Well, it's not quite fair I call this "unexpected," since we knew it could happen any time and for any reason. We just really hoped it wouldn't happen, so I still call it Unexpected. N and I both had second telecommuting temp jobs (on top of our regular full time jobs) that were both at-will employments; that is, we could be fired/laid off at any time for any reason. His job ended several months ago, which was very disappointing, but we thought we'd fare okay with mine. Then my term ended very recently, which was BAD NEWS. We really needed the savings we were expecting to acquire to make our move to LA as smooth as possible. On top of that, we had a large unexpected expense (you can't stop life), so we're down even more than before. But with our decision for our new January 2010 moving date, we said that nothing would stop us, jobs or no jobs, cushion or no cushion.
But, a very lucky thing that recently happened is that my sister just replaced her extremely old 250k mile Honda Civic with a new car, and she generously offered to give the Civic to me for no cost. I should be jumping for joy at this prospect, except that I've had about two near-death accidents in that same exact vehicle over the past several years (due to its age and condition, not the driving), so can you blame me for being hesitant?
One can't pass up this kind of opportunity, though, especially considering the financial circumstances we are now in. There's one catch, though--the car is currently in San Francisco sitting in a relative's garage. How do we get it to LA? We'd need it there the second we got there if we weren't going to waste money on a rental car (which would truly be a waste, if this car was available for us to drive). I also didn't want to juggle moving us to LA with Stewie and all of our stuff while also trying to figure out a detour to SF. Wouldn't it be so nice if the car could somehow magically be waiting for us in LA in January when we arrived? Wouldn't that be grand?
That's what spurred along a search for long term car storage options in LA. N mentioned that prospect to me, and I thought he was making it up--I've never heard of such a thing. But after some Googling, I came across two basic options:
1) Renting an indoor, air conditioned covered garage, where attendants start the ignition on your car on a daily basis and make sure all is in good and working order for when you return to your baby;
2) Renting an outdoor, at-the-mercy-of-the-elements painted yellow line parking spot, where your car will be as if it's sitting in a mall parking lot...just for a really, really long time.
Obviously, the second option is about half the price of the first. And I don't believe being at the mercy of the elements in Los Angeles is really that dire a situation, so we are considering option 2. My sister will be having a wedding in San Francisco in early November, so we are thinking of driving the car down to LA after the wedding, visiting a bit there, and then flying back to NYC from LAX. That way we'd just be paying for car storage for 2 months before our move.
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