We're here!

Yes, of course I'll still be blogging from the west coast! I've gotten multiple queries asking if this blog has ended, which means I know there are people out there actually following it. Comment, lurkers! Don't be ashamed!

We arrived this past Thursday, but I haven't had a chance at all to write until now. So it's time to back pedal a little....

There's been torrential rain and storms in California this past weekend, and I was 90% sure our flight was going to be canceled. But somehow, miraculously, it wasn't even delayed! And thanks to our buddies who drove us to the airport at 5:30am (you know who you are; we owe you guys big time!), getting there with our 11 pieces of luggage went as smoothly as we could have hoped. We also mailed something like 15-20 boxes of stuff before we left that should arrive in LA within a couple days. The timing of everything has worked out very well.

Stewie was very good on the 6.5 hour plane ride. He whined a bit in the last quarter of the flight (he really wanted to get out of that bag he was in), but overall he was very good. Of course, he was the center of attention everywhere we went (the airport, the plane) and got a lot of petting from strangers.

Once we arrived, N gathered all of our checked luggage while I walked Stewie outside the airport. LAX has a cute little doggy break area that has fake turf and fire hydrant along with a faucet and water bowl just for traveling dogs like Stewie. We made good use of it.

Then it was time to pick up the van. We decided to rent a caravan from LAX even though we have a car in LA already for several reasons--one was that we could never fit our 11 pieces of luggage into our little Civic, and another was that we knew we'd have to do a lot of furniture shopping right away. N went to pick up the van while Stewie and I waited with the luggage:


We piled in and headed to our new apartment that we signed a lease for but still had never laid eyes on! We live on Sunset Blvd. It's kind of crazy in a way. But also pretty neat. Here's our palm tree-lined street:


More details of the apartment itself will come later. Oh, one last thing--the view from the back of the apartment (click to maximize!):