Housing Update

After looking at about 18 apartments, Meg finally fell in love with one. We filled out an application and submitted a deposit on a one bedroom place in West LA just outside of Santa Monica and South of Brentwood. We'll be living the next 12 months (and hopefully longer) on the 12300 block of Texas Ave between Wilshire Blvd and Santa Monica Blvd (which Meg has taken to singing every time we drive down). I think what finally sold us was that it has a nice kitchen and a wall of windows that let in a lot of light. We'll be only a few miles from UCLA so my commute won't be too bad (and there is a bus stop right outside). The place is about 8 miles or so from LAX so we encourage any and all of you to come visit (we've got a comfortable couch - believe me I know).
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Apartment Search Update

Most of the way through our day 1 appointments. A few duds, and a few potentials. We're feeling pretty confident that we'll find something that will work well. More appointments later this afternoon and tomorrow, so updates to come. Right now, taking a PinkBerry break (delicious fro-yo with fresh fruit)!
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Saturday Schedule

As of this post, we have 12 appointments on Saturday to view apartments in the Westwood, Brentwood, West LA and Santa Monica areas. Some of those appointments are for multiple places, so we expect to see about 15 apartments on Saturday between 10am and 4pm. That doesn't include the 4 appointments we have on Sunday. In total, we're expecting to see about 20 places this weekend. We figured that if we threw enough against the wall, something was bound to stick.

The map above is our Saturday schedule. We didn't do a good job setting appointments in geographical order, but everything is within a couple of miles of each other, so it shouldn't matter too much. We're also hoping to meet up with some friends from Davidson and possibly some future classmates from UCLA. It's going to be busy, but fun, weekend.

Anniversary

Last night was our 6 year anniversary (yay!). We got all snazzied up on a Monday night and went out to dinner at a cute Greek restaurant in DuPont. Amidst the wine, the pistachio pesto scallops (ps I LOVE scallops, as evidenced by the accompanying picture), the honey draped figs and pork loin, the strawberries and black olives in red wine sauce, and the chocolate-chili mousse, Mike and I reminisced about our time together as a couple. It is hard to believe that we've been together after college as long as we were at Davidson and that we've been dating our entire 20s... and in love through it all! I'll stop the sap there. Suffice it to say, it was a great evening to celebrate our relationship, and talk up our upcoming adventure.

Enjoying my scallops!

Our favorite pose, expect a lot of these.

The Other List

Megan posted about the list of things we need to do before we leave for LA. Well, there's another list that she didn't mention: the list of things we want to do in DC before we move away. This other list includes all of the sites we want to see one more time (or for the first time) like the monuments and memorials, or events in which we want to partake (like taste of Georgetown) or restaurants we want to try (like Ben's Chili Bowl).

We crossed off two things yesterday: visiting the Dulles Air and Space Museum and seeing the 4th of July fireworks on the National Mall. Believe it or not, it took me four years to get to the Dulles Air and Space Museum. (For those of you who don't know, the Dulles museum is a part of the Smithsonian but includes all of the large planes that are too big to fit downtown. It includes a Space Shuttle, an SR-71 blackbird and the Enola Gay.)

Unlike Meg's list, there is no written version of this one. We have notes saved on Meg's phone and we both have a mental list, but its no big deal if we forget anything on this one.

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4th of July

Our last 4th of July in DC. We made it down to the National mall with Mike's parents just in time to find a spot in the browning grass and see the fireworks spectacular. Since it was our last 4th in our Nation's Capitol, I thought it only appropriate to join what seemed the half million other Americans to see some gunpowder go "boom". Despite the fact that we are still waiting to even enter the Metro station down here, I'm glad that we went (and that I somehow talked everyone else in to going, too.)
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Where to Live?

Meg recently posted our list of things to do before we move. She left out the biggest thing we need to accomplish - find a place to live in LA.

I've searched for apartments before, both for myself and helping other people. I've never done it, however, from 3000 miles away with a 3 hour time difference. Being as stubborn as we are, Meg and I decided we could do this on our own and didn't need to enlist the help of a real estate agent. We thought we could just search CraigsList and Westwide Rentals and any other online listings, fly out to LA for a weekend and get it done. With less than a week to go before we head out West to look (we leave next Friday night), I'm starting to worry that we won't find a place that we like. There seems to be a lot of vacancies, and if I was living by myself I don't think I would have a problem, but Meg doesn't want to (and I'm not interested in subjecting her to) living in some of the crapholes I could bear for a year. With 2 people, we don't want to live on top of each other in some tiny place and we don't really know the area well enough to know where to stay away from. This seems to be more difficult than we first imagined.

We've got a couple of leads for our trip and we'll be spending a lot more time this week looking for places. But if this move is anything like our last one (when we looked at 20-25 places over 2 months), we might need to make a second house-hunting trip.