The 25 Random Things meme is now a bit passé, but given that today marks the completion of my 25^th year of existence, I somehow felt it would be appropriate to chime in and let the world in on 25 random things about me.

1. I ride my bike as much as possible.
   City living is exciting in its own right, but when it comes to parking, it’s an absolute nightmare.  I got myself a nice bike with street tires, and use it to get around as much as possible.  It’s particularly rewarding on crowded streets, where I am at once flying past the pedestrians and flowing through the backed up street like water through a strainer.
2. I have an unidentified blood clotting disorder.
   I would get bloody noses quite often, so I underwent some medical tests.  After a chemical analysis of my blood, all indicators appeared normal, yet on the ‘gash-the-patient-and-watch-him-bleed-while-counting-the-time-it-takes-until-he-scabs-naturally’ test, it took my blood about 50% longer to coagulate than it should have.  I still have several scars on my arms from where those bleeding tests were administered.
3. My favorite musician is Hans Zimmer.
   He writes film scores (one of my favorite genres of music,) and in my view, his versatility and the power of his music is unparalleled.  I often try to listen for the signature he leaves in much of his music: a distinctive synthesized percussion fill.
4. I have been the recipient of a corporate sponsorship.
   My first year of college, I was involved with some roommates in producing an SNL-type comedy show.  Through some tactful negotiating and unmatched business savvy, we landed a deal with Pizza Pipeline, a local Pizza joint (now defunct.)  They provided us with cash and gift certificates in exchange for some product placement and advertisements in our show.
5. I nearly landed a role in a Belgian made-for-TV movie.
   When I was in first grade while living in Belgium, a talent agency came through the local elementary schools.  I auditioned for them, and got called back to their studio for a second round of auditions.  The line they had me read the most was “Mon père n’est pas mort!  Il est à Manchester!”  I didn’t get the part, but I think I was pretty high on the short list.
6. I have been approached by three Korean media networks.
   In early 2007, I became somewhat of an internet celebrity in Korea because a video I made somehow made it as ‘today’s featured video’ on Korea’s largest video sharing site.  I received a lot of random fan mail, and among the flood of contacts was a reporter from a Korean new website, a producer from KBS (Korea’s PBS) and a Seoul-based radio show.  I got a newspaper article written about me, but the offers to be featured on the TV and radio shows fizzed when they learned I was not currently living in Korea.
7. I have an online entourage in India.  
   In 2005, an Indian guy about my age found me on the internet and we began corresponding.  He introduced me to a lot of his friends, and since then, I’ve gotten to know them well, as we’ve all transitioned from  school to the workforce together, albeit worlds apart.  Most of them live in Kerala, a southern province of India;  I have been invited to their weddings, and have been guaranteed a hero’s welcome to their village should I ever visit.
8. Minnesota Timber wolves center Mark Madsen is my 2^nd cousin.
   That means we have the same great-grandparents: Elmer Madsen and Sarah Ellsworth.  There have been several family reunions where I have met him, but I can’t say with any level of confidence whether or not he would remember me.
9. At one point, I was an accomplished high jumper.
   In 3^rd, 4^th, and 6^th grades, I placed either 1^st or 2^nd in my division for community and school-wide high jump competitions (and still have some of the medals to show for it)  Unfortunately, I peaked in elementary school, and when I tried to pick it back up on the high school track team, it was a dismal failure.
10. I had a blog before you did.
    Well before blogger or wordpress, in the bygone era of 2001, I was involved in running an underground high school newspaper online, using a now extinct web app called Nuke News, which was an early blogging platform. Our operation was by all standards a blogging initiative, although that terms was not yet in our vernacular.
11. I’ve produced a documentary film.
    In 2002, I was part of a team that put together a documentary on Salt Lake City street racing.  We shot interviews with local street racers, listened to people brag about their rap sheets, went onsite to rocky mountain raceways to shoot some races, and got to see a bunch of really nice cars.  The film premiered at the University of Utah student union center, where a respectable amount of people showed up.
12. I’ve been to John Stockton’s house.
    I had a friend who lived in Holladay UT, a part of which (notably Walker Lane) is the harbor for high net worth estates.  While at a party a this friend’s house (circa 1999), she announced that the Stocktons were her neighbors.  Another guy at the party and I wondered if she was bluffing, so we decided to go find out for ourselves.  We marched over to the neighboring house, rang the doorbell, and demanded to see John Stockton.  His wife answered the door with a kid latched on to her leg.  She graciously informed us that they liked to ‘keep things private’ and kindly sent us on our way.  Although I’m pretty sure I caught a glimpse of him when I tried to sneak a peek at the side window.
13. I am a devoted fan of the TV show LOST.
    What I always tell people is that the show can be analyzed in the same way a lengthy novel can.   I have gotten a number of people watching the show, and enjoy discussing the characters, the themes, the narrative elements, etc, in a similar way that we would discuss literature in AP English.  I also contribute to the show’s Korean transcripts on the fan wiki Lostpedia.  And to those who claim the show makes no sense, I recommend doing more than sitting in a mid-season episode…that’s like showing up to a book club meeting late  and not having read the book.
