I'm new here. New to the office, new to the city and new to the state. When you move somewhere, be it to a new city or a new job, there are many changes, many differences to what you are previously accustomed. Some changes are big, some are small nuances that can really make you smile.  For instance, both my previous commute and my current commute are 9 miles. Before it would take me close to 45 minutes on an extremely congested highway to travel 9 miles, now I drive a leisurely 25 minutes across the golden gate bridge to a wonderful place called "Liberty Ship Way." Kinda makes you want to smile and salute. I never get tired of going over the bridge. Coming around the bend on 101, just past Divisadero it suddenly appears as a giant orange Transformer standing to protect the Bay. And everyday is different, somedays I leave behind an extremely foggy city, travel through the rainbow tunnel to find a magnificent blue sky on the other side. Sometimes, it's even foggier in the North Bay and I wind down the hill seemingly inside a eucalyptus flavored cloud. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and top of the Liberty Ship.

The way I worked has changed tremendously. Now, I find myself in a veritable playhouse of creativity. I can play music loud, draw on post-its and throw out any crazy idea without the fear the furrowed-brow. Currently, I am doing a lot of research on urban planning and cities in general. Research meaning, I troll the internet for hours, reading article after article in hopes of some amazing, wonderful, incredible story to post on my wall of information. Lots of times, it's a wild goose chase. One site re-posts an article from another, that was a summary of a talk given by this guy, who wrote this book, and so on. It's a hunt, and I love it. To make sense of all this information, I have learned to use post-its. There are no shortage here at Central. In my compulsive need for order, I try to color code each post into a category of thought orange="this is interesting" blue="fantastic quote" pink="scary fact about the world ending." I'm aware that my coding system is just for me and to everyone else it has no rhyme or reason. Here is one recent article by Chuck Wolfe (myurbanist.com) about the urban experience that got the honorable blue post-it  "The urban experience is the best spectator sport we have, free of charge." I find that quote especially pertinent here in San Francisco.

So I love the change, I love that you can find a farmer's market any day of the week and purchase nineteen different kinds of tomatoes if you wanted to. Or that you can hear parrots chirp outside your window (the parrots of Telegraph Hill hang out behind my apartment building). But I especially love the change in my work...from the commute to the fact if I suggest that we hire an office chimp for amusement and filing purposes, it's not met with harsh words and confusing stares,  but rather a simple question "Where are we going to keep all the bananas?"