I would like to give pub­lic and sin­cere thanks to the City and County of San Fran­cisco for imple­ment­ing a Twit­ter ser­vice by which to report prob­lems found through­out the city. I have used this ser­vice three times already, and three times I have seen the prob­lems fixed within 48 hours. It’s amaz­ing to me. All of the issues I had were with road con­di­tions, small things com­pared to the over­all state of roads in the city, but they were men­ac­ing nonethe­less. The most recent of these was a small­ish pot­hole up against the curb of Lyon Street, just across from our new apart­ment. It was about two feet square, just big enough to roll one of your wheels in and not be able to get it back out. It looked like it had been there for a while because it was filled with all sorts of debris, includ­ing a banged up old orange street cone. One night, after park­ing just inches from it, I sent a direct mes­sage to @SF311, and within an hour, I had a direct reply with a case num­ber, and two days later, I woke up to the rum­ble of road equip­ment tear­ing up the street to fix the prob­lem, which looks a great deal worse than a sim­ple pot­hole. I should have taken pic­tures. In any case, it gives me a lit­tle bit of civic sat­is­fac­tion know­ing that I helped fix this irri­tat­ing prob­lem. I will be vig­i­lant and unafraid to tweet away any issues I see … within rea­son, of course. I mean, don’t even get me started on the Tenderloin …

In other news, I’m in a bit of quandary. Our new apart­ment is con­sid­er­ably smaller than Henry Street. I think I’ve men­tioned that. V made a sort of half-hearted rule about buy­ing new things, espe­cially when it comes to shoes. Yes, it was directed at me, and yes, I am ignor­ing him. His rule is that if we buy some­thing new, we should be pre­pared to get rid of some­thing old, in order to main­tain some ten­u­ous bal­ance that he thinks we’ve achieved. Ha, I say. I have 20-ish pairs of shoes, and they’re not at all orga­nized, and it’s messy, but what­ever. I wear them all. So, when I saw a sale at 6pm.com, for a pair of Keens that I don’t have yet, and for $30, I had to jump on that. They came in yes­ter­day, and I clev­erly wore black shoes to work so that when the new shoes came in (also black), I could swap them and wear them home with­out rais­ing too much sus­pi­cion. I don’t think he noticed them because for sure he would have said some­thing. But now I feel guilty for buy­ing them, or guilty for not telling him that I bought them. Like I need to come clean and admit an offense or some­thing. Like I’m doing some­thing wrong. Like his rule is ridicu­lous. He doesn’t read this, and no one else does, either, but I still feel like I need some abso­lu­tion. This is just as ridicu­lous as his rule.

One of my favorite songs ever, just for fun:

It’s over, we’re com­pletely moved out of Henry Street. Good-bye, farewell, see ya later. I don’t ever want to do that again. Seri­ously. Oh my god, I can’t really tell you enough how much I hated that whole expe­ri­ence. Not only the box­ing and schlep­ping across town in I don’t know how many trips, but the amount of junk that I have accu­mu­lated over the years and to which I have ascribed some sort of emo­tional value. It’s junk. Books, CDs, papers beyond belief, I don’t get it. I am mov­ing into a new phase of my life that is non-accumulative. I’m not buy­ing things I don’t need. I’m not col­lect­ing junk for the sake of any­thing. For my sake and san­ity, I will strive to be a min­i­mal­ist. Not only will it help my liv­ing space, it will help my bank balance!

And the books! Did I men­tion that I have more books than I know what to do with? Granted it’s not a library, but it’s so many. So many that I don’t know what to do with them. So many that I want to buy a Kin­dle just so I don’t have to keep them around. I don’t read as often as I used to, so it’s a won­der why I buy books at all. And that Kin­dle thing, as much as it’s still an abom­i­na­tion in my mind, is a pretty good idea for those of us who want to remain lit­er­ate but who don’t have space for it. I have to find a place for all these books. Like, some­where out of my apart­ment. Far, far away.

One of the strangest parts of the new apart­ment is my neigh­bors, as in, I don’t know them, I don’t see them, I don’t even really hear them, except when they open and close their doors. Our build­ing is three build­ings, three floors, six units in each, 18 total, do the math, all con­nected with lit­tle alleys between them, so from up above, the build­ing itself looks like an “M,” a “W,” or an “E,” depend­ing on your point of view. Our kitchen has win­dows that face onto that alley and look directly into the kitchen of the apart­ment next door. It was weird to wake up the first morn­ing, go into get break­fast and see some­one stand­ing there. I got a lit­tle self-conscious of my hair and my attire all of a sud­den. But then I real­ized that they weren’t look­ing over at us, even though I was look­ing over at them. I quickly averted my gaze and agreed to ignore them.

It’s weird. I feel like I’m break­ing the fourth wall when I do look over, and I can’t help being a lit­tle nosy. Plus, they have cats, and the cats see us and stare at us like we’re lit­tle laser points on the wall. And that freaks me out because I can see this black mass out of the cor­ner of my eye that is watch­ing me, and I don’t want to look because it’s not polite, and is this what city liv­ing is really like? Weird. Really weird. I don’t know them, and I almost don’t want to know them because it would totally ruin it for me. If we met on the street, would I have to be rude and not acknowl­edge them? Does the fourth wall extend out of the apart­ment and into the street? And since the win­dows don’t cur­rently have blinds or cur­tains, if we put up blinds or cur­tains, would it seem rude con­sid­er­ing the unspo­ken agree­ment of non-involvement? I just don’t know enough city eti­quette to know what the right answer is. I lived in flats for so long, and they were all so closed off from the neigh­bors, I don’t know. They were like lit­tle houses. I didn’t have to worry about stuff like this.

What­ever. Happy Mon­day. Happy February.