14. I was a resident assistant in the BYU dorms (Deseret Towers.)  
    It seemed like a good stable job to have that would get me room and board for my sophomore year.  It turned out to be one of the best jobs I ever had.  I had a lot of fun with my floor; I certainly wasn’t a drill sergeant when it came to enforcement—I allowed, among many other things,  a full sized arcade game station on the floor.  (police trainer, I believe it was.)  I look back very fondly on that time, and I really came to love all the guys under my care—Shout out to 4Dub, you know who you are!
15. I designed and built the BYU Kennedy Center Lecture archive.
    While employed at the Kennedy Center, one of the largest and most lasting projects I was involved in was using my web design, database, and video skills to revamp the online lecture archive.  While it hasn’t received an enormous amount of attention, I hereby publicly issue the challenge for anyone to show me a comparable media archive from any other academic center, school, or college that rivals the Kennedy Center’s in terms of depth of content, searchability, visual appeal, and ease of use.
16. I’ve had videos of mine displayed on the jumbotron of the Marriott Center.
    My freshman year of college, I was recruited by the student union to produce some fake commercials for an end-of-year spoof forum they were putting on.  I delivered in spades, and got about 5 minutes of air time on the jumbotron’s four large screens in front of an audience of thousands.
17. One of my legs is longer than the other.  
    When I was very young, I broke my leg in a car accident and sustained damage to my bone’s growth zone.  As I got taller, one leg grew faster than the other, so I now wear a lift in my left shoe to compensate for the difference.
18. I’ve been called by some ‘the cross-roads of the universe.’  
    Don’t ask me why, but I have an abnormally high occurrence rate of ‘it’s-a-small-world’ moments.  I can’t count the times that  I’ll meet someone who is friends or associates with someone I know from a completely independent context.  Sometime I will even know someone for a while only to find out after some time that we had a mutual friend all along.  Other times, people I know independent of each other will randomly meet each other and have me as their common friend.  I know these things happens to a lot of people, but I seem to have more stories than most.
19. I attended summer scout camps for seven consecutive years.  
    My first scout camp was at Camp Freedom, Germany, in 1995.  The early years I was just a regular participant, then I got into the junior leadership camps, which eventually lead me to the national camp in Philmont in New Mexico, where I was then called back to be on staff.  My last camp was an experimental startup forged by a disgruntled scoutmaster who was set on showing the rival local camps how things ought to be done.  He recruited me to be the senior patrol leader, based on my Philmont credentials.
20. I love the clarinet.
    I don’t play the clarinet, but if I ever picked up another instrument, it would probably be the clarinet.  I don’t know why really, I think it just has mesmerizing sound that works effectively as a single voice or an ensemble.  When watching movies, I often listen for clarinet parts, and to me, those parts often become the most memorable segments of the score.
21. I can beat-box.
    I may not strike you as the urban hip-hop type (you know, the style that the Republicans are now trying to identify with,) but I can generate a pretty eclectic array of percussion, DJ, and techno sound effects with my mouth and voice.  In fact, a few months ago in St. Charles IL, a co-worker and I brought down the house at the local karaoke club when we did an unplugged vocal + percussion rendition of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean.’
22. I owned tadpoles.
    I had a friend in Belgium who’s family members were the caretakers of a large estate, which included a frog pond.  We would go fishing in the pond, and pull out all kinds of creatures, including tadpoles.  I brought some home in a bucket one day, and after some bartering with my next door neighbor, who also had tadpoles from a different source, I ended up with a nice little aquarium.  Sadly, none of them lasted too long, maybe because I never figured out what I needed to feed them.
23. I feel strangely drawn to Thailand.
    I can’t really explain this one.  I’ve never been to Thailand, don’t have any Thai friends, and know no Thai beyond ‘hello.’  I enjoy Thai food, though I’m no connoisseur; yet despite my essentially complete alienation from the country, there’s something about it that piques my curiosity, and I feel that someday I’ll end up going there for whatever reason only time will tell.
24. My facial hair grows in four different colors. 
    I rarely let my scruff go unattended for longer than a few days, but when it gets long, the whiskers comes through in four distinct varieties:  a thick black, a medium brown, a golden blond, and a fire red.  That’s right, red.  Whatever shred of Irish genes I carry, they come through in one out of every four whiskers.
25. I play the piano by ear.
    I took old-fashioned lessons for a good 8 years, but it wasn’t until I stopped lessons and switched to ‘independent study’ that I really hit my stride.  I’m terrible at reading music, but name a tune, and more often than not, I’ll be able to whip something up (with varying degrees of accuracy.)  Improvisation comes along with the territory, so name a theme or a mood, and I’ll spell it out in music for you.

