Because these are the sunsets we see from our living room window every night.
Jade Keller
Where do you live?
I realize a question like that makes me sound like some crazy stalker lady and you all might decamp immediately with your children in tow, but that’s really not how it’s meant. In the next year, my husband and I will have to move from sunny southern California to who-knows-where and I find I haven’t the foggiest idea where I would want to go. (I’m a spoiled brat, what can I say?)
The thing is, I’ve lived in southern California almost all of my life (not counting the first five years where I was born and lived in Mississippi). I’m simply used to having sunny weather, oh, 92% of the time. And not oh-my-god-I’m-roasting-in-an-oven-sunny. A nice temperate 70-degree sunny. I’ve traveled a lot and I know that I can handle super hot and humid weather. I can also handle some cold (down to about 30 degrees), though really I’m not a fan of supercold. I can deal with snow, as long as I don’t have to shovel it from my walk every day. But having lived with the sun for so long, I’m not sure how well I’d deal if it was gone for too long.
I’m also used to having a wide variety of really good ethnic food – ranging from excellent sushi to stunning Indian, Moroccan, Vietnamese, and amazing Mexican (because we, here, know what a good avocado is) – and Asian stores where I can buy coconut milk, curry paste, Asian vegetables I don’t know the English name of, and rice noodles, etc. But you know what does suck about California? Property prices. We are now paying $1,350 a month to rent a 1-bedroom apartment (a shoebox at that) which is pretty much more than a mortgage for a house just about anywhere else in the continental U.S. And I would LOVE to have a house with SPACE. And my husband would be happy anywhere he could go for long, scenic rides on his motorcycle.
As far as society and culture go, we’re in our late twenties now and we do like to go out to nice restaurants, watch movies, and grab a drink at the bar. But we’re also equally happy eating dinner at home and watching DVDs or reading books. We don’t need a fast-paced, high-society life (though we do enjoy it). However, we do need some diversity and things to do whenever we have been cooped up in the house too many days straight.
So these are our considerations when we think of moving somewhere. We’re ready for something new, and would love to live elsewhere for awhile. And for (my) career reasons (my husband works remotely), it’s pretty much a guarantee that we will have to move somewhere else this time next year. But not having lived anywhere else, I’m curious to know about the places other people live, what they think about where they live, and what they love and hate most about their location.
Where do you live or where have you lived? Give me the skinny on what your life as a native is like!
(I realize this is public space on the internet, so only go as specific as you feel comfortable. Responses like “southwest Nebraska” are totally fine!)
An Ode to Coffee
Santa Barbara is really a gem of a little city to live in. It’s not a big city, so doesn’t have quite the flair and pizazz of San Francisco or London, but it’s got a lot of funk. And the best thing about it is that even though it is a small city (in a gorgeous location with perpetually perfect weather), it has a plethora of good eats, if you know where to go. Amazing sushi, decadent Italian, artful healthnut stops, fabulous tapas and drinks, to-die-for Indian, and quite a few places that have made sandwiches an art. And the list goes on.
But the one thing that Santa Barbara lacks is really, really great coffee. The locals are quite proud of their mom-and-pop varietals like the Daily Grind, the Coffee Cat, or Santa Barbara Roasting Company. And major chains like Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee do very well. (In fact, between the two of them, I think they own a quarter of the real estate on State Street.) But I have yet to find a single place that does really, really fine Italian coffee, the likes of which you get when you are actually in Italy. Most of the coffee here is about mid-range and tastes fine, but some of it verges on bitter and you can actually taste separate layers of weak mediocre coffee flavor, artificial flavor as a pathetic attempt to mask the mediocrity of the coffee, and then oils from the beans.
The Italians have it down to an art: the high quality of the beans, the perfect degree of roasting, the exact grind, the temperature of the steam and press of the grounds. All of this combines to create a rich, smooth level of decadence that is unparalleled. When I first discovered true Italian coffee in a little cafe in Florence, I actually thought I might have found heaven. I even brought some Illy home with me, but alas, could not manage the artistry of the Italian barista.
I looked everywhere for good coffee, and eventually succumbed to my fate, thinking I wouldn’t be able to find such good coffee anywhere but Italy. But then we went to Costa Rica and discovered Costa Rican coffee. I was astounded. Costa Rican coffee does not have the decadence of Italian coffee, but it does have a wild variety of smooth flavors that make for a different, wondorous java experience. I was so surprised since normally developing countries export all their good stuff and the locals have to make do with the dreck. Not so with Costa Rican coffee. They hoard all their delicacies so that even the chain bakeries have coffee superior to that of the States. Apparently, they export all their dreck. Smart.
So I sighed, again wondering why the U.S., which has access to the best of just about everything, continues to have only mediocre coffee (yes, I am spoiled and discerning when it comes to my taste buds). And then I went to New York. Besides the bagels and other baked goods which are divine, Manhattan offers real, true, primo Italian coffee. We popped into a little Italian bistro called Via Quadronno and ordered a couple of cappuccinos to go as we were on a trek across Central Park to the Natural History museum. I took my first sip and practically melted into a little puddle of delight in the middle of Central Park. It was so good I couldn’t decide if it was heavenly or a sin. Still, perhaps that little bistro could have been an aberration. A bright spot; a diamond in the rough, so to speak.
And then we found Joe the Art of Coffee. Well, I can’t exactly claim that we found it as the place was recommended to us by friends who had lived in New York. But they have several locations across Manhattan and they have mastered the art of truly fine coffee. They select the finest beans, and they have a policy of never using any artificial flavors, and when they serve up their coffee, it is an actual artpiece with designs swirled into the foam.
