A late goodbye, hello

Some of you know, and some of you do not, that I recently left the Land of Enchantment for the Golden State. This means a lot of things, major shifts in my life. This means that I quit school (probably). I've never really quit anything before, and I don't feel too good about it, but I think it was the right decision. It also means that, for the first time in my life, I have no plans to be going back to school. Think about that. I've never not been either in school or preparing to go to school. There's a finality in that that I've never experienced, and I'm not sure how to take it. For now, I mostly just don't think about it.

This also meant moving again. We had some troubles with the landpeople, but luckily my wife is awesome. It meant I had to tear out my garden, which was a little sad because the yellow squashes were finally starting to bear fruit; the zucchini, beans, and corn were pretty much played out, with little result from the non-pop-corn (I should take a picture of my bean and popcorn harvests some time; I dried them and brought them with me...shhh! don't tell California). I had already finished up with the community garden, since my pepper plants succumbed to frost. The zucchini plant also proved to be pretty well infested with aphids, so it was probably time for it to go. It was taking up at least half of the garden when I killed it. I haven't yet gotten around to planting anything here, a month later. And we had to give up all our houseplants (including my grape vine that was doing quite nicely) before the move. Hopefully some of those plants still exist?

Another thing the move meant was that I got to realize what great friends I have. I am a complete douche when it comes to keeping in touch with people and such, as pretty much all of you know. I only talk to one of my friends on a regular basis, and that's because he's a bulldog about calling me regularly. So I had notified two of my friends about the upcoming move so they could come help me fill the truck. I texted (texted!) BT the day of to see if he wanted to come down the street to help out, and he passed the word to SB, who passed the word to KGS and PS...all of these people showed up at my front door on no notice, with SB, KGS, and PS having to drive all the way down from Santa Fe for this. They stayed for hours and hours, helping me move boxes and pack boxes and wipe down surfaces and such. I really don't know how to thank these people. And AKW wouldn't even let me pay him for the beer that he brought over, so I basically did nothing for anybody, with no notice, and all of these people still gave of their time and energy just to see me off. I am truly luckly to have such people in my life. I hope that they still want to know me after my little escapade, although I would not blame them if they did not. They are all welcome to come stay with us in the big city any time, of course.

The next thing the move meant was a very long drive by myself (Alison already having moved out here the previous month). I hope not to have to drive a rental van that far again, maybe ever. The trip took 16 hours, with all of it taken up by road either terribly boring, pitch black, or that I've already seen before. Or all of the above in some cases. The only new towns I got to experience were Barstow and Bakersfield, and I tell you I could go my whole life without experiencing them again and be perfectly happy. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but they're just more Kingmans and Yumas. Nothing for me there. The move took me all of a day and a half, and I did it on a pretty amazingly low budget (less than $1K for the van, meals, gas, and lodging) which netted me a good signing bonus. The nicest part was seeing Alison again, even if we had to stay in a not-so-nice place for a couple nights.

The move also meant finding an apartment. I'll be first to say that Alison put in a heroic effort looking for a place in this city. The rental market here is apparently even worse than in Albuquerque, where you have to basically commit to taking a place as soon as you see it. In SF, you have to commit, and you have to have credit reports, references, and all kinds of other documentation ready at a moment's notice. This was kind of a shock to me, and led to quite a bit of running around for her, and a little bit for me. When I got to town, we looked at a total of two places and I encouraged her to agree with me that we should take the first one we saw. Now we live in a huge (by SF standards - 700 square feet for a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom) apartment on Twin Peaks, from which you can see the entire city, the Bay, the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, and everything else (on a clear day). Look at the pictures of the city in that article (incidentally, you can see our apartment complex on the aerial photo, just east of the parking area to the north of the two peaks). It's quiet here too, the quietest place I've been in the city yet. The roads are all very steep, and so nobody ever drives through our neighborhood.

It means that my carbon footprint has nosedived. It takes me about 40 minutes to get to work in the morning on the bus and the subway, and about 50 minutes or so on the subway and on foot (up the mountain!) to get home. I have a bus pass now, so I ride all of the buses for free. I have been in the car 5 times since we finished moving into this apartment, which is a bit over a month. I've commuted on public transit, I came home from the airport on transit, and we go into the city to do our shopping, socializing, and eating on transit. I've never, ever lived anywhere so easily accessible as this place. What a wonderful thing.

It means that I am having all kinds of new experiences. I have never lived sniffing distance from the ocean before. In fact, the closest I ever lived before here was Phoenix, which is a far cry yet, climatologically if not proximally. I've never lived somewhere so liberal before (although the passing of Proposition 8 was a pretty crushing blow, and kind of a shock in such a progressive state). Every day I embark on the subway in the morning (and disembark in the evening) in the Castro, beneath a huge gay pride flag. This place is easily the most diverse, most accepting place I've ever lived in, and I'm very appreciative of that.

I hope that this will be a return to regular blogging for me, although I only have a limited number of hours to spend with the wife between work and bed. I had such a long hiatus because my life was in flux, and I hate having to tell everybody that my life is in flux; I'd obviously just rather not deal with it and tell people after the fact.

Finally, it has come to my attention that my mother has located my blog, so everybody cut out the penis jokes and all the childish bullshit, for her sake if not for mine.