DaveAndAnastasia

I mean, if they paid us like we lived in San Francisco, we could afford to stay in San Diego (we want to see my family more than 2-3 times a year, and PRGs at least once a year*). However, no one seemed willing to do this. New job is going pretty well three months in, and both PRG and I are fully remote (and I mostly work with people in Eastern time anyway). So that's fine. One time thing. * If flying from 'Murrica to Russia becomes possible again. If it's third-country meetups or workarounds to get into Russia (and as long as I'm working for a defense contractor, I think the latter is likely PRG traveling alone or with mini-Dave but without me) indefinitely, I think it'll probably be every other year, but want to make a third-country meetup this summer happen because it'll have been five years. Mini-Dave still has one living great-grandparent in Russia who we'd like to get to see him in person at least once, but that'll take going to Russia (if she were fifteen years younger, would be easier to convince to go outside of Russia than PRG's mom).

So since my last check-in here, we've - Visited the Raleigh area between Christmas and New Years (mini-Dave was informed that Santa knew we would be flying early Christmas morning and so stopped at our place on Christmas Eve) to evaluate potential relocation (we want a house with a yard, to be closer to my family, to save money, and we don't really have close friends or family out here). Parents drove up from Florida to meet us after Christmas morning with my brother and his wife and kid (even more mini than mini-Dave) and so got there the next day. Saw many houses (generally accompanied by papa-Dave while mini-Dave got some grandma time), checked out things to do for mini-Dave (children's museums, indoor playgrounds, parks). Had a good time, really liked the area, and concluded we could in fact get a nice many (2*2) - bedroom house with almost twice the square footage of our townhouse in a good school district for less than we paid for our townhouse. Found a couple places we really liked, though as the one we liked the most had the highest list price, we wanted to see what we could get for our place before making any offers. - Talked to realtor we used to buy our place about selling, concluded we could probably get $many00,000. Did a bunch of touch up work and minor repairs, got pictures taken. Realtor suggested we could raise listing price based on interest levels. Got multiple offers for $many many 0,000, and accepted one after just one weekend with our place on the market. - Made an offer for the place we liked the most (still on the market, yay), but ended up needing to slightly revise that upward to get the place (which we did). - Made all sorts of arrangements with movers, car rental places, hotels, and such to get ready to move - So now after almost many (2*2*2*2 + 2*2*2 - 1) years in San Diego, I'm leaving. With as much as I moved around between middle school and two years after college, I never really expected to be in city that long, to be honest.

Here's me about to cut the cheesecake. Pictures of the rest of dinner also have my niece and nephew in them, no posting pictures of other people's kids without their permission and too lazy to crop them... Oh, they were good when they were mom-food too (when we were kids we usually had Thanksgiving with mom's family, with most or all of her many -- 2*2*2+2 -- siblings, their spouses, and so many of my many cousins -- not really sure how many, but there were a lot even if the youngest of them weren't around yet; every family brought something so there was quite a lot of food even given the number of people eating). * does not confuse computers, who can't tell a letter x from a times sign x, so what I default to for multiplication. Programmer, man. Hoping I can get the whole family to Casa-DA some holiday season, though my other siblings and their families may be more difficult even if we move closer to them (one brother and his wife have jobs that make leaving town for the holidays difficult; other brother rarely visits everyone; other sister has other issues; and of course Vlad makes meeting the in-laws difficult these days).

Can't say much about new job; working for a defense contractor, classified, man. Would not accept a job that requires a security clearance without having an active one and while unemployed again; too long between offer and start of work so got very stressed out (and in the last month or so before I started, was sufficiently frustrated with nothing happening to start seriously interviewing elsewhere). Had many interviews, even many second interviews, only one actual job offer. Though a few got close right around when I got the initial offer and I declined to interview further, and a few around when it became clear I'd actually be starting with these guys. Me too, man. Parents, little sister and her family all back home now. Parents left casa-DA at about 5 am on Tuesday, early morning flight. Was great to see everyone. Thanksgiving dinner was successful despite green bean casserole falling out of the fridge and crashing into pieces. Veggie pot pie for non-meat eaters looked good, but I didn't try it; too much else and after one day of leftover-eating on Friday (combining Thanksgiving leftovers with Greek takeout leftovers from Wednesday) it was all gone. My turkey (pre-seasoned frozen turkey breast in a bag whose cooking steps were basically "put it in the oven"), non-gloop sugar-free cranberry sauce, and sugar-free pumpkin cheesecake were well-received, si man. Mama-Dave made the same rolls she'd made for almost every Thanksgiving that I can remember. Mini-Dave ate many (2 * 2) of them. Niece and nephew decided they weren't interested in going to the Safari Park, then were sick the next day, so saw them (and sister and brother-in-law) less than we'd hoped. Though we did go down to La Jolla Cove and saw the sea lions on Thanksgiving morning (mama-Dave finished rolls and rested), then had lunch at a place that was only serving breakfast food. Parking where I did was $many. Took mom and dad to Legoland with us instead of taking whole crew to Safari park (all non-Sandy Eggo people would have had free or half price tickets at the Zoo or Safari Park via our memberships), had fun and then had pizza and pasta buffet lunch (thanks to membership discounts and 3 year olds still being free at the buffet, surprisingly inexpensive for amusement park food; spent less than we did at Panera the next day). Papa-Dave accompanied us to Safari Park and Sea World, where we had free guest tickets, but mama-Dave wasn't up to walking that much. Then they had Monday on their own, dinner back at our place (made a sous vide tri-tip roast), and packing up to leave early. Papa-Dave was also able to help us fix a few things around the townhouse; more handy than us, si, man.