Today begins my charge to the holidays.
I’ve got Thanksgiving off, then the next two Sundays and then my friend from New York shows up and there’s four days in a row off. When she leaves, I work another full week, and then get on a business-class flight back to the East Coast for the holidays, where I’ll get a week in the cold DC air before coming back to work New Year’s Eve.
And just like that, 2013 will be over.
What a freakish thought, that another year has flown by so quickly. The old folks are right when they say that each one just goes by faster. New Year’s Eve 2012 feels like yesterday when I look out my window, as I can remember the block party going down in the alley across the street from my house. Drunken revelers stumbled out into the street as I tried to unsuccessfully to sleep before my New Year’s Day shift and I remember thinking that it was amazing how fast the year had gone by.
Now here I am watching the homeless encampment in the same alley from the same vantage point as I sip my tea, wondering where the time went.
It just flew by.
Now I’ve got a couple more grey hairs in my beard, a few less on the top of my head but things oddly feel the same.
This isn’t a bad thing, just an observation.
Tomorrow will come and I’ll pick up the pies from Mission Beach Cafe that I ordered and deliver them to my buddy’s house, and then the next day will be my fourteenth consecutive Thanksgiving spent in the Bay.
I guess at this point, you could say I’ve been here for a while.
I’ve peeled this city like an onion for quite some time, always finding another layer just when I think I’ve seen it all. Which is another reason I’m glad my friend is coming to visit, because I’ll get four long days to do a little more exploring with an SF virgin.
There’s always something new and shiny to find here in San Francisco, and having someone in from out of town is always a good excuse to go get out the knives and give this little seven by seven scrap of land another pass of the blade.
As well as get out of town for a day and hit Point Reyes, Bolinas and other spots in Marin.
It’s still crazy to me how much of the city I know and then I go over the bridge only to realize that I don’t really know my way around Marin very well at all. I thought when I moved here that I’d be spending way more time outside of the city than I do.
But then San Francisco sunk its teeth into me and wouldn’t let me go easily – the other side of that bridge often feels far, far away.
But as soon as my guest shows up, we’ll hop on my motorcycle and tool around the city, then hop in a rental car on Saturday and cross that bridge.
She’s never seen redwood trees, and while I have many times, I still delight in getting to watch someone see something so old and big and alive for the first time.
Watching that is like being eleven years old again and seeing them for the first time myself.
I’m looking forward to it.
