Haircuts!

Truthfully, one of the things I was most bummed about leaving in Sarasota was my hairdresser, DeeAnn.  We had been together for 2 full years upon my departure and she and my hair had a very close relationship.  Unfortunately, however, hair grows, and my hair was desperately calling out for a cuttin'!

I did a lot of research (Yelp.com is a fantastic tool when you don't have any personal recommendations/warnings to go off of), found a salon (and found Shane one too because he was also in need of some styling!), and found some bravery to trust my precious hair with a new stylist and voilà!

I give you, the haircuts:

Do we look good or what???

Nesting

My deepest apologies for my blogging absence.  I wrote this post last weekend and meant to have photos by now and don't, so I'm posting without them.  Enjoy anyway and continue anxiously awaiting photos of our slowly-but-surely-coming-together home :-)

We returned from our Thanksgiving vacay late Friday night and hit the ground running on Saturday with our nesting now that we have the rest of our boxes.  Both Shane and I felt 50% dread (soooo much work to be done) and 50% excitement (to finally have a home!).

First on the list was ridding ourselves of the surprisingly large amount of excess furniture.  Our first thoughts went to our friends Kennedy and Dan (fresh off the boat from the UK!) -- we were delighted for them to take a couch, 2 arm chairs, a set of outdoor furniture, and some dishes.  For the rest of the furniture, we decided that the value (in terms of our sanity) of getting it all out ASAP outweighed the potential small revenue we could make if we tried to sell everything one by one, so we put out an ad on the "Free" section of Craigslist and immediately got a bite!  A very sweet and very needy woman named Hannah was furnishing both her and her brother's houses so she took a recliner, a coffee table, an arm chair, and a side table.

The highlight of our Saturday (aside from the joy of having a usable living room) was definitely Kennedy and Dan.  Not only were we so thankful that they took that extra furniture off of our hands (literally we had couches stacked on top of couches), but they also came to the rescue with their thanksgiving leftovers for lunch (perfect since we had been out of town and had zero groceries!) plus they helped us move around the rest of our furniture (so much heavy lifting!!).  Our productivity on Saturday was double what we had thought it would be, all because of their help.  We're truly blessed to have such wonderful friends so close....

Womp Womp...

As photo-documented in the last post, our furniture arrived on Wednesday.... sort of.  Unfortunately, the Bekins man who estimated the tonnage of our furniture underestimated and the stuff from our condo wouldn't all fit, much less ANY of the furniture and boxes from my storage unit.  So fine, we rolled with the punches and they picked up the remaining stuff in a second truck a day or so later.  Well, we were under the impression that we would receive ALL shipments in the 3-day window promised to us, but alas, our second shipment won't come for THREE MORE WEEKS (they quoted us 2 weeks but that's Thanksgiving and we'll be out of town). Are you freaking kidding me?? What a big, fat disappointment. So for now we're trying to make-do with the random assortment of things we received. We received the couch but not the coffee table, the bed but not the bedside tables, the TV but not the TV stand, Patio furniture cushions but no patio furniture, DVDs but  no DVD player.... etc, etc.

Also, the neighbors that live below us are terrible. Just plain awful. And noisy. And rude. And disrespectful.  And they smoke in their unit and it comes up through our vents. More on them later. Or not.

Also, San Francisco highways are super stressful and confusing to navigate. Why don't they put exit numbers on any of the exits?!

Quick! Make a list of things we like about California before we enter full-blown pity-party mode:
1. Living just across the bay from an old friend, Kennedy, and her darling husband Dan who are having us over for dinner tonight!
2. The promise of great restaurants and exciting things to do (though truth be told we have done little to no exploring/adventuring... yet) 
3. Scarf and boot weather (we rarely if ever got this in Florida)
4. The gorgeous views of the city at all times -- it's just so cool to see houses up the mountains. And it's really pretty at night when all you see are the twinkly lights.

The To-Do List

1. Find a moving company
• Luckily, Shane and I were proactive enough to begin this process last week getting estimates from various moving companies.  We got 3 quotes, all were around the same price, but Bekins was the company that really stood out to us and seemed the most professional and reliable.  
2. Pack up the house
• Because Shane is such a bad@$$, Formspring is paying for his relocation with enough money for a team to come in and pack us! Can you say blessing? This allows us both to continue working (i.e. earning money) right up until moving day, thereby keeping a steady flow of income. 
3.  Find Taylor a San Francisco job 
• Because Taylor is such a bad@$$, her boss is allowing her to stay on and work remotely through the end of the year, at which time she has the option to transfer to the west division.  This is amazing for a number of reasons: a) I'll keep a steady flow of income, with no lag time between end of old job and beginning of new job, b) no stress of trying to hurry and get settled in a new home while simultaneously getting settled in a new work environment, c) I'm able to fulfill my committments to my company so they're not left high and dry, d) my resume will show a tenure of 10 months instead of 8 months, which looks a little better to potential employers, and most importantly e) I get to work 100% from home, which means working in my jammies!! Woo hoooo!
4. Find a house
• Oh Lord what a stressor this is!  How do you find housing in a city you've only visited once without actually seeing it before signing the lease??!?!  There's so much to consider: how safe is the neighborhood? is the house as cute/clean/big as it appears in pictures? We have 1 pretty good prospect on the table in Daly City (just southwest of San Francisco proper), but nothing is settled or signed yet. We'll keep you posted :-)
5. Get rid of the stuff we're not moving
• So far this includes old clothes and other miscellaneous items around the house, excess non-perishables in the pantry, 1 large couch, 1 king mattress and mayyyyyyybe Taylor's car.  We're all over Craigslist and have made a few trips to the Foodbank and Goodwill. How in the world did two twenty-somethings acquire this much unneeded stuff???
6. Say goodbye to Florida friends and family
• So very sad to say goodbye, but everyone has been really excited for us and really supportive so far. We have a few lunch and dinner dates planned with friends, and we're planning to crash at Shane's uncle Jim & Aunt Debbie's house for the night after the movers take all of our stuff.
7. Say goodbye to Sarasota
• This basically includes saying goodbye to our favorite restaurants.  We have dinner reservations on Saturday at Euphemia Haye (the site of Shane & Taylor's first real date), at least 2 more take-out meals planned from Star Thai (Star Thai Tuesday has become a tradition in our home), and hopefully 1 more meal from Gateway to India (Sarasota's finest Indian restaurant, in our opinion).  Other honorable mentions that we'll try to fit in but there's only so much time and damn eating out is expensive!: First Watch (we ate here every Sunday for breakfast for at least 3 months before we realized that their belgian waffle was making us both fat), Main Bar (their jalapeno dressing and gazpacho soup will change your life), our favorite McDonalds (don't judge us -- somehow their fries are ALWAYS hot), Red Elephant (so many memories, I don't even know where to begin), and believe me the list goes on and on...

I'm sure there's way more on our list that I'm forgetting, but that's more than enough to overwhelm us right now!!

Countdown to the big move: 11 days!