A few weeks ago I started working on-site at Fireman's Fund Insurance, a client of Accenture's.. The Fireman's Fund headquarters are located in Novato, which is in north bay. Up until then, I was taking my bike route to Accenture's downtown office, but Novato being significantly farther away, I had to reconfigure my commute routine.

I started out just driving, which worked out OK, but I was missing the regular time on the bike. So, although it takes more time, I devised a bike-and-bus routine, in which I ride up to the Golden Gate Bridge, and there hop on a bus that takes me to Novato. The distance from my apartment to the bridge is about a mile less than it was to the downtown office, but it is much more difficult.

The final mile of the trip involves gaining over 215 feet in altitude, pedaling up the west shoreline road of the Presidio. The view, however is much more appealing than anything the downtown route has to offer. The pacific ocean comes into unobstructed view at the most difficult point of the climb, providing some form of reward for the effort needed to get there. I caught this snapshot of the moon setting on the ocean at that spot:

Once I get to the bus stop, I get two noteworthy views, one, of course of the national landmark that is the Golden Gate Bridge, and the world most secure former prison, Alcatraz:

Scenery aside, It's nice to be working on site with a client company, and the work brings with it its own set of challenges and opportunities. Needless to say, this should prove to be an important and formative time to my career.

January finds me back in the city by the bay, where the weather is surprisingly pleasant, considering it's supposed to be the dead of winter.  Last year, the winter was particularly harsh, and I was keenly aware of it, given I rode my bike to school every single day, rain, shine, snow, ice, or any combination thereof.  During this time, my belief in global warming eroded as freezing temperatures extended well into March, with some snow storms hitting even in April.  On several bike trips to school, I hit black ice in the parking lot, which would send my back tire sliding and slipping in whichever direction momentum would lead it, as I tried to maneuvered what would turn out to be a mix between a flying dismount, an emergency eject, and an express abandon-ship, all while I watched and felt my bike spin out from under me, fooling myself into thinking I'd somehow be able to land on my feet.

Needless to say, this winter's bike commute is much more appealing.  I've joined the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and have more or less figured out the routes that work for me as I get to where I need to go around the city.  In an effort to reduce my carbon footprint and save the whales, I try to drive only when leaving the city; and every time I try to navigate the city streets while driving, or even ride the train during rush hour, I am emphatically reminded why I opt to ride a bike.

The holidays have come and gone, and I joined in the joviality and merrymaking.  Alex, my friend from high school, and his wife hosted a Thanksgiving feast to which I was graciously invited.  Alex's family was also in town from Utah, and the following day, we also all joined forces for a Black Friday stroll around the city.  As December rolled around, I found myself at a few office holiday parties, a church charity auction, and other festivities.  My brother Philip even flew out here to take some sort of aptitude exam, and stayed with me for a few days.  I treated him to some of the local ethnic cuisine, with which he was not impressed.

