Journals : 2005 : June
1 June 2005 | Link this
Tomorrow is my last full day as a resident of San Francisco, after almost thirteen years. Years ago, I often thought about how I might spend my last day in the city. Apparently, it's not uncommon; Herb Caen once wrote a column on the same subject, featuring numerous stops (and numerous drinks) all over town...
My last day will probably be less ambitious. I'll go to work, finish up a few projects, ship a few final items, and say goodbye to my coworkers. Then I'll come home, do a little freelance work, invoice some clients, send aa few change of address notices, and pack up the G5 for its trip to North Carolina. Afterward, Mark and I will probably get some takeout food and then clean the toilet...
2 June 2005 | Link this
Typically, my final commute home on Muni involved waiting 25 minutes for a bus which supposedly runs every ten, and then crawling home for a trip which lasted only about fifteen minutes longer than walking would've...
2 June 2005 Later | Link this
Goodbye, San Francisco. You can give me your phone number, but I probably won't call...
8 June 2005 | Link this
Just a quick note to say that we're alive and well and sitting in air conditioned comfort at a Red Roof Inn in Phoenix. I may very well wait until we land to do my trip commentary, but you can get Mark's version starting here...
16 June 2005 | Link this
Nous sommes arrivés. More soon...
20 June 2005 | Link this
Ruth's Pimento Cheese Spread. It's one of those things you just don't realize you've been craving for thirteen years until you happen to see it in the Food Lion one Sunday night...
I could not be any happier than I am at this moment, being back in a city that makes sense to me and feels like home. OK, maybe I'd be a LITTLE happier if Bellsouth hadn't lied and told me DSL was available in my new apartment, but that's nothing a little bit of cable modem won't fix. So maybe I'll be able to answer email tomorrow; SMTP doesn't seem to be working too well on my stopgap dialup account...
Pictures and commentary on the cross-country trip coming soon, I promise, along with the interesting and rather happy story of how Mark will be doing yet another one in a couple of weeks...
22 June 2005 | Link this
It's official. We now have North Carolina driver's licenses. And the really cool thing is that I got my old license number back so I don't have to memorize a new one. And the really SCARY thing is that I still had my old number committed to memory after all these years...
27 June 2005 | Link this
Sorry for the delay, but I now unveil the illustrated story of my most recent cross-country road trip. Enjoy...
28 June 2005 | Link this
It's good to be home. One of the great things about Charlotte is that there's so much good and dirt cheap food that it almost makes more sense to eat out than to cook at home. Five or six bucks will buy you a complete meal with entree and two sides at any number of places, and it's even cheaper at the cafeteria, where you don't really have to tip. We could eat someplace different this way every night for months, particularly when you factor in all the assorted ethnic places which weren't around when I lived here before...
And should we decide to eat at home, the groceries are dramatically cheaper too. It's amazing how having multiple competing grocery store chains will stretch your food budget...
Other random observations about Charlotte:
- Bellsouth sure is stingy with the phone books. SBC seems anxious to circulate as many as possible; you can get them at just about any supermarket. With Bellsouth, it's like pulling teeth. They won't even give you an office address where you can come to pick one up.
- Obviously they're doing something right here with respect to residential development in the center city. It's absolutely amazing how much there is...
- It's so cute that finding graffiti on an abandoned building in the suburbs was actually worthy of a TV news story the other night...
- I'd forgotten just how polite everyone is. Except the manager of the Steak & Shake near our house...
- It's really nice not sitting up in bed at 11:00 at night trying to remember if your car is parked legally or not...
- How much do you think it cost Food Lion to license the theme from "The Andy Griffith Show" for its ads?
- I've not yet run into a single task which wasn't ten times easier to perform here than it is in San Francisco. Then again, I haven't tried to buy drugs on the street or have anonymous sex with a homeless, syphilitic speed freak yet...
- Aside from leaving some very good friends behind, I have no regrets whatsoever about leaving the City of Doom...