We moved!
James got just one job offer, so he is now working at UC San Diego as a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in the mathematics department. I think I've sort of explained this before, but basically a postdoc is a recent Ph.D. graduate learning how to be a professor under the guidance of an established professor in your field. James is working with Mike Holst. Basically, James' job right now is to find a REAL job, as well as continue research in his field. If I understand correctly, his new mentor does a lot of computational stuff as well, so James might get to branch out into that sort of stuff as well. We'll see.
Postdocs are really not supposed to last very long, so basically the plan is for him to work at UCSD for a year. If he cannot find a new job for next year, then he will continue on as a postdoc here for an additional year.
The sort of job he's hoping to find for next year is of course a real professorship of some sort, but lacking one of those, it's possible he'd do a second postdoc somewhere else. And that's not really unusual. Plenty of math professors did two postdocs before getting hired as a professor anywhere. (James had better find a real job after the second postdoc, though, because doing more than two postdocs is kind of like wearing a giant neon sign that says, "Oy, I'm not good enough to be real professor and no one will hire me, so you shouldn't either! Heehee!")
Anyway, James is officially into his routine now. Here's what his day looks like.
He wakes up at 5:30, and leaves the house around 6. He unicycles to the bus station, and then busses the rest of way to campus. The entire commute is about two hours, so he reads his scriptures during the ride, and gets there at 8. He works until noon, then lunches, then commences work at 1. He sets off for home again at about 5, reads stuff on the bus to keep himself sane on the way back, and gets home after another short unicycle ride at about 7. Hopefully wife has provided something tasty for him to eat. He spends time with wife and children for a few hours, and then goes to bed around 9:30.
It's kind of a nasty commute, yes. But that seems to be the way of things in California. Sigh.
We had a heck of a time finding an affordable place to live. For the uninformed, California housing is super nasty high-priced. I'm not well-enough informed to tell you why that is, but it's true.
At the beginning of our search, we looked for somewhere to live close to campus, because James is commute-averse. It got depressing real fast. Given the size of our family, we wanted something with two bedrooms. We also required washer/dryer hookups, because I absolutely refuse to do cart two kids worth of laundry to a communal laundry room. Especially if I happen to get pregnant (and practically disabled) while living here in California, as is the plan. So. A 2-bedroom apartment, close to UCSD, with washer/dryer hookups seemed to run somewhere around $2,000. It was doubly frustrating because everything actually close to campus had been... I don't know. Luxurified. Those apartments were fancy. And, quite frankly, there isn't anything not fancy right there. So we look a little farther away in Clairemont, with a half-hour commute by bus, and look, there are not fancy duplexes for $1500/month!
That would have been nice, except that... I don't even know how to explain it. I swear all the affordable places in Clairemont dried up around our availability date. I called about several, and either it was, No, that's too soon, sorry or No, we'd really like to fill this vacancy immediately. And then we found one condo in Clairemont for $1500, and James even flew down to look at it (as well as sign some paperwork at UCSD), and the owners loved him, and even was going so well, and then... Someone else got it. Because guess what! Someone else offered a three-year lease. Darn it.
In the meantime, I still couldn't find a place to live.
We started getting truly desperate and looking even further and further away, only it didn't seem like housing prices were getting all that much cheaper as we looked farther away. It just seemed like we were adding on tons of commute time for a minimal decrease in rent prices.
In the midst of our desperation, we applied to a second-floor apartment for $1450 in Chula Vista. The idea made me squirm, but we just wanted a place to live. I was worried about the second-floor idea, in particular. James tells me he earned the nickname "The Elephant" as a child because his stride was just so loud and earthshaking. And Amelia pounds the floor too. I just knew our downstairs neighbors would hate us. Not only that, but that would for sure mean I'd have to get rid of my only recently-acquired piano. There's just no way in heck it'd be able to get up there without killing half the Elder's Quorum. Oh, and apparently, the crime in the area was a little high for comfort. But it was affordable AND available. So we applied... And we didn't really hear back for the longest time.
Found a few listings for houses in Chula Vista, and other apartments in the greater San Diego area. Both James and I made TONS of phone calls, and seriously, none of them were working out. It was SUPER depressing.
I was so depressed. We could not find a good place. And James was practically unable to concentrate on work. He was leaving for Europe in just a few days! And still nowhere to live! Argh! How was he supposed to invent new math when he was worried about providing for his family?
James gave me a priesthood blessing which assured me that the condo we had been so sure we'd get (the one which had seemed so perfect and applied for, but hadn't gotten at the last minute because someone else) was NOT the right place for us. And we'd find the correct place to live.
I think it was actually that night around 1am after the priesthood blessing when I found it, I think. I couldn't sleep because I was so frustrated and anxious. I was feeling almost inescapably hopeless, and I widened my search again to even farther away... Escondido. Escon-freaking-far-away-dido.
I found a listing for a little 2-bedroom house in freaking Escondido. And, inexplicably, my hopelessness and depression vanished into thin air and was replaced by excitement and joy. And also bounciness. I researched it. I just felt so happy looking at it. I was so excited that I woke up James and told him about it. He was intrigued about my happy feelings about, and admitted he was inexplicably not worried about the commute. He felt it was doable.
A perfect little 2-bedroom house, not fancy, with a garage and a yard with a tree!
HOUSE! Houuuuuuse! House house house house house house house TREEEEEEEE!
So we inquired about it. And we were immediately CRUSHED! Sorry, it is our policy not to give out applications before you visit the property.
I was so sad! Devastated! Confused, betrayed!
