Sac City babyyyy So it's been two years since Charlotte and I left South Bound Brook, New Jersey, traveled around the country for like seven months, and got an apartment in Sacramento, California. We've been here for like a year and a half now, as I tell many of my Lyft passengers, and there's obviously still a lot to see and do. It's a great area, like the center of a wheel -- a variety of landscapes available within a few hours' drive.
Tahoe the lake place and sand
also Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe is where we were recently.
One of the three rivers in Sacramento
a little overview, near the airport.
So many beautiful places within half an hour of us.
Succulents grow wild here so I snagged a couple.
Serious Charlotte
Mossy rocks waterfall pee yay
Fantastic music festival with just amazing food. Chunks of crab meat on garlic fries? Fuck yes.
Sacramento is the city of trees after all!
Shit also just burns here...
Didn't think I'd ever see this just driving around.
Smoke so thick we slowed down to like 20 mph.
It's gonna take a fuckin while to get used to the fact that California
just kinda burns for months yearly. Whatever, my multitude of plants
will be fine so long as I water them and occasionally brush the ash off
of them... We've been doing pretty well, starting school and working and stuff. Been meeting really nice people like everywhere, which seems to just be
happening since we met Henry. It's like he taught us to see people as,
you know, other people, part of your world, friendly by default or
whatever. So maybe we're also way more open and friendly, but also maybe
new jersey really just sucked that much that people weren't happy in
general. I mean almost all of the Lyft riders I've had that were from the east coast agreed that people were friendlier here.
Charlotte plays clarinet in a band!
There she is! See her?
Hello?
So yeah. It's been two full years since we left New Jersey. A lot has happened.
* hey it's karol, coming over to play? * Denver, Colorado ,207 \m/ 27 So we stayed with our friend Jack at his place. His roommate cooked most nights and made delicious meals.
omg Matt, everything you cooked was delicious. Holy shit. This was the meal he greeted us with.
'208' 28th mmaaaa We got to hang out inside, it was great holy shit. There were animals and there was internet and also a couch and chairs... Electricity... what luxuries!
Frank with his conquered toy and Lily near me.
We had been hearing this wonderful groaning whenever we turned the wheel so Matt's.. brother (I think) met up with us and took a look, hooked it up to a computer he happened to have and just told us we needed more power steering fluid. I looked a week or two ago but it was dark and I didn't see that there was a measure on the cap... so we went to the store!
GET IN THE ZONE, FRIENDS
Lily's like should I.. move? Is this okay?
I also have a dog!... in minecraft... actually I think this one died in lava, but I'm sure I have another one or two around...
209hundredthousand aaaarrrrrrrr29
Omg cooking again. Only made rice and then fried it briefly for lunch but still fuck yes cooking with custom spoons! The one on the right is the first one I ever made, that Nathan in WV helped me shape, and the one on the left is one he made in like 5 minutes with just an axe.
We played Munchkin! I put my luminoodle on the table cause the overhead light is a little fucky.
?210} ccchhh 30 Boulder, Colorado We went to Boulder! Jack's partner came with us - Jack drove his car because he claimed not to want to subject us to his driving lol.
Parking near red rocks!
We walked up like 400 stairs.
Here's the venue! Sweet as fuck, full of people exercising.
Jack and I race up the stairs (later I found out he goes on the treadmill or whatever, so I don't feel so bad.)
Some fuckin awesome formations around there.
We went on the Will Call trail (what a name... ended up near the will call booth thing)
There happened to be like 15 deer near the trail, just munching on some grass, not giving a fuck.
Charlotte took this gorgeous shot.
Hoowee!
Seems like this didn't totally work out for Charlotte...
Guess what nope wrong the Celestial Seasonings tea factory is in Boulder so of course we went there too.
Denver, Colorado
We all grazed for lunch and I found new ways to take pictures of my dumb faces
sup babies
Yeah, I applied to 15 solarcity positions (all for "solar jr installer") and have since been rejected from.. 6? 7?
{}211 hhhhhhh 31 On the road again.
In the mirrors again.
Uhhh Wyoming? Fukin cray.
