do you ever feel like you've just turned your switch to "automatic" and are just going through the motions of your days without really experiencing anything that's happening around you? i have felt that way far too long.

i guess it all really started about a month and a half ago when i started searching for a new place to live. where i was living: the "peninsula." the little sliver of land bordered on the west by the pacific ocean and on the east by the san francisco bay. i was paying $765 a month to live with two roommates in a luxury complex full of young families and stanford graduate students. i liked my space there, but it got really tiring trying to live peacefully with two other people that i rarely spoke to; i was always rushed in the kitchen and there was always a bountiful supply of rotting food stinking up our stuffed refrigerator. it also got really tiring being so...stifled. it's just not my thing to be in a place that's so homogenous and safe and comfortable. so i spent nearly one month searching every square inch of the bay area for a new home...i saw raunchy studios, tiny rooms in peoples' houses, an in-law with the kitchen in the crawlspace...i had no idea people lived like that. good eye-opener.

where i live now: oakland. and no, not everyone that lives there riots or gets murdered. my new place is spectacular. i'm living solo in a studio near lake merritt (the country's first wildlife refuge...the wildlife being really cocky geese)...it's got creaky hardwood floors and a bathroom so tiny you can't even shut the door without scraping it on the toilet. the kitchen has a tiny studio stove and mini oven...but a full size frige that's all my own!! the only downfall is that it takes 45 minutes to get to work...but i think it'll be worth it. i walk out my door and everything and everyone is so diverse. people look like they are trying and doing and being...they don't look like they are just existing and eating from a silver spoon.

the food scene is amazing. and what's best about it is it's totally understated. there are roach coaches serving menudo every weekend morning; big daddy's chinese restaurant makes me wonder; el faralito has the biggest and best burritos i've ever had; la estallitia (?) for breakfast on a sunday morning is heaven...huevos ranchers and fucking AMAZING hash browns; vegetarian cuisine is out of this world...i will not go hungry living in that town! plus berkeley is a five minute drive and that place is legendary in it's own right with chez panisse and the original peet's...the gourmet ghetto is at the top of my list. you can get french fast-food. where else??

i am fortunate enough to have aaron only fifteen minutes away...i know that he's there if i need him.

now that i have that settled, i am trying to sort out everything else.