With the holiday trip to Philadelphia getting extended, I was away from home more than I expected this January. As I look at the last few days of this month I’ve got a really busy schedule, but I’ll back up a bit for this post to share the time I did get to do earlier in the month.
First, I got rained on. San Francisco welcomed 2018 with several rainy days, which sadly over-lapped with my boss being in town for a week. I spent the week I returned at the office having a series of productive meetings with my team in person as we sketched out our plans for the next quarter and year. I’m looking at the work year ahead with anticipation for the projects we have lined up, it should be a great year for us. We also had some meals and a happy hour together as a team, which is always nice for building cohesiveness as we juggle travel and remote members of the team (myself included). A couple of us also were able to participate in an Apache Mesos Doc-a-thon on Thursday evening were folks broke off into teams to work on things, and I assisted on the sidelines and did a bunch of spell-checking.
We week wasn’t all work though, I also got to finally see our new house in Castro Valley! Of course we saw it when the inspection was done in early December, but on that Tuesday I took BART down to meet MJ at the house after work and I finally got to visit it, use my keys for the first time, and explore. Some major work done a decade ago makes the house a bit unusual, and it could use some work in the front to improve the boxy look of it, but I really love it. The inside is beautifully done, and at 2,900 square feet it’s on the larger side of properties we were looking at. The only surprise so far has really been the state of the kitchen. At first glance it’s dated, but tolerable. Once you start really pulling on drawers and inspecting cabinets, it’s clear some work needs to be done. We’re now in the process of seeing just how much work we want to do on it. The options for a remodel are pretty wide open, but currently include actually changing the layout of the upstairs to make a considerably better kitchen. We met with a designer over the weekend to start sketching out our options, though I admit I’m still recovering a bit from sticker shock. Kitchen remodels are expensive, even if you don’t move the kitchen like we may end up doing. House layout-wise we are somewhat helped though, the former owner left behind four large binders/folders full of appliance manuals, work orders, floor plans and CAD printouts of the house, a treasure trove of details about the house and work done on it.
My first visit to the house post-sale!
The weekend we met with the designer also happened to be a three-day holiday weekend that I had almost forgotten about. It gave MJ and me time to go to a shooting range, something we’d never actually done together. It was a lot of fun, we should make it more of a thing, and perhaps invite some friends next time. We also had a lovely tasting dinner over at Octavia, which I didn’t realize we’d been to until we got there. We also had a new dishwasher installed at the condo. With our plan to move down to Castro Valley in early February, we have a lot of work ahead of us as we prepare the condo to be rented. Changing out some of the appliances that have been there since the condo was built in 2004 is part of that, and the dishwasher was the first thing on our list since it was already having some draining problems. Next up is the washer and dryer, which we had fixed (twice!) last year. Once we’re moved out we’ll get the place repainted and new carpet put into the bedroom, along with a bunch of miscellaneous handy-man type repairs. I’m super sad to be leaving the city and I’m sure it’ll be difficult to have a renter move into the place I’ve called home for eight years, but I am looking forward to having nearly four times the space in the new house.
Then it was off to Australia for linux.conf.au in Sydney! With all the house stuff going on, it was a bit hard to leave, but it’s one of my favorite conferences in the world, so I wouldn’t miss it. Thankfully MJ has been able to make time while I was gone to push forward on various house things, so since my return yesterday we’ve been able to sync up on the current status of things and start packing. It’s already starting to get bad since I began yesterday, but the condo will soon be full of packed containers, ready to move! I anticipate that taking up all of my free time over the next couple weeks.