San Diego Trip

I lost my mind last week in San Diego.  I could feel it slowly starting to slip on Monday evening and then completely cracking up on Tuesday.  The stress that caused my brain to turn to mush was brought on by two days of serious house-hunting.  It wasn't at all like last year when we visited Peoria to find a place.  After all, Peoria only has a few apartments to pick from.  It only took us 4 hours to visit them all and decide where to live.  San Diego, on the other hand, has an endless sprawl of neighborhoods and communities-none of which we were familiar with-and thousands of properties to choose from.  Despite this, there seemed to be nothing available.  Unfortunately, we only allowed ourselves two days in the city to find a place and sign on it.  On Monday, we were greatly aided by Raphael Vagnone, our trusted realtor.  He spent the day driving us around, showing us several places, and explaining some of the neighborhoods to us.  With Ralph with us I felt sure that we would have no problem easily finding something we liked.  When Ralph had to go and we still hadn't signed on anything, I started to worry a little bit.  I knew that we only had one day left to find a place-by ourselves-in a city that we barely knew.  By Tuesday afternoon we hadn't seen much that fit our needs.  We did see a nice house in La Jolla that was in a beautiful neighborhood.  The only problem was, it was an older house and was a little run down.  We had it narrowed down to two places: a townhouse in Hillcrest or an apartment in Mission Valley close to work.  We liked them both okay but weren't really excited about either.  Hillcrest, we found out, was the gay community in San Diego.  We stopped for lunch there and saw two guys making out in the parking lot.  We decided that was a little too much "California" for us.  We then drove around aimlessly, shaken by the gay scene and the crazy real estate rental market.  Without Ralph I had become frustrated by nearly everyone we talked to.  I was ready to call it a day and crawl back up the I-5 then fly back to the friendly confines of Peoria.  I figured Ashley would have to come back later to find a place without me.  I was mentally checking out.  I was tired of the people, tired of the traffic, and tired of looking at places.  If I kept it up I probably would have started to drool on myself and not notice it.  I think around that time Ashley noticed my rapid deterioration and decided we should just sign for an apartment in Mission Valley before I blacked out.  I don't remember much after that.  I remember signing my name four times and then sitting by myself in the car in the parking lot, after which we called it quits.  As I look back on the trip, I'm glad we got the place we did, even though it was a horrible trip.  We move to San Diego on June 12th. 

-Byron

By the way, we're really excited to move!  -Ashley