Oh my, I do love a good Top 5. The earliest I can remember doing Top 5 lists is when I worked at this recliner factory with a friend from high school and it was SO boring. We alternated between working in the actual factory putting together books of fabric swatches and working in the office stuffing envelopes and putting stick-on address labels on them. SO boring. On office days my friend Chris started a tradition of doing Top 5 lists: top 5 bands you liked, top 5 movies, top 5 things to eat for lunch, top 5 whatever.
Nothing really new has happened in the last, I don't know, day or so...which means it's Top 5 time!
Top 5 Songs I Like to Listen to at Work:
1. Beast of Burden, The Rolling Stones
2. Monster, Lady Gaga (he ate my heart, he aaaaaate my heart)
See that cutie? That's my boyfriend. He's sooooo great- he takes me everywhere, moves just as fast or slow as I'm comfortable with...ok I can't keep this up without making a joke about riding so I'll just stop.
I did go for a fantastic bike ride the other day. I started in the Mission and rode up the 'wiggle' (a series of streets you switchback on to go up a giant hill without going on the actual giant hill) to Golden Gate Park. I rode all the way from the Haight end of the park to the beach! See?
That's the windmill right by the beach end of Golden Gate Park. I was curious about why there would be a windmill (officially called the Dutch Windmill) in the park so I did some interneting and this is what I found:
Originally the area of Golden Gate Park was arid, bare, and too windy for anything to grow. San Francisco decided to kill two birds with one stone, harnessing the wind with the windmill to pump water out of underground wells and water all of the trees and foliage planted in Golden Gate Park. It worked well and the park became the world's largest botanical garden at the time. Now the windmill is just a monument- it doesn't work or anything- but it still looks cool in an 'out of place' kind of way. If you want to read more you should go to http://www.dform.com/projects/windmill/index.html. Veeeeery interesting.
My long bike ride dumped me out at the beach where I ate a peanut butter sandwich and a banana and read until it got too cold and windy. The weather here is so diverse. When I started my ride in the Mission it was sunny and warm (because the Mission is perfect) and then as I rode up the hill it just got warmer. Halfway through the park it started to get cloudy, then windy, then cold...beachy, I guess. You need to dress in layers just to go across town. Weird.
I think biking around the city might be my new favorite thing, especially if I am able to upgrade my bike soon. It's so fun and liberating to just ride wherever, explore any street you can ride down, get lost and then find out that you're really close to somewhere you've been before. Kind of like life...
Back in January my mom called me and asked if I wanted to go see James Taylor and Carole King in concert with her and my dad. "Yes, of course!" I replied, thinking that I could easily drive down from Seattle for the weekend, see James and Carole, rock out with my parents, have some Mothers' Day fun, and drive back.
Then I moved to San Francisco.
Still wanting to go to the concert I devised a new plan: I would drive up to Portland, leave my car at my parents' house indefinitely (because so far having a car here just sucks- see my post about parking), see James and Carole, rock out with my parents, have some Mothers' Day fun, and fly back.
I left early on Thursday morning and 13 hours, one audiobook (Blink, by Malcom Gladwell), a few stops for fast food (eew), and some headset-enabled phone conversations later I was in Portland.
The concert was amazing! Inspiring! Far out. All the hits and all played together, mostly with James on guitar and Carole on piano. They rocked so hard and everyone was so into it. There was this unique energy, like they were reliving something wonderful but this time with perspective. It made me wonder: do I enjoy this more than other concerts I've been to because of that perspective? Am I reliving the past even though I didn't live it the first time? What does that mean?
The rest of the weekend was great family time. We went out to dinner at this cute little Portland place, The Country Cat, and had some reeeeeally filling soul food. I watched a ton of OnDemand TV (mostly The Hills and The City, I know, I know...), had a great lunch with my dad, played cards with my mom, and chatted with my brother and sister. It was just what I needed after a long month adjusting to new circumstances and surroundings.
