Just as a reminder:
And after?
After hours of scrubbing and vacuuming and screw-unscrewing and taking things (boxes, cinder blocks, one of the big suitcases) down the stairs, I am left with a clean, quiet, empty apartment. The picture makes the space look small (and it is), but it feels huge after it being full of furniture. I left the futon there so that my little bags don't look so lonely.
Now that the place is clean-- and I'm exhausted, I'd love to lie down and take a nap until tomorrow, but tonight the acroyogis of Austin are throwing an acro jam/going away party. (I had an equally nice dinner last night with my coworkers, which involved considerably more good sushi and considerably less being tossed around on people's feet. But I take them either way.) There's always a premium on open space for acro, and suddenly I wonder why we don't meet in my virtually-empty apartment tonight instead of cramming into Jason's place and potentially damaging his stereo system.
And then I remember: I'd have to clean again after they're gone. I love my acrofriends, but not enough to repeat all that cleaning.
I had a nice holiday with my folks, but now it's that time that we've all been dreading: packing time. I'm not sure that these pictures, compared with the "before" pictures, are what you might call heartening, since there seems to be a steady level of messiness. Everything's just getting lower to the floor as the furniture disappears...
It may not show, but I had a strategy: my plan was to pack everything I knew I wanted to take, make sure it fit into my suitcases, and then take the rest to Goodwill or to the dumpster. This, however, requires enormous foresight, and after I packed the suitcases, I realized there were other things I wanted to bring.
I think I can still get it all into the two big and one little suitcases, per the original plan (I really don't want to ship anything if I can avoid it). My goal for the day was to get everything in the main part of the apartment taken care of, and then tomorrow focus on the kitchen, bathroom, and closets. I was almost successful in getting through the living/bed room today, since I got in another hour or so of work after I took the pictures. But the kitchen is scary. Very, very scary.
Today was also my last day of work, which was sad. Goodbye to all the lovely and strange people I've met on both sides of the desk, goodbye to tea stains on the carpet that won't come out, sweat puddles, and that silly software. Goodbye to the cushiest job in the world (you're going to pay me to sit at a desk and talk to cool people and take free yoga classes? Yes!)... hello reality check.
And thanks to everyone who has given me such good wishes. I'll need them, not in San Francisco, but to get through cleaning my kitchen tomorrow morning.
Yesterday I signed my lease and got my keys. I'm all set to move in, complete with the official "Kà" keychain.
Later in the day, I got a phone call from the nice folks who interviewed me at Starbucks, who for some reason want to hire me. I think I actually said "really?" when she told me: I fully expected to spend weeks or months searching for a job. As I was walking around earlier yesterday I could already feel the burden of it on me: am I hungry enough to spend three bucks on a coffee, when I don't have any way to get that three bucks back? (of course, I don't think 'bucks is going to be paying me through the roof, so that may still be a question I ask myself-- though maybe not about coffee. I might be okay for coffee.") Now that problem's solved
Of course, I know plenty of righteous-minded people who will never speak to me again after they learn who my future employer is-- Destroyer Of Local Coffee Shops, Corporate Oppressor, etc. But it's better than being hungry, broke, and worried. And who knows, it might be fun: my degree only prepares me to sit in front of a computer all day, and here I'll get to run around and talk to people and learn about coffee.
I had a moment of feeling completely overwhelmed after I digested all this change: I acquired a new job and a new home in a span of several hours. But this is what I came out here to do. I didn't think for a moment I'd be so successful, but hey-- go me! [pats self on back]
Mission accomplished: time to go to the beach.
Somehow, I had to step off the bus and smell the ocean before my brain registered that yes, I'm really in California. Especially on Monday, part of my brain was convinced that this was just some elaborately disguised area of Texas. I've spent a year planning on coming out here, so it's a little weird to shift from "waiting for it to happen" (which had actually become a comfortable state of being over the past few months) to "it's happening." It took a day or so for me to stop going "woah!" when I saw California license plates and discovered not the Austin Statesman but the San Francisco Chronicle peering out from news stands. I think I'm adjusting. Of course, I'm going back to Austin in a few hours...
The final paper is finished, the exams are done, and I'm here in San Francisco on Day 3 of a four-day house-and-job-finding trip, or as my dad called it once, the "exploratory mission" (makes it sound official). I have, in fact, been successful on the "house" part, and found a room to stay in over on the west side of town. It was the second place I looked at, which both makes me think I've been slightly hasty, and makes me glad that I cut out all of that running around town to look at crappier rooms.
Although I've been running around the city anyway. Yesterday I came up with some spare time and was a tourist for a little while in spite of a constant, cold drizzle and blustery wind that frequently turned my (cheap) umbrella inside out. All so that I could bring back pictures:
...and the Japanese Tea Garden, also in the rain...
Then I went to the Circus Center, even though it's closed for the holidays, just to stand there and go "Wow! I'm at the Circus Center!" It worked.
And guess who else is in town?
Since I'd gotten all my business done, I made a last-second trip to worship at the shrine of Cirque du Soleil. I'd never seen Kooza before (it's new) and though I'm still not thrilled about the name (makes me think of koosh balls-- remember those?) it was pretty good. They didn't have silks, but they had a swinging trapeze act that made me think "maybe I'll look into some trapeze stuff at Circus Center..."
