Be vewwy vewwy quiet...

... I'm huntin' houses.

What season is it anyway?

My recent emancipation from credit card debt has emboldened me to take some tentative steps into that lion's den of real estate, the Bay Area housing market. Without really meaning to, I'd find myself cruising around choice neighborhoods Sundays, 2-4pm looking for that cheery-yet-elegant 'Open House' sign and then making the (often abrupt) maneuvers to intercept.

It's house huntin' season!

By choice neighborhoods, I mean the edges of what I *think* I can afford. If trends hold up, that should be expanding in the next few months. Before my eyes, prices have dropped $10-20k on locations I've been looking at the last two weeks alone. I'm actually fighting a strong impulse I have right now to move on this condo by Berkeley's dog park. Besides the overall cool-down in the market, there's the seasonal winter cool-down a-comin' that I'm hoping will give me a fighting chance at something better when autumn rolls around.

Berkeley's at the top of the list. The town and I have history, and I'd like to build on that. I'd be perfectly snug as a bug in parts of Oak-town or E'ville, though, if circumstances dictate. The Watergate condos that so many of my cohorts have bought up, for example, are well within the price range. I find them a bit bleak (I like to call them 'people storage'), but I'd hardly be suffering there.

BART proximity's also a huge factor. Living in the East Bay means commuting, and so help me I will not be able to maintain sanity if I have to endure the Bay Bridge 5x a week.

Money-wise, all the on-line calculators and trackers have given me a pretty good idea of what I can afford. All these cheats like Interest-only and TIC just aren't options, as far as I'm concerned. I really wanna go for the real deal or bust. Some people swear by TIC, but even in the best case it sounds like a hell of a long-term gamble.

The big variable for me is the job. It's a volatile industry and I really need to factor that in somehow with my decision. What if I have to move in a few months? Who knows, I may find myself making lattes or something for a bit. Or I may find myself... living in a shotgun shack. Or I may find myself... in another part of the world. Or I may find myself... behind the wheel of a large automobile... Anyway, if any of this happens, I need to figure out stuff about moving and renting it out or potentially selling it before the 2-year minimum.

I suppose it's also possible that home ownership may simply not be in the cards for me right now. I haven't seriously talked to a professional just yet, and there's only so much all these web tools can consider.

Model citizen

I was pretty excited to learn that they were starting up sculpting lessons here at the new digs with Richard, the lead maquette builder for our (now former & lovin' it) model shop. Many others shared the excitement as well, apparently, and I couldn't get into a session until the start of June. Just finished up last Monday and I had a terrific time and got a lot out of the class. Rich is a terrific teacher too, not afraid to poke fun at your work if you're doing something really off, and had lots of great little tricks and little pearls of wisdom to offer on the subject. It's great how people here are down to earth about things that are easy to become such an insufferable snob about.

We did two subjects with a four 3-hour sessions each. That's plenty for an experienced sculptor with the basic poses like the ones we used, but it's still fairly challenging. Most other workshops I've been to do at least six sessions. Lacking formal instruction, these have always been a real battle for me, and I finally started getting it together with my co-worker's class last year, but it was his first time teaching and we ran out of time to cover everything.

So getting a real class with an experienced instructor for free was a real godsend. We'd have a catered dinner too on top of it all, which was awesome. I kept forgetting to bring tupperware -- the food was good and there was always tons of leftovers that'd just sit there overnight and get tossed in the AM.


I guess generally I've got a good grasp of proportion, facial expressions, and attitude. I notice I tend to stick to heroic or athletic body types, though, regardless of what's in front of me (though the models were both very athletic -- not always the case). This is fine, but can get a tad monotonous. I liked how some of the more experienced people layered on flesh to to give muscles and fat a sense of sag. The flesh on my models tends to look taut and a bit tensed up.


Faces were one area I really developed a lot this time around, even throwing in this pissed off expression on the guy with the staff. Because there was a very Wushu-like feel to the pose, I embellished a bit by taking the stance wider and lower and giving it a bit of a lean. I guess this sort of gives us something that looks kind of like southern staff.

Given the level I see my colleagues are at, I know I've got a long way to go, but at least I feel like I'm progressing. I'm in a maquette class due to start in two weeks, where we're supposed to make up something to build. What, o what to build...