My Birthday

Last Saturday was my birthday. My 40th birthday. Unfortunately, I managed to catch a cold a few days before my birthday. We had been planning a housewarming/birthday party, and we came close to canceling the whole thing, but I decided to persevere and do this no matter what it took.

Well, perhaps we should have canceled it. The problem is that we just don't really know enough people around here yet to throw a party. If everyone, or even close to everyone, that we invited actually showed up, it would have been a good party. But apparently I wasn't the only person in town dealing with a cold. Of the 30-35 people we invited, only 8 showed up, with no more than 5 people here at one time. We managed to have fun anyway, but I can't help but think it would have been better to get a babysitter for Jeffrey and go out somewhere with Stella.

The highlight of the evening was a photo/video card that Stella made for me. She had contacted many old friends and my parents and asked them to send her old photos of me, the more embarrassing, the better. She posted her creation on her blog here, or you can just view the video here. She did a great job with this and I was very touched. At least there was hardly anyone at the party to see the embarrassing photos of me in my youth.

You would think that after 40 years on this planet, I would have learned my limit with tequila. Sadly, no. I spent the first half of Sunday in bed recovering from the excesses of the night before. But once I did get up, we headed out to Fort Funston on the coast in the southern part of San Francisco. A quiet walk along the striking dunes & cliffs was just what I needed.

Unfortunately, the excesses of the party may be responsible for setting back my recovery from this cold. It's now been a week and I am still in the throes of it. I'm hoping I will have recovered by this weekend.

The view from the sand dunes of Fort Funston


Me at 40 and only slightly hungover


I love the diagrams of the dog and person falling

those dutch cellists

Years ago, when I first started playing cello, I heard about a dutch cellist who had developed a technique of playing with two bows - one played conventionally, on top of the strings, the other under neath the strings. Both bows are held in the right hand and the "underneath" bow can only play the outside strings - C and A. This opens up all sorts of possibilities of the cello as a chordal instrument. Periodically I heard more about this cellist and her fascinating technique, but never actually heard her play.

Fast forward to last Wednesday. My friend and pianist-extraordinaire, Myra Melford, was doing a gig at CNMAT (Center for New Music and Audio Technologies), a UC Berkeley performance space conveniently located 5 houses up the street from my old house in Berkeley. The two times I went there while living in Berkeley (once to hear Myra with Frank Gratkowski, the other to hear pianist Georg Graewe), I reveled in the ability to walk up the street 5 houses to see such great musicians. On Wednesday, however, it was about a 50 minute drive from the Outer Richmond in San Francisco. 35 minutes in light traffic.

This particular gig paired Myra with Frances-Marie Uitti, a dutch cellist visiting the area for a new music festival. About 10 minutes into their captivating set, the cellist picked up a second bow and started playing with both, one underneath, the other on top. I suddenly realized that I was watching that dutch cellist i had heard about for years. It was a rather thrilling realization. Their set was wonderful, if a bit too short. Very much worth the drive across the bay.

Tonight I'm headed back to Berkeley again see Myra play a double bill at Freight & Salvage - the Myra Melford/Ben Goldberg Quartet, followed by (or preceded by) Wayne Horvitz's Sweeter than the Day.

frozen in Grand Central Station

I love this! A group of over 200 actors all froze on the spot, at the same time, for 5 minutes. Then they simultaneously resumed what they were doing as if nothing happened.

Running

My temperature threshold for running outdoors is 50 degrees. Any colder than that and it's just no fun. Back in Ann Arbor, that ruled out almost every day from sometime in October until sometime in April. Here in San Francisco, almost every day is above my threshold. Today was one of those days.

This is the third day I've gone running since we moved to San Francisco. I loved running through the cute little hilly neighborhoods in Berkeley, getting high enough to get a view of the whole bay. But running here isn't terrible at all. I head straight for Golden Gate Park, a block away, and wind my way down to the ocean and run along that for a while. Every time I emerge from the park and see the ocean, I'm totally amazed. I can't believe that I actually live here!

Here's a map of my run today, which was exactly 4.5 miles.

the view

This is the view from the master bathroom upstairs. From one window in our apartment, you can actually see the Pacific Ocean!

(This photo is zoomed and cropped a bit. The ocean may not be as close as it appears in this photo.)

we're here

Well, we now live in San Francisco. The move was ridiculously difficult. I took friday off work, picked up the rental truck at 8:30am that morning, and started moving everything that I could lift myself, since Stella was not able to take time off work, being a teacher and all.

