Days #3 and #4 (this past weekend)

Day 3 consisted of buying a couch from Costco and a bed from West Elm. Combining various gift cards we've received from friends and family, we managed to get our bed with no out of pocket cost to us! I love using gift cards. The West Elm we went to was in Santa Monica, a city southwest from us right on the ocean. The place feels very Bay Area-esque to me...maybe more South Bay than the city. It's full of very clean outdoor higher-end malls and you can feel the ocean breeze wherever you go. It is very, very nice there. If only I could get a job at Google or Rand out there...

Day 4 involved returning the van to LAX (wow, car rentals are so cheap here!) and picking up our Civic, which all went very smoothly except for the fact that the Civic had absolutely no coolant in it and was on the verge of overheating. Now that I own a car there's a lot of things for me to learn about maintenance. One of them being--never open the cap to the coolant before the car has completely cooled down or you will become drenched in antifreeze. Poor N.

By the end of this weekend my muscles were about to give out from so much lifting and loading of furniture and boxes. I basically collapsed into bed both nights at 7pm and didn't get up until the morning. On the plus side, we went to a big discount grocery store a few blocks away called Food-4-Less and got 2-liters of Diet Coke for 98 cents each, the lowest price I have ever seen. I am getting so many thrills from how cheap (read: cheaper than NYC) everything is here! I also just discovered a new LA-based cheapie blog that shows you how to shop grocery and drug stores for FREE using a combination of sales and coupons: http://www.chieffamilyofficer.com/search/label/Drugstore%20Game