First Morning in San Jose

My first morning in San Jose. It's been a busy one. I got up and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast since it was all I had besides a water filter.











Mo spent the night stuck to the inside of my sleeping bag. I think she might still be there. She's afraid to come out. It took her an hour to get brave enough to climb the stairs, now I don't think she's going to come down. I caught her peeping under the loft railing earlier, but beyond that I haven't seen hide nor hair of her.









Oh well, she'll get used to it. She loved the hardwood floor in our kitchen at home. It was the perfect place to pretend she was ice skating. She would run from the living room, jump onto the hard wood floor, and slide on her fuzzy little feet all the way to the other wall. I imagine after she figures out this place won't eat her, she'll be having a ball sliding all around the apartment. I hope she remembers there are stairs with no carpet.

:|






After I wandered around outside and took some pictures of my empty apartment, my friends brought over the sofa they promised to give me and a few other goodies.



They decided on their way home that I needed a projector.. and some speakers.. and a plant. So they set me up. I have a set of speakers and a projector so I can play dvd's on my laptop and shine them on the big white vacant wall by the stairway. It's going to be like a huge flat-screen TV.

:)

Wasn't that sweet?

















A few other random shots.

Ignore the messy bits.

They're still looking for proper homes.












Here are a few other random shots of my apartment, then I'm off to explore. I'm taking my camera, so watch out. I have no idea where I'm going today, but I've decided my bus pass and my books are #1 priorities. So first I'm going to go to campus and get my student ID, then I'm going to take that to get my bus pass so they'll give me the nice student discount. Then I'm going to go back to campus with my schedule in my pocket so I can find where all my classes are before they start on Thursday. After I walk around campus and probably take a half zillion pictures, I'm going to go to the bookstore and pick up my books. I figure that should be my last stop around campus because after that, I'm going to want to walk straight home. Hopefully they're not too heavy.. or some poor little kid will loan me his wagon for a half hour.



Stay tune, I'm sure I'll have lots more to post soon.

LA to SJ

Wow, i forgot what it's like to go on a road trip. It's been a while. And it's been even longer since I went up the coast of California - how beautiful. I also forgot about the road with the zig-zagging highway lines. I can only hope they painted them in the dead of night when there was no traffic and they kept falling asleep. Do they still have those trucks with the little platforms where the guy sits on the grated platform and glues the little reflectors down? I saw one of those in Minnesota once upon a time and it made me realize I never wanted to work for the highway department.

Anyway, it was a beautiful drive. With a few stops, it took us a little over seven hours. Here are a few pictures from along the way. I didn't take as many as I would have liked, but daylight was quickly slipping away.






Goodbye to Rodeo Drive and to Hollywood Hills.
















*sigh* It's going to be a strange adventure, but aren't they supposed to be?









We stopped at a little scenic overlook. It was definitely scenic, wasn't it?





Isn't it amazing how little space your life can take up when you pack it in a car? Okay, I guess not. Most people have accumulated so much stuff by the time they move all they can think is, "How can I have this much crap?" I threw out my crap. Well, not really threw it out. I sold everything I could sell, then took the rest to Goodwill. All I had left were three boxes of clothes, linens, kitchen stuff, and a Rubbermaid tote with snacks, cat food, bowls and brushes.




I knew I'd be making a serious WalMart run upon arrival. The only other things I have are my laptop, a sleeping bag, and a couch my friends are going to give me for the apartment, which until last night I hadn't seen. That was another adventure. But since I have no furniture and I knew it came with a refrigerator, washer and dryer, I wasn't too worried.



It was dark when we got to San Jose so I didn't get to see much. I'm planning on going exploring later on today when I go to get my light rail/bus pass and my school stuff - notebooks, pens, and of course my books from the university bookstore. I'll have to be careful and watch the time because I know I'll get caught up in exploring and forget to make it to the bookstore before it closes. Classes start on Thursday and I still have my mini-orientation to do also.




I won't drag this out much longer, I'll just throw up some pictures I took of my new apartment from last night.



Here's my front door beside the kitchen down on the bottom, my laundry room door (that's hanging open, ignore the junk on the kitchen counter and the shoes in the floor - I was just starting to unpack). The kitchen opens up into a living room with a staircase along the side that goes up to a loft bedroom.










This is looking from the kitchen into the living room where I have a HUGE floor to ceiling window with a little railed mini-patio porchy thing that I can't think of the name of.










The other side of the living room with the staircase that goes to the loft.




And my kitchen, which won't be so bare soon.