Day 159 - If you're going to San Francisco make sure to bring Frizz Ease for your hair

Well, we are both back safe and sound in Seattle from our fun-filled excursion to San Francisco Mon-Weds. Hopefully things work out future-wise so we can start filling in the blanks as far as what city we'll be living in, where our daughter will spend at least the first few years of her life and, as the subject reveals, what kind of hair products I will be needing to invest in. By the time I got back to Seattle, I was half expecting some little baby sparrows to peak their heads out of my hair with its new nest-like qualities.

San Francisco is really sunny. I mean, maybe I've been in denial about Seattle weather- yea it drizzles frequently, but when it's sunny it's pleasant and normal. I felt like I was staring into the sun most of the time while there. I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge (two times as I was typing that I typed "Gordon Gate") and on the return journey when I came out of a tunnel through a mountain, I thought I was going to have to pull over because I was just absolutely blinded by the sun. Maybe my eyes have just become accustomed to indirect overcast sunlight. I don't know. Anyway, the more I explored SF the more I liked it. John was busy kicking ass with a job interview so all of this exploration was done solo (with baby girl hanging out within, of course).

The night we arrived, after spending some time at Carlos's awesome apartment, we headed to the hotel in Mountain view. Frankly, Mountain View is like a typical higher class Long Island town which gave me the yuuuuhhhlll chills. If I had to name which town on LI, I'd say Manhasset. So for about 1/4 of the people who grudgingly read this blog- there is your visual. I was thinking to myself, Yikes, I'm not sure if this is the kind of place I'm looking to spend any significant amount of time and psyching myself out on the whole deal (privately- I didn't share this with John before his interview; call it consideration?) The next day I hopped on the train into SF (about an hour ride north) squinting the whole way (re previous paragraph), I was also not very excited about the flatness of the landscape or the spanish style one-level housing abundance. My critical analysis is about to take a positive turn now- once I got into SF my opinion about everything was much brighter. There is a lot of personality, natural beauty and charm there. I did find that my usually accurate mental GPS was not functioning at all, which was a huge bummer. I tell John all the time I like to get lost and then find my way which is difficult once you've become familiar with the territory and here I was with a whole new map and I was like barely able to orient north from south.

When John came back from his interview we walked quite a ways downtown and ate at some place that seemed like it might be mexican due to the font of their signage but in fact was more like a diner without the gaudy greek mirrors and soulvaki. On the walk back to Carlos's place I fell and scraped my knee and both of us were complaining like true athletes about the state of our feet from such a trek- mine were swollen and getting grinded up against my sneakers and John was essentially wearing water shoes- I can just hear his reaction to this when he reads "Tai, those shoes are PRAAADDAAAAHHHS!"

We spent the evening with Carlos, Jesse, Ajit and Carly watching Alice in Wonderland and Lost and the next morning I woke up day/nightdreaming about eating cocoa pebbles.

All in all, I really enjoyed SF. It is very different to move to a new city under the premise of a longer, more permanent stay. When I moved to Seattle I was committing to a year; after 6 months I realized I could happily spend the rest of my life here but enjoyed the flexibility. If we end up moving anywhere, it will be for a longer stretch of time for sure and that context is odd. Of course the case isn't shut. I'm still rooting for Seattle- I'd like to continue working for the Center and be surrounded by the familiar but I'm also up for a big change and carving out a new life somewhere with John and Aria. Yea, we've pretty much decided her name is Aria so shout it from the rooftops. We'll let you know if that changes, and I'll probably insert it nonchalantly at the end of another blog post to weed out our less than avid readership. See ya!

Oh also I did a very shitty job of taking photos in SF. The only thing I captured was this:

Why even bother, you ask? I thought it was cool because of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21TmsT1qsPo