Tuesday, October 2, 2001
I go to work even though I'm still sick because I want to go to the Ergo Fair so that I can pick out a new chair and a keyboard tray. I'm impressed with the Steelcase Leap chair and the Humanscale Freedom chair, but none of the keyboard trays feel right to me. I end up choosing the Leap chair because I want to punish Niels Diffrient for presuming that I don't want my positions to lock or that I won't bother to learn all the controls they can put in. The Freedom chair has superior grace in mechanics, but the Leap chair is more configurable, so the winner for me is Steelcase. After work, I meet Patrick at Amy and David's Victorian apartment because their landlord, Clay, is moving out of the unit below them, and we happen to be looking for a new place just now. Turns out that the arrangements are perfect: he'll be out two weeks before our lease is up. The new place—886A Capp Street—is nowhere near the beauty of our current 302 Junipero Serra Boulevard. However, it's in the Mission, which means Hello, sunny skies! We'll have a dishwasher (!), garage (!), washer/dryer in the garage (!) at no extra charge (!), all utilities paid for except phone and DSL (!), all for the low, low, price of US$1400/month (!!). Gas range, gas(-only) fireplace in our bedroom, hardwood floors, central air heating, a tiny space in back for barbecues or whatever. Like all great housing finds (especially here in the bay area), the timing was key: Clay had two other interested parties coming the same evening, but we beat them to it by only hours or minutes. Patrick arranged this meeting rather spur of the moment, so we forgot to bring a check for a deposit. However, our friend Amy is Clay's new property manager, and she's so excited at the prospect of having us so close by that she offers us a pseudo-check-loan for the US$2800 move-in fees for 24 hours until we can get our real check to Clay tomorrow. It's the first time I've ever gotten a place without providing a credit check or references from past landlords or even a signed statement that I have no water-filled furniture. Clay trusts Amy, Amy trusts us, and there's still a legal document we all sign. The whole deal goes down and is done so quickly that Patrick and I have trouble sleeping after a celebratory dinner at Eric's. Suddenly there is everything to arrange, and in one month, we'll be sleeping in a different room, hearing different noises at night, and exploring the Mission's eateries like we always wanted to deep down. Best of all, it means we'll finally be able to start saving some money so that we can leave the cost-of-living suckhole that is San Francisco. We cannot believe our good fortune, and we know we have Amy and David to thank for it.