Movin' Out

We moved. I wish it was as much fun as the musical by Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp.  While it couldn't have been much easier than it was, moving sucks a lot.

We listened to Bill but didn't dance like Twyla

Our new place is about .15 miles away from our old place but it may as well be on another planet.  When I first moved to San Francisco I wanted to live in a place that at least looked like Full House, which meant that it had to be an older building.  I was extremely lucky to find a place that was perfectly located in the middle of a neighborhood that I liked and was convienent to the express bus.  But that was about it.

I didn't live there, or even close. 
But we have friends that live close to it so it is cool

After living there for a few months, it became clear that that place was a one year only kind of place, or two at the absolute most.  The square footage was a few hundred sq/ft bigger than our place in New York but more than 200 sq/ft were wasted, the kitchen was crap, the heat didn't work, the windows were akin to stretched plastic wrap, the walls leaked, and I could go on and on. But I won't.  Instead, after they raised the rent, we moved.

As soon as the wall was leaking we put in our 30 day notice and started looking for a new place.

A step back

It is the end of the year. It is the end of our lease. It is the end marathon training. It is the last time those of us reading this post will ever see a 12-12-12 dateline.  But then again, isn't it a new beginning? (What was that noise you ask? It was me throwing up a little in my mouth.)

The Year: Facebook bombarded me with the Year in Review app that told me what was so fantastic about my year.  Unsurprisingly there were lots of posts about running and missing my wife in the first half of the year and lots of posts about running and living in San Francisco with my wife in the second half of the year.  As I said in my self-review for work, this year was "trying" and to be honest I am glad it is almost over.

The Lease: We are leaving our apartment after dealing with leaking walls, drafty windows, and general disregard for the upkeep of the place.  I will disclose more once I get my security deposit back, but I will say that after living in a place that I took pride in keeping up I was shocked that people don't want to keep their property in top condition.  Abby and I are moving into a place now that is clearly well maintained by a proud owner.  It is smaller but it has a washer and dryer.  And that is the sexist thing I have ever seen.  Abby agrees.

We are both thinking dirty thoughts...that will soon be clean.

The Training: This year's marathon training was insane. I started training on a schedule for New York in July.  I wanted it to be an epic PR.  And I was ready for it.  Thankfully, I didn't waste my training and got to run in the CIM.  It was supposed to be a fun and easier run after NYC, but it turned into a really tough race in the rain.  I am relieved that my training for the year is over.

I will run the New York Marathon, if NYRR ever figures out what they are going to do with the 47,000 of us who got caught up in the wash.  But I will run at least one other major event, what it is I don't know. I have the Kaiser Half on the schedule but nothing else.  An ultra sounds interesting but honestly 26.2 sucks enough. Not sure I am cut out for more mileage. However, I am pretty sure I said that about Marathoning for the first five years I lived along the New York City Marathon route.

I am currently assessing my goals for next year's races, but I am not making any concrete plans until January 1, 2013 (when the prices go up on the Oakland Marathon).

They are very pretty..

12-12-12: I don't care about that.  Some people think it is lucky and others think its just another day.  Others are right.

Over the next few weeks, we will move into a new place, start a new training schedule, and begin a new year. There are other new things too that will start in the new year.   But the best part of this past year has been the new things, especially our new friends here in San Francisco.  I have a pretty good feeling about the new year so here is to it.

Generational Swings

A little over a month ago, I put down the Dustbuster in our New York apartment after cleaning up what seemed like the millionth dust bunny we had found while getting ready to move, and I tweaked my back.  This was problematic for a number of reasons -- chief among them was the fact that our movers were coming in an hour.

I had been running a lot, trying the 100 pushup challenge (I was up to 45ish pushups) and flying all over the country for work.  Oh yeah, and moving.  There was a lot of pent up stress and I suppose the Dustbuster was the straw that broke my back.

Anyway, after about three weeks of letting it get better, I was on the bus coming to work and the bus stopped very short.  The entire bus load of Financial District Bound San Franciscans whipped forward, and hard. I called a chiropractor when I got to the office.

Over the past week, I have been stretched and cracked and such, and I am feeling much better thank you for asking.  But the really wonderful part of this story is that today I was given homework.

True, homework is never fun. But this homework has some history.

