1. Part of our ceiling collapsed last night. Luckily, I don’t have to write about it because Marie all ready did.

2. I think the most satisfying change with the move, besides the weather, is the food. For the first two weeks we were here, we ate out the majority of the time and now that we’ve been able to have home cooked meals, we’ve been approaching cooking with much more enthusiasm than usual. It helps that the produce has been outstanding and we’ve been able to eat fresh, nutritious, and inexpensive. Being a vegetarian has been a piece of cake out here, though it’d be tough to make the vegan jump because of all the feta and parmesan we’ve been eating. I’m rambled.

3. When searching for apartments and becoming accustomed to the Bay Area, I became enamored with Google Maps. It is awesome for so many more reasons than just its maps and ease of use. If you feel even half as grateful as I do that Google Maps exists, you will check out this blog. 

4. I’m sad that I didn’t write more about President Obama’s meeting with the GOP last week. See it all here. It was inspirational and after a few weeks of political disheartenment, I felt an immense sense of pride and dare I say hope about the people trying to fix the country. It renews my desire to help along a change, I just don’t know how I’m going to do so yet.

5. I have a few music developments. I’m playing at Wheaton College on February 23rd, which is great. I think it’s my favorite college to play at because despite the fact that the crowds are never huge, there is always a good feel in the room and the people who work there are very nice. I also had another one of my songs “Tell My Story” on the Kardashians this week, which was a pleasant surprise. I’m also getting a footing out here with some gigs, mostly farmers markets, which is a potentially consistent workload for low-key musicians, and street performing.

6. Overall, things are pretty good. I feel healthy, and deliberate in my actions and though I don’t have a defined goal that I’m working to right now (I’m just trying to stay afloat), I feel pretty secure that my direction is true. I’m going to try and meet some interesting people over the next couple week and I’ve been looking at part-time jobs and jobs with non-profits as a potential way to wrap my head around something else. You are all welcome to visit.

Quite a few things have been going on outside of my little California bubble, however. I followed the debacle that was the Massachusetts Senate election. Scott Brown ran a better campaign from top to bottom and deserved to win. Martha Coakley was definitely a poor candidate but I would have voted for her if I was still a Massachusetts resident because she’s a democrat and her loss lays waste to the progress that some democrats fought for over the last year. I’m starting to realize more and more as I follow politics that I’m not a democrat. At the very least, I don’t agree with the way that they run anything, I just agree with more of their ideals. It was a tough pill to swallow to follow this election and my friend Scott put it right when he told me that he’s coming to realize that ideologically, America is by-and-large conservative…and we’re liberals. It certainly makes for some frustration.

Some good things though. On occasion, I find online petitions and choose to sign them if I believe in them. I found a couple today:

Alan Grayson (D- Florida), perhaps one of my favorite politicians in Washington, has started an online petition in advance of a Supreme Court ruling today that could allow corporations unlimited power and spending in political campaigns, which is, of course, really bad. I’m looking forward to watching Rep. Grayson’s growth over the coming years as he is one of the true progressives in Congress.

RealNetNeutrality.org is also circulating a petition in protest of FCC Net Neutrality regulations which would basically make internet providers responsible for policing copyright infringement over the Internet, which is a relevant issue that affects all of you crazy music pirates out there.

It does matter and only takes a minute to do so if it’s something you’re on board with, please sign the petitions.

In lighter news, Conan O’Brien has been killing on Late Night recently. It’s been a joy to add that to my rotation with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It also looks like I might start blogging with some of my old college roommates on another site. We had a blog that ran during my freshman and part of my sophomore years in college that is certainly more raunchy and more irreverent than anything I would post here. We’ll see how things develop.

I can now declare, VICTORY!

