San Francisco Makes Me <3 California Even More!

You better believe it.

I've been here since Tuesday for work and I'm loving every minute of it. I mean, except for work getting in the way. It's been kind of a slow week. We didn't have a whole lot to do until 3:30 on Friday. Stupid. So now we have to get done in four days what should have been eight. Not cool.

I really like living in Southern California, but San Francisco has quite a bit more going for it than most other cities I've been. It's on a pretty small penninsula, so there is a lot going on in a little amount of space. Although I've never been to NYC, I gotta believe this is a small glimpse into what it would be like. I have so much I could say about my experience here, but I just don't really know how I want to formulate my thoughts.

Los Angeles is so spread out, and downtown is pretty much a ghost town. There's not really one spot where everything is happening. That kind of sucks. It's starting to change a little bit, but I'm pretty sure L.A. will always be a car town. Public transit is awful there. San Francisco, however, has got the public transportation going on. You can use it to get everywhere. And parking is so insanely expensive in the city, you almost have to take the bus/streetcar/cablecar/train/taxi. We took a cab from Oakland to San Francisco for $60, then found out we could have taken the train for $3.35. Uhhh...

Last night I wandered around Union Square for almost three hours. There is soo much to take in. So much going on. Tons of people. Mobs of them crossing the street at one time. It's so fun. Electric. I love being able to walk to everything. All they need around here to make it complete is a Target or something. There's one in downtown Minneapolis, there's one West Hollywood...why not Market Street in San Francisco?

The hotel I'm staying at this weekend is charging me $9.95 a day for the internet. Yikes. Thank goodness it's free when we go back to the Mariott tomorrow night.

Today I went to the Dodgers v. Giants game at AT&T Park. My manager Ryan is in town with me, so we met some of his friends and went to the game. We sat amongst a bunch of Dodger fans, which made it a lot more fun and safe amidst the chants of "Beat L.A." and "L.A. sucks!" etc. No fights broke out, but there were some choice words exchanged between some Dodger hombres and a Giant cracker. It was good stuff. This ballpark is incredible. We sat in the cheap seats in the 3rd baseline/left field corner and we had an awesome view of the Bay. There aren't really any seats in the outfield, so you can totally see all the sailboats and cargo ships in the water. Very cool.

I'm glad the Twins are getting an outdoor stadium.

We sat in some empty seats that were closer to the field than ours. In the 5th inning, a whole crew of black guys wearing Dodger blue came up and wanted to claim their seats. I was wearing my Twins cap and one of them said to me, "you're going to have to find a different seat, Twin Cities." haha. Good thing we were rooting for the same team.

Ryan and his buddies were out late last night, drank all through the game, and then went bar hopping afterwards. It's 9pm, and I'm sure he's still out. I don't get it. I don't understand how sooo many people drink as much as they do. I'm sure they have a great time, but I don't understand how it doesn't get old one weekend after another. I'm happy with my Jamba Juice. I don't think I'll ever be a bar-hopping kind of guy. I do enjoy the beer, but after 3-4, I am sick of it.

Anyways. Back to San Francisco. It rocks. Even more so that I am not spending a dime of my money to be here. My food and sightseeing is all covered by my per diem. How can you beat that? I'm pretty sure at some time in my single life I would love to live in an urban setting like this. If only for a year or two. Live downtown. Work downtown. San Francisco is the most expensive city to live in the whole U.S., save for Manhattan. I'll probably have to wait until I'm 30 to afford it. I'm thinking it would be pretty difficult to find the type of girl I'm looking to marry in an urban area, too. I sort of feel like I need to find my girl in Orange County. Hopefully her daddy is rich so I don't have to be.

Now I'm just rambling. It's cold in San Francisco. That's one thing I miss about SoCal.