Author Archives: jen

About jen

My name is Jen Ransom and I am a recovering consultant. Now I study Spanish and Argentine wine. It's better.

We’re in BA!!!!

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After spending a surprisingly relaxing and enjoyable day in DC, we headed to the airport once again last night and this time had no trouble with our flight – flight 847 was on time, had a friendly flight crew and was surprisingly easy despite the nearly 11 hours it took.  And at last we have arrived in BA!  Our apartment is small but sufficient and very well located, just 2 blocks from Plaza Palermo Viejo, which is packed with restaurants and cafes (see our apt. here: http://www.4rentargentina.com/buenos-aires-apartments/palermo/malabia-and-guatemala-i-1530.html).

We went out for a fabulous Italian dinner that cost us a whopping $46, including a bottle of wine and dessert (for reference, a comparable Italian restaurant we frequented in North Beach in SF was typically ~$130 for the two of us).  Tomorrow will be spent wandering through our neighborhood more, investigating Spanish schools and of course trying out more local restaurants – we’ll keep you posted!

Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn (say what?!)

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Sadly, we’re not staying in a Holiday Inn, but we’ve got the hotel (last night – Red Lion) and motel (Travelodge) covered so far.  Nothing but the best for our honeymoon!

We’re gaining an understanding of just how different San Francisco (and Chicago, and Boston, and Tokyo . . .) is from just about everywhere else in the country, even elsewhere in Northern California.  For example, we got into Redding last night and thought we’d go for pizza – sounds simple enough, right?

The first place we visited had strong ratings on Yelp . . . and a pizza buffet that looked like it had been sitting out since our last day of work (which was now over a week ago).  After some additional Yelp research, we decided to go big by visiting the Upper Crust – reviews that said its prices were too high but we were willing to pay up if that meant good food and a decent atmosphere.  Turns out half of that was right – food was good, as long as we weren’t run over by screaming toddlers (at least a dozen of them) running back and forth to the video game room on our way to our table.  Breakfast at IHOP wasn’t much different.  But one thing Redding has going for it – everybody was extremely friendly, even if they drive ridiculous trucks (see below; more to come in an upcoming post) and eat 2000+ calories at every meal.

Homeless and unemployed, at last

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4 days, 43 boxes and several bottles of wine later, we are at last moved out of our apartment and officially homeless – so exciting!!  When we arrived at the storage facility with our movers today and couldn’t fit all of our stuff in the allotted space, we made friends with the facility attendant by helping him furnish his apartment with our leftovers.  Guess we’ll need a new desk and bookshelves when (or if) we come back.  After a surprisingly painless walk-through with our crazy landlord, San Francisco sent us off in style – with a full-on downpour.  We’ll miss you too, SF!!

It’s been a big week – we quit our jobs, had an epic going-away party (followed by a rather debilitating hangover), packed up our apartment and crammed the material goods of our San Francisco life into a 10×11 storage cell, where it will sit patiently waiting for us for the next 6 (9? 12?) months.  And it’s not over yet – tomorrow we get married (justice of the peace style – sweet!) and then start making our way to Seattle.   But at least now that the stressful part is over and every item on the to-do list has been checked, we’re finally starting to absorb the fact that we have no responsibilities, no obligations, no restrictions.  We’re looking forward to getting used to that and wondering how our thinking might change (and how we might change) as a result.  We’ll keep you posted.