House location
The most commonly asked question about my new house, in all online contexts, has been "Where is it?"
I've mentioned the approximate location various times in various places, but I think I must've buried it in the middle of other info, because a lot of people have been asking.
So I figured I'd do a separate post to answer in more detail.
The house is in Mountain View, about two miles from my condo. It's about a ten-minute walk from the cornucopia of restaurants downtown, and from the light rail and CalTrain stations.
It's roughly a 15- to 20-minute bike ride from work, though unfortunately the most direct route takes me over 101 on Shoreline, which doesn't look fun by bike. The new house is also near the Stevens Creek trail, but I suspect that taking that trail would double the travel time. But we'll see.
It's in a quiet semi-private neighborhood with, unfortunately, limited guest parking. (And any cars that aren't parked in designated guest spots or in driveways can be towed away, and there are no clear on-street indications of that.) But there's plenty of street parking a couple blocks away.
It's right next to a mobile-home park; I wouldn't have thought there was such a thing in Mountain View, but sure enough, there it is. My understanding is that it's a quiet mobile-home park; certainly when Kam and I drove through that park on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, there were few people out and about and no noise.
Re food: It'll be the furthest I've lived from La Costeña (excellent taqueria) since I arrived in Mountain View post-college, lo these many years ago. On the other hand, it'll be a fast and easy walk to a multitude of Chinese, Indian, Mexican, and Thai restaurants and a couple of cafes, and a slightly longer walk to Japanese and Italian food and bagels and a couple of bookstores and the public library. Plus a gyros place, a couple of noodle shops, what appears to be a new kosher restaurant, and various other restaurants I'm not so interested in (shabu shabu, pho, etc).
It'll also be a quick/easy drive to Kam's place. And pretty easy access to both 101 and 85.
So it's really an excellent location. Early in my search, I had briefly thought it would be nice to live near downtown, but decided I probably couldn't afford the neighborhood between Castro and Shoreline; it hadn't occurred to me that there's more than one direction in which one can be near downtown.
I may also have neglected to mention prominently enough that the new house has three bedrooms, so as soon as I'm settled into it a little, I encourage any friends and family visiting the area to help me justify buying the house by coming to visit!