We ended up driving through like a pre-blizzard
I think this might've been near the grand tetons, maybe. probably?
Charlotte dancing along
yeeeeaaaaaahhh
Maybe I should've tilted the camera to match my head angle...
SHH (this is uh.. little america? some rest stop/hotel thing in Wyoming, the original of a chain?)
oranges how many? 212 boys. September 75 So... I totaled the car.
April Fools! woo.
Oregon!
Pulled off the highway to get to this little park and found that it was quite flooded.. Charlotte saw a big fish splash up in the water over there but I was too busy taking a picture of her ass.
I'M READY FOR MY CLOSEUP
Some weird round sink sitch threw me off. The toilets were also quite futuristic.
Look, Chris! I finally found another dead bird!
Ooohh yeeaaaahhhh
The mountains in Oregon are kinda iridescent, it's craydiculous.
Ellensburg, Washington
Pizza Colin! Right after we got pulled over for having an expired registration... expired since October o:
Who the fuck puts cinammon in pizza sauce?
TOILETS
In the untotaled car!
2=1+3 Harp too
HHUUUUURRRRRRRRR (my beard looks drawn on...)
Seattle, Washington We made it!
Proof of Seattle
You can see the Space Needle!
Ok, here you can really see it.
BLAAAAAAAAHH TWO MIRRORS!!
Karen and Tom took us to Bad Jimmy's brewery! So named for one of the co-founders' growing beer belly!
So many opportunities for unique new pictures with two mirrors!
214 points par 3
Lots of the intersections on the side streets were like this... just mini roundabouts.
We visited the troll under the bridge! There were so many fucking people there...
Then we went to.. gas works park?
Complete with graffiti beyond fencing!
Also seaplanes and boats!
Charlotte striding like a strider.
This is where 10 things I hate about you was filmed woohoo!
It's not centered :/ but still whatever not terrible. I'm sure I could crop it if I really cared.
Uhhh... don't put an outlet near the heater then?
MAMA CARE PACKAGE WOO YES
We played Sorry and I finally ate the rest of my sunflower seeds :]
22+1=5 on aprons for
Delicious ramen dinner with Karen! Omg so good.
There were these weird, cone/trumpet on a cob plants on Karen/Tom's street. I like 'em.
2&16 rap phyive So I had been applying for jobs in the morning, looking on Indeed for just like whatever was vaguely relevant to things I had applied to in Tesla, so that I at least start gaining relevant experience for the production/manufacturing positions I (might) want. Charlotte ended up helping, found a thing on Craigslist that was also on Indeed and I applied to that of course. It was a solar panel installer position for a local company near Sacramento and half an hour later I had an email asking if I wanted an interview. What the fuck, really? I asked if they had anything next week cause I was in Seattle and she said no and enjoy my trip, she'll let me know if there are more interviews some other time. So I replied and said I'd drive overnight, to give me an afternoon apartment. So that happened. Luckily I had my mom send some fancier clothes to Seattle so I could have nice shit to wear, and I found $2 jeans at a goodwill in Colorado so I was pretty set, since I still had fancy shoes that my mom sent over.
I practiced looking pregnant with a dumb unshaven face as I offer a handshake at the interview.
We played one last game of Settlers of Catan (which we now love and need to get) before we left.
Check it out yo, I'm so hireable, quite desirable.
-217 ape drill 666 CALIFORNIA (for real this time) I drove for a few hours, then Charlotte took over for the rest of the drive so I could sleep as much as possible before my 3:30 interview.
Here's a rest stop we peed in! That's why the window is wet...
El Dorado Hills, CA That's where the interview was, some bourgeoi city with fancy ass shopping centers and shit.
I mean, it's pretty though.
Just dicks. We ate dicks while we waited for time to pass before the interview.
