Vagabonds no More
October 26th, 2006
If you’ve been tracking with us over the past year, you’ll know that 2006 has brought a lot of changes. Early in Janurary Jen and I quit our jobs, put all of our stuff in storage, moved out of our apartment in Berkeley, flew out to Massachusetts for the winter term at L’Abri Fellowship, went back a second time during the summer, driving across the country to the east coast and back over 7,000 miles and through thirty states. After that was all done, we thought we wanted to move to San Diego, then changed our minds and came back up to the San Francisco Bay Area. All of that you can read about in past blog entries.
When we got back up here to the Bay Area, a friend of ours hooked us up with a couple in Danville, CA who generously opened their home for us to stay while we both found jobs and a new apartment. We had a great time with Joe and Tanya. They were very hospitable and accommodating. I think they probably would have let us stay six months if we needed. Joe turned out to be quite the chef, I think due in large part to his Italian blood. At least a couple times a week he would grill or bake some great dinner for the four of us.
It took a couple weeks of hitting the pavement (online and in the real world) and Jen found a job at a small IT company in Oakland near Jack London Square on the waterfront. She went in for an interview and was offered the job on the spot because her boss said he recognized something in her character that he knew would be a great asset. She’s now working as an office manager / executive assistant / mother for two bachelor tech support guys and her boss. It’s not the most ideal job to suit her passions, but it pays decently well, her boss likes her, and it gave us a source of income again for the first time in the several months since leaving Crusade earlier this year. Some of you may wonder, “what about grad school? since that was her plan a few months ago. Well she’s still interested in doing it, but isn’t sure about commiting to two years of full-time schooling plus another 2-3 working to get established in the field. She’s still looking into grad schools, but right now is focussing on her job. It’s a big relief for her to be back working again, having a regular weekly schedule with evenings at home together.
About a week after Jen got hired, I landed a contract job doing QA work for Wells Fargo in downtown San Francisco. It’s related closely to computer programming, what I ideally want to end up in, only instead of writing new software I write software to test other software and find bugs so that other people can fix it. I just started there this week, and though I’m not sure yet if I’m going to love the work, I can tell already that I’m going to like my coworkers and the work environment which feels big-company corporate though fairly laid-back and casual. There is a strong possibility that my six-month contract will get extended to a year, and also a chance if it goes well and there is still more work to do that it could turn into a full-hire.
The timing of us getting our jobs worked out at the same time as this apartment that we found became available. It’s a unique sort of place unlike any that we’ve ever lived in before, but seems to suit us. The building was originally part of the California Cotton Mills factory built in Oakland in 1917. It’s all brick with big factory windows, and has recently been converted into loft apartments. Our suite sits on the top-the fourth floor, and affords an amazing view of downtown Oakland, and even the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and downtown SF. Sometimes we just sit in our living room and stare out the windows. The interior is industrial with all hardwood factory flooring, exposed brick and concrete walls, and steel girder beams that reinforce the original external brick wall. It’s got a lot of space, and presumably because of the location in the industrial part of Oakland (at 23rd Ave and 880) across the Park St bridge from Alameda, the rent is affordable. We feel really fortunate that it became available at the same time that we were landing our jobs. You can check out some photos on my Flickr page of the place during the stages of moving in.
All in all, we are really happy to be back in the Bay Area, not in the least because of our church home at First Pres in Berkeley. We’ve come to admire our pastor Mark Labberton because of his preaching, the importance he places on seeking the welfare of the people in our city and around the world, and for his personal input in our lives post-Crusade. He was largely responsible for getting us connected with the Massachusetts L’Abri which played a vital role in helping us transition from a poor fit in Crusade campus ministry to beginning to discover what this next phase of our life would be like and re-instilling hope for the future.