Thankfully, further inquiries revealed that we could send someone else to look at it for us, so we did. My friend Megan drove a long time to get there and looked at it for us, and the management emailed us an application. Woohoo!
And then things worked out from there.
HOUSE! Houuuuuuse! House house house house house house house TREEEEEEEE!
And it felt right. I felt peaceful about it, for once. And, for bonuses, we don't have to worry about downstairs, or upstairs, or any shared-wall neighbors. Fabulous. AND we could keep the piano. And even bang on it without fear of disturbing neighbors. So many plusses. AND there was a giant clothesline in the backyard, which very much appealed to me. AND the big tree in the yard. AND the ample storage space. AND the garage. AND the gardener included in the rent. AND trash and water included in the price.
Remember that other apartment that we applied to as well? That I felt so uneasy about, but it was an availability? Seriously, it took them FOREVER to process our application. They called us to say our application had been accepted a week-and-a-half later, AFTER we'd already signed a whole bunch of paperwork for the Escondido place. James admits to praying for this. Specifically, he asked that we wouldn't hear from the other place if this house was the right place. And that's what happened, I guess.
Anyway, while James was in Europe for a math conference, his mother flew down to help me pack and clean and tend kiddos. James got home from Europe in the wee hours of Sunday morning. We loaded the moving van and finished packing on Monday. Then we left on Tuesday. We drove to the San Francisco bay area and stayed with James' brother Jesse for a bit.
James drove down to Escondido on Thursday, but the California traffic was even worse than he'd accounted for, so he didn't make it down before the management office closed. He actually got into the house on Friday. The rest of us showed up on Friday. Wooooooo.
Our new ward seems alright. The weirdest thing to get used to is that everyone seems to primarily go by their first names. If you don't know, as far as I can tell, it is far more common for people to go by Brother or Sister Lastname.
On Monday, we did the dreaded DMV thing, and registered our car here and got our California licenses. And, because California is dumb like this, we also had to do a smog check on the car. There was so much annoyingness, and it took practically all stinkin' day. After the DMV, I checked out thrift stores and I found an amazing recliner for $18. MINE.
James's mother left us on Tuesday morning... She was so helpful while she was here, it was amazing. I, for one, would have gone utterly insane without her help.
So, how do we like it so far?
Things that freak me out: this is supposed be one giant sprawling metropolis or something, but it doesn't feel like it. Everything is so spaced out. Lots of sky. It just seems weird. The San Diego area doesn't seem densely packed at all. I am having a hard time finding things without the GPS, because it seems to me like everything is primarily palm tree-d landscaping with giant buildings kind of hidden behind them. Don't ask me how they hide shopping malls behind palm tree and shrubs so that I have a hard time seeing them, but I'm actually having this issue. So. Much. SPACE. I feel like I live in the middle of nowhere. A professionally manicured middle of nowhere. (Maybe that's why it feels so wrong?)
The water smells and tastes like dirt, or maybe rock. The water is SO hard here. My laundry soap of choice is, unfortunately, designed for soft water, so I'm going to have to order the hard water booster so that my clothes don't turn to stone. My mother-in-law did one load of laundry for me, and I think the clothes smell of rock. I hope the hard water booster gets here soon... I don't want petrified clothing. We also ordered one of those filtered water dispenser things for inside our fridge, because the water tastes bad enough that I don't think I'm going to get used to it. It tastes so strongly of minerals that we broke into our water storage pretty much as soon as we got here.
Gas is something like $4/gallon here. I think car insurance is also more expensive.
The sun seems more intense. In Oregon, there isn't a whole ton of difference in temperature between the shade and the direct sunlight, but here, there's a HUGE difference. The shade is gloriously comfortable. But step into the sun, and it feels like your skin will melt off. It would make me nostalgic for Arizona, but, uh, this isn't something I missed.
Anyway, the house doesn't have amazing insulation. The first day was awful, because our bodies were still used to Oregon temperatures. It was also unseasonably humid here, for whatever reason. James installed our window air conditioner, and it didn't really do a great job until we got some painter's tape and tried to make that thing as airtight as possible. Anyway, things are bearable now, but it got really hot in our house the first day before we had everything set up ideally. Plus, that first day was super hot. AND we were coming in and out a lot, so any cool air we had inside escaped.
This seems like a nice neighborhood to me, albeit "poor" for the area... The neighbors on both sides seem to have small children like we do. I think our neighborhood is primarily populated by Hispanic people, and they all seem nice enough. I think some people in our ward were of the opinion that we're in the "bad" part of town, but my impression is that those people aren't aware of what a bad part of town is ACTUALLY like. This place is picturesque suburbia, seriously. It's just not full of mansions. (Gasp! No mansions? The "bad" part of town! How many of your neighbors have graduate degrees? Few, if any? Egads, you must move your family away, for their safety!) I think I feel safer here than I did in my neighborhood growing up in Chandler, and that was pretty nice.
We now have library cards for both the Escondido library and the San Diego County library. Woohoo! So many books!
The closest grocery store is a Sprouts. Excellent produce, here we come.
Um, what else.
Huh. No dishwasher. Whatevs.
The outlets are primarily two-pronged. Weird. Also inconvenient.
I've managed to satisfactorily decorate the house to my liking, I think. (Well, the public areas, anyway. The bedrooms are very sparse.) James has complained that it is too pretty, which means my job here is done.
We have our own mailbox. Weird.
Anyway. This is going to take some getting used to.
Love and HOUSE! HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE TREEEEE!
Jenna & Co.