Towards the end of December, I flew back to Utah to spend the holidays with family.  I spent an enjoyable two weeks there, saw plenty of family, attended my cousin's wedding, and got to experience the snow and cold, something I had as of yet not done this season.  Taking advantage of the snow on the ground, we had a few sessions of horse-training, where we got my Dad's horses comfortable pulling a seasonally appropriate "one horse open sleigh."  I caught a quick picture of one moment of it:

Also, in the vein of taking advantage of the mountains and snow while I could, I made it up to the ski resorts twice, once with family and once with friends.  Here I am at the base of Brighton Ski Resort with my friend Tommy Hyatt and his little brother Peter, after a full day on the slopes.

The holidays having come to an end, I returned back to San Francisco, where my now-furnished apartment was waiting for me.  After chaotic mismanagement of my IKEA order, my stuff finally arrived to its intended destination. I got two sofas, a bed, a rug, some side tables, and several bookcases.  My apartment is small, but it's pretty nice!  See for yourself:

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Now, as I hear of record low temperatures throughout the nation, as well as debilitating winter storms, I am content enjoying the 50-60 degree breeze as I fly through the clogged city streets on my bike.  At work, I still have not been assigned a client to do chargeable work, but I have been enlisted to work on various "job jar" projects as they call them, doing data cleansing, format conversions, and deliverable document preparation.

Hopefully the new year will bring with it some good projects to work on, despite the lagging economy.  Whatever the future brings, I'm glad I have a job and steady income, because from what I understand, that's becoming less and less common in the population, especially among those just now entering the work force.

I've now been an active employee of Accenture for a while, but I'm still very much in the training phases.  After the first week of orientation, my start-group and I began what is known as "Solution Delivery Fundamentals" training, where we are to learn and apply the various company standards for processes and deliverables with regards to client projects.  SDF Training is officially introduced and described as follows:

"All our entry-level consulting people need to understand the technical work we often undertake on consulting engagements, so your next two weeks will be dedicated to the Solution Delivery Fundamentals course. You will research, learn and apply basic programming concepts while becoming immersed in Accenture’s quality practices, standards and methods. What you learn at this stage will also help you quickly pick up more advanced technical skills if you need them."

In essence, the training involved a series of client requirement scenarios, and our task was to deliver either documentation, or to write Visual Basic programming code.  So, even those without any technical background in the group were required grasp the basics of VB, and we helped each other through the various training modules.  For me, most of the programming was fairly elementary, but I did have a harder time creating and compiling my documentation according to specifications. 

After two weeks of SDF, we embarked on our journey to St. Charles, Illinois, where Accenture runs its "Core Analyst School," the boot camp for all new hires globally.  The course is overviewed as follows:

"In their first year, all entry-level recruits attend Core Analyst School, an intensive, two-week training course at our Global training centre in St. Charles, just outside Chicago, Illinois. Through a rigorous set of learning experiences, you’ll discover how to deliver quality solutions with a high degree of competence using the same tools and methods you’ll use on the job. You’ll develop a thorough understanding of how each workgroup in the Consulting workforce builds value for our clients. There will also be plenty of opportunities to focus on developing personal, professional and people skills that will help you every day of your career."

Our group flew from San Francisco to Chicago O'Hare, and we were graced with a limousine that took us from airport to the training compound in St. Charles:  The Q-Center.

The Q-Center Entrance

It's a huge interconnected network of buildings, containing dormatories, dining centers, and conference rooms.  It's website boasts:

"Located due west of Chicago in a secluded, distraction-free environment, Q Center has more than 150,000 square feet of IACC-certified, versatile meeting space, plus 1,042 guest rooms. As one of the largest conference centers in the world, we can accommodate big groups, but small regional businesses find Q Center a private and productive place to meet as well. We mean it when we say groups of two to 2,000 receive the same high level of personal attention."

So it was here that we began what the course faculty calls our "Odysee of Learning."  Over 100 new employees from across the globe are all assembled, and split into three sections.  These sections meet in separate classrooms, and is then divided into several work groups.  Each work group sits together at table in the classroom.  My table (section 1, table 4) is composed of 6 people, with people from Sweden, Italy, France, Chicago, and Charlotte. 

Our days are long; we get going in the mornings at 8, and usually don't get let loose until about 6. After hours, we have our meals, and can take a number of shuttles to nearby areas to go shopping or watch a movie.  There are also a number of on-site activities available to us: ping-pong, karaoke, billiards, a fitnes center, and for those who wish to can go get plastered at the nearby pub (indentify-the-hangovers is always a fun classroom game the following day.)

