Today marks the 13th anniver­sary of my mov­ing to San Fran­cisco. On 28 Jan­u­ary 1998, I left the Mon­terey Bay for good, and moved to the dorms of San Fran­cisco State. And despite a pro­longed detour in the East Bay, I have con­sid­ered myself a cit­i­zen of San Fran­cisco ever since. It feels like a life­time, but it’s only been 13 years. Crazy.

Today also marks the end of the sec­ond week of school. It’s over, and wow do I have to con­stantly remem­ber why I am doing this. Span­ish is always fun and engag­ing. Just take that for granted. I spent another hour in the lan­guage lab, and one of the peo­ple who works there clued me in to the really great resource that it is. There is a DVD that accom­pa­nies the text­book and the lab man­ual, and they are a con­tin­u­ing story that evolves as our grasp on the lan­guage does. There is also a writ­ing pro­gram that helps us with our spelling and gram­mar. I was wor­ried that I wouldn’t be able to take up two hours a week con­stantly repeat­ing vocab­u­lary and silly in-text dia­logues. Now it seems that I don’t have to work so hard to fill two hours. It’s kind of exciting.

Ecol­ogy is going to be a chal­lenge, but really only to keep myself inter­ested and motivated.

Eng­lish? Fuck. Why? Eng­lish started out inter­est­ing and promis­ing, but with the pass­ing of our first writ­ing assign­ment, I felt like a total fail­ure, demor­al­ized and very dis­ap­pointed in myself. I worked very hard on that sum­mary. I spent the whole week­end try­ing to write what we were told to write, and I got a C−. In Eng­lish. A C−. I’ve never! Appar­ently, even though there were 4 A’s in my gen­eral vicin­ity, there were many oth­ers who thought they did well and received bad grades, and the judging-paragraph exer­cise was equally dif­fi­cult. Mine was kind of shit, because I’m not about to admit to a room full of strangers that I’m a judg­men­tal crea­ture, even though we all are, but I’ve already got a rebut­tal in place in case what’s-his-name decides to give me more crap about it. So, I guess I under­es­ti­mated my own abil­ity to write well. No, I know I write well, it’s this kind of writ­ing that I don’t do well. I need to learn. My sav­ing graces were my famil­iar­ity with MLA for­mat and a proper use of para­graphs. What I really have to remem­ber is that Eng­lish 1C is a freshman/sophomore level class, and most of these peo­ple are very young and inex­pe­ri­enced. The bloom is off the rose.

Today ends the first week of school. I’m tak­ing three courses this time, and I’m at Ocean Cam­pus every day for at least an hour. It’s kind of obnox­ious. And it’s total cul­ture shock to be here with all these teenagers. They’re filthy crea­tures: spit­ting, smok­ing, throw­ing their trash every­where. I ended up sick from expo­sure, but that’s good for my immune sys­tem. I guess.

My classes are OK. My Span­ish class is awe­some. The prof is really great and very pas­sion­ate about her lan­guage. I love her expla­na­tions of syn­tax and gram­mar. It is what I missed from Span­ish 1.

Eng­lish will be a chal­lenge, but I already see threads of what I learned briefly at El Estero Tech. I took an argu­ment class for a cou­ple weeks and dropped it for some rea­son that escapes me now, although signs are point­ing to my impromptu evac­u­a­tion from Clay Street. Any­way, argu­ment is argu­ment, I guess. This teacher is very cute, so it will be easy to pay atten­tion. I just hope I have what it takes to make rea­son­able argu­ments, being as set in my ways as I am. Ugh. Plus, I think I may have to take Eng­lish 1B next term. For some rea­son, I thought it was optional, but I’m get­ting the feel­ing that it is required. No big­gie, just some­thing else to do. Along with speech. Fuck me.

I haven’t had my ecol­ogy class yet. It’s only Mon­day nights from 6 to 9 at the Mis­sion cam­pus. Good times.

I don’t want to be sick any­more, please and thank you.

Let’s take a look.

Jan­u­ary
The first month of the year started out with us in with­drawal from a week-long trip to Mex­ico. It was our Xmas Vaca­tion 2009, and it was fab. We didn’t recre­ate it for 2010, but we are plan­ning on it for 2011. We had a bake-fest – where we made cook­ies, ahem–and we moved into a new apart­ment. I lived at Henry Street for a measly five and a half months before we vacated for smaller and cheaper pas­tures. I was sad, I felt like we were sac­ri­fic­ing too much, and more than any­thing, I felt respon­si­ble for the move. V had lived there with C for I don’t know how long, and C always had more than enough money to go around. He was a trav­el­ing nurse, and they are always well com­pen­sated. But since he moved out, and since I moved in to fill the vacant spot, and since my bank account didn’t match C’s, we had to make a sac­ri­fice. It took a lot less time than I expected, and within a few weeks, I had accli­mated myself to the new space, and now I can’t think of leav­ing it.