With the offer of places such as these and Employees Only (which has turned cocktail-making into an artform as well), I could almost consider happily trading my sunny apartment in Santa Barbara for an over-priced shoebox in Manhattan.
Fire on the Horizon
Tuesday evening a fire started in the brush up by Lizards’ Mouth, just a little northeast from Goleta. It started out small and firefighters got on it right away, but then by Wednesday evening it started to get quite large. It even cut out electricity for several hours in Goleta. Here’s a picture Toby took of it, from his parents’ house:
As you can see here, you can definitely see the flames from their house, which is off Patterson.
Everyone up from Glenn Annie and in the La Patera Canyon have been evacuated. People between Glenn Annie and Fairview are on evacuation warning.
I’m really hoping this gets contained soon, but that brush up there hasn’t burned since a fire in the 1950s. According to the latest news reports, the fire is only 5% contained.
I’m worried for Toby’s family’s house for all the obvious reasons. But I’m also worried for our wedding reception as it is being held there. If they don’t contain this soon, we’ll have to come up with a contingency plan quickly. Don’t get me wrong–I’m definitely concerned about the people whose homes are threatened and all–but I can’t help feeling I’ll be upset if this significantly changes my wedding plans and things don’t turn out as nicely as I hoped. I’m not trying to be selfish or unreasonable. It’s just that I’ve been dreaming about this for a year and half now, thinking meticulously about every little detail. And it’s not stubbornness–it’s just I feel like if things don’t work out nicely it’s like there will always be a little tinge of regret that I didn’t get to see my dream totally come true. Normally I’m pretty roll-with-the-flow I think, and I don’t get my panties all in a twist if things don’t turn out the way I expect. But this is different. It’s hard to explain.
And another part of me is thinking back to our “playa wedding” at Burning Man which got derailed by a major dust storm. Sure it makes for a good story now, but it’s hard not to take it as a bad omen. I mean, seriously, we’re going two for two here. Why does something vaguely apocalyptic always have to happen when Toby and I try to get married? Well at least we’ll have a total of 3 ceremonies. Third time’s a charm, right?
Construction Madness
Last summer after Toby and I moved into our cute new apartment, our landlord decided some “renovations” were necessary. He hired two guys to come by and paint the outside of our apartment. It was a nice swiss mocha (kind of off-white) with a green trim, and we thought it was cute. But they decided to paint the green trim white instead. We didn’t like it too much since it kind of made it look more like a mental institution…but whatever, not that big a deal, right?
Wrong. I don’t know who these painters were but they sure didn’t know their ass from the end of a paint brush. It took them about 4 months to do (probably about 5 times as long as any normal person) and it was a mess! They went to paint the trim on the lattice of the windows, but they used a wide brush on a quarter-inch trim. What’s more, they apparently haven’t heard of painter’s tape. So there were these big globs and swaths of paint on the windows themselves.
Then they realized they couldn’t leave paint on the windows, so they went back with a razor blade to try to fix it. Which of course took forever, and did nothing but leave huge scratch marks on the windows since you can see there’s still paint on the glass.
They also left big swaths of paint on the walls around the window as you can see here (you can click on the photo to see it in more detail):
And did I mention this took them the better part of 4 months? It was so obnoxious because I do most of my work from home and I was studying for a major exam at the time, and I had to do it all with these nimrods peering in the windows.
So, okay we got over that episode without too much complaint. Until now…
The landlord has decided again he wants “renovations”. This time he decided he wanted to take out the window in our bathroom shower and replace it with a new one. We said alright, whatever. Nothing was wrong with the old one, but whatever he wants to do, fine.
Well. So the same “painter” crew comes in and takes out the old bathroom window (banging on the outside with a hammer, thus creating cracks in the bathroom tile around the window), and puts the new window in. Except the new bathroom window is about 1/3 the size of the old bathroom window. So they have to fill in the missing wall and cover the empty spaces with tile. But of course they hadn’t actually ordered the replacement tile until after they put in the new window, so we were left showering with a minor construction mess for two weeks until the new tile came in.
Meanwhile, we’re both too busy to care overmuch, so we just deal with it and didn’t think much of it…until we saw the new tile.
Okay, so the old shower tile is pink with a green trim (kind of reminds us of a watermelon–like Nicole and Allyson’s old apartment senior year of college!). Not exactly the height of style, but kind of cute in it’s own funky way. But does the landlord get more pink or green tile?
No, he gets navy blue.
Talk about ghetto fabulous. I would say it’s hideous, but I don’t think it even makes enough sense to be hideous. I don’t know what the landlord was thinking but whenever we move out, I would love to see prospective tenants’ faces when they walk in the bathroom.
Blogs & Sites I {Love}
- 27b/6
- An Apple A Day
- Barefoot Foodie
- Badass Geek
- Burnblue Photography
- Cake Wrecks
- Carthage
- Diary of Why
- Hooking Up Smart
- I Should be Folding Laundry
- Inkredible Stamping
- Kidnapped by Suburbia
- Kimchi Mamas
- Living in a Girl's World
- Mrs. Soup
- Mulatto Diaries
- Nutz to You
- Playgroups are No Place for Children
- Nyataimori
- Our Best Bites
- School Teacher by Day, Superhero by Night
- The Bloggess
- The Chronicles of a Kept Man
- Things My Boss Has Said
- This Fish Needs a Bicycle
- Urban Prankster
- Your Daily Thread
- I {heart} NPR
