I like it here. But sometimes I'm jealous.

Our apartment is amazing. It has granite countertops, lots of space, is virtually soundproof, and has a panoramic view of the SF bay. And we finally have some real furniture, plus--plus!--a digitial piano for TCH to play (in his past life, he played competitively). We've taken a good 2 or 3 steps up on the apartment living scale.

The only problem is that our fantabulous apartment is in the middle of what is referred to as "San Francisco's largest-ever mixed-use redevelopment project, Mission Bay." Until two years ago, there was nothing here but rail yards. In fact, if you google earth my address you will see an old satellite image that shows, well, nothing. All around us there is undeveloped land, construction happening, etc..

This means that there are a lot of places to shop and eat that are within walking distance during the day, but at night they're off-walking-limits. Fortunately there's good public transportation. But for someone like me, who's used to living in neighborhoody places like Coolidge Corner and Harvard Square, it's a bit of an adjustment. No big deal, just an adjustment - but I admit to feeling jealous of people who are living the classic San Francisco life, in a cute little hilly neighborhood where they can go around the corner for dinner or coffee in the middle of the night if they want without having to tiptoe through a half mile of sketch.

I don't think I'll have to wait long for things to improve-- there's a cafe opening up downstairs in my building, and in true (as it turns out) San Francisco fashion, the "cafe" turns into a bar in the afternoon. Love it! Yes, it's true: in San Francisco, cafes also serve beer and wine. Places called "java joint" are usually plastered with neon-light booze signs that turn on in the afternoon. This probably has something to do with my proximity to AT&T Park, where the SF Giants play baseball (we can hear the crowd cheering during games), but it's still funny. We also have a pub on campus that I haven't gone to yet but am retaining in my arsenal for a future desperate day, and some place called "Peasant Pies...the hand-held meal" that sounds kind of California-strange but is apparently quite good. So mostly I am feeling sorry for myself and need to get over it.

The other really cool thing is that I'll be across the bay in Berkeley at least three days a week for school starting in the fall, and it's really neat over there. Neighborhoody with a beautiful campus and TONS of really good food for less than here. And we all know that I mostly live for food. And also chocolate, which is technically food but I think deserves an elevated status.

Now it's real

It's been a busy couple of weeks. My mom and I got here almost two weeks ago and spent the first 1.5 weeks getting things set up, furniture delivered, unpacking, etc.. My dad got here at the end of our first week, and TCH touched down in San Francisco on Saturday around noon.

Since the guys arrived, we've done more sightseeing - walked across the Golden Gate Bridge with my dad, and then yesterday we went to see ancient redwood trees at Muir Woods, then to the windiest point on the Pacific coast at Point Reyes National Seashore (see pic). Both were fantastic, and within a 45-60 minute drive from San Francisco. Having such huge and awesome nature experiences so close at hand is pretty different from being in Boston. Very exciting!

However, the hard part of moving out here just started: my parents left last night to go home to Vermont. It was really nice having them here for the startup phase, though in some ways it kind of just postponed the inevitable. Now it's just TCH and me here in San Francisco, starting our Big Adventure Together. This means that as of today, there is exactly one person in San Francisco who understands who I am and why I am that way! My local-friendless state is temporary, sure, but it's a little weird.

In a fit of desperation last night, I logged on to Facebook and searched to see if any of my college classmates are here in SF. I recognized one person. Hmm...next idea?

In truth, I do have some plans to get in touch with, or stay in touch with, people I know who are here in the Bay Area. A high school classmate is in SF, and a recent coworker is also moving here this summer. She and I already have plans to get together, and I'm sure I'll be able to scare up some people to get dinner or drinks with, or go for a hike, or whatever. Also, most of the people who move into my apartment complex each year do so within the next couple of weeks, so there are lots of newbies to meet. There's even a summer kick-off party on Thursday for people to get to know each other.

I expect I'll get to know some people soon - and I'm enjoying my time settling in - but right now, I still feel a little unmoored.

Life on the edge

I've heard before that there are a lot of homeless people in the bay area, and I've seen it a little during previous visits here. But now that I'm actually living here and have spent a bit of time wandering around town, I'm starting to get a sense of just how pervasive the problem is.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned yesterday that the city spends $200 million a year to help support the homeless, but the problem keeps getting worse. There's enough support available to draw people here (and the fairly constant weather helps, since people can--temperature-wise--sleep outdoors safely), but not enough support to actually get people out of this awful situation. What that means is that if you spend a full day out wandering around the city, your sightseeing will be peppered with vignettes of lives spent in constant desperation. There are a lot of dirty, hungry people around this city, on a level that I haven't really seen in all my years in Boston.

