first day and camera on the way

I love my job. I can't believe I am getting paid to do this. OK, so I am only one day in, but I already see what a perfect fit it is. I even get to apply my anal-compulsive organization skills to keeping our product displays straight.

Yesterday, after getting paperwork in order and getting familiar with the product warehouse (a big store room and a series of closets in our temporary incubator space), Priya and I drove to visit our San Francisco customers. We went to two Whole Foods markets, the California Academy of Sciences gift shop, Body Time on Haight Street, and Rainbow Grocery. Today was a Siebel day and it must be said; shifting gears back to cubicle/computer mode was a trick. Did I mention I don't even have a computer for my new job? Score!

I spent the Saturday before my first day of work in Berkeley shopping for costumes at vintage and used clothing stores with Barbara, my good friend from college. She's throwing her boyfriend a surprise theme party for his 30th birthday. An important site of anti-war rallies and the center of civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s, the area of town around UC Berkeley still maintains a wonderfully crunchy, patchoulli-infused air about it. My office is in Berkeley, mostly because Priya and Siddharth both live and went to business school there, but what an ideal and appropriate location for this kind of socially-conscious company to be operating.

Saturday evening I visited with Chris, my good friend and travel partner in India (and some of Thailand and Nepal). He lives in a beautiful house in Oakland, the city right next to Berkeley. His roommate's bedroom looks like something straight out of one of those interior decorating reality TV shows. We talked and reminisced for hours in the hot tub under the stars. He made me a copy of Om Mani Padme Hum, the mantra every record store in Nepal played on interminable repeat. Though it became the official theme of my trip there, I got so sick of it, I never bothered to get myself a copy. I listened to it while doing yoga the other morning and the first notes had me sobbing as rushes of memories from Nepal filled my mind and heart. Sigh.

This daylight savings time change is messing with my head. I love it (came home from work and had time for a sunset jog), but my body is still keenly aware that something is askew and I am having a hard time getting to bed in enough time to get enough sleep for my big days. Tomorrow Priya and I will visit our customers south of San Francisco.

I bought a new camera online tonight, a Canon Powershot S70. It's basically a very-souped of version of the camera I lost. Just in time for the season of silliness that is about to get underway here in San Francisco. Stay tuned.