Sitting, mesmerised in front of aforementioned 60″ TV. It’s been a strangely tiring and unrelaxing week, although this wasn’t entirely unexpected. Despite a semi-regular sleeping pattern that I’ve been trying to impose upon myself I think today the lost hours caught up with me as I was just about ready to call it a night at 2pm. I don’t think it’s actually hit me that I’m here yet. Nothing seems real, except I know there’s a big list of things that I need to get done. I think I might be in autopilot.

Coming east like I have done it means that I wake rather early in the morning, but by the time seven o’clock in the evening comes around and I want to sit down and catch up with all my blogging, I instead just want to pass out on the couch. So once again it’s off to bed for me and still no details about my journey over here *yawn*.

Hopefully in a couple of days I will be more adjusted and back into my old routine- they say it takes one day for every one hour change in timezone of which I’ve travelled across eight *yawn*.

Night all *so sleepy*.

The cleaning of the kitchen.

DrMrNin and WineChris (not to be confused with FilmChris) actually did an impressive job at keeping the apartment clean over the last 15 months that I was away. But I’m a clean freak in the kitchen and nothing will ever meet my standards unless I’ve done it myself, so today I reacquainted myself with my old bleach stash that I’ve kept stored under the sink. Yes, my bleach stash – spray bottles, gumption creams, good old-fashioned thick blue bleach, and more. I like counters so clean you can lick them.

I like having Sunday as a day of rest. Today we slept in until noon, then in the afternoon drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to the pretty little harbour town of Sausalito where we were lucky enough to spot the $100,000,000 Maltese Falcon bobbing up and down on the water. That’s a glimpse of it right between our heads. Wow, what a sight!

So things have been busy pretty much since I arrived and today (Saturday) was no exception with a 9am start. The mission: find somewhere to live. We’re trying to decide at the moment whether to rent or buy as what with the state of the economy we could actually REALISTICALLY look to get on the property ladder in the not too distant future. The market is funny out here- if a good house comes on the market that has been sensibly priced, it can go in a matter of days which is in complete contradiction to what the media would lead you to believe. But at the same time, there are properties which have been on the market for *months* that just aren’t moving. So in some respect the market is red hot, but in other respects it’s miserable.

But anyway, by the time it got toward the end of the day and we were both tired, we thought we deserved a nice liquid treat. We didn’t buy anything from this particular stand, but I was drawn to the general kitschiness of it. I like kitschy things.

PS note the clothing- it’s like Red Hot Boiling Summer over here right now.

Yes I did! I’m living in America! The journey was good – it makes SUCH a difference travelling first class, you arrive all refreshed and ready to go, I never want to fly coach again!! – and since arriving I’ve spent time adjusting to the new timezone, playing with all my things that I had to leave behind for 15 months, and generally finding my feet. There’s quite a lot to do in the coming week (driving test, finding somewhere to live etc etc) but it’s all very exciting. In a strange way it doesn’t feel like I’ve been away at all….

I’m just about to eat dinner now and am then heading straight to bed (jetlag), but I hope to be able to catch up properly this weekend There are lots of pics and more details to come, but in the meantime I’ve been catchin up on my 365 which is summarised below… click on the thumbnails to be taken to the relevant post.

Enjoy

Day 159/365

Day 160/365

Day 161/365

Day 162/365

Day 163/365

Day 164/365

Day 165/365