It gives you some perspective on your own minor struggles, like yesterday when I saw a man with shoes that had the toes worn off, dirty legs and diseased feet, sitting on the ground shoveling food into his mouth from a trash bag. My God. And I think it's an issue if I have to pay a bunch for rent per month? At least I can manage to pay rent at all, and I never worry about whether I'll be able to eat.

I'd like to say I want to help, but really I have no idea what I could do, personally, to make anything better.

I ate a fresh fig!

I heard the other day that 90% of the food we consume in the U.S. comes from California. I'm not sure if that means 90% of the varieties of food we eat, or what (doesn't all the grain come from the midwest?), but the number is high. And I've been making the most of it!

In between furniture deliveries (hel-looo, cream leather couches from the discount store in the Mission District!) and watching the progress of the construction outside my front window, I've been exploring the food and drink options that the bay area has to offer.

Last Saturday, my mom and I went to the farmer's market to end all farmer's markets. Prices were higher than, say, Haymarket in Boston -- and the produce was better, the people nicer. Even better, the sellers all give out free samples (cheese, bread, olive oil, preserves, a huge variety of fresh fruits and veggies, even including fresh figs (!)). The fresh fig--which I didn't know came any way other than dried--was a big sign that I'm not in Massachusetts anymore. No offense to New England, but the fruits there never taste like the ones I've had every day out here.

I'm starting to think that the reason California kids are always so laid back is that they can just assume a constant supply of phenomenally fresh and tasty fruits and vegetables year round. On the other hand - maybe I'm assuming things about other people. Not everyone gets all excited about fruits and veggies the way I do.

On Sunday, we went on a wine tasting tour in Napa Valley, which was beautiful! Here's a picture:

That picture is of the vineyard at Andretti Winery, which is (side note) owned by Mario Andretti, NASCAR dude. The countryside was gorgeous. Kind of like going to Italy, but without the language barrier. We went to 4 wineries on the tour, and had an ongoing picnic of olive bread, gruyere cheese, olives, and apricots.

If you come visit me in San Francisco, I'll send you on the same tour - it was a lot of fun.

I also had two more food/drink triumphs today: I figured out how to get to Trader Joe's (by using a city bus), and I also found a seriously good thai restaurant within walking distance from my apartment. My neighborhood (this is a euphemistic term - it's really a few buildings and then a lot of apartment buildings under construction) may be dreary right now, but as long as I can get my TJ's fix and my pad thai, everything will be okay.

Have to admit, though, I really miss knowing exactly how to get to everything I need. I could practically get around Boston in my sleep after nine years, and now I'm in the position of going places and thinking, "Oh, crap! I figured out how to get here, but never looked up how to get home again! Now what???" I'm hoping to get this phase over with by the time I head back east in August, so there'll be minimal angst when I have to add in the Berkeley commute this fall.

On an air mattress, 15 floors up

I'm in San Francisco!

On Tuesday morning, my mom and I got up at 3:30 in the morning, deflated and packed her air mattress, collected our pile of luggage, and headed to Logan. This is what we were up against:

Twelve hours, some sore muscles, and two very full taxis later, we looked out the living room window of my new apartment at this view:

My apartment is on the 15th floor of a building in what they call an "up-and-coming area," with a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay, including (as you see) the Bay Bridge, marinas, and a working harbor. The up-and-coming aspect involves a lot of construction (note pile driver at left). It's kind of like the west coast's large-scale answer to Bar Harbor, but with a very messy front yard. It will be very interesting to see how the neighborhood evolves over the next few years. Several shops are going in downstairs in the next few months, and much of the immediate area will be biotech and research, plus a number of high-end condo buildings.

But more about the move: we opened the door to an almost-new (2 years old) apartment with chocolate carpet, off-white walls, granite countertops, and a really cool view. The dirt and construction next to the building took a little getting used to, but that will go away and the apartment (and its view) is gorgeous. I'll be interested to see how things change over the next few years.

No future in retail

My sale was a flop. I did manage to sell our dining chairs, desk, ottoman, and a few miscellaneous items, but after all that, I basically just met my going hourly rate in terms of the amount of time I put into setting it all up and waiting for people to come by.

I also discovered that an insane person (or at least an insanely angry) person lives in my apartment building. Here's the background:

I live in a building that has a really positive community feel to it. There's a table in the main lobby where people leave things they don't need for others to take for free. And when people move out, they often hold moving sales and post signs in the building. Usually they put a sign on each of the two elevators, since that will catch most people's eye as they come and go.

My sale was scheduled for Saturday, 1pm-5pm, so on Friday evening, I posted a few signs. I used tape to put up the signs, but tested it first to make sure it wouldn't damage the paint, and planned to leave them up only until the end of my sale. A few hours later, I found the sign from the elevator torn down and thrown, crumpled, on the floor. I posted a new one. Repeat 3 more times. After the 4th sign, since my printer is on its way to California and I had to print my signs at Kinkos, I was starting to run out! I posted one more sign, and added a small note asking the person to please stop removing my signs.

