Last night I gave my extra keys to my house, and more importantly cat, sitter and this evening I’m leaving for a week in Northern California. Lucky for me, most of our offices are fairly close to each other, so I get to stay put in San Francisco for almost the entire week and just commute (with colleagues) out to different offices.
I’m really looking forward to taking the Amtrak from Sacramento to San Francisco, I think that should be very relaxing and maybe I’ll even get some writing done. For some reason, I find Amtrak trains ideal for writing.
Then I’ll check into the hotel and make San Francisco my home for six nights. That is eight weeks less than I made San Francisco home in 1996. Yes, dear readers, once upon a time I lived in San Fran. The summer of 1996, between Freshman and Sophomore years, I made an impossible Catch-22 come true.
Sassy Magazine (you remember Sassy, no?) the precursor to the now defunct Jane Magazine ran an article. 16 Cool Summer Jobs. One of the jobs was organizing a cross country bicycle trip called Bike-Aid out of the ODN (now JustAct) office in San Francisco. The catch was that it was an unpaid internship. My parents supported me going emotionally, but couldn’t financially.
Millikin offered some fellowships for people doing service that summer. So… I could get the fellowship if I had the internship and I could get the internship if I had the fellowship. Somehow it all worked out and I bought my first plane ticket online and moved to San Francisco for nine weeks.
Twelve years ago.
That’s the summer I got my first tattoo. Lived in my first apartment. Had my first credit card. Made my first friends that live in other countries (that I’m still friends with). It was an amazing summer. I ran around a lot. I cried a lot. I ate a lot of ramen noodles.
Not this trip.
Now I return as an adult. At 31, I’m the same age that my roommate was when I lived there. I hope I find time to check out the old neighborhood, the Mission, and see the Golden Gate bridge. But I’m also looking forward to seeing friends I’ve traveled to Israel with, turns out I have a few in San Fran.
I’m also looking forward to going to BlogHer. This will be my third year going and it is the first time that I feel like I’m actually going to meet some of my friends. Because of Twitter, I now know other women who will be attending the conference. Yay! I do wish that my sister could go, just like I wish every year, but a brand new job makes it hard to sneak across the country to go.
So if you’ll be in San Francisco. On Tuesday night, you’ll find me at the Mashable Party. On Friday and Saturday, you’ll find me at BlogHer. On Thursday night, if you are a Jblogger or friend, please ping me and I’ll get you info on where we’re getting dinner.