An Era is Over

I am very happy to report that as of today, Christian and I are no longer in the possession of property in Washington, DC. We successfully closed on our house at Beekman Place and despite the sagging market conditions in the area, were still able to get a deal that sets us up well for whenever we turn to buy here in SF.

But selling the house is not without regret. I read somewhere awhile back that like your first love, you never really get over your first house, and I think that will probably be true for this place with me. At the urging of my parents, I bought the place as a clueless 25-year old after a week long search landed me in a place only a few doors down from where I had been renting for the first 2 years I lived in DC. (Thanks for the urging and support, Mom & Dad!) I moved in right as Christian and I were getting back together after his brief first stint in SF, and before long, he would move in and we would make it our first home. The house became known as the "frat house" since we had so much more space than most of our friends, so people would just come up and hang out. After we got a grille, we started to throw "Frat House BBQs" each Thursday night since so many people went to the beach or out of town for the weekend. There was the legendary post-2000 election party we had for Ted and Todd that Todd couldn't even make it to since he was in Florida. There were also the many nights watching "24" and "American Idol" with Phil, Ted, Derek, Lem and Matt, and the countless other times we entertained there.

And of course we lived there when we adopted Hobbes, who after a rough start of pulling down our newly-installed wood blinds in panic attacks after we left for work, quick ingratiated himself into our lives, where he will be forever. We owned Marty the Miata, Andy the Acura and Murray the Murano during our time there. We went through numerous layoffs and downsizings at my company. I'll never forget the day of our wedding, when I thought we were going to get rained out, when the sun came out after I got out of the shower and I was dancing around our bedroom so excited about what was to come. We remodeled the kitchen and downstairs with tremendous improvements. I found out my grandmother passed away in that house right before we moved. We got to know our friendly neighborhood cop. We laughed. A lot. We built the foundation of the relationship we have today.

So financially, yes, it is a good thing we are making this transaction. Life milestone-wise, also good. But there will always be a piece of 1656C Beekman Pl with me.

** Anyone needing a rock star realtor in DC, look up Charlie Gaynor. He pretty much did everything for us since we were in SF and I couldn't be more pleased with the experience. Thanks to DWK for recommending him!

Reasons to be Happy

On Christian’s urging, I saw the new Will Ferell movie, “Stranger than Fiction”, last night. Ferell plays a straight-laced guy who starts to hear a nararrator in his head, documenting his life, who is a real author writing his story in a novel. The movie starts strong, wanes a bit in the middle, but really brings it home at the end. It reminds you to appreciate all of the subtle nuances that make life the precious thing it is.

And so this is my list for today:

* I had to go on a work trip early this morning, and as I came around the corner to Candlestick Point, looked to the left and saw the sunrise coming up over the San Francisco Bay. The sky was a stunning mix of blue, orange and red as the sun peaked through the clouds. One time Christian and I watched the sunrise in Miami and I said to him “God just turned the light on.” Indeed.

*There’s a batch of good new TV shows this season, and the networks are showing an unusual dedication to them. I read with great pleasure last night that “Friday Night Lights”, a drama set in small Texas town following the local obsession with the high school football team that’s been struggling in the ratings, got picked up for the full season. I watched the first few episodes and was immediately drawn in by the stunningly true depiction of a town very similar to the one I grew up, as well as the star quarterback suffering a neck injury much like the one I did when I was in middle school, although his resulted in paralysis and mine, thankfully, did not. NBC picking up the show for the whole season is a welcome relief, and along with the other pleasant surprises of the season like the doofy fun “Ugly Betty” and the refreshingly real gay courtship and on-screen kisses on “Brothers & Sisters”, its nice to see some quality shows hitting the airwaves and getting the support they deserve.


*Buttermilk biscuits. Mmmmm, I had one at breakfast this morning and they are just yummy.



*Matt & Michael are taking off for a fun 1.5 week trip to London and Amsterdam and I’m really excited to hear about their adventures when they return. Matt urged me to come with them about a month ago and I have to admit, I was very tempted. But we ultimately decided to keep our plans to head home and spend Thanksgiving weekend with my family in PA, and as soon as I’m able to hug my step-mom, who is just recovering from a surgery, or hold my newborn nephew, or clown around with my brother, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel I have made the right decision.

