cybergeisha

MOVING

Readers of this website have figured out by now that I have moved to the Bay Area. I posted, when I left. Well, I’d like to share a few stories and photographs from the drive down - it’s by no means the FULL STORY, or ALL the photos, but it’s the “highlights” of the trip.

DAY ONE

Erik and I loaded up my 1999 VW Jetta (named Vex) with as much stuff as I felt was necessary and drove down I-5 until we were too tired to continue. The adventures between Seattle and Corvallis mainly consisted of making silly faces, singing along to music, recording ourselves having stupid conversations, and videotaping EVERYTHING.

I told you we were making stupid, goofy faces.

One of the highlights of first part of the trip (pre-Oregon) was when we pulled off the slickest tire-squealing, spy-movie wannabe turn-around ever in Vader, WA. I’d been distracting Erik and he had taken the wrong turn, so we ended up driving down a country road and needed to flip a u-turn and go in the and even though the house looked like the type of place in which someone who would SHOOT TRESSPASSERS would live, we turned around in the driveway and BURNED RUBBER, SQUEALED THE TIRES, and took off like a missile. It was very funny and not too mature, but who cares, right?

While driving through Corvallis Erik called Caz to let him know we were near his place and he seemed amused. He’d have been more amused if he some of the dorky faces we were making shortly before calling him. While Erik was talking to James, I photographed those really cool dust devils - there were more of them, too - many more!

In Albany, OR, we stopped at Santiam Rest Stop and I shot some arty photographs of flowers and a portrait of Erik, we used The Facilities (so to speak) then headed back onto I-5. While looking for a gas station near some middle-of-nowhere town called Sutherlin, we accidentally took a totally surreal, freaky back-road detour that had the steepest banked offramps and onramps EVER and no actual gas station.

We ended up at the “BEST BUDGET INN AND MINI MART” which shared a parking lot with a Shell station in Sutherlin, OR.

Incidentally, I bet you didn’t know there’s a road called Dude Mask Lane in Sutherlin, OR. o_O

We were too exhausted to continue by the time we made it to Mt Shasta, CA. We made it from Seattle, WA to Mt Shasta, CA in under 12 hours, which isn’t bad.

We stayed at the Best Western Tree House Inn and ate ice cream for dinner (since the only thing in the whole town that was open at 11:30PM was the Chevron Mini-mart) and promptly fell asleep watcing Law and Order reruns on the hotel TV.

DAY TWO

The next morning, we shoved ourselves back in the car and took off for San Francisco, but got distracted when we reached Redding, when we saw a big road sign for THE CALIFORNIA WELCOME CENTER. We had to go in and demand to be welcomed.

Just before splitting off I-5, we stopped at a rest area to trade drivers so Erik could nap. First, I photographed the trunk of the car with my awesome InSoc magnet, and took artistic photos of a flower and a faucet. I’m so avant-garde, aren’t I? Heh, I supose not.

I think I need to alter the name plate on the back of my car to say “VEX” instead of “JETTA.”

In Vallejo we stopped at BevMo! and Erik goofed around with a clear plastic mini-keg labeled “MR BEER!” We also found “PURE ENERGY” energy drinks, which was hilarious - of course we had to try them. They were in pleasing glass bottles had a name reminiscent of an Information Society song - how could we not?!

The most beautiful rest stop on I-5, as far as I’ve ever noticed, is one just north of the Bay Area. It’s on a hill from which you can overlook the ENTIRE San Francisco Bay Area, from the Pacific Ocean in the West to the mountains in the East, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge on a clear day, it’s just gorgeous.

I was finally at the end of my journey when everything started to get screwed up - we got to the Oakland exit(s) and realized that NONE of them were the exit for which we were looking. Uh-oh.

The road signs were a little confusing (so many of them! and not enough warning to make the right exit!) and it was sort of hard to find the place (the directions were far, far less than clear) but we were able to get there, unload my stuff, move it into my new room and collapse from exhaustion. The next day, Erik flew home to Seattle and I was, like it or not, on my own.