It couldn’t have come at a better time because Marie and I have run out of patience. With the exception of a couple of nights in the city (at a charming dive of a hotel complete with curbside crack addicts and drunken party girls who yell “They know not what they do!” at 2 A.M.) we’ve been staying with a family friend and though she has been gracious and hospitable, we really want to get settled. I haven’t even touched my guitar in over three weeks, haven’t listened to This American Life in just as long, and I missed my chance to get The Wire: The Complete Series for sale on Amazon over the holidays because I had nowhere to ship it to! I’m turning a corner, however, and by this time next week, I should be settled and back to my cheerful and charming self.

Luckily, I’ve missed a ton of cold weather and snow back east. There were two earthquakes in Northern California over the past week (including a 6.5 a few days ago) but we missed both of them, so I’m still waiting for my first big shake.

I will have more to come over the next few days, but we’ll see if I fall short of blogging promises like I have in the past. For now, however, I have to open up many correspondences with friends that have lapsed since I’ve been here.

I was also hoping to be able to post far more about getting adjusted here than I have been able to. I have, however, had scarcely a moment to myself since I’ve been here. I’m staying with a friend of the family in the north bay (San Rafael) and between coordinating the borrowing of her car (mine was supposed to be here Wednesday but snow has pushed its arrival to Sunday) and viewing of apartments (the count is somewhere around 10), I have been flat out exhausted by the time I arrive back home each day.

We haven’t applied for an apartment yet. I can say with complete confidence that whatever we decide on will be far better than our apartment in Somerville. We’ve been viewing apartments in Berkeley and Alameda–a small island between Oakland and San Francisco, but one that is easily commutable–and we’ve had some real promising showings. I had to fight my initial urge to sign on the first apartment that I enjoyed because there’s not as much pressure here. In Boston, it’s pretty cutthroat and if you don’t pick up an apartment right away, someone else surely will. We won’t be able to afford San Francisco at this juncture, which is fine, because we can work at our own pace and find a nice apartment.

Other than apartment hunting, we’ve kept a pretty low profile. We’ve spent a bit of time in the city, but not very much. We decided to take the day off from searching on Wednesday and drove south to Monterey, which was stunning, and made stops in Carmel and Salinas. We have 3 open houses in Berkeley to check out tomorrow and then we’ll be applying for an apartment after we take inventory of what we’ve seen.

This whole situation has been a complete break from my normal routine. I’m a creature of habit, but I haven’t spent anytime on the computer, save browsing through Craig’s List apartments, and haven’t been able to catch up on my daily news sources or emails. I’ve been wired from the moment I wake up each morning until the moment I collapse into bed at night. I was able to book one show in February when I’m back in Boston (at Wheaton College, a personal favorite) but that one fell into my lap. I hope to be settled into a place by this time next week, then I can get back to some semblance of a normal life.

A few observations before I go: 

1. The move has met or exceeded every one of my expectations so far.
2. We were considering living in Oakland, but it may be just as bad as everyone says. The moment we crossed the border into Oakland, a car alarm went off, which we took as a bad omen.
3. People are very generous here with rounding off the change. We had a bill that came to something like $8.13 and I couldn’t find a quarter and the cashier told me not to worry about the change. Situations like this has happened a number of times all ready. I think that may be part of the reason that California’s out of money.
4. Public transportation is very expensive when commuting in and out of the city.
5. Alameda has big closets.

Happy New Year everyone.

Mike also does something awesome. He is a fire spinner. In fact, his fire spinning was the very reason we were at the bachelor party at all last weekend. Bob met his fiance through a fire spinning gig that Mike had, a Lifetime Channel worthy story that is only worth hearing if you have Bob as the story teller. Bob is shall we say, very Italian and expressive. Anyways, Mike was working a 6-month contract at a resort in Portugal when that all went down. He has also had an exhilarating and surreal experience on the show America’s Got Talent, which is hilariously told on Cahill’s podcast. He has performed at Burning Man, done numerous private gigs, and will be performing at Mohegan Sun on New Year’s Eve.

If you haven’t all ready, check out his website PoiSpinner.com