Bribes etc.

After teaching art this morning, I ventured over to Oakland to do a little shopping. The traffic was really crazy, but the views of the city were remarkable. The fog is so interesting here. As I was coming over the Bay Bridge, it looked like a wall of fog separating the city. As I sit and write this, it is floating by in chunks covering my view.

As I was coming into our place, I ran into one of our neighbors, Jill. She asked me about myself and I told her a bit about the apartment hunting drama. She said we should pay the potential landlady off! She said we should give her the equivalent to one month of rent so she could go on a vacation or something and really want to have us live there! This is crazy!  

Tonight we went to check out another apartment. It is a single family home with a garage. It is located on a hill roughly above the Giant's stadium. I really liked the gated door. When we walked up the stairs, we saw people on every possible writing surface in the space filling out an application. She brought 30 applications and after twenty minutes into the open house, she was out! The apartment does not have the curb appeal the other one does, but it has a lot of character. The kitchen is big with a little breakfast nook. The living room and dining room are charming and have a lot of 1920's charm. There is 1 and 1/2 bathrooms. There is an extra bedroom, office with a door to a deck, and up about 5 stairs is the master bedroom. It is a very nice space, but I can't imagine competing with 30+ other applicants. People kept piling in after us! As we drove away, we saw two remarkable views: the Bay and the San Fran. skyline. What a great apartment! We should have brought pastries!

The pictures I included are by request: East and West outside our temp. housing door, a vertical shot of our building. In addition, the potential new apartment, and a close up of the potential apartment's door. 

We just received a call from the potential place we visited yesterday. We did not get it:( She didn't give us a reason but I sure hope she didn't pick the girl who brought the pastries. Back to the drawing board...