A Lady in London

I didn’t want to come home for Thanksgiving. For the past five years I have gotten used to being away. From St. Petersburg to London, I have enjoyed carefree Thanksgiving dinners and have largely avoided cooking. But this year my mother’s attempts to guilt trip me into coming home to Silicon Valley finally worked. I packed my bags and got ready for a California Thanksgiving with the family.

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One of my favorite things about traveling home to California is the abundance of outdoor activities on offer. From hikes in the Santa Cruz Mountains to walks in Northern California’s coastal regions, from big wave surfing at Mavericks to kite surfing in San Francisco Bay, there is no shortage of things to do.

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Every six months or so I find an excuse to travel back to San Francisco. Sometimes the excuse is work, sometimes it’s family or friends, sometimes it’s holidays, and sometimes it’s something that brings together any number of those elements.

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I grew up in Silicon Valley. Intel, Cisco, and Oracle were household names in my town not just because everyone used their products, but because everyone’s parents were employed by them. As a kid I didn’t realize how unique my home was; I thought everyone’s parents—except for mine, of course—became paper millionaires overnight and every household had at least three computers by 1986. And while I was stuck driving a 1992 Dodge Caravan to school every morning, most of my classmates were embarrassed that their BMWs were only 3 series. It was, as we came to call it, a bubble.

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I love ham. When I was a kid, the woman who ran my day care center nicknamed me The Ham Girl. While the other kids were on their best behavior for the prospect of a Sweet Tart or some Pop Rocks, I practiced the art of decorum in hopes of a few slices of Weight Watchers Deli Select.

My mother, who could easily eat her weight in chocolate (and has probably tried), has always been a bit disappointed in my lack of interest in the sugary things in life. However, she is indefatigably supportive of my love of ham. So much so that the other week she threw a big family birthday party for me, complete with a giant honey baked ham.

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On Monday I started a new job in London. On Tuesday I hopped on a plane to travel to San Francisco for three weeks of job training at company headquarters. Ironically, the company I’m working for is headquartered in Silicon Valley about three blocks away from my high school. My life has a funny way of bringing me back to California.

So far I have spent the entire week in the Valley, which is something I haven’t done since college. It’s strange to be back in the area where I grew up. After living in London for a year and a half, I’m seeing things from a completely new perspective.

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I like to consider myself efficient. I got all my packing done last night and this morning I woke up early and headed down to my mom’s house in Silicon Valley for the harvest at our community vineyard. I figured that harvesting grapes for wine would be a great way to say good-bye to California before moving to London.

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Today was a busy day. I started out in Visitacion Valley at a volunteer event with the Spinsters of San Francisco. We had a Halloween-themed event for the kids at Real Options for City Kids (ROCK), the organization we partner with.

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My boyfriend works for Google, and today I met him there for lunch. He took me to Pintxo–one of their eight hundred cafeterias–for tapas. The food was amazing. I had:

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One of the great things about not working is that I get to do things that I was always “too busy” or “too tired” to do when I was putting in crazy hours at the hedge fund in San Francisco. For example, tonight I had dinner at my mom’s house in Silicon Valley with three of my cousins that I rarely see.

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