I haven’t been posting. I’m horrible. I know.

Here’s what you’ve missed:

• Found I love Jerk chicken
• Bought healthy snacks: grapes & cherries (CA grown)
• a drawn out, dramatic recount of my 3.5-hour 4-mile move
• a bit about exploring my new neighborhood the same night. Discovered an Apple store & Urban Outfitters within walking distance. Had my first Johnny Rockets experience
• my first happy hour at Pete’s, the bar (except Johnny assumed I meant my married boss, Pete, and thought I was being a bad kid)
• the first project I was part of launched
• my peaceful lunch on the roof, watching boats pass by, enjoying my yummy bagel sandwich. I met some guys from Current.tv on my walk up
• Rocked my first Spindig at Butter with Diana. Fell in love with the After School Special. Heard some co-workers spin and saw others do other things. Got hit on. Later realized he was the same guy who had yelled at Johnny for not introducing us when I visited SF in Feb 07. Same guy stood between me & the door when I tried leaving, demanding my phone number. I won’t say that I didn’t make this entire experience very difficult for him, nor that I didn’t enjoy doing so.
• Decided I was just drunk enough to conquer walking alone at night and just sober enough to not die in the process. Google Maps estimates I walked just under 5 miles and that it would have been 2.8 miles to my destination had I actually known where I was going. I was about 1.5 miles in to it before I called Justin to see if I was even on the right track. Surprisingly, I was but I had taken the scenic route. Oh yeah, it was 11pm on a Friday :) But hey, I got there in time to watch part of the Care Bears movie.
• Checked out Union St and Haight St with Justin. Discovered free shelves on the sidewalk. As we were toting them down the street, a girl pointed & yelled “Woohoo Craig’s list!!!” Amusing. We cleaned them up & tightened the legs. They’re ikea shelves that are now practically like new. Score. Bought a shower curtain, an item you don’t appreciate until you’re lacking it. Waited almost an hour for brunch at Zazie’s in Cole Valley. It was kind of delicious. Scrambled eggs with basil & cream cheese. Yum. Also, sampled my first poached egg. Surprisingly yum. Had pizza at Escape from New York. Yum, again.
• Learned my building had a hidden private commons area (sweet)

So now you’re pretty much up-to-date. I still have no internet, so if this post appears, I was able to successfully hijack some long enough to get it up. There’s scaffolding covering my building and thus my window and thus my view, so I’ll post more place photos when that’s all done. Maybe I’ll even have some furniture then.

To give you an idea of the extremist minimal conditions I’m under, let me share the steps required to eat my italian leftovers. Seek out metal surface, wash it, dump food on surface, pop in oven, cut plastic carry-out containers in to a makeshift fork/knife, remove from oven, eat directly from pan while hovering over stove, decide plastic silverware is genius until I poke too deep and it starts melting. Oh yeah, and I sleep in a van down by the river. Not really but it just sounded appropriate.

My movers allegedly picked up my stuff Friday, so it could be here in 4 days or 2 weeks. I’m waiting on an ETA.

I do enjoy my place, though. The bus ride is pleasant and never packed. I pass by most the piers, the bay bridge, and some cute little parks. This morning I discovered an In-n-out burger walking distance from my place. Expect photos of that as it will be necessary to taunt all my IN folks and Johnny, the SF deserter. (However, he is a homeowner in Amsterdam as of recently, so he gets points for that one.)

But yes, I have shopping, dining, cafes, movie theaters, my bank, a post office…all within a 5-6 block walk. And once the scaffolding is down, a view of Golden Gate & the dome on the Palace of Fine Arts. Oh yeah, and all the park areas along the north shore are steps away. Too many things to do. The days here are passing by. I’ve been at my job a month. I still have this strange, mixed sense of time. So much time has passed so quickly, but the timeline feels as if it extends back further than a month. It’s as if I’ve lived here in a past life or known some of these people for years before. It’s strange but awesome. Maybe I felt this way in Carmel and I don’t remember.

And this is going to sound horrible, but it’s crossed my mind that I’m afraid having friends/family visit me here will somehow tarnish the purity of this experience—somehow bring with them traits, habits, and beliefs I left behind. Then again, it’s a true test of the permanence of this evolution. I have to hold tightly to who I am now (who I thought I always should have been) and not let it waiver in the face of my past.

Oh, and the guy from Friday. I didn’t give him my number. He works in the same building as me, so I told him if he really wanted it, he’d figure out a way to get it when he was sober on Monday. I walked in this morning to his number scribbled on my desk and got a call on my office phone a couple hours later inviting me to lunch. I went and had a nice time. I’m trying to give him a genuine chance, something I often struggle to do.