After spending almost 3 years in Seattle, I'm now back in California, Bay Area to be exact. The wife and I flew down yesterday and are now living in Mountain View. I quit Microsoft and will be joining Groupon next week. The wife is transferring to the Microsoft down here.
Lots of changes but it also feels like we never left. The wife's previous job was in the Bay Area and I spent a few summers here as well. Everything around has that familiar feel to it. Reduces the stress of moving I suppose.
Along with the move back, I'm also going to re-introduce a couple of old hobbies back into my life. First is music. I haven't seriously listened to music, old or new, in at least a year. I almost exclusively listen to podcasts these days. It's good and bad I suppose. I keep up with current happenings with podcasts but a lot of them are redundant (anyone else feel like 90% of the twit network is just reverberation of the different shows?). I've been missing out on a lot of new music (Mogwai, Red Sparowes, the whole "chill-wave" scene, etc).
Second is photography, specifically film photography. I haven't touched a film camera in ages. I basically just use my Panasonic Micro 4/3 these days. Kinda sad to have all that equipment sitting around gathering dust. In the next couple of weeks, I'm definitely going to break out one of the medium formats, shoot a couple of rolls, and develop them at home. Let's just hope I still remember how to load film, how to meter, ... :-)
One last thing. I've decided to stop subscribing to cable TV. With the HD, DVR, HBO, etc. packages, it was adding up to something like $100/month just for TV, even though I just watch a handful of shows. Ridiculous. Instead, I'm going to start subscribing to Hulu Plus on the PS3. I already have Netflix on that. Add ESPN3 on the Xbox, that's basically 90% of what I watch these days.