My first visit to Zachary's Pizza

As the saying goes, there are 2 really great pizza places in the Bay Area: Zachary's Pizza and the Cheeseboard. People who have lived in Norcal know of these two places and often argue over which is better. So, finally, I had my first experience at Zachary's Pizza.

David and I had to make a trip to Emeryville to Ikea. Ikea is cool and all IF the place is empty. It sucks going to Ikea when it is crazy busy. Imagine having these tiny aisles that you need to navigate through but you have shopping carts and little kids running around the shopping carts and all you want is a couple lamps. Then you realize you're on the wrong floor completely and could have avoided some of the crazy kids. Fun, right?! NO. So after the crazy visit to Ikea, David suggested we have dinner at Zachary's Pizza since I had never been. He went one New Years with his family a few years ago.

Using his wonderful iPhone, we looked up directions and made it there in one piece without dying (his GPS was all screwy in Oakland).


Zachary's was insane! There was a line out the door on a Sunday night just before 6pm! When I first entered, it looked like there was no order to the madness but then I realized it was very organized. If you want to eat there, you head up to the greeter and he takes your name and gives you a piece of paper that says approximately when they will have a table ready for you. But, the cool part is that you can then place your order while you are waiting for your table so your food should be ready once you sit down! Neat, huh? You can also order half baked pizza to go which you then finish cooking at home.

We put our name in (about a 45 min wait) and placed our order. We found a nice spot to wait out of the main flow of traffic. We waited about 10 minutes and then they called us! We still had to wait a fair bit for our pizza, but we had free refills that were filled very often (awesome!) and a salad to munch on while we waited. Soon, our order came out: we ordered a small pizza. It was wonderful!!! The pizzas at Zachary's are Chicago style so they have really thick crust. We got the crust stuffed with cheese. It had pepperonis buried under the layer of pizza sauce topped with chunks of tomatoes. MMM! Even tho we ordered a small, we still had leftovers to take home. That's how much pizza you get. It's very deceiving.

So, I had a great first experience at Zachary's. It's not David's favorite kind of pizza cuz he doesn't like tomato chunks, but I LOVE those. Next time we're near East Bay, we'll have to try the Cheeseboard out and see how it compares.

Settling down in California for now

Now that David and my US road trip has come to completion, it's time to settle down and start working again. David received a job offer he couldn't refuse in San Rafael which is in Northern California. Once he had his job finalized, we began looking for various places around his work to live. His work is off the 101 freeway in North Bay so ideally we wanted to find something close by. He has the inside scoop that the company would be moving their office to Novato after the Thanksgiving holiday so we started our search there.

Novato is a cute town just north of San Rafael with approximately 53,000 people so not too many. It's located roughly 30 miles north of San Francisco so it's an easy drive if suburbia becomes too much. We checked out about 5 places before deciding on the place we ultimately chose (since we needed to decide rather quickly so we could head back to So-cal and finish packing). We decided on a 2 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath 2 story townhouse. We have a garage and washer/dryer hookups! It's located on its own "court" and it's very quiet here at night. We have a Lucky's (yes, they're still around) around the corner from us and a larger Safeway not too much farther away. We have several restaurant choices all within easy walking distance but most of the restaurants are located in San Rafael. The restaurants are mainly on Grant Ave which is lined with lighted trees at night, making it a pretty cute street to drive down. But, so many places in Novato close pretty early, as early as 6pm.


click image for gallery
So, now we have a place to live, but we don't have anything to put in it! Before David and I went on our road trip, David had a big yard sale and got rid of most of his stuff. The only furniture he held onto were two double beds. Now began our frantic search for new furniture experience. We started in the high desert because we figured it would be better to buy stuff in Socal where it would be cheaper, where we had my Dad's truck to ship it back to Phelan in and where the movers could move it for us! We managed to find a couch set which consists of a couch, love seat and recliner (5 recliners in total!). Next, we located a washer, dryer, and dining room table. Those were the basic things we needed. We ran out of time to get anything else until we were up north. All of this and more were piled into my parents' garage awaiting the big move.


David had to drive back up to the townhouse before I was able to. David's company was paying to relocate us so I had to stay down south to oversee the movers packing up our stuff. We had a utility company coming on the Friday before he started working so I tried to send some stuff up with him such as a aerobed, vacuum and clothes so the house wouldn't be too empty. The moving company came the following Tuesday and I was able to drive up then.




Poor David had an empty house to stay in for 4 nights. I brought up the remainder of the clothes and most of the kitchen stuff so at least we could cook and eat at home. The place was pretty empty when I arrived. All the rooms were empty except for our bedroom which only had the aerobed.




Originally, the moving company said that they wouldn't be able to deliver our things for 9 days!! 9 DAYS to be without all of our stuff!! Luckily, after David called and bugged them every day for nearly a week, they said that they would be able to deliver it on the Saturday after I had moved up. So, only a 4 day turn around. Not too bad.

They arrived early on Saturday and finished unloading pretty quickly. It was so nice not to have to move everything ourselves. A moving company is the way to go if you can get your work to pay for it!! :) It took the weekend to unpack everything and get it organized (yes, I'm insane and can unpack that quickly). We have a pretty big townhouse. It's soooo nice to have so much space and a place to put everything!

So, as I mentioned earlier, we were lacking a lot of furniture. Once we were both up here, we went out furniture shopping AGAIN. We managed to find a desk, printer stand, and 2 shelves at Staples. Then we found a cute furniture store in San Rafael that sold inexpensive bedroom sets. We badly needed dressers. We found a set that came with 2 dressers, a mirror, a bed frame, and 2 night stands. We ordered a queen mattress to go with the bed so now we have 3 beds! Guess, we need to get rid of one of them. :P

So, the house is looking lived in.










We are still waiting on the delivery of the bedroom furniture, so I'll post new pics of those once they have arrived and are all set up. We only have a couple more things to pick up but have to go to the Ikea in Emeryville to get those. Not looking forward to that. Maybe we'll get to that this weekend. Now, I need to find a job.... :)