Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

So much has changed recently. We moved across town, from the Outer Richmond to Bernal Heights. It's the third time in 18 months that we've moved. I have not moved this much since college. After the last move, which nearly killed me, I swore I would hire movers the next time I moved. I guess I lied. We moved ourselves again and it nearly killed me. I'm surrounded by boxes in our new beautiful, but small, apartment. There's still a bunch of stuff at the old house, which we're paying for until the end of the month. And worst of all, until I get this damn cat door installed, my kitties are living alone at the old house.

About that cat door... since the new place is SO small, there is no good place for a litter box except on the small back deck (which has a wonderful view; photos to come later). So I bought a new door from Lowes, cut out a hole & installed a cat door, cut holes for the door knob & dead bolt, and chiseled out space for the hinges. Now I have to cut about a half inch off the bottom of the new door before I can hang it where the current one is (the current one will go into storage until we move out). Then I have to paint it. Once I finish all that tomorrow, I can finally introduce the kitties to their new home.

I also bought a stackable washer/dryer combo that is currently sitting in the garage because it's so incredibly heavy that we can't move it up the stairs. Fortunately our friend Elliot has some kind of contraption to move incredibly heavy objects up stairs and will be helping us out on Saturday.

What prompted this move was the fact that I was laid off from my job of 12.5 years back in late October and have not been able to find a new job. Faced with the possibility of prolonged unemployment, we decided to move to save money. I love the new neighborhood; we're on the eastern edge of Bernal Heights, one block from Mission St, so it's very close to The Mission, Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. Unlike living in the Outer Richmond, this really feels like urban living and all that entails. So far, I love it.

The irony here is that on the first weekday in our new apartment, which we moved into because of my unemployment situation, I was offered a new job which pays more than the job I lost last year. The company is located in Santa Clara, which is about a 40 minute drive south (up to 70 minutes in rush hour traffic). I, however, will start by taking CalTrain instead of driving, since we currently have only one car. I can bike to the CalTrain station on 22nd St in about 15 minutes, I think. Then it's just over an hour train ride to Santa Clara. Fortunately my new job is about a 5 minute walk from the train station. Still, that's about a 90 minute commute each way, but I can read/work/whatever while riding the train. I'm thinking it won't be too bad. I start on January 26, so I still have some time to get settled into our new place.

In the South

I'm currently with Stella in Greensboro, NC, visiting with her family. Although this is technically "The South", it's not the southern experience one might imagine. Being near a University of NC campus, it's actually fairly liberal; walking around I see enough Obama signs and stickers, plus the occasional Grateful Dead sticker, that I don't feel too out of place coming from San Francisco. However, I just had a little encounter that reminded me that I am, in fact, in "The South." Of course, this actually could have happened anywhere, but I'd like the view it as a "southern experience."

I wanted to take a little walk to a nearby drugstore, and since it's quite cold out and my winter coat is in my still-missing luggage (that's a story for another blog post), I borrowed Stella's grandfather's army jacket. A real army-issued jacket. I'm guessing he served sometime around WWII, but I'm not sure.

On the way out of the store, I'm chatted up by a local. He's very blue-collar looking with some very noticeable silver teeth in his crooked smile, speaking with a thick southern drawl. We'll call him Blue-Collar Silver-Teeth Guy (BCSTG). I had two dialogs going with him, one in my head, the other spoken out loud. It went something like this:

[BCSTG]: It's a cluster-fuck out there, huh?
[Me, internal thought process]: I don't know what cluster-fuck you are speaking of; everything outside this store appears normal to me. I'll just politely agree.
[Me, spoken]: Yeah, man, it sure is.

[BCSTG] (Noticing my army jacket): Was you in the army?
[Me, internal thought process]: No, I'm part of the educated liberal elite in San Francisco. I wear this jacket as an ironic statement; a symbol of the imperialism and suffering our crypto-fascist government is spreading throughout the middle east specifically, and the world at large in general.
[Me, spoken]: No, man, it belonged to my grandfather.

[BCSTG]: I like the jacket anyway.
[Me, spoken]: Thanks, man. Later.

Bill O'Reilly on Our Fair City

We all know what a dirtbag Bill O'Reilly is. Recently, O'Reilly aired a brief "documentary" segment on San Francisco as a "warning" about what Obama's secular-progressive agenda could mean for America. Needless to say, it's highly sensationalized, focusing exclusively on the more "colorful" aspects of our city. It's amusing to watch, but of course it's not at all an accurate representation of what it's like to live here.

A World Transformed