I’m so out of touch

Some­one asked me which pic­ture I liked for Best Pic­ture. I thought about it for a moment and respond­ed that I did­n’t know what pic­tures had been nom­i­nat­ed. After a few sec­onds, I added that I did­n’t think I’d prob­a­bly seen any of the nominees.

She said, “what? you haven’t seen xxxxxxxxx? and you haven’t seen yyyyyyyy?” Nope, nope.

So just to check, I went to http://www.oscar.com/nominees/nomineelist.html to see what has been nom­i­nat­ed. Turns out, not only have I not seen any of the films up for Best Pic­ture, I have only seen one pic­ture that’s got any nom­i­na­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it: Pirates of the Caribbean, which I rent­ed on video.

Some of those movies I haven’t seen are sup­posed to be real good. It cer­tain­ly used to be that I’d see every­thing. Don’t know what hap­pened, but I guess i just lost the moviego­ing urge. The last few times I’ve gone near the the­aters, I haven’t been able to bring myself to go, some­times opt­ing to just walk around aim­less­ly in the rain rather than go in and see a movie that I expect­ed I might enjoy.

I had a great time walk­ing around a few neigh­bor­hoods where I used to live and try­ing to find an apart­ment. It’s much more fun to look for an apart­ment when I don’t need to than it is when I’ve been pan­icked about find­ing a place. I’ve been hav­ing fan­tasies of walk­ing to work and being with­in walk­ing dis­tance of a cof­fee shop that’s open after 7pm.

I saw one beau­ti­ful apart­ment that was way too expen­sive for me, but much less than I would have thought. It had a gor­geous view of Tele­graph Hill and the Bay from Russ­ian Hill. It remind­ed me a lot of the apart­ment I lived in near Alamo Square, except that it was a lit­tle bit small­er and the view was much bet­ter. It’s less expen­sive, too, but I’m not earn­ing what I made in 2000, so the pro­por­tion would be sim­i­lar; 44% of my take-home pay is pret­ty steep.

Wow. A lit­tle cal­cu­la­tion reveals that when I lived on Ful­ton St., I was pay­ing 53% of my take-home pay for rent. Is that insane, or what? I guess that’s what obses­sive fear of being alone love will do to you, eh?

Inter­est­ing. (insert sound of num­bers being crunched) This means that I could have an apart­ment with a bet­ter view in a tonier neigh­bor­hood and still clear $120 more each month after rent is paid than I was at the place near Alamo Square. Maybe it’s not so insane after all.

The place was avail­able imme­di­ate­ly and I don’t have the cash to move in, so it’s aca­d­e­m­ic. A more real­is­tic plan is to go for one of the apart­ments over at North Point where I think I could get into a one-bed­room for 33% of my take-home pay or a stu­dio for around 27% of my take-home. I might be able to look up at either Coit Tow­er or over at Alca­traz from one of those, but I would­n’t be able to see them both.

I think I need to remem­ber what a bur­den that place near Alamo Square was. I love the hard­wood floors, and I love the view, but do I real­ly want to get myself tied in to a sit­u­a­tion where I’ll be shelling out such a big por­tion of my rent?

In my fan­ta­sy mind, the hum­bler car­pet­ed place has almost as much impress-the-vis­i­tors cred since I’d be near to some coo­lio touristy land­marks. But I also see myself with a straight and most­ly flat bicy­cle route to the Gold­en Gate Bridge and Marin, plus direct prox­im­i­ty to the Embar­cadero for run­ning. The car­pet­ed places have heat­ed pools too. So why is it that I’m still fan­ta­siz­ing about watch­ing the moon rise over Coit Tower?

Ah well. Off to crunch more num­bers and get some sleep.