This time I have hair for flowers

In January I wrote from 35,000 feet and I was moving without the wife to San Francisco. Today I am writing from the same space, along with my lovely wife (who has lovely hair for flowers) as we go to San Francisco.

The flight is about to begin its initial decent into SFO and we will head to our new apartment and we will get our stuff on Wednesday.

This is real now and thank God the last four months are over.

The begining of the end

This is it. Today is the last Monday of the separate coasts thing.  And I am ready.

Within three days I will be back in NYC for one last hurrah, which will include two graduation ceremonies, a goodbye party, a half marathon, and a birthday party for a dear friend, as well as a few days of work. Oh yeah, and packing and moving our apartment.

These past few months were hard but the last one really sucked. While the end was near, there was more "stuff" than needed to be addressed (like moving), making the distance all the more difficult. It was no longer just being alone.  It was being alone and feeling out of touch, or alone and pissed off, or alone and misunderstood.

I am excited just to feel out of touch, pissed off or misunderstood.  It is much better to do those things with your wife than far apart from her.

I will post before and after pictures for both apartments when I have them and hope to have some good news to share after the Brooklyn Half.

But for now, I blog about nothing in particular and am happy that it is just three more days.

An Open Letter to Trader Joe's

Dear Trader Joe's,

Thank you for making it impossible to control myself. I have known for years that I was not really allowed to buy your Chocolate Raspberry Sticks; they have long been on the "DO NOT BUY OR YOU WILL BE SORRY" list .  But living alone means that you have no one to blame but yourself when you, say, sit down and eat an entire bag of Gummy Tummies Penguins. 

DO NOT BUY

ALSO DO NOT BUY

So TJ, while I love your store and your affordable organic goods, stop it with the really good snacks that make it impossible to stop eating.  I have a crazy "tummy" ache due to the seven servings of these impossibly tasty fruity bites.

No more Gummy Tummies for me TJ and I am sorry that it most likely will hit your bottom line.

Thanks again,

The dcc

Slacking Off

This last week and weekend was the hardest of my moving process. Why? I don't know but it was hard.

Nothing has changed significantly at work or in life. I have sort of kept up with my running goal and I am doing well on my reading goals. Clearly I am slacking on the blogging front. But I am trucking along.

It may have something to do with me being so sick of living without my wife and working completely alone.

So in an effort to not completely fall off the blogging bandwagon, here is a lazy ass blog post in a list-update format:

1. I have shined my shoes 3 times. Current cost: 100 bucks a shine.
2. I was in Austin during SXSW Interactive. This was like visiting a city I like that was hosting a mashup of the worst of a Dungeon's and Dragon's Convention mixed with worst of the cool kids' table in middle school. Thankfully, the wedding we attended was lovely and the BBQ was, as always, epic.
3. I am going to see the wife for a week! It is also our three year anniversary tomorrow.
4. My sister, who is a total bad-ass and a third year medical student, went on a heart harvest. The text messages from that day will be saved forever.
5. It appears that Slap Cancer, Save Lives, a pretty cool and innovative fundraising concept that I am helping promote and such, is already generating some fun attention. It would also seem that hipsters are just snobs who don't shower or have jobs.
6. Something else I have done over the past few weeks and a snarky remark about it.

I told you I was feeling cranky. But that is behind me now...or at least I am telling myself that.

Perspective

The wife and I went out to see some very big trees today.

Cute, no?
During our trip to Muir Woods, driving the somewhat death-defying roads and taking in the forest that has been standing since long before they started fighting in the Middle East, it was easy to get all philosophical.

It has been two solid months of living apart now and we are into the final two and half months until we live together again. Time is relative, as they say, and for me these past two months have passed both slowly and extremely quickly. For those of you who went to camp, you understand that days have the value of a week, a week a month, but those summer nights...

More often than not however, time moves slowly. But life is good for me. I have no complaints. So I will spare you the painful analogy between the the trees' lives and mine and the feeling really small thing and simply say, two and half months to go and I am pretty happy about that.

Also I get to see my lovely wife at the end of this week, so that is an added bonus!

Big Trees for Big Thoughts

I like it

People asked me within days of moving here if I like living in San Francisco better than New York. Clearly these people have never lived in the greatest city in the world. But trying to be nice, as is the custom here, my answer was I can't tell you that yet.

