Time goes by. Feels like yesterday, but it's actually been a whole year since I moved to LA together with the family. Guess the wonderful present we received a month ago from our landlord - $500 rent increase. W00t! Needless to say, we've been apartment hunting ever since.
The Yahoo! office is at a great location, Santa Monica, 23 blocks from the beach. And since I wanted to be close to the office, so that I spend more time with the family and less time stuck in the world-famous LA traffic, we wanted to find a place nearby.
It just occurred to me that (for the things that matter to us) the formula for apartment hunting in West LA is:
"Price, school, washer/dryer in unit: pick any two"
It's crazy how expensive housing is here. It's crazy how few apartments have washer in the unit (the idea of washing your baby's clothes together with some dude's smelly nikes is insane, but apparently totally acceptable here). And it's crazy how the school regions are divided - our street is in the region of a perfect school (rating 10 of 10), but two blocks from here, it's totally different (rating 4 of 10). And you're not allowed to pick the school, you just have to enroll in the school for your region.
I checked Burbank (another Y! office) and Sunnyvale (Y!'s HQ): nowhere, I mean nowhere, the situation is that tragic as here. For the same money and often much less you can get excellent apartments (or houses) with great schools. California is expensive, but LA and especially the beach areas are just beyond expensive.
Anyway, I can go on, but ranting isn't my style and it only makes me more miserable 
On the bright side you live close to Hollywood, Beverly Hills and celebrities (like I care), you can "make it" as an actor (which I'm not), you can hit nice clubs where some of your favorite bands played (never done it, kids and all) or strip clubs (not me, hello, I'm a father of two girls).
On the really bright side we can hang out with Cinderella in Disneyland (hello, I'm a father of two girls) and hit the beach. Which we do. We have to, I mean, to make up for the insane rent 