By about 2:30pm, I had moved what felt like 3 tons of boxes, furniture and assorted crap into the truck, pretty much filling it up. The drive across the East Bay Bridge was just fine, although traversing the hills of San Francisco felt like it was pushing the limits of the engine of a fully weighted truck. By the time I emptied the truck, carrying box after box after box up 14 steps to our front door, I was bruised, sweaty, sore and completely exhausted. And it was a warm and sunny California day - usually perfect weather, but for moving it was just too damn hot. After all that heavy lifting, the long, slow drive back to Berkeley in rush hour traffic was actually a relief.

The next day Stella & I managed to complete empty and clean the Berkeley house, although I finally pulled out of the driveway just after 5pm, again completely sweaty and exhausted. Unloading in San francisco was even harder, since I left the heaviest items for the second day. Fortunately, we were able to dump much of the heaviest stuff in the garage, which is at ground level, to contend with the next day. We finally finished around 9:30 or so. While we were unpacking, one of our new neighbors came by and introduced herself to us and insisted and getting us a couple of burritos from a place near by. Those burritos may have well saved our lives. At the end of the evening, when I finally was able to shower, I was stunned by the amount of bruises covering my arms and legs. Next time we move - and hopefully it won't be for a LONG time, we will definitely hire movers. I think it is probably worth the expense.

Today, Sunday, we moved the last of the heavy items from the basement and spend much of the day putting things in their proper place. We're all completely exhausted, Jeffrey has a bad cold and mild fever, Stella is getting sick and I'm sitting in the living room blogging when I should be sleeping.

Our phone and internet, which was supposed to be turned on Friday, is not working. They are sending someone out tomorrow by 7pm, but that means I can't work tomorrow as planned. honestly, I'm not too upset by that. We still have so much more to do here.

I'll miss Berkeley. It really is a wonderful city to live in. But San Francisco is pretty amazing too. We're half a block from Golden Gate Park and roughly 12 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. We can even see the ocean from the upstairs bathroom window. You can't get too much further west that we are now.

Things Happen FAST!!!

I feel a little bit crazed right now. Okay, a lot crazed. Due to various circumstances with Jeffrey's schooling, we've decided we need to move to San Francisco, the sooner the better. Our lease here ends at the end of June, so we figure we'll look around for the perfect place and try to time finding a replacement for our current lease so that we're not paying two rents at the same time. We figure this could happen fairly quickly or take the next six months. But I didn't think it would happen almost instantly!

We spent much of our christmas vacation driving around San Francisco looking at various places, most of which we could cross off our list without even viewing the inside. And of the places we did see inside, most were crap. It's amazing how much money people will pay to live in crap in San Francisco. So we saw two really nice places inside. One was just two small - two bedrooms, under 1000 square feet, which is small for three people and two cats.

But then we saw an amazing place with 3 bedrooms plus a study, a garage, living room, dining room, 2 and a half bathrooms, a great updated kitchen, and a wonderful back yard. It's a bit pricey at $3500 a month, but actually a good deal for San Francisco. (Did I mention that rents and home prices are totally insane here?) So at the open house we looked around and said to the realtor "We'll take it!" Unfortunately, at least 3 other people did the same thing. So we drove home and emailed the realtor all our application info and waited, thinking we'll never get it. Then came follow up calls from the realtor. And a conversation with the owner's sister. (The owner lives in Florida, the sister is local). Then the realtor telling us that the sister really liked us and things look good.

In the meantime, I put an ad on craigslist to find someone to take over our lease. A precarious juggling game, to say the least. If we don't find someone, we're stuck paying $3150 + $3500 a month until this place is rented!

As soon as I put the ad up on new years day, people started emailing and calling. I set up the first showing for the following morning. A really cool couple came by and looked around for about 5 minutes and said "We'll take it!". They sent their applications to our landlord, who accepted it. Now all we can do is wait until we hear about our new place.

So 15 minutes ago I get the call. They owner chose us! We got it! The only catch is that the place is available now and the owners don't want to wait until February 1 to start collecting rent. They want to start mid-month, which still means paying two rents for half a month. But wait - the people taking over our lease would actually like to move in early if possible. I'm stunned at how this is working out. I still need to call the owner of our new place and negotiate when to actually start the lease (I'm hoping for the weekend of the 19th), but I think this will all work out perfectly.

Of course the downside to this is that we're moving again. soon. very soon. panic inducing soon.

The new place is in the neighborhood known as The Richmond. It's the area north of Golden Gate Park and south of the Presideo. We will be pretty far west, about 10 or 12 blocks from Ocean Beach on the pacific ocean. What this means is when the infamous San Francisco fog moves in, it covers us first. In the summer, the fog should lift late morning and return early evening or even late afternoon. I can deal with that. I can deal with being half a block from Golden Gate Park. I can deal with being walking distance to the Pacific Ocean. I can deal with being in a nice house in San Francisco. It won't suck. Not at all.

Now is the time to go crazy with moving, setting up utilities at the new place, renting a truck, and all that fun stuff. Anyone want to come help us move?