*Work has been going really well lately for me. I was chatting with Titus and he was saying that he admired how passionate I was about my job and sure enough, I am. When I left the Travel industry after 6+ years of working in a field I have a personal obsession with, I was unsure how excited I could get about Customer Care, Matt’s snarky-but-well-deserved- after-all-of-my-payroll comments “help desk” snipings notwithstanding. But through a combination of hard work and maneuvering myself into a good position, here I am. That said, a lot of my goodwill towards work right now has to do with the positive feedback I’ve recently received from my director and also the VP of the business unit that I work in. So managers out there, don’t forget – if you have people in your group are doing a good job, tell them! You never know how far a pat on the back will take them.

*South Africa became the 5^th nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage yesterday. One of the leaders of a GLBT group in South Africa said “It forced us (South Africans) to consider: what does equality really mean? What does it look like? Equality does not exist on a sliding scale.” A question for the rest of the world and the USA—how is it that of all places, South Africa, home of apartheid, et al, is now one ahead of most of you in equality? Cheers to all of our boys in South Africa!

*I've worked it out that while in San Diego today, I'm going to see my pal Erin. It's always fun when business trips allow you to see a friend as well.

*And lastly, the countdown begins: 1 month from today, Christian returns to SF for good! It can’t come fast enough.

No Camera Required

I really love to take pictures, but I don’t know if I would call myself a photographer. It’s not so much the precision of the picture itself that I concern myself with as much as capturing the memories of whatever it is that I am doing while I am taking the pictures. At pretty much any event I go to with friends, family, Christian and/or Hobbes, I usually have my camera with me to snap at least a few pics to help encapsulate it into memory. And at the end of every year, I put them together along with other mementos into a scrapbook for a Christmas gift for Christian, a tradition that started 1.5 years into our relationship together and will now be entering its 7^th iteration this holiday season.

Since we moved to the west coast, my trips home to Pennsylvania to visit my family have become much less frequent than when I lived a short 90 miles away in Washington, DC. Like anything that was once plentiful and then becomes rare, I now appreciate these visits much more than I used to, and I think the same is true for them seeing me. Pretty much every time I go home, I have my camera in hand, snapping as many pictures as I can of my nephews as they grow up too fast, my grandmother sipping her standard glass of champagne, and other family moments. Often when I call my mom she references having just had dinner with my brother and wife or that my nephews had all just left after spending an afternoon in the pool. I have to admit it’s sometimes hard to hear the everyday things that happen there that I’m not a part of by virtue of where I have chosen to settle my life.

This past weekend, Christian’s mom and stepdad (Jane and Skip) arrived with a moving truck from Dallas to move here to the Bay Area. They had asked if they could borrow our SUV for awhile as they run all of the errands that you need to when you are moving into a new house. So I drove out to see them yesterday to welcome them to San Francisco and check out their new house. Melissa and Alex (C's sister and husband) were also there, with their two adorable little boys, and it was quite a site to see them as they are unpacking in their new digs, just a few minutes from where Melissa lives and about 30 min from our place.

I spent about an hour there, getting the tour of the house, hearing about the plans they have to decorate, and regaling at the size of their yard, as it will be Hobbes’ new vacation home when we are away. After that, I popped over to Melissa and Alex’s and played trains with their 3-year old, Alister for a bit. Then I went upstairs to hang out ("visit", as C calls it) with the adults for awhile, also playing “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out” on Alex’s rad original Nintendo that he got from Ebay a month ago. Then it was time to go, so Alex and Alister drove me back to my house, and we made plans for me to come back out for dinner sometime this week or next.

Once I was home last night, I realized that I had not taken my camera along and therefore took no pictures. And as much as I love to usually commemorate big days like yesterday, what I’ve come to realize is that because of Jane, Skip, Melissa, Alex, Alister and Beckett’s proximity to where we live, we’re going to have lots of days like this. Families who live close to each other do stuff like this all the time; hanging out during the day, eating dinner together, giving each rides, etc. Things like these are going to become much more commonplace, and therefore, the need to take pictures to capture the “preciousness” of it will become less.

Not that I won’t appreciate the increase in family time; if anything, being so far from the family that I grew up with makes me even more eager to invest in the family that I married into here. But for the first time as an adult, I’ll get to have a family living in the same town that I am. What a great feeling.

So my camera may not be used quite as often on these family days, but that’s okay. We’ll just have to take additional trips to Pennsylvania to appreciate coming home to SF and our family here even more.