The weekend finally came (although we did have coursework on Saturday before noon) and most people made a trip into Chicago.  A few of us gathered together a group to get some authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza, and catch the Bull-Pacers basketball game at the United Center.

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It was quite an experience, and there were constant reminders of the legendary Michael Jordan at the stadium:  His retired number (Jordan's #23 hung alongside now Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan's #4) and a bronze monument at the front of the arena honored His Airness.

The weekend excursion came to an end, and another 5 days of rigorous training awaits.  This next week, the groups will reconfigure, and the material will based on each employee's work group's tasks (mine being Systems Integration, I will likely be doing more technical training.)  It should be fun, and I hope to get a lot out of it.

Monday marked the beginning of my career with Accenture.  I figured out my commute, and am strategically situated to take the N Judah line directly downtown.  I end up riding the train for less than 30 minutes, and walking only 2.5 blocks from my house and 3 blocks to the office.  So relative to others in the office and in the city, the commute is fairly easy going, although the trains do get fairly crowded around rush hour, which unfortunately, ends up being the times that I find myself riding.

The first few days of work have involved filling out paperwork, sitting through presentations about procedure, policies, and company values, setting up e-mail and voice-mail, ordering business cards, and  getting briefed on training protocols.  Accenture has a number of self-serve online training courses which we are required to complete, but there are some login issues with the system, so will not be able to take those until later.

The company is involved with a number of community outreach initiatives to support the community.  As such, a volunteer opportunity was offered to us new Joiners to go work at the San Francisco food bank for a few hours.  So on Wednesday, I, along with those others to chose to participate, headed over there and worked on an assembly line packing boxes for a federal program that supplies food to needy senior citizens in the city.  While we were working, a major milestone way hit, and I helped pack the 500,000th box packed in the warehouse for that program.  We celebrated with a cake, followed by a rest in the break room.

On Friday, we had a breakfast event with some of the Senior Executives and some other people staffed in the office.  The SE's gave some insight about their careers, their fields of focus, and offered some encouraging words.  I was able to chat with some other people, and as I found out from talking to them, the San Francisco is more of a high-demand place than I realized.  New hires often request this office, but rarely get placed here, so I guess that's something I get feel special about.

The core of my start group is composed of 8 people (one of whom is also a BYU grad) and we make up a pretty diverse group.  We all come from a variety of academic fields, ranging from business management, to finance, to economics, to liberal arts.  We also represent a wide variety of cultural and ethnic heritages, collectively claiming heritages from all over the world, and coming from an assortment of areas in the US.The next few weeks at work are going to involve a more training than anything else.  Starting next week, we have 2 week of delivery protocol training here in San Francisco, then 2 more week of training at the Accenture training campus in St. Charles, near Chicago, Illinois.  During this time I think I’ll be getting the foundational knowledge and skills that will empower me to be a valuable employee here.  Upon returning from St. Charles, I think the idea is that I’ll be staffed on a project with a client, and begin the real work, but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I’m just taking it one day at a time, and although the initiatory procedures can get a bit mundane, I am glad to be here, am enjoying my time with the company, and hope that this will lead to some worthwhile opportunities in the future.

Finding a place to live has been high on my priority list.  From the get-go, I’ve been checking craigslist, other online rental listings, and getting advice from locals.  The Sunset District had particular appeal to me, because of its quieter, neighborhood-like feel, its proximity and access to downtown, its inclusion of the church building, and some not-so-distant family history connections. There were a number of places available in the area, so I began exploring. 

I was very hopeful about one that was very reasonably priced, was in a good area, and had a very flattering description online.  But to my dismay, when I arrived to get a tour, it did not live up to what I had hoped for.  The exterior of the shabby row house seemed to have been painted a sickly purple in the 1970’s, and now the purple had turned into a dismal grey, tainted mauve.  The studio apartment was on the ground level, and had a nasty tile floor with decaying grout.  The bathroom had a different variation of tile on the floor and the walls, and was even more unappealing.  There was a shared yard in the back filled with all kinds of junk, ranging from a rusty broken trampoline to car parts, to abandoned garden tools.  Needless to say, I could think of only one thing, and that was how much I wanted to get out of there.

