Tue 19 Sep 2006
Whew. What a week. I’ve moved - sort of - and am now living with Zia. Hi Zia! She’s a friend from UCLA who I’ve kept in touch with a bit. She goes to UC Hastings and lives in the student housing, placing me at 100 McAllister just off Market St. I work in the south Financial District just up past Union Square on Market. I work in a suite with about 15 other people, two of which are from my startup, Attendio. The founder is Gerardo Capiel, and the other guy I work with is Eric Hansen. The office is pretty cool, and I use my own computer at work with a nice big Dell display.
I moved my stuff into storage yesterday. It was a blast. No. Really. Moving all that stuff by myself: superb. My back thanks me and all of you who weren’t there. Actually it wasn’t all bad. There were carts and stuff that did most of the actual moving, I just had to lift, drag, and coerce the boxes and other crap from one platform to another. Moving it out of my apartment was much more work, but fortunately Kip helped with that.
It was kinda funny going down there after I’d been working here a week. I’m so conditioned to leave a place “once and for all” and to sorta forget the people there. I’m still mostly that way, but I definitely want to keep some of the frienships I’ve made in Santa Barbara. It can be my second home.
The major remaining thing is a place to live. This has been a two-pronged effort. One prong is me buying a place, probably a condo, sometime within the next six months or so. The other prong is to get out of Zia’s place. Like yesterday. I don’t want to overstay my welcome (which has been extremely generous so far). To that end I met a guy named Elliot at his place today at the very south end of the Mission District. It’s about four miles from work, a 12 minute walk from BART, and close to Muni stops. I’d have a bedroom downstairs in a four bedroom house with two bathrooms for $650/mo + utilities.
Let me clarify how this actually happened. I took the J-Church from work to meet him at his place at 6:30. I got there a little before, and knocked on the door. He’d told me that his girlfriend lived there and that they had a big dog. I heard the dog right away, but human sounds were not forthcoming. I waited a minute and knocked again. Eventually a woman came to the door. She looked to be about 55-60. I asked her if Elliot was there. She said he’d be home soon, and did I want to wait for him outside or inside. I said inside if she didn’t mind. I didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know who I was. I told her my name was Brian and that seemed to clear things up a bit - at least for one of us. After a minute I discovered that there was another woman in the house, Roya, and that the one I’d met was Kate, Elliot’s mother. She didn’t live there, but was there helping prepare the dinner for her daughter’s (Elliot’s sister’s) 26th birthday party. Roya showed me around the place and explained why this room was a total mess and the state of construction in that room, why the two bathrooms were adjoined and the basic setup for the house.
I got to talking to both of them while I waited for Elliot and they were both very friendly. Kate asked me to try the pita chips and hummus, making sure that the hummus had the right amount of garlic. I said it was great. Roya handed me a glass of wine. Some time later Elliot walked in with another girl, Montana, his sister. All the while the dog Mossimo (sp?), was being quite friendly. People arrived slowly, trickling in just a tad slower than their names trickled out of my head. In this way I was able to remember most of the names of the people I’d met, at least for the time being. At some point it became too much, and there were those I didn’t talk to, but all in all it was good. I talked to Montana (the sister), Elliot (the dude), Kate (the mom), Roya (the girlfriend), Jennifer (an ‘eco-friendly’ realtor), and a few others whose names escaped. They barbecued tri-tip, corn, onion, and squash. There was also good macaroni and cheese. It was great. There was also home-made pomegranate ice cream and then chocolate cake, not to mention party favors that were a flashback to when I was five years old (chinese yo-yo, party blower thing, bubbles).
Overall I had a great time and am looking forward to moving in there, assuming they are okay with me. Back to the fray!