For the most part, I am a happy dude who can get along in any location, and San Francisco is no exception. After visiting New York last week, a city I love, and my wife, a woman I love more than anything, I know I like living here in a City by a Bay.

Yesterday, as I got into a Zipcar to take care of some errands and head out to my run, I caught a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance over the shimmering bay. I thought, well this is easy to like. And for a New Yorker, even by six year proxy, that is hard to admit.

An additional benefit

When Abby and I were dating, we did the long distance thing for about six months before she moved to New York. At the beginning it was hard but doable. We both had jobs with a bit more flexibility than we do now and we were young and in love and stuff.

In fact, the long distance thing was even a bit fun. We went out on dates and got to plan for our time together; every second of being together was extremely special. We were really into each other and it was always great to spend time together. The day-to-day stuff was put off for six months and is the reason so many long distance things don't work when people are in the same place.

A little too cute, but a good visual.
When we were apart we talked more than daily, but we both had other stuff going on in our lives and we were just starting the process of building a life together.

Too Fast

My wife was here this weekend. It went by pretty fast.

Now she is somewhere over these great United States in an airplane. I don't like that one bit.

We spent the weekend doing stuff that we do normally: eating, running, going to hell Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond. We also had the chance to celebrate the "Bat Mitzvah" of a good friend's rabbanic ordination and to see some old friends. But now it is over. And it is nearly a month before we see each other.

Nothing good about it.

In better news the weather here is snazzy and I have two rugs from hell Ikea. But best of all, the wife likes the apartment and our neighborhood. I got to say I was a bit nervous in that I picked it without any help. But after going out to eat in a few very nice places within walking distance (some within steps)and enjoying the views of the Presidio it was clear that I (at some point semi-soon, we) moved to a great place.

But now, I wait until February and enjoy the weather.

Wake up and be amazing

A few years ago I saw this commercial and thought it was pretty amazing.


My mother hates that word. Amazing is hackneyed and tired. At some point this word, born of biblical experience, became just some shit girls and boys say.* I have long tired to keep this unfortunately trite word out of my daily lexicon. However, sometimes it is needed.

This commercial was aired in the Fall of 2010. You may remember the Fall of 2010 being a pretty horrific time for the economy. All signs pointed in the wrong direction. It was getting easy to say that America was past its prime and that nothing we were doing was going to make this country great again.

When I watched this commercial it was most likely as I was getting ready for work or I was sitting on the couch with my lovely wife after a long day at work. But I wasn't being amazing, I was just doing my job and coming home. Not much in the way of risk, nor in the way of reward.

All Quite on the Western Front

The three hour delay due to fog, which I gather happens more often than not, made me sure that my carefully scheduled afternoon would be completely shot. It was not. I got to Best Buy to pick up the TV I needed for the cable and internet set up and was back to the apartment in time to take delivery of a very comfortable bed. I am now sitting in my place in San Francisco (granted on the packaging from my new TV).

I got my Clipper Card today and even took the bus without asking for help. I will pick up my Zipcar card tomorrow before I head into the office. It would appear, beside the lack of seating, that my apartment and "life" is shaping up well here in San Francisco.

Now I need to figure out this eating on a regular schedule thing. I think once I get some plates and whatnot that will become easier. Those will be here on Friday, special delivery from Mom and Dad.

Anyone have suggestions for dinner in the Pac Heights/ Laural Heights area?

No Hair for Flowers

37,965 feet in the air and 971 miles to go on my way to San Francisco where I will be living.

Yeah.

Lots has happened since last I blogged, but I have this funny feeling that I will be hitting this forum up just a bit more over the next few months.

Here is why:

1. I am moving across the country
This is a significant change for me. A few facts to inform this move... I did grow up in California, I did leave as soon as I graduated in a pilgrimage of sorts to the Mecca of all things - New York City. I did said I would be happy living there forever. Then I got all married and my lovely wife said she wouldn't live in New York forever. So yeah. There is that. Now we are moving. (This is a slightly abridged version of reality.)

Granted neither of us were "ready" to leave but I suppose that makes it better; leaving at the top of your game is better than going all Brett Favre. So I am moving.