind a small apartment building) was HELL.

Despite a softened rental market, it's still difficult to find places that meet all of our needs, specifically:

• Must have enclosed, private, garage
• Must not share walls (we could hear our old neighbors snoring through our bedroom wall, which was a really unpleasant thought)
• Must allow cat (this was actually one of the more difficult ones. Many landlords would rather let their properties sit on craigslist for many months, than allow a lazy old cat in the house)
• And, the one weird thing we had to check at every location:
• Roof cannot be accessed from any nearby structures. This is something that never occurred to us before moving into the Mountain View pit.
• Location: needed to be near a work shuttle or caltrain, and within a mile of a grocery, with strong preference for a "downtown" nearby

Sure, there were other nice-to-haves*, but these criteria were plenty to make the whole process rather painful and desperate.

After several weeks of looking and getting more and more dejected, we managed to pick up a place in Sunnyvale, not too far from Murphy Street (Sunnyvale's downtownish district)
And? it was bigger than we needed, and we were thrilled.

The new place is bigger, has insulation, modern wiring and plumbing, a much bigger garage, our own laundry, and 100% fewer people on our roof. The commute to work takes a bit longer, and the area is a lot sleepier, but it is sooooo much nicer.


*A few weeks ago, we discussed adding "no persimmon or pomegranate trees" to our list, because based on our recent experience, they clearly attract tweakers.