Frustrated by the dearth of contemporary furniture offerings in the Sacramento-Davis area, we decided to head into the Bay area to expand our search. After a 4-hour marathon of med student skits last Friday, we awoke early on Saturday to drive to Berkeley to peruse CB2 and a Crate & Barrel Outlet before meeting with a friend from the East Bay for lunch. Afterwards, we drove into the city to check out KD Buttercup, Room & Board, and Bo Concept; but was disappointed that the Baker furniture showroom was only available by appointment on weekdays. We stopped for fancy Cantonese seafood at Asian Pearl before returning home. My clinical duties kept me busy last week with a pair of RDs that kept me up until 3am Monday night, and our Dean Symposium where I tried to showcase my recent work. Fortunately, my lab work has been alleviated with a new technician whom I hired. In just the few weeks since starting, he has proven to be a quick learner and hard worker. This past weekend, we returned to Berkeley to revisit the C&B outlet among several nearby modern furniture stores in Berkeley and Emeryville, including West Elm, Ikea, and an enormous granite outlet endorsed by Martin Yan and likely run by the Triad. A Yelp coupon gave us a small discount for momos and goat curry for lunch, which was offset by the $5 taro egg puffs after dinner at the Pacific East Mall – our now regular Richmond stop on the way back from the Bay. On Sunday, we ventured back to Vacaville to find more inspiration, scoring a small end table and towering faux ficus plants from Scandinavian Designs and another end table from Pier 1 that Melody’s been eyeing. Despite the low yield of actual furniture purchases, we were encouraged by our slowly-emerging consensus of how we want our new home to look.