Then and Now

Corona Heights Playground looking out to Hayes Valley and Pacific Heights.

Corona Heights Playground looking out to Castro and Mission.

From the Presidio looking at the Golden Gate Bridge.

From Ocean Beach looking at Seal Rock and Cliff House.

I have been working on this project of scanning in family photos, so that I can have copies of all of them and so they are all digital. These on the left I found at Grandma Shirley's house. My grandpa's brother Tony spend time in the military in San Francisco in the 1950s before moving there permanently, and these were from him.

They were very familiar. We've spent time at the bridge and seal rock, but the top two images we didn't recognize until this weekend when we went up to Twin Peaks to see one last view of the city. From there we saw another small hill that we thought could be the place of the top two images and sure enough it was! I knew it right away.

After 55 years, some of the buildings haven't changed at all, and it's fun to compare the image to see what's changed in that time too.

A Day in San Jose

Today Janelle and I drove down to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House, a 160 room Victorian mansion built by the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune. She believed that if she continuously built onto her home the ghosts of those killed by the Winchester rifle would not haunt her. Carpenters worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 38 years, creating a spectacular mansion with some odd features including; a stairway to the ceiling, doors that open to blank walls, windows in the floor and upside down posts.

Touring 110 of the rooms on our guided tour was surreal considering that I wrote a report on the mansion in middle school. I never thought I would actually see it in person!



After our tour we drove a few miles down the road to check out HP Pavilion, also known as "The Shark Tank," home of the NHL's San Jose Sharks. Living in Northern California for the last two NHL seasons have really got me hooked on the Sharks. Dare I say, the Sharks are my #1 team?

Harding Park

Today I celebrated President's Day the best way I know how, I played golf. For the second year in a row Kyan and I took advantage of our day by hitting the links. This year we played Harding Park in San Francisco, home of the 2009 President's Cup. The course was amazing, lined with old cypress trees.

I played arguably the best round of golf since moving to California today. I shot 40 on the front nine and followed it up with a 37 on the back nine. At one point I had it to two under par before making two straight bogeys.

We chose...

This house is a place we may never leave. The location is AMAZING. It's only 3 blocks from Lake Harriet and 1 block to Minnehaha Creek, right near 50th and Penn Avenue. You can check out some of the pictures Josh took at the showing in January on Flickr.

We're not out of the woods yet though. The property is going into short sale, meaning the seller owes more on the property than we offered and she doesn't have the money to make it to closing. Her bank has to approve our offer and agree to lose money on the deal. It's kind of the middle ground for the bank and seller between a normal sale and foreclosure. So, we technically don't have it in contract yet to move to closing, but we have sole rights to the property, so no one else can make offers.

Our Offer was Accepted!

So we're going to play the House Hunters (like the show on HGTV) game. Did we choose...



Post your guess in the comments and we'll reveal tomorrow which one we picked!

All Aboard!

Sunday, after going to the Alameda Flea Market for one last time, we stopped at the USS Hornet (an aircraft carrier that was used in WWII turned museum) which was close by. We boarded the ship and listened to the short introduction and then went straight up to the Island. That's the tall part that houses Primary Flight, the Captain's At Sea cabin, and the Navigation Bridge. Our tour guide worked on the sister ship to the Hornet, so he had a lot of knowledge about everything in the Island and many stories to go with it. It was an awesome tour.

It's Official!

We're coming home! Josh's relocation was approved today and he is also being promoted to a Financial Analyist 2. We can't wait to get back to our family and friends. We'll be here in California until mid-March and then we'll make the long road trip home.

On another note, we will hopefully make an offer on a house tomorrow. Stay tuned!