{"id":289,"date":"2003-08-12T14:57:47","date_gmt":"2003-08-12T21:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2003\/08\/12\/welcome-to-berkeley\/"},"modified":"2008-01-21T14:59:55","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T21:59:55","slug":"welcome-to-berkeley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2003\/08\/12\/welcome-to-berkeley\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Berkeley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wow. I&#8217;m here &#8212; is it like living in Wallingford?                 Not exactly. There&#8217;s a slightly chemically-induced relaxedness                 to Berkeley. I&#8217;m normally a somewhat relaxed person, but here                 I&#8217;m a positively-stressed-out type A. What&#8217;s really mind-boggling                 to me is that the new apartment I live in is the same geographic                 distance from San Francisco as Seattle is to Seatac.<\/p>\n<p>Immediate observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Pedestrians are generally surprised and happy                   when I stop at an intersection to let them walk past. Drivers                   behind me are surprised and unhappy, but then they see my Washington                   license plates.<\/li>\n<li>People are busier here. Everyone seems to be                   in a hurry to go somewhere, but maybe I&#8217;m just imagining that                   since I&#8217;m sort of in limbo until Saturday when the rest of                   everything I own gets here<\/li>\n<li>The second time around has been a lot better                   mentally for me. Last summer, I moved here without really knowing                   anyone except Diana, and now I know dozens of people, and feel                   a bit part of<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.berkeleykaraoke.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">karaoke                     in Berkeley<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Gas, rent, utilities are about 1\/3 higher here.<\/li>\n<li>BART rocks. Seattle&#8217;s monorail should be even                   nicer, when and if it gets built.<\/li>\n<li>Would it kill the Bay Area to have a decent                   bowling alley? A man&#8217;s gotta bowl, you know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, it&#8217;s just the waiting to get set up                 here that&#8217;s the most stressful thing. I do miss Seattle and my                 friends and family, and the gang at Molly&#8217;s and the Twilight                 Exit. That, and Mom would have                 been 62 today. By this time next week, I should be laughing                 maniacally about the whole thing, if they haven&#8217;t come to take                 me away by then.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, it seems that KB Toys is selling                 a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kbtoys.com\/genProduct.html\/PID\/2431939\/ctid\/17\/place\/aguc?_ts=y&amp;ls=collect&amp;_e=3f396&amp;_v=3F39618BFc4Qa077C6AE0C7C&amp;_ts=y\" target=\"_blank\">George                 Dubya action figure with flight jacket<\/a>, and people in India                 are boycotting and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/business\/content\/business\/coke\/0803\/09india.html\" target=\"_blank\">smashing                 containers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi because the drinks are contaminated                 with pesticides<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"facebook\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share.php?u=https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2003\/08\/12\/welcome-to-berkeley\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share on Facebook\">Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow. I&#8217;m here &#8212; is it like living in Wallingford? Not exactly. There&#8217;s a slightly chemically-induced relaxedness to Berkeley. I&#8217;m normally a somewhat relaxed person, but here I&#8217;m a positively-stressed-out type A. What&#8217;s really mind-boggling to me is that the new apartment I live in is the same geographic distance from San Francisco as Seattle &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2003\/08\/12\/welcome-to-berkeley\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Welcome to Berkeley&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"facebook\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share.php?u=https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2003\/08\/12\/welcome-to-berkeley\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share on Facebook\">Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,9,22,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-berkeley","category-entertainment","category-moving","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}