I flew home (sort of home? Is it home yet? Not quite but getting close) on Sunday feeling refreshed and ready to go back to work. Portland is great and so sleepy and quiet compared to San Francisco. I came back to sun and fog and a knitting project and friends and my little room. Ahh...
It has been a month (a little more, actually) since I've moved here and I thought I'd do some Pros and Cons of San Francisco:
Pro: It is sunny and beautiful most of the time. Like, go to the park every day kind of sunny. And I know that there's this fog all the time and I've seen it creeping over the Twin Peaks but I haven't been affected by it too much. Those hills keep it out of the mission so it's sun sun sun for me.
Con: When it does rain it's, like, impossible not to get soaked. It reminds me of, and this will sound totally nerdy, in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when it is so rainy outside that they have to stay indoors and play hide and seek. I never got that when I was a kid- in the Northwest if it's raining you still go outside to play. If you didn't you would live your entire life indoors. But now I get it- it rains too crazy hard to play. Sorry I doubted you, CS Lewis.
Pro: People are very friendly! When you walk down the street people will look you in the eye or maybe even say hello. When I first got here I was looking for the Rainbow Grocery Store and asked a random woman on the street if she knew where it was. She didn't know but was like, "Oh hang on, I'll look it up on my iPhone for you!" and actually took the time to look it up for me! So nice!
Con: Catcalls. Harmless but annoying.
Pro: Lots of fantastic fresh produce. Cheap avocados and the best asparagus I've ever eaten.
Con: Yes, everyone, you were right: food is expensive here. Plus I have yet to find a good grocery store that's also affordable. Safeway is disgusting- really crowded and gross produce, although it's pretty cheap for pasta and bread and stuff. Rainbow is really great but very expensive (it's a worker-owned coop). There's tons of restaurants but that's expensive and I will get fat. Will I just have to make a few different stops for my shopping needs? I think so. Life change!
Pro: San Francisco is huge. There's so much to see and do and I feel like every time I go somewhere new I'm pleasantly surprised by some new neighborhood or store or park. I can keep exploring forever!
Con: San Francisco is huge. The other day there was a 10 cent lunch special in North Beach and I didn't even bother to go because I had to be back in the Mission by 3:30. Sigh. But a 10 cent lunch special! Make that a Pro!
Overall I would say that moving here has been one huge Pro. I am so, so much happier. Yeah, things are hard sometimes and I miss the comfort and familiarity of living in the same place for so long but it's worth it. When I first got here I was happy about 50% of the time. After a few weeks it bumped up to about 70% and now I would say I'm at 90-95%, no joke. How many people can say that?
It's been 3 weeks here in San Francisco and things are going well. I found a place to live, although the internet situation isn't quite worked out yet so I've taken another hiatus from blogging. Having a place to live really helps me feel more centered and settled, which might seem like a big 'duh' but I didn't realize how subconsciously stressed out I was until I wrote a giant check and breathed a giant sigh of relief.
Here's the view from my bedroom window: Nice, right? Beautiful colors, great amount of sunlight but not enough to wake me up in the morning, the hills in the background (might they be Twin Peaks? I don't know yet)...it's wonderful. My new favorite thing to do is put on some music, drink some wine, eat some cheese, and read on my bed (aka foam mattress on the floor). Relaxing and restorative!
I've been spending some time in Napa also, which is GORGEOUS. A good friend from college lives out there and works at a winery so I can enjoy some of the Napa experience with her, minus the Napa price tag. Check out Whitehall Lane Winery in St Helena if you're ever out there. The girl in the tasting room is preeeeetty cute.
But when I'm within San Francisco city limits this is my favorite place so far. And this is my favorite place in that place:
It's the Poetry room at City Lights Books and it was made for me. It's my quiet little sunbathed spot in the middle of the city. Like, seriously, in the middle of it. The people that live next door are hanging their laundry from the railing and you can see skyscrapers. Or maybe just high rises. Either way, very urban. I sat in this chair and read Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, which City Lights is famous for publishing. There was this giant, precedent setting trial surrounding it's publication and it is a big part of San Francisco history.
