santa barbara, ca

Thank you! I will tell everyone back on the lesser coast that it is awful here and they should stay put :)

We drove around yesterday with stupid grins on our faces :)

I keep thinking "oh I hope I get to do X on this trip" and then remembering this is not trip--this is *home* now.

Gonna be hard to go back to work tomorrow when "home" feels like a vacation destination.

Oh and we got to see the house we bought yesterday, and we looooooooove it.

aaaaaaay

If ya'll see a tall brunette driving a white pickup with Massachusetts plates (a rental, natch), that's me. Wave me over!

Later, if ya'll see a tall brunette driving a beat-up 12-year-old gray camry with DC plates (our own jalopy, natch), that's me. Wave me over!

Even later (we close next month and will be under construction for at least a month after that), we would love to have ilxs near and far come hang in the garden.

quincie, feel free to complain about this 1 day of rain and drive so slowly on the 101.

Everyone at the barn was freaking out about "horses standing in mud OMG" and I'm like whatevs, my pony has been through so much worse!

We can't get over how awesome this place is.

Except for the DMV but hey, show me a DMV that doesn't suck.

(And it actually wasn't that bad, just not as superior as the weather, the food, the scenery, etc.)

Barnmate also advised "do NOT drive on the 101, stick to side roads!" and I'm like lady I have spun cars on black ice on Pittsburgh hills, I think I can handle the 101 today.

I felt the same way until I realised who I was sharing the roads with when driving in Southern California.

I can relate, but I also imagine LA is another level. xp happy to hear you are still enjoying it out here. we are still settling in after our big move 1 mile up the road. we recently learned that our crawl space smells awful!

I have become rather intimate with our crawl space myself, given that I can see it through the rotten subflooring.

What started as a kitchen/bath reno has turned into a complete gut reno of the whole house, which is currently down to studs and said rotten subflooring (which itself will be replaced along with. . . pretty much absolutely everything else).

Moving into Milpas rental #2 next week, will be there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Will see how SB permitting office compares to SB DMV.

ooo wow. We are also doing an extensive reno of a portion. Our subfloor might be ok, but we have to replace all posts and piers and pour some new perimeter foundation. And we also have to fix the terrible compost smell. The internet seems to think you do this by either improving ventilation or removing ventialtion entirely and adding moisture barrier. These two things are opposites so I'm worried it's all bad.

Remember the good old days when it was just about retaining walls? :)

We knew the reno situation could snowball once we started pulling things out. Once it was clear that the subfloors should be replaced, then it meant drywall had to come down, and once that was the walls were opened up, why not go ahead and vault the ceiling? And we knew we needed to replace the knob and tube electrical for safety--easier now that it is all exposed.

I have not yet started to wrap my head around stuff I'd like to do outside. Does CA even have a lottery? Need to get some more cash flow going. I guess there is always the Chumash casino.

But back to adventures on Milpas: we decided that we are in the hood, we will eat at each and every restaurant from top of the street to ocean.

Unfortunately, this includes a Jack In the Box and a Carl's Jr.

Plenty of good stuff to offset those, thankfully.

KFC and Winchell's!

There's 4 or so places I've not had yet. Always wondered about Cesar's.

Always wondered about seeing a Jewel concert between poker hands at the chumash as well.

We have done Winchell's and ruled it not as good as Eller's. Haven't tried Cesar's yet. Actually doing KFC tonight--it has been years and I do so grudgingly, but spouse is unreasonably excited.

There is also a Little Caesars to tackle. Haven't had that since the 80s I reckon.

Bossie's was great!

I seem to eat/drink coffee on East Haley a lot.

In fact I think I will walk over there now that the terrible, terrible weather has passed.

Oh and I have not done the hot dog place yet but am excited to make a custom corn dog out of hot italian sausage instead of dog.

Eller's is indeed better. Glad somebody is up for KFC. Maybe there's some joy in choosing sides? I enjoy Bossie's and hope they do well. That spot, an old dairy building that had a cow statue on the roof, has flipped a number of times. Bossie's seems to have possibly stuck? The Haley Corridor was starting to happen before the pandemic. Hopefully it will pick up where it left off afterward.

Spudnuts my dudes

I prefer to eat my doughnuts with a side of mashed potatoes

Fatal shooting in front of our place last night was. . . unexpected

I'd imagine so! I wondered if it was nearby your current spot and hoped it wasn't. Santa Barbara is not immune to the occasional act of violence, typically "gang related" as this is described. We had some occur very near to the place we rented on Anapamu years ago. Most of it seems to happen closer to downtown, so it's a trade-off between living closer to the city and being nearer to incidents of crime. But things have happened even near Santa Barbara Middle School, which seems to be one of the swankier areas in the hills on APS.

100% of the two deaths i've been present at are described earlier on this thread

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/santa-barbara/crime-rate-statistics#:~:text=Violent%20crimes%20are%20defined%20in,a%205.03%25%20decline%20from%202016.

violent crime rate seems to trend near that for the US or at least california. murder/homicide is generally lower by a factor of 4. let's not give the Trumpers more ammo based on anecdotes.

i don't actually think SB is dangerous haha (although my post is true!)

I think this means that you are dangerous!

in combination with santa barbara anyway

You could fall off a cliff and into the sea, or eaten by a mountain lion, or almost get swallowed by a whale. Things of that nature

celebrating laker fan might hit you with their car

One of the victims was literally in front of our door :(. Apparently there were three separate spots where shots were fired along Liberty (which is only a block long). We were at the barn; came back at ~6:30pm to a lot of police tape. Detectives stopped by a couple of times but we obviously did not have anything to offer.

Very sad, I like this neighborhood a lot and don't feel it is dangerous at all!

So this is the fire-y flip side of the paradise coin.

Pony evac'd to Earl Warren yesterday.

Fires aside, this place is awesome and we are so happy to live here. It's been a year this month! We still don't live in the house we bought on video lol.

Glad you've made it home -- the area, if not the house!

excited for the reservoirs, of course

less excited for the 8 mph average speed around town

Creeks v full

Ah I remember the tense December by Mission creek 2 years ago. Now I just have mid-foundation-construction worries.

Just noticed a gutter was broken and aiming water directly at exposed wood in the sub area.

I’m not in SB at the moment, but pretty sure my pony is knee deep in mud. Hopefully not the case at the house. The street was prone to major float-your-car-away flooding, but the city did a bunch of storm drain work on it over the summer, so hopefully all is well.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ubvaxowp8UpF6RUN6

just a horse in a yard very near to downtown

wow this place is kind of magical?

It can be!

Jean Baudrillard waxed eloquently about it in his book America.

I am here now, in my glass coffin surrounded by VCRs, obsessed with death.

I eat a burrito, a spooky mummy for beans, as a hummingbird probes for kniphofia's nectar like a pirate skeleton with a cutlass.

this place truly is hell