Or, at least, as ours as a rented house can be.

I picked up the keys to the house today from our new landlord. For some reason, the whole idea of moving into the house is a little surreal. Perhaps I’ve grown too rooted to and spoiled by our current residence. There is no doubt that I’ll miss this little piece of luxury I’ve had for the past five years. I’ll manage. With luck (and a few lottery tickets?), we’ll be able to buy a house of our own by the time our lease comes due next May.

When I got home tonight, I got an earful from our neighbor about my choice to rent instead of buy. The conversation gave me second thoughts about choosing not to buy a house, but I think I’ll get over it. Particularly if I go back to read a few of the articles written about the San Diego housing market over the last few months.

During class tonight, I learned that to earn my second degree I need to meet only two requirements: study actively for two years or more; and, learn two additional kata.

There is, of course, a third requirement I have assigned myself: re-learn all of my old forms and understand them in-depth. So, after a ten year hiatus, I am well on my way to earning my second degree black belt. I wonder where I’d be had I not spent so much time away from the art.

Perhaps after earning my second degree I will investigate the possibility of starting my own Kiado-Ryu school. Yes, I’d like that.

Today marks my three month anniversary at Qualcomm. Well, technically tomorrow would be three months, but tomorrow is Saturday. I feel that I have finally come up to speed with what I need to do and have started accomplishing things and making a difference.

I have come somewhat full circle now. In college, I took a class entitled High Performance Computing. We learned how to write programs to take advantage of multiple computing resources (mostly multiple CPUs, be they within a single machine or spread across multiple machines). After the final paper, the professor asked if I would like to do graduate-level work with him. At the time I turned him down, but now I am working with a massive grid of computers and returning to do graduate-level work is looking all the more tempting (particularly since Qualcomm will help foot the bill).

About once a day or so, I stop and think how much better this job is than my last and how much happier I’ve been. The incident last month with my last company really demonstrates how bad it was. Sadly, I could have skipped all those years of worthless Web development (the development I did, not to say that Web development itself is worthless). Back around 1997, I was offered an internship at Qualcomm, but I turned it down. Oh well, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

After looking into buying a house in San Diego, we finally faced facts and gave up. I can lament all I want about wasting my time and not buying a house when I had the opportunity, but nothing is going to change that.

To that end, today we paid our first visit to the house we’re considering renting. It’s nice, I suppose. The previous occupants didn’t treat it very well, unfortunately. However, it has been kept up reasonably well for its age. Four bedrooms, front and back yards, a garage, and—perhaps the clincher—no pet deposit. I’m not entirely pleased with the house, but beggars can’t be choosers. We can’t stay in our current residence and we can’t afford to buy a house. This is the best rental we’ve found, and I don’t expect we’d find better.

The landlord seems like a nice enough person, though I suspect it will take some time to grow accustomed to not renting from my own parents. My mom sure makes a nice landlord.