Santa Fe, pt. 2.

So I'm here. And I'm feeling rather 'meh.' The casita is nice, if small, but everything fits. I *finally* got the internet to work, which is a story I'll tell in a bit. But for the most part, I'm just like 'This better fucking be worth it.'

I'll say this though: if I've seen anyplace more gorgeous than this area, I've forgotten it. Santa Fe is nestled (absolutely the right word) into the Sangre de Christo mountains, and it's quite something to just look up when you're a supermarket parking lot and be like 'Oh, yeah, mountains.' Last night on my way west through town in a (at the time) wild goose chase for something that would get my computer on the internet, I just happened to hit sunset on the mountains, with the bright orange light cutting out right behind the purple mountains. It would've been one of those hallelujah type moments had I not been so worried about getting rear-ended while looking for the right street.

The city itself is just too big though. I was expecting a nice little Lawrence and I get Lawrence on steroids. There's way too much traffic for the listed 66K people, and there is absolutely no regularity to the streets; what starts here may end just over there, and everything goes on a diagonal, and one street even goes in a semicircle and connects back to the main drag! So I'm not too impressed so far; I'm sure I'll get to like it, but I seem to be a guy who either digs a medium-sized town with everything nearby, or a city where at least there are major highways and interstates to connect it all. Or New York City, where you don't have to leave Manhattan at all. But I digress.

I didn't audioblog when I got here, and I apologize. But I was too concerned about getting everything in here and squared away, when I realized that I didn't bring the power cord for my eMac. I already knew I was going to have to get some type of wireless internet solution, so I went searching for those two things. Office Max told me where Best Buy was, where I got a cord and a USB wireless thing. I quickly remembered that the cord was the same as the one I had brought for my printer, so I didn't even open that. But the USB wireless thing was built for Windows and wouldn't work on a Mac (silly me, I thought the 'U' in USB meant 'universal'). So I took it back this morning and got a full refund on both items, and got a full load of groceries before going to another electronics store that Best Buy told me about. This place actually sold Apple items, so I got an Airport card, and was going to install it myself. Until I realized that I don't have the tools to open my computer. I then drove around looking for the offices of Outside magazine (still haven't found them, by the way), visited a health club that I'm probably gonna join, and then went back to have the store install it. They couldn't get to it until tomorrow, but gave me the location of a little computer shop that would do it. After a good 20min. looking for that place (talk about streets that have no names!), I dropped it off. An hour and a half later, I picked it up, and when I turned it on, it immediately logged on to the wireless network that I'm paying for with the house. Whew.

I know that was riveting to you all, but whatever. I'm gonna eat some cereal and then rest for a bit before I take my bike out to find the magazine (when I emailed my boss-to-be and told her that the street listed for the magazine doesn't exist on any map, she wrote "Ha. Welcome to Santa Fe.") and get a sense of whether I can ride my bike around this place without dying. I'll get up rather early tomorrow, probably go join that gym, and then get to work by 10am. This better be worth it.