San Francisco, here I come!
March 16, 2012: I don't remember much from this phone call other than that it likely included something along the lines of "I got matched in San Francisco". Regardless, of what was said exactly, it was who said them and how they were said that immediately changed my life. As someone that generally doesn't take many risks, 2012 had already included me leaving a job I'd been at since my Junior year of college and subsequently traveling to a third world country by myself. Yes, January was pretty exciting. But as I tried to process those words as they were tearfully repeated to me over the phone, I knew that the excitement of 2012 was just beginning. I knew immediately that judging from my girlfriend's tears and my immediate emotional response, our relationship had progressed 
way past our joking 2 months earlier that it was "nice getting to know you" if she didn't match to a medical residency program in Boston.
And so here I go on what will quite possibly be the most scary, stressful, and downright exciting three months of my life. I will be renting out my condo (anybody interested in renting out a really nice place from me?), packing my bags, saying goodbye to the city I was born in and have grown to love, and then driving my car west to San Francisco at the end of August. I will be following in my parent's footsteps (when they were my age) and staying out there for at least the next three years before likely returning back to Boston. For such a big decision, it strangely has been incredibly easy to make despite the bottomless pit of questions (What will you do for a job? How will you make friends? Do you really want to leave all of your family and friends behind?). Perhaps it's because I will be embarking on this wild ride with such an amazing girl (who will be about the only consistent thing in my life in 2012).
Unfortunately, this also means that for the second time in a year, I am starting a job search as I will likely not be staying at my new employer past the end of this year. Thankfully I work in IT and am going to be living in the greatest city in the world for technology companies.
Check your calendars, who's coming out to visit me and the California sunshine? 3 hours from Yosemite and skiing Tahoe, minutes from the Pacific, and a brand new city to explore, I CAN'T WAIT!
A miserable life in a California prison
I know prison life is generally pretty brutal, but I was still more or less a little shocked when I saw this picture in The Economist of a crowded California prison. I'd have to assume everyone in this picture is in for a relatively minor crime such as drug possession or petty theft, and if so I'm not sure the crime is worth the punishment here. I just can't imagine having so little privacy and can't even begin to imagine how badly that room must smell. I guess I'm not alone here, as a California court just required some drastic changes within the next two years. Lazy man's summary: California is currently at 175% prison capacity, and a court decision recently made will require them to get down to 137.5% within the next two years (either releasing 46k people, shipping them out of state, putting them in county prisons, or building more state prisons). Not an easy task for a debt burdened state. So what caused this problem in the first place? "The draconian sentencing laws that now unnecessarily keep huge numbers of entirely non-violent inmates behind bars: for smoking dope or writing bad checks , say, or for missing parole appointments." Read the full article here
