this morning from the apartment

I thought I would sit on the balcony this morning and update the blog, but there is just too much street noise on a Friday mid-morning to be comfortable.  I'm not the world's best sleeper and this noise goes on pretty constantly (our bedroom faces the noisy side of the apartment), so you can imagine the bags under my eyes after a week of poor sleep!

A little video to give you a taste:

(When I watch the video, it doesn't sound like lots of noise, but trust me.  There's just a constant humming of cars and sirens and people yelling and motorcycle horns honking.)

I'd like to point out some things of interest that you may have missed in the video.  (Sorry for dark pictures - the rainy weather is rolling in for the weekend.)

There are some unique marvels of engineering feat that can be viewed from our apartment.  To the left of our balcony, we can see this view:

Do you see what I see?

Here, let me give you close-ups of the left and right sides of that shot:

The mountain is being held up by what looks like concrete.

By concrete.

First of all, how did they get they get those beams under there?

Second of all, I hope the real estate prices of the apartment buildings that abut the mountain are cheaper than those not right on the mountain since they're serving as the first line of defense in case the beams give and the mountain crumbles.

Third of all, I'm glad there's a little distance between us and the mountain in case the Quikrete fails.

(With that said, the back of our apartment abuts the same mountain but I haven't seen any concrete beams on our side.)

Directly in front of our building is a little monument and plaza that the firefighters use for some sort of training.  We've now seen them twice in the last week here.  They raise the ladders, lower the ladders, shoot some water around and then head off with all sirens blaring.

More on the housing situation later, but it looks - fingers crossed - like we may move into our real residence in September!  We toured the house yesterday and I'm happy to report that I could not hear the first bit of street traffic when I stood on the balconies!