Another Week, Another Hotel
Posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2003 10:32 AM
Anyways, I had to change hotels again. I did NOT want to be in another hotel, but I dropped the ball this week finding an apartment, so I had to bite the bullet and drop some more cash at Hotwire.com for another week in a hotel. Actually, most of the apartments I'm looking at aren't going to be available until the first of the month either, so it works out that way as well. I actually was happy with the place I was at, but Hotwire is playing games so instead of the Holiday Inn across from where I'm working, I'm going to be at the Double Tree down the street - which is "nice" in that it's in a little Marina. But I'm not looking for "nice" right now, just functional and convenient. Since it's right down University Ave from where I'm looking to live, I guess that it counts as functional, but I would've rather not moved. Oh - I didn't explain, the idea is that Hotwire gives you deals on hotels, but doesn't tell you which hotel you're at until you've booked. I chose the same exact description as the Holiday Inn and thought that all I would have to do is go downstairs and re-check in to the same room, but I had to change instead. Urgh. No real big deal as I'm pretty compact at the moment still living out of my suitcase, but still. It's another thing I had to do today. At least this week I didn't have to spend 4 hours returning my rental car like last week... Hopefully my car doesn't get broken into since I have all my crap in the back until I can check in this afternoon.
Before I checked out I did some webcamming with Ana and Alex. Though my old computer gave Ana endless problems (which is why I bought my new laptop not too long ago) we ended up chatting with the webcam for a few minutes and Alex really liked seeing his dad and I liked being able to see/hear him. Alex won't speak into the phone on cue just yet, but the webcam is like a conferencing/hands free microphone so I can hear everything that's going on in the room on that end, including Alex babbling at me. :-) It was a very nice way to start this sunny Sunday here in California (it's going to be over 90F/32C again today!).
So I'm back at my favorite Starbucks on north Shattuck Ave which is pretty big and packed with students and other people with laptops and is generally a very comfortable place to come hang out with your computer for a while.
I was using Craig's list for my apartment searching but decided to put some cash down at a local service which gave me a ton more listings for apartments and houses in the area. So I'm going to mark a map and use the new power adapter I bought for my car today (since the battery life in the Toshiba is soooo bad) and roam around the neighborhood today looking for places.
I found one pretty nice apartment yesterday, actually, but it's in a *horrible* building, so it's just a backup for now. It's in a great little corner and it's pretty big and in the back with a nice terrace and is relatively cheap and is available now, so it's definitely being considered, but I'm going to hold out a bit more for something more like a house with a yard. We'll see - they want 2x rent here for the deposit plus the first month's rent so we're looking at around $6,000 to move in to most places... that's stretching the budget *reeeeallllly* tight.
Okay, I gotta get moving.
-Russ