A Health to the Company

So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let us drink and be merry all out of one glass


I've never been one to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. When I moved to San Francisco, and worked in the Financial District, I remember hating the mess of drunken fratboy behaviors, and the screams of "why aren't you drinking, aren't you Irish?" (really. Nothing weirdly racist about that at all.)

But now we are fortunate enough to live walking distance from a lovely pub, where we regularly take molly for dinner and/or a beer. (for us... not for her

And Sunday night they had Irish step dancing and a band playing Irish folk music. When we got there, Molly desperately wanted to squeeze inside to hear the band. She told me "mama, I like music!' when we took a potty break. When the dancers came out, she went to watch and she LOVED it. But the best? After the dancers left, and the pub became less crowded, she found the dance floor to herself, and danced for like an hour. At one point, two women came up to dance with her, but Molly wasn't quite ready to deal with that. People sitting at the side smiled and waved at her bizarro interpretive, but heartfelt, dance.

I'm old now, and my clubbing days are well behind me. I'm so happy to have a place where kids are loved as part of the continuum. A friend at work seemed surprised "you took your kid to a PUB?!?!" but it seems like the natural thing to me. I've finally come around to St. Patrick's Day, and only because now I can see it through the eyes of a child dancing to folk music at a pub while her parents slam back pints of Murphys.

On another note, though, St. Patrick's will always be a bittersweet time for us, as we'll remember it as the time we saw Kathie off. She passed away the morning after, one year ago.

Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again

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.