So the interview was alright. It was clear that they didn't so much as look at my resume nor cover letter, just saw an applicant and called me for an interview. It also seemed to be full of teenagers/early 20s fucks (which I realize I was when I joined UFF, haaa... (except I wasn't shitty... right guys?)) so yeah I guess I didn't really feel like I would fit in at all. The interview was fine for a preliminary interview (except that now it's almost a week later (interview was on Thursday and it's now Wednesday) and they still haven't so much as called back, the fucks). The girl who interviewed me might've been younger than me and like didn't seem to really give a shit about the things I was saying. I'm most likely too intellectual (in general?) for that group or maybe, like I said, in general.
Mothafuckin delicious in n out holy fuck yes.
Woodland, CA (Elkhorn rest area) Basically, this is where we live now.
We make a fort out of the car every night now, hanging up our hoodies on the sides to cover the rear windows.
~218 daises or annual percentage rate sewen Charlotte gave me a tour of where she used to live this day, it was really nice! I actually like Sacramento quite a bit, it's not really shitty (some neighborhoods aren't great but duh it's a city, also the capital which I forgot/didn't know) and it's certainly not as shitty as Charlotte made it seem, though that was partly, she thinks, due to the fact that she hated her job (she worked in a mall) and also her boyfriend(s).
Uh, what? Oh shit, what the fuck? It was like a double speed bump, totally unnecessary.
I'm not even gonna make this picture larger cause with each bite of the burritos I wanted to eat this meal less and less. This is from California Burrito and ugh gross. At least the chips were free...
2 9teen lirpa ate Folsom Lake
We stayed in a walmart parking lot as it poured overnight. A cop knocked on our window around... 4? and luckily actually let us stay. Maybe cause we were white. This was in Folsom Lake, which is quite pretty.
North Natomas
We found a park in North Natomas that was actually across from a high school, all in all a huge amount of land. Here's a ton of flowers!
We strolled around the whole park, or one way around the park, which ended up being... about two miles?
There was a lake with like 4 fountains in it.
Also geese and.. brontoswanuses?
Also, a fuckload of (ryan) goslings or whatever
Check me out, babies. (My sister said I looked good when I sent her this.)
!htnin lirp no syad 022 saw ti I don't remember where this park was... actually I think it was also in North Natomas so I won't change the heading.
Community garden! There was a nice older guy there who ended up chatting with us, told us that a spot here is a thousand dollars and there's a waiting list. Yyeeeaaaaahhh whatever, not paying for that.
There was a skate park which was cool, people on bikes and then skaters came later. We played frisbee!
Yeah. This was after Panera thing and also walmart.
I feel like John will appreciate this picture more than others. Here's us cooking (read: heating up) soup from my mom! That fucking spinach and cheese one is amazing for being just powdered soup.
too hun dread twunny won on apeurl10 This was me in a panera bathroom cause I thought I might finish the post then but I didn't but I actually have some news anyway so I'm gonna add two more days quickly here...
Herro
tututu #11 I was woken up by a phone call asking if I could come in for an interview! That was at 9 something (ended up going to sleep around 2 cause it was hot and I was busy reading anyway) so I went to this manufacturing warehouse in Lincoln (northeast of Sacramento, 35 minutes away from our home at the rest stop) and had a quick interview at the end of which I was asked if I could start tomorrow. It is for $10.50 an hour, unfortunately, so I said I had another interview and that I'd call him tomorrow. So basically I ended up just going to the temp agency that this job was through and did most of the paperwork before finally talking to a lady (not the one who called me cause she was busy) and ended up just deciding that I'd take the fuckin job just to have a job. 223 mothafuckin days y'all. par 12. go. So yeah I started today. I worked 10 hours, but unfortunately won't be getting overtime yet cause it's Wednesday... Still though, that's like $80 at least, right? That's not bad. The job itself is kinda meh. The company manufactures cases, so I was cutting foam (well helping at any rate). It's pretty disorganized and they are clearly shorthanded, both of which contribute to how hilariously behind they are on work, but hey they pay me. My feet hurt cause I was wearing my oldest shoes (skate shoes from high school which are now... like... 10 years old? Fuck, man).
I'm sure that's there for... a good reason...
