From San Francisco, with love

Hi! I’ve recently been asked if I’m still writing my blog, both by my dear friend Tommy and my favorite cousin Sara. It only takes a slight nudge to turn me on so I signed onto WordPress for the first time in I don’t even know how long, and discovered an old draft from when I first moved out to California. Although slightly dated (I’ll correct things when necessary), I figured I might as well post it, so here goes.

As all* of you know, I’m now living in San Francisco with two of my very dear friends. We’re finally settled in our lovely apartment and ready to take on this beautiful, wonderful city.

* all 5 of you.

Upon arrival, Olga and I were so kindly hosted by my friend Margaret and her husband, Larry, who have a lovely home in Cow Hollow. This was our neighborhood:

The two weeks we spent there were incredible. An enormous thanks to both of them for their hospitality. But as not to overstay our welcome, we hit the ground runnin’ in search of an apartment, which we’d heard would be nearly impossible at our price range. We lucked out and landed a great pad, within our budget, in no time.

Quickly, a little about our apartment: Meg’s been working her butt off since before Olga and I arrived, so we decided to take it upon ourselves to try and get the whole apartment in order so that our little breadwinner didn’t have anything to fret about. This meant that Olga and I would be spending an, at first, uncomfortable amount of time at IKEA. I say “at first” because after our second or third visit, Olga and I got to the point where we would long for the mammoth warehouse if we missed a day. On one particularly ambitious back to back two-day string of visits, we had dinner in the IKEA cafeteria (their famous Swedish meatballs, mushroom crepe, salad and smoked salmon plate), contemplated snuggling up in the bedroom section, decided against it, went home and then headed right back the next morning to find ourselves, once again, in the cafeteria. Breakfast.  We needed fuel: eggs, cinnamon role, home fries and French toast strips. Here is a picture of dinner and breakfast:

Yum…. er, eeeww. Not sure.

By day four the employees were referring to us by name and high-fiving us on our way in. Anyways, sorry, this was supposed to be a brief synopsis of our apartment. I’m bad with summaries.

Long story short (too late), we literally built every single piece of furniture in our entire apartment. We built the beds. We built the chests of drawers. We built the coffee tables and the shelves and the TV stands. We built the kitchen table and the patio table and the chairs. We built the couch. We even built the largest and most complicated armoire that IKEA has to offer – hey, we needed a challenge.  We built everything except for a chair that was donated to us by a friend, and I’m even considering taking that apart and putting it back together. I am 100% confident I could do this.

If you can’t tell, I’m mighty proud of our accomplishments. And the place looks great. Meg, proclaiming that she was over the “college student, thrown together hodgepodge” look, pulled everything together nicely with some throw pillows, wall art and shelf decorations. Here is a picture of the outside.

Our apartment stretches the whole length of the top floor on one side. It’s quite spacious. I refuse to post pictures of the interior because I told dad and Deb that they’d have to come visit if they wanted to see it.

 

Now that I’m settled, and true to my semi nomadic nature, I can start thinking about my next move.

It’s time to switch gears. Perhaps you remember me subtly mentioning a studly gentleman in Boston, just weeks before my Western voyage, who was trying to convince me to stay and save money before we head off on our trip around the world…? Well, despite the 3,000 miles that are now between us*, and the very minimal time we’ve actually, physically spent together, we’ve become an item (conventionality has never been my forte). And I must admit, we’re doing exceptionally well.

*There are no longer miles between us. In a twisted turn of fate, he moved to San Francisco, where everyone knows it’s impossible to save money. He is my new partner in crime. Meet Gates Atterbury Sanford, the man with a super WASPy name and just enough game to convince me to go out on a second date with him despite the fact that I thought he was gay. Turns out he isn’t at all gay. He’s the most incredibly weird and wonderful person I’ve ever met:

Obviously I’m not dating that naked (sorry, he’s wearing a collar and a hat…) old man in the forefront of the photo. I’m talking about the one behind grandpa; the one wearing jeans and that leather strappy thing around his midriff.

Okay sorry, that’s not true either. But I couldn’t resist. That photo was actually taken at the Folsom Street fair last weekend. Folsom is a fair where anything goes – especially if “anything” involves nudity, bondage and bazaar homoerotic fetishes, my favorite of which was “puppy play time,” where men rolled around in a pin playing with squeaky toys and humping each other…

Here are a few other random photos for your enjoyment:

 

 

More current post coming soon. Lots of adventures to recap!

-csc