I still have another day and a half here in town, and almost no plans.
So maybe I'll go play the tourist and take some more pictures...
especially since it stopped raining the moment I got back to the hostel
yesterday (but I'm learning all about microclimates!
Incidentally, anyone thinking of moving or even visiting Sa Francisco would do well to invest in the Not For Tourists Guide. It's already saved my life about nine hundred times, as it contains lots of information about where to get coffee, or catch the bus, and is fairly frank about the quality of that coffee and how late your bus is likely to be.
And look at that discreet black cover. Every other guidebook has a big ole picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the front that screams "I'm a tourist!" Now you can pretend not to be a tourist, until you bust your cover by not knowing where to put your money in the BART ticket machine. Or you whip out your camera every ten seconds to take pictures of rain-sodden landmarks...
I set up my class schedule (and wrote a big old check to the Circus Center) yesterday evening. Here's what I'll be up to:
Aerial Conditioning
Aerial Skills
Aerial Silks (picking up on a theme here?)
Extreme Stretching
I admit, items 1 and 4 are slightly frightening to me, since in my experience conditioning=agony, and well, even ping-pong is threatening when you put the word "extreme" in front of it; my ligaments quake in terror at the prospect.
But the rest of me is thrilled!
Ah, another Sunday night of avoiding writing my (monstrous, slightly daunting) final paper, going to bed at a reasonable hour, and posting my damn furniture on Craigslist. But while doing nothing productive, I found a video about the Circus Center, where I am destined to be in [checks calendar] 35 days. Picture me climbing those steps, jumping around on that equipment...
Also, after failing to remember to bring my camera to silks for ten consecutive classes, I remembered! Many thanks to Shelrey for photographing (and sorry about butchering the spelling of your name). Check it:
This is actually very comfortable. Except that Courtney (the teacher, visible bottom right-- looking mildly pleased with me, no less!) made us go into and come out of them five times in a row earlier in class. That was kind of hard.
This is the setup for what Courtney calls iron cross (none of these things have "official" names).
Here's me trying to get out of the final product of iron cross. The actual pose is like this, but with my arms out. And... higher. And not so tangled.
Setup for the pirouette. I unhook my top knee...
and
roll
to
here
Ta-daa!
I may well look back on these pics and say "pffft... pathetic." But right now? I'm proud of myself.
If you could perform alongside any artist (actor, dancer, musician, etc.), who would it be, and what would you perform?
Submitted by Kristin.
My first thought was "oh, easy!" There are plenty of fantastic artists with whom I'd love to perform: Isabelle Chassé, Isabelle Vaudelle, Stephanie Gasparoli-- and that's just from cruising down my youtube videos And then I realized that I'd actually rather be these people, or at least temporarily inhabit their bodies. I guess that's a little different.
So I'll go to an old standby: Francesca Gagnon. I can only imagine how inspired I would be to perform on silks (let's just say, hypothetically, that I could perform anything right now) while she serenaded me from below.
As promised, my "before making my belongings travel-ready" pictures. Turned out my camera just needed a new set of batteries...other than the new batteries I'd just given it. Ahh, technology.
I took a few more of these, like the kitchen and the closet, but I don't especially want to seem like I live in a complete disaster area, so I'll leave it to your imagination.
And this bed is the best napping bed ever. Mmm. But it's gotta go, too.
And, finally:
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
It's a strange feeling to look around your modestly-sized, full-of-stuff apartment and realize that in two months' time, all that furniture, all those books and clothes and movies and dishes-- all of it is going to be consolidated into two trunks, a suitcase, and a backpack.
At least, that's the plan. The furniture will be going into storage for my sister, when she has her own apartment and needs to fill it with stuff. Things like my bike will be sold. The rest will be given away, all except for clothes, a handful of books and movies, some essential electronic equipment, and a yoga mat or two. My goal is to cram whatever is going with me into a couple of biggish trunks (as big as the airline will allow me to check without slapping a fee on it) and two bags for carry-on.
I tend to think of this as being a pain in the ass, more than anything else, because there's quite a lot of posting things on Craigslist-- not to mention scrubbing down my apartment, which at present is a bit grubby in the corners-- between now and moving. But it's also an interesting exercise in simplicity-- even radical simplicity. I imagine that it will be satisfying to get on the plane with all my earthly belongings packed neatly into a few bags. Satisfying, assuming the airline doesn't lose any of those bags, in which case, "problematic" is the operative word.
Speaking of essential electronics, I have to get my camera up and running. It might be interesting (bearing in mind that my use of the word "interesting" typically only refers to "interesting to me") to take "before and after" pictures of my apartment/belongings.
Hey! Welcome to the blog!
So this is going to be my account of going to circus school out in San Francisco, come January. I realize it's October, which would perhaps make it a little early to actually be starting this blog, but now that it's set up I can start telling people-- the ones who go "ooh! I must know all the details of your escapades in California when you go!"-- that they can read all about it here. In January. In the mean time, or at least until I begin the excitement of moving, I won't be around. You can admire my template selection, though, and the links I stuck over there on the right.
