Remember when I told myself I was going to update more regularly? Remember when I totally failed at that?

Anyway, hi. I’m digging myself out of yet another hole, because the long and short of it is, I miss blogging. Despite the fact that I’m absolutely pants at it. I guess I’ve had a bunch of photos piled up on my hard drive that one day I finally went, enough is enough and finally got around to writing this.

So what have I been up to these days? I’m still in San Francsico, and I hit my one year milestone of becoming a California resident (and a Googler!) in July. I still blatantly refuse to forfeit my New York license, partly out of my love for the state and partly because the amount of patience I have with DMVs is nonexistent. In fact, I went to New York twice — the first time in August to help my brother move into college and the second time just last week, mostly to visit friends, Comic Con, and J.K. Rowling.

Yeah, you heard me. J.K. Rowling.

We’re biffles now. Don’t be jelly.

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For those unfamiliar with San Francisco and its many oddities, summer doesn’t really start in June — nor does it really start in July. As not-Mark-Twain so sagely put it, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” A year ago, I remember arriving as a total newcomer to the paradox of San Francisco weather and bundling up in tights and jackets in mornings that were characterized by the soul-sucking mist known as San Francisco fog, shedding the layers once the temperature peaked in the mid-60s by the middle of the day, only to throw them back on by the evening (aka a mist-filled hell). In SF, “summer” (at least summer in the traditional sense) doesn’t actually begin until mid-August, which is a total bummer for those (hello, self!) who are used to unadulteratedly sunny, breezy weather. And for somebody who adheres to the textbook definition of summer, the prospect of having to wait yet another two months for decent weather was a grim one.

Fortunately, I didn’t actually have to wait very long, as I was in Boston and Providence for the first week of June: the former to visit my parents (who happened to be on the East Coast), and the latter for work, where I was manning the booth at Google’s Get Your Business Online. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been to either of the two cities in a while — other than random visits to my Harvard friends, my time in Boston is largely defined by the summer after my junior year in high school when I had interned there, and I had last been to Providence seven years ago, when I had briefly considered applying to Brown for college (oh, the days of college visits — how young I was then!) — I mostly skipped out on the standard touristy fare and instead worked at the Google Cambridge office and … ate a lot. As terribly fascinating as working and eating sounds, I’ll spare you the details and convince all of you that I lead an exciting life by providing you with visuals of the contents of my stomach, before they ended up in my stomach. Cool? Cool!

On my second day in Boston, Annie and I went to Mistral, a French bistro in the Back Bay, where I ordered a roasted duck with wild mushroom risotto and Annie ordered the grilled salmon.

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For the record, this has absolutely nothing to do with a mid-90s Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie and everything to do with a trip that I took to Seattle two weeks ago, during Memorial Day weekend. Nor do I have insomnia — though most of my friends can attest to my night-owl tendencies. I just insist on having punny blog titles that are at least semi-related to the actual city, and that movie happened to be the only Seattle-centric phrase/pun/thing I could think of.

So why Seattle? Well, (a) I wanted to and (b) it was a holiday weekend. I had actually been to Seattle before — the West Coast was always a popular vacay spot for the family back when I was in elementary school — but seeing as I am no longer 9 years old, it doesn’t really count for much. If that doesn’t scream TIME FOR A REVISIT, I don’t know what does.

Besides, if I’m living on the West Coast, I ought to get myself acquainted with cities other than San Francisco, am I right?

Seattle is actually very much like San Francisco; if they were both people, they’d be in the same family — cousins, probably. Maybe even siblings. Actually, no wait. Seattle and Portland would be siblings, and San Francisco would be their cousin. And Bergen would be their Norwegian relative (apparently Bergen and Seattle are sister cities, a fun fact I picked up while walking around Ballard, the Scandinavian neighborhood in Seattle). Anyway, back to San Francisco and Seattle, as I have yet to go to either Bergen or Portland (both are on my list though!): they’re both cities with a residential community vibe, hills for blocks and blocks, a shortage of sunny days, grassy parks made for lazy weekends, and quiet residential neighborhoods that you will definitely not find in, say, New York. Instead of Berkeley, you get Fremont. And in lieu of the Mission, you get Capitol Hill. Coming from a San Francisco standpoint, Seattle is leafier (+1), less touristy (+1), less pedestrian friendly (-1), and its skies more downcast than SF (-1). And surprisingly, I managed to escape the infamous rain while I was here (the weather report told me it was going to rain all weekend. Thank god the weather report lied like a dead bird.), so +938234893 points in its favor.

After dropping off my bags in Fremont on my first day here, I was hungry because my stomach was having none of that wimpy airplane food. And in times of hunger, my stomach waits for literally no one. First stop? Paseo, a sandwich place up the hill famous for their much-beloved Caribbean Roast Sandwich. Juicy, marinated, slow-roasted pork sandwiched between two warm loaves of bread? Yes, please! Word to the wise: it’s ridiculously messy of a sandwich, so be prepared to forego any pretension and load up on the napkins.

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