fall back

Can I just say this? Daylight Savings always messes with me. Like, always. Every time. I do prefer the "fall back" portion, generally, because it's usually better to gain time than to lose it. But "spring forward" is good, too, because, well... it's spring, right?

Those distinctions mean less when you live in middle California, though. Because fall is actually really sunny and beautiful, generally. I hear the pattern will be fog-rain-sun (honk-fog-punch), but so far it's been fog-rain-sun-sun-sun. So that's nice. Whenever I get homesick for Seattle I remind myself that it's the beginning of November... or "the bad times" as we call them in the Pacific Northwest.

In other news, I've moved again. Yes, yes, yes, go ahead and make your adult ADD jokes. God knows I've made them all myself. I'm now living in Oakland, the murder capital of the country! Actually, that's not quite true; now that New Orleans has gone third world I think they've taken the mantle. And I do have a hard time believing that Oakland is worse than Detroit or Houston... but that's what they tell me.

Important note: like any city, there are okay parts and the you-don't-want-to-ever-find-yourself-here parts. I'm living in what has been roundly described as the best neighborhood in Oakland. And so far everything has supported that view. I am about a mile and a half from Lake Merritt, which as far as I can tell is pretty much exactly the same as Green Lake. About 3.5 miles in circumference, jogging/walking path around the outside, etc. Only this lake has an added bonus: bird sanctuary in the middle! Yeah! Yesterday I walked around the Lake and saw what I thought was a crane or a heron but have now identified as a "great egret." And it was pretty great. Wading around a bunch of huge seagulls and occasionally doing that cool "spear a fish with its beak" thing. And I saw a flock of cormorants fishing, and a bunch of other cool smaller stuff. I think I might've seen some pelicans, too. Turns out this is the oldest National wildlife refuge in the country. So that's pretty cool.

What else is happening... still working all the jobs for the time being. I'm more comfortable tutoring now, but it is still intimidating in a way. When I first started, I could just study and read all the time and feel like I was preparing and getting better whenever I started to feel anxious. Now, I'm at a point where pretty much the only way I'm going to get better is to just do it. Which has both good and less good points. On the good side, my time outside of work is more my own, to fill with what I want; on the less good side, it's harder to deal with the nervousness if I can't just plop down and study for a while.

I don't think it's just the job that is making me anxious, though; it's just a convenient thing to project the anxiety onto. The move, of course, has left me unsettled, as well as the fact that I really haven't been down here that long. It feels like forever sometimes, but I've only really been gone for eight months.

My brain trip for the day: one year ago I had just moved into my own room in Barcelona.