That got me thinking about what I want in an apartment.  And it turns out, I don’t want to live in a dump; and I feel fairly strongly about that.  I don’t know how long I’ll be living here, and I don’t even know many days of the month I’ll spend at my own place, given that I’ll likely be traveling a good deal for work.  But one thing I do know is that when it comes time to go to the place I’m calling “home,” I don’t want it to be a total hole. 

After some more searching, I came across a place that was listed at the upper end of my price range, but still seemed to have some attractive features.  I called the landlord and arranged a visit.  This place was, in contrast, very nice.  It wasn’t all that much bigger, but the owner had clearly put much more effort in terms of upkeep.  The appliances were newer, the lighting design was appealing, the floor was an elegant stained concrete, the bathroom was clean and sleek, and the yard was well kept and inviting.  I looked around, liking what I was seeing, and went on my way.

After the visit, I kept on feeling that I would never forgive myself if I let the opportunity to live there slip away, especially if I ended up living in a place like the aforementioned dump.  I couldn’t shake the feeling, and accompanying sense of urgency (knowing that others were also likely interested,) so that night, I called the landlord back up, and told him I wanted it.

He was glad to hear it, and told me about the credit check, and the application forms involved in the process.  I got the required forms filled them out, authorized a credit check, and faxed them all back. 

The credit report came back fine, and I was told that I could meet the landlord and his family, and get the keys to the apartment in exchange for a cashier’s check which was to include a hefty deposit and pro-rated rent for the month. 

I complied with the terms, and before I knew it, I was in possession of my very own set of keys to my new apartment.  That brings us to today, when I actually got to move in.  David Peterson let me borrow some chairs, a card table, and some kitchen items for the time being, and helped me unload my stuff at my new place, which isn’t all that far from his own place, where I had been staying. 

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I got my stuff unloaded and starting filling the shelves, cupboards, and closets, although I anticipate I’ll need to do a good deal of organizing in the near future.  The place still seems a bit bare, although hopefully things will start to flesh out after a trip or two to IKEA, where I’ll get some shelves, a desk, and maybe some other stuff.

Until then, I’m enjoying having my own place, and look forward to turning this into the place I’ll call home.

On Friday morning around 10:00 am, I got in the car, and headed out on I-80 West.  After driving through the salt flats, and considering stopping by at the Bonneville Speedway, I arrived in Wendover, where I took a little break, and had lunch at the local Subway.  Back on the road, I started listening to the book-on-tape of "The Fellowship of Ring," which was quite enjoyable, although the reader's voice was a bit too soothing, and I felt myself get a bit drowsy.  So I stopped in Wells (home of the fairly recent earthquake) and took a nap.  Upon awakening, I felt reinvigorated, and made the rest of the day's trip non-stop to Reno.

The weather got a bit bad that night, with some snow flurries in Reno.  Thankfully, I found myself a comfortable Motel 6, and spent the night peacefully.  The next morning, I checked the weather, took my time getting ready, and headed back out.  The most treacherous part of the road goes through Donner Pass, known for its bad weather, winding roads, and cannibalism.  Lucky for me, the weather was fine, the roads were good, and I didn't have to resort to eating human flesh to get through.

So after, descending in to the valley, and then getting stuck in stop-and-go traffic around Sacramento, I reached the Bay Area, where I-80 lead me straight to the Bay Bridge, connecting Oakland and San Francisco.  I was surprised at how clogged that area was, and at the $4 toll to cross the bridge.  But as I was crossing, I realized how inconceivably expensive a bridge like that must be to engineer and build, and I suppose they have to cover their costs somehow.

I navigated the streets of San Francisco surprisingly well, and without any missed turns, found my way to the Sunset district, and pulled up to David Peterson's place on Noriega St.  He graciously let me in, provided me with a room, and some information regarding the singles ward and the neighborhood.

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On Sunday, I found my way to church, and met the group of LDS singles in the area, which was considerably large.  I got some advice regarding where to look for places to live, tips about the public transit, etc.  That evening, I headed out to Berkeley to meet an old high school friend, Alex Kessinger, who was hosting a taco night with his wife and baby.  I had an enjoyable evening there, and was able to meet and chat with some of the locals.  On the way back to the city, I witnessed the angel island fire, which I couldn't tell if it was some sort of pyrotechnics display or a real fire.  Turns out it was real.

Now I'm getting busy looking for a place to live.  I've got some good advice, some good leads, and hopefully something will be coming of it very soon.  I'll post more information about the house hunting chronicles soon.