WHERE AM I NOW?

I’m now living in Oakland with two roommates, temporarily, as I don’t like the East Bay very much but I’ll live with it until I can find a place in the city. It’s been sort of rough trying to start over from scratch in a new state, a new city, a foreign environment… It’s scary and lonely but it’s going to be okay. That’s what I keep telling myself.

I’ve been trying to keep busy - Kurt has been giving me a lot of advice on things to do and see in the area, and I’ve been extremely grateful for that. It’s nice to know someone who knows the city so well. San Francisco really is a beautiful place, and every time I feel really desolate, I leave Oakland and drive into San Francisco and do something. Invariably, I feel better afterwards - it makes me remember why I moved in the first place.

If you want to read my bitching and moaning about how hard moving is, you can read Everything is Wrong and I Hate It Here, my blog about trying to get used to life in a new place.

“The Sky Away” by rivetgirl.

Tonight is my last night in Seattle.

By this time tomorrow, I will be in San Francisco.

This is a monumental change. I was born and raised in Seattle. However, recently, I’ve come to realize that while I am ready to move forward with the “adult” phase of my life… Seattle just won’t let me. It’s too hard for me to forge a new path on my own as an adult when everything around me is steeped in 25 years of learned behaviors and experience. I didn’t realize this, though, until I visited San Francisco for the first time last November. When I got there… It felt like home.

Sometime between then and now, I decided I was moving. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, it doesn’t seem real even now.

The process of moving has been frightening, unknown, alien, scary, exhilarating, educational, and so many more things I cannot even put into words. But tomorrow night marks the final paragraph in this chapter of my life, I suppose.

Just a few muddled thoughts before I take the leap of faith into the abyss and not just hope I can fly… believe in the fact that I can fly.

Goodnight, Seattle.

[click to see the best typo ever]

This was in an article titled Women Saved from Burning Building published on KOMO’s website. The article has since been edited to add detail, as well as, presumably, to fix the faux pas.

You may have noticed back in the beginning of December that I suddenly stopped posting here. I had been posting a travel journal of my and Erik’s November road trip to San Francisco, but abruptly stopped about halfway through with no explanation. Any work on my site or Internet presence sort of went silent.

Well, I have an explanation - but I couldn’t let everyone know at the time. It was actually a much bigger secret than my Internet absence of the past few weeks. A huge secret, over which I was giddy for months, but required to maintain confidentiality until the project was public.

And now, it is. I can finally share this incredible, unbelievable awesomeness with the whole world.

I was finishing the Official Information Society Website!

I’ve taken on duties as the site administrator, so I will be doing the updates and such, in addition to having done the visual design and layout of the site - but the meaty tasty code underneath was only possible once I brought Erik on board to help. So indeed, I had somewhere to be. ;)

The Whole Story

Since August, I’ve been in communication with Paul Robb, of Information Society. When InSoc played in Portland last summer, I was so there. The day after the show, I visited the Information Society MySpace and clicked over to the “Official Website” link. There wasn’t anything there except a “coming soon” type splash page.

So, being the type of person I am, I clicked “E-mail This Person!” on the MySpace profile and sent an e-mail to Information Society saying I noticed they didn’t have a site up, and that I’m a web designer and would love to help out, gave a link to my portfolio and my e-mail address, and sent it off into cyberspace, thinking I’d never hear anything.

Not more than a few days went by before I found an e-mail from Paul in my inbox saying he liked my work, and I’ve been in contact and working with him on the project ever since. Given the confidential nature of the project, I couldn’t tell anybody - except Erik, who came onboard the project in October to do the high-level coding and debugging to get the site to be what I’d envisioned.

An Excused Absence

So why did I disappear? Because in early December, Paul said “Okay, let’s do this thing,” and we said “You got it,” kicked it into high gear and said we’d have the site ready to go live by the first week of January - and on 07 January 2007, the Official Information Society Website is finally online, and Erik and I have never been more proud of something we’ve produced.

visit the site now!

Welcome to Peace and Love, Inc.