That's all the blog I have in me for now. I'll figure out the internet situation as soon as I can and hopefully be blogging every few days or so.
So now that that Barenaked Ladies are part of the party, here's what I've been up to for the past week:
1. My aunt lives in Reno but has a boat in Sausalito and invited me to go sailing with her last Saturday. So I did! It was great- beautiful weather, fun companions, snacks...loved it. This was like a 60something foot, 2-masted sailboat made for cruising so it was a really smooth ride. There was a crew working so the only thing I had to do was tighten the jib once, which is my kind of sailing. I just want to be on the water but not doing any of the work.
We sailed out towards the Golden Gate Bridge at first and I got some great views of it (note the cloudless sky!) and then we headed over towards Alcatraz, hung out around there for a bit, and headed back. The whole time I could see lots of the San Francisco skyline and learned a lot from the other people onboard. Did you know that Koit Tower is supposed to look like a fireman's hose (no, not that kind of hose, sicko)? It's a monument to the firefighters that died fighting the fire in 1906. Or 1916. Or something. Betcha didn't know!
2. I joined the Jane Austen Book Club of San Francisco and went to my first meeting! I'm a very, very big Jane Austen fan and this first meeting was everything I wanted it to be. The book was Northanger Abbey, which I read sometime in the last 6 months so I got a Wikipedia refresher before I went. Catherine Moreland, Henry Tilney, John Thorpe...got it. It's all coming back to me. Basically the story is a playful mockery of a Gothic novel, which was a really popular style when Jane Austen was writing. Think Wuthering Heights. The main character, Catherine, is preoccupied with Gothic novels so much that she tries to make her life into one and hilarity insues. Anyway, me and about 10 other women (and one late arriving man in a beret) discussed the book AND they all made allusions to and comparisons with other Jane Austen books!
For example: "I mean, what if Isabella Thorpe had met Mr. Elton?! Now there's a couple who deserve each other." Hahaha sooooo true, Alex. So true
An Austen nerd's dream! I was so happy. I just went to the library and got a copy of Sense and Sensibility, our next book. So excited. Oh, and there were homemade scones. Yes please!
3. I started working and discovered that we have a Nintendo64 in the basement/hang out area. So far it's been pretty lame games like Perfect Dark (a ripoff of 007) and Madden (eew) but people keep saying they're going to bring 007 from home. I'm hoping for MarioKart.
Everything is so exciting and new! Every time I go somewhere it's an adventure! I'm happy and energized but really freaking exhausted at the same time. All the newness is wearing me out and I'm ready for bed by about 9 every night. But I think that just comes with the territory. New city, new life, new bedtime...for a while. Anyway I'm loving this city and so far it's loving me back!
Yes, I didn't blog for a really long time. Let's just acknowledge that right now and then we can move on. Good!
I'm here! I made it to San Francisco. Right now I'm sitting on the couch (which is also my bed) in my friends' apartment with all my stuff piled around me. It was such a weird feeling to be driving down here and realize that almost everything I own is in my car. Weird. Weird weird weird. And now most of my stuff fits in the corner of their living room. Also pretty, prettaaaaaay weird.
It was a great road trip down here with my sister. We listened to a lot of Stevie Wonder and had some 'Wonder-ful' chats. I have to say, though, once you get past Redding it's kind of a crapper of a drive- just farmland and dirt and cars going too slow in the fast lane. I don't know how I would have gotten through it if I didn't have a partner in crime.
I had a fantastic first dinner in San Francisco last night at this place called the Blue Plate. Cheers to my first meal here and everything like that! Today I'm planning on exploring right after I move my car. Here's a funny thing about San Francisco: it really really sucks having a car. I've been here less than 24 hours and I've already learned this. My car is parked in a "Parking anytime except Wednesday 12-2" (for street cleaning) zone. So now I'm going to move it to a 2 hour zone while they clean the street and then hopefully get my spot back again at 2. We'll see. These are the kinds of adventures I'm having.