The next time I went to the elevator, someone had taken the sign down, crumpled it thoroughly, written on it, and reposted it. The general idea is that I am treating the building like a dorm by posting a sign using small pieces of carefully-tested tape, along with a request to "Stop WRECKING our home, you SELFISH NITWIT!!!" The sale was almost over by that point, so I took down the sign and moved on--or so I thought.

TCH San Fran went out to remove a couple other signs from nearby buildings, and during the 5 or so minutes he was gone, my anonymous critic went to his/her apartment, typed up an angry missive in bold font, printed it, tiptoed to my apartment, and TAPED the sign to my apartment door. The irony and possible humor around the use of tape didn't escape me...except that when something like this happens, you kind of wonder if the person is crazed and murderous, and the fact that they are anonymous, but know where you live, is a little creepy. At least the sign wasn't posted with a bloody knife the way it would be in a movie.

So how did we deal with it? We wanted it to just be over. We wrote a note that said, "We are very sorry. We hadn't considered your point of view, and it makes a lot of sense. Please know that we have learned something for the future. Thank you for taking the time to explain."

I guess those years of diffusing customer service tension really do come in handy sometimes. After reading that note, how could anyone--even someone seriously unhinged, with an inability to make sure the hate mail they tape on people's doors is hung straight--feel they need to pursue the issue further? In some way, this strange and angry person has won the battle that only they were fighting. I'm leaving (though I was anyway), and having had a glimpse inside someone's creepy mind, I am sufficiently subdued and am looking forward to getting out of here. I suppose they felt my sign hanging on the elevator door to be an invasion of their space, and so they decided to invade my space in return. The sheer passive-aggressiveness of the whole thing has left me feeling a little bemused, but it's time to move on.

Meanwhile, while we were dealing with all of that, I was also trying to sell stuff in my apartment. As I said, some items sold - but we are still left with a bunch of things, including 2 big items - the couch and my dresser. I hope we won't end up setting them out for free, as they're in good shape and worth a little money. At a certain point, though (like tomorrow), we're going to have to dispo them and move on from this city.

It was serrated

Moving to the west coast, at least at my stage of life, precludes taking furniture with you. So when TCH San Fran and I loaded up our Door to Door container last week and sent it off to San Francisco, we didn't include any furniture other than our desk chair and our coatrack (hey, they fit!). Door to Door seems great so far, but I will be very happy to have the rest of my clothes back on June 21st, since right now I'm just mixing and matching the same six things over and over.



Ever since then, I've been trying to sell the rest of our stuff. Several items have sold already, and today I'm holding a moving sale in our apartment. I've arrayed a wide variety of high-quality, good value items (aka things I want to get rid of ASAP) in my store's display area (aka my living room), and have labeled them with reasonable prices (aka prices that will get people to buy stuff and take it away). I am hoping to be done with this wacky process after today.

A woman showed up this morning to pick up our bed (mattress, boxspring, and frame). As she walked in the door, she said, "I brought a bunch of rope with me, but I'm going to need your knife if we want to get this over with fast."

Once I figured out what she meant, I gave her a knife to use to cut lengths of rope for tying the mattress to the roof of her car -- but I gave her the dull, serrated one!

Remembering

I recently helped my mother go through the last of the childhood leftovers in my old bedroom. Makes sense, since I haven't lived there since the summer of 2001, am married, and am about to move 3,000 miles away.

So I've gotten rid of most things--except for one box, lined in plastic, labeled DO NOT THROW AWAY! NOT TRASH! SAVE FOREVER!!!! IMPORTANT MEMORIES!!

This box has been slowly filling for about five years now, with illustrated stories I wrote in second grade, photos, my high school art portfolio, and the like. Also, one small treasure: a journal I started keeping when I was twelve and in the seventh grade. It provides a frightening glimpse into the inner life of a middle-schooler...for about thirteen pages, and then I guess I got bored and went to watch Star Search.

Life has come so far since then, of course, that these days, I don't remember the seriously, totally horrible things that I might not even survive detailed in the journal. I remember generalized feelings, but very few specifics.

However, it was a time of important transition...and so is this.

I realize now that if I want to remember the small victories, disappointments, and surprises of my current transition -- moving from Boston to San Francisco, starting school, discovering a whole new world of adventures -- I had better record it, and share that record with others so that they know my memories, too, and can help keep them.

I will write as often as I can, to share my new life with all of you. I will do my best, and I hope you will keep checking for updates. Thanks for stopping by!