Jan­u­ary also began my new school career. As I promised myself in Novem­ber, fol­low­ing the very ungrace­ful inter­view at Elan, I went back to school to fin­ish up my bachelor’s degree. I started out with two classes, dropped one, and really liked the one I kept: soci­ol­ogy. In fact, I liked it so much, I dab­bled with the idea of going into a social field to help peo­ple some way, some how. That faded as quickly as it came, and I focussed my sights on French, as I had when I was in high school.

Feb­ru­ary
The sec­ond month of the year was not so busy. I don’t remem­ber any­thing too spe­cial. We went to the SAP Open in San Jose. We saw a cou­ple con­certs. That’s it. Pretty much.

March
Wow, what a month March was. Aside from more ten­nis at Indian Wells, not much hap­pened. But being laid off from a job I hated made the month almost spec­tac­u­lar. I still can’t believe that I was as momen­tar­ily dev­as­tated about being laid off as I was. My ego just didn’t make the con­nec­tion fast enough for me to avoid the pit­fall in my stom­ach. To this day, there is no regret, and I’m so happy to be free of that weird hole in SSF.

April
It seems like I coasted through April, with only one con­cert. Adjust­ing to unem­ployed life was easy. I mean, when you’re fully immersed in the World of War­craft, it’s easy for the days to fly by.

May
May was equally bor­ing, except that my lay­off became final, and I was really among the mil­lions of job­less. I cleared out a money pit of a stor­age unit, which sub­se­quently sev­ered ties with a rela­tion­ship that lasted far too long. I got a new eye pre­scrip­tion before my ben­e­fits wore off, and I recon­nected with an old boss who kinda saved my ass–again.

June
As I look back through my cal­en­dar for June, noth­ing hap­pened. One hair­cut. That’s all?

July
July was a lit­tle more busy. The Fourth in G’ville, three birth­days, three con­certs, and the Bank of the West Clas­sic at Stan­ford. I turned 39 this year, and very shortly after that, I started to feel my age. For years and years, I never felt like the age I was. I always insisted that I felt like a 20-year-old. Though I main­tain this posi­tion now, my true age creeps in every once in a while to remind me that I’m adult and maybe should start act­ing like one…every once in a while.

August
More birth­days, more con­certs, more school, and a trip to New York! I started Span­ish for real and loved it imme­di­ately. Shortly after the begin­ning of the term, I decided to add a dou­ble major to my BA and make that Span­ish. Why not? Easy peasy. I had Eng­lish 1B and a cin­ema tele­course, but by Novem­ber, I was down to one class again and fear­ing that this is a bad habit to pick up.

My sec­ond trip to New York was fab. We had a great time in upstate at V’s fam­ily place, and a few amaz­ing days in the city after­wards. We went to the US Open two days, saw a Broad­way show, and ate our way across town. It was so much fun, we might do it again this summer.

Sep­tem­ber
School and school. I was so busy get­ting used to study­ing a for­eign lan­guage again, time just flew by.

Octo­ber
More con­certs, a straight wed­ding, and V’s first marathon in Port­land, Ore. And more school.

Novem­ber
A long week­end in Vegas to cel­e­brate a 30th birth­day, a week­end I can’t really remem­ber even though I kinda want to. More school. Only one concert!

Decem­ber
Decem­ber was kind of gay. It is hol­i­day sea­son after all, and the gays love the holidays…well, most of them, except this one, any­way. But we saw Liza Min­nelli at Davies, which at this point is a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and it was purty cool, I have to say. But was was extra spe­cial was Cyndi Lau­per at the Inde­pen­dent. She was there to pro­mote her Grammy-nominated blues album, but I was there to live a dream. OMG. For as long as I can remem­ber, she has been one of my favorite singers, and I never got to see her live. She was kind of a diva on stage, but it’s kind of OK because I think she’s allowed at this point, and her voice was fan­tas­tic. She was all in black leather with all kinds of red hair every­where. My god, that was a great show. I love her so much. Even if it was the blues.

The holidays…meh…what’s to say? They were kinda bor­ing this year. We planned a “stay­ca­tion” to save some cash, and it was nice. It rained a lot. NYE is all a blur, and I real­ize that it was just a week ago, but I can’t remem­ber what I did, so I’ll just say I’m sorry, please forgive.

Don’t really know what to expect for 2011. I’m going with the flow and let­ting things fall where they will. I’m in school, start­ing again in a cou­ple weeks, three classes, drop­ping none of them. They’re all required now. I’m turn­ing 40 this year. I can’t fuck­ing believe that shit. I’m not gonna own that one for a while. Although, the guys I hang out with now kinda like dad­dies, and though I’m loath to be a daddy, it might be a fun drag to play.

I guess that’s all. We’ll see.