other 3999 pictures of gaultier haute couture available upon request

This picture should simultaneously illustrate that I live in a city, that I like dramatic neon neo-noir stylings, and the below paragraph.

(A brief caveat—I am evidently awful at taking pictures.  When trying to pull pics for this post I had nothing of like my friends or family or actual scenic landmarks buuuuut I did have like a hundred blurry shots of various art exhibits and things I guess I found really funny/cool at some point but are utterly nonsensical to me now.  So bear with me.)

View from Twin Peaks, which is where I live.

So four months ago I moved to San Francisco with the help of my dad.  This is an update since then.

This is my awesome Dad; we are on Coit tower.

I love this city.  This city is perfect.  It’s a city of hills, of pitching and lurching your way from point to point.  The trees are enormous and twisted and dark green.  Every night the sea fog rolls in, roiling and dense like smoke.  

This is right when it starts--it literally rolls in, tumbling and tangible and enveloping everything.  Also, FREEZING.

It’s always the perfect amount of chilly, always, even in summer.  The architecture is narrow pastel stucco and wood and neo-Victorian.  People wear trenchcoats and tights.  There is non-traditional gender presentation.  Basically tripping over coffee shops and small bookstores walking everywhere.  The food.  McSweeney’s.  The weird store next to McSweeney's with the disconcertingly large back room full of carnivorous plants. 

McSweeney's small press offerings: basically like porn for me.

There is everything to do here all the time.  There’s German film festivals and readings and performance art and like 8 operas a year.  (I’m going to Moby Dick for my birthday; am reaaaaallly excited for the next Ring Cycle.)  Cindy Sherman downtown like it's no thing; across the city, Man Ray and Lee Miller.  Everything all the time everywhere. Whatever.

"We will not become what we mean to you."

Did not have time to find out what these ladies were doing, but they had dresses and popcorn and next to them a girl band was playing lesser-known tracks off of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," and if that isn't an afternoon well-spent then I don't know what is.

When I moved here, I lived next to a modernist cathedral outside Japantown.  Now, I live in Twin Peaks, so I can make David Lynch jokes to myself as well as live on a hill above the Castro with an amazing view, when not surrounded by mist like a Silent Hill game.  (Were there enough pop culture references in that sentence; I have more.)

Next door-neighbor for the summer

I love my job.  It is stressful as an extremely stressful thing but it is interesting and engaging and will remain so.  Consulting is a trippy, trippy industry.

Here's my business card balanced on my dresser though.  In case you need any consulting.  I'm in the SaaS practice, which is pronounced "sass" so I just tell everyone I'm a sass consultant.

I’ve traveled a bit since I’ve been here:

·      CHICAGO, PART 1: In a suburb in a corporate compound made out of a renovated Catholic girl’s school.  Everyone lived on top of each other in little cruiseship cabin rooms going through four weeks or training while the European management consultants breezed in and out for their four-day courses.  Weekly movie-night was always and seemingly without irony something like “Wall Street” or “Limitless”—I’m surprised they didn’t like play “Gattaca” with the last ten minutes cut out or something.

I have no pictures from Chicago part one except for like ten of this deer I found on a run and one hundred from the art museum--here's one of Chicago part 2.

·      SACRAMENTO: Shock when I got out of the car and realized it was actually summer.  Saw beloved long-lost cousin and fam—HELD A BABY.

·      CHICAGO, PART 2: More training, downtown this time.  Going out every night to museums and restaurants.  The architecture was amazing. Once I got lost in a horrible underground road complex walking home and I was terrified until I realized it was where they filmed the Dark Knight Joker-chasing-Harvey-Dent-in-his-truck scene, and then I was actually still terrified but also kind of jazzed.

Me on the Sears tower skywalk thing looking like I just had my wisdom teeth out.

·      PROVO, PART 1: Stopover from Chicago part 2.  Fun but brief; saw the girls at least.

My babies.

·      CARSON CITY: Amazing drive, did anyone actually know Lake Tahoe was that beautiful.  Best hike and conversation ever with Dana, also best casino food and popsicles.  OF COURSE NO PICTURES because I am the worst.

I do have like FOUR THOUSAND pictures from the Gaultier exhibit though.

·      PROVO, PART 2: Recruiting.  Stressful but glorious.  Reflected on how much more fun it was to drive up the hill to the alumni center in my comped rental than biking up the hill in the rain, exhausted and miserable, which is what I had been doing exactly one year ago.  Saw more friends and fam and that was lovely.  Ended up in a cabin in the dark telling scary stories which always ends well, psychically. 

Sarah and Sarah, besties from home, visited and we did everything from Redwoods to surrealist photography exhibits to watching/giggling about “Sherlock” all night.  In two weeks I am going to Cleveland with my mum and some just crazy awesome ladies to Bouchercon, this mystery-writers conference.

Two years ago I went with my mom to Bouchercon in San Francisco.  It was the first time I had ever been, and I liked it well enough to ask to live here.

The heroine from one of my most formative reading experiences is after all from this city.

And I am still in the process of settling in, getting into a groove with my job, and getting to know the city.  And trying to write a book.  Oh my goodness that stupid book.

But anyways.

Last year was a very, very hard year in my life which has included some hard times.  Recruiting this time was especially trippy—this time last year I was miserable and frantic and tagging along with my brother to info sessions.  I had no idea my life could improve so much in such a short time.  I am really really happy right now although it kind of terrifies me to write that because I am superstitious and it seems to be inviting disaster but oh well.

I'll just end with a creepy picture of me at a concert--see how happy I am.