So anyway. We are at Panera and what we just spent like an hour talking about was what the fuck we do now. I have a job (pretty much right on schedule, I had assumed that around the 10th would hopefully not be too early to tell Tesla that I'd be ready to work, and here I am with a job. Speaking of Tesla... I will likely turn any offer down (if I even get one) cause they'll be in places we can't really afford. It turns out that most of the places I applied to are in or near the San Francisco bay area and that's really really expensive. Like, we found 325 square feet of shit for like $1700. Yeah, so no. We decided that we are going to focus on other things, most importantly an apartment. I want to focus on learning/school. So I'm gonna keep looking for a better job, hopefully one of these solar installer places call me back (or I'll just be more likely to get a job once we have an apartment?), and we'll just get an apartment somewhere near one of the community colleges (which will be free, and I think will lead to (hopefully) free transfer to a state school after two years, where we'd be able to get bachelor's degrees). The idea is basically that, at least for me (and I think Charlotte too), I need to gain more experience in general to get better jobs, and also I will have to have some education in things I'd actually want to do (computer science and probably engineering, I also saw they have "Energy" courses) before I can actually get an actually better job. So.... yeah. I've also applied for a position at the Tesla store in Sacramento cause I am finally caving or something and willing to at least do that because yeah, it would be an in to the company, which was literally all I had been hoping for and, especially after talking to Valerie about it, again, it would be bearable. Yeah, that was a run on sentence deal with it yo yeah this is too i dont give shit madafakas CASH ME OUSSIDE HOWBOUDAH 224 dogs april 13
Heading home! It's funny, I saw a review that said don't go to this rest stop at night. Yet, here we are.
I'll leave you with this final view of our updated fort
So the physically traveling part of our journey seems to now be over. I still have to go back to Seattle to have the tattoo continuation done there and of course we need to actually have a stay with Karen and Tom, we were there for a few days and didn't get to hang out much at all. Now comes the hard part for me... the learning (actually the keeping up the motivation and trying to pretend like I actually know what I want to learn/do (which maybe I do, I think AI is really grabbing my balls lately (in a good way) and of course that pretty much means like another decade of learning/schooling)).
225 days on the road as of April 14, 2017 So Charlotte was looking up apartments and calling and visiting some of them today. Luckily I got out of work early (which is to say I didn't have overtime today, so I left at 2:30), so we drove over to the one she liked most (unfortunately slightly out of our price range) cause she loved the manager so much. Well, let me tell you, it's fuckin sweet. There are 70 units, there's a pool, a little playground (a couple of swings and a slide and some grass) and the apartment would have a patio and we'd get a parking space under an awning thing and there is plenty of extra/guest parking and they allow pets (up to 20 pounds only but whatever I guess, they only take a $500 deposit for pets at least, instead of charging them rent, maybe we'll just get a cat). It's also a pretty nice location, in Sacramento still but further away from the street and across from a grocery store (which sells beer, cause they do that in many states) and next to a liquor store and there's good food nearby too... It's also like a 15 minute bike ride from the community college I was most interested in (cause Charlotte liked it a bunch when she was here years ago) aaaaaaand yeah. The lady is really really nice and was trying to make it work for us (cause they want like 2.5 times rent proven in pay stubs, which I don't really have yet since I just started working but hey whatever she's really pulling for us apparently). We've gotta wait two more weeks to move in but whatever, that's time for saving up money and shit. We'll probably get an airbnb somewhere near where I work. Things are feeling pretty good. Tomorrow we're gonna go check out some more apartments, I called the temp agency today and will hopefully get an interview at another place that pays more (ironically also in El Dorado Hills, I think, where I had my first interview (they never called back, the dicks)), the car isn't breaking down, and we have one strong choice for an apartment already (yeah, it was pretty fuckin quick, good job Charlotte!) So as to avoid confusion, the next picture is just one I took walking for like half an hour to this park after work, since Charlotte didn't expect me to be out of work at 2:30 and so was half an hour away at a panera. I thought it was a good ending picture cause duh look at it.
NEVER FORGET TO END PARKING ANYWHERE
I'll likely update you guys and whatever from our apartment (also cause Charlotte has been